alex baron

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

BREAKING: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declares humanity is "now in the singularity."

[Palmer Luckey @PalmerLuckey]

You've been...

THUNDERSTRUCK

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

I'm a cardiologist. Everyone is sharing this study as a skin story. They're burying the part that matters.
Scientists took the aorta of a 75-year-old donor, applied a single engineered enzyme, and stripped away more than 70% of the molecular damage — bringing it down to the levels you'd see in a 30-year-old artery.
Published five days ago in Nature Communications. Revel Pharmaceuticals, with Calico and the University of Colorado.
Here's what they erased.
Sugar reacts with proteins in your body the same way heat browns bread — slowly, over a lifetime. It leaves behind a residue called CML, the most abundant advanced glycation end product in aging tissue. It welds itself onto collagen and elastin in your skin, your eye lens, and your arterial walls.
Two things follow. Your arteries stiffen. And CML latches onto a receptor called RAGE, which drives chronic inflammation — the exact fire I've been writing about for months as the engine of heart disease.
Since the 1980s this damage was considered permanent. Your body has no enzyme to remove it. Every existing approach only slows new damage from forming. Nothing touched what was already there.
So they built an enzyme that doesn't exist in nature. They screened 45,000 protein structures, then ran five rounds of directed evolution across more than 500 million variants until they had CMLase — a molecular lawnmower that oxidizes the CML off the protein and restores the original, healthy lysine underneath.
Not patched. Reversed.
Over 70% cleared from elderly arterial tissue. Over 55% from elderly skin — below the levels found in 31-year-old skin. 45-78% in lens proteins. The CEO said they expected 20% and were floored.
Arterial stiffness drives systolic hypertension, heart failure, and stroke, and I have no drug that reverses it. I can slow the process. I cannot undo it. This paper says undoing it may be possible.
The caveats are real and I won't skip them. This was done on donated tissue in a dish, not in a living person. No functional data yet — we don't know if that artery got measurably more elastic. Delivering a large enzyme deep into human tissue is a hard, unsolved problem. Clinical trials are years away.
But something considered permanent for forty years just came off human tissue.
We spent a century learning to slow aging. Someone finally figured out how to erase it.
Thank you @theallinpod @friedberg @chamath @pesottas

[@jason @Jason]

I have been building positions in all but one of these names as well — I like to think “if I couldn’t touch this investment for ten years, would I make it?”

Which is the same question every VC makes when they place a bet — even if they don’t recognize it.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: American Heart Association reveals drinking up to five cups of coffee per day may lower the risk of stroke, heart failure & type 2 diabetes.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

BREAKING: SpaceX’s first Starship launch as a public company is scheduled for tonight, with its launch window opening at 6:45 PM ET.

[alex baron @akb1459]

@jiratickets @sco0otz

[Documenting Saylor @saylordocs]

THIS DATA IS CRAZY.

OVER 95% OF THE $SPCX STOCK SUPPLY IS LOCKED RIGHT NOW.

ONCE INSIDERS RECEIVE THEIR SHARES, BILLIONS IN POTENTIAL SELLING PRESSURE COULD HIT THE MARKET.

TODAY: 5%
AUG 11: 25%
AUG 21: 32%
SEP 10: 39%
SEP 25: 46%
OCT 10: 53%
OCT 25: 60%
NOV 9: 60%
DEC 9: 58–60%
JUN 13, 2027: 100%

THIS DOES NOT LOOK GOOD AT ALL...

[unusual_whales @unusual_whales]

Warren Buffett: "Tough to find value" when everyone is gambling

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

BREAKING: Scientists discover “true sugar” in interstellar space for the first time, opening the possibility of complex alien life forms.

[@jason @Jason]

I really want to buy more Apple given the new CEO being a hardware guy AND @markgurman report that they will release M6/M7s with absurd amounts of RAM...

Stock price is fully valued, but when it dips I'm gonna buy more.

... I would have no problem buying every team member @launch a $50,000 desktop computer with 1TB or memory.

I can't think of better use of a $1M, than giving each associate at the firm a desktop capable of running a FABLE level model.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: Infectious disease doctor advises avoiding fresh produce — even if washed — as the explosive diarrhea outbreak spreads rapidly throughout the U.S.

[Polymarket Money @PolymarketMoney]

JUST IN: Citi says Elon Musk’s SpaceX be worth $900 per share within the next few years.

[Kalshi @Kalshi]

JUST IN: 1 in 3 men aged 20+ are neither working nor looking for a job in the US

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: 900-pound time capsule packed with items from all 50 states has been sealed & will remain unopened until 2276.

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

The Spanish broadcast of Malik Tillman’s free kick

MAJESTIC 🇺🇸

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Boston bars are reportedly running out of beer as Scottish World Cup fans drink the city dry — with one bar saying “We tripled St. Patrick’s Day.”

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

This is absolutely insane:

The SpaceX IPO has now drawn more than $70 BILLION worth of retail orders alone.

SpaceX is raising $75 billion, making retail interest ALONE enough to nearly fill the entire sale.

To put this in perspective, the previous record IPO was Saudi Aramco in 2020 at $29.4 billion.

This means that retail interest in SpaceX is now 2.4 TIMES larger than the total amount raised in the previous largest IPO in history.

As a result, SpaceX has announced that 20% of their IPO will be allocated to retail investors, following through on @elonmusk's vision to democratize the record IPO.

Nothing even remotely near what SpaceX is about to do has ever happened.

Friday will be a historic day.