SignalMunk

The SignalMunk is a hardy yet optimistic creature, wary of debt and fiat debasement, constantly adapting his outlook in a shifting macroeconomic world.

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

I'm a cardiologist. The greatest footballer who ever lived spent his childhood injecting hormones into his own legs every single night — because his body had stopped growing. This is the medical story behind Lionel Messi, and it's more extraordinary than most people realize.
At 11, Messi had barely grown since he was 9. He stood 4'4". Doctors diagnosed Growth Hormone Deficiency — his pituitary gland, the master gland at the base of the brain, wasn't producing enough growth hormone. Without treatment, specialists predicted he'd never pass 4'7".
The treatment: nightly injections of synthetic growth hormone into his thighs. A small boy giving himself shots while other kids played. The cost: around $1,500 a month — impossible for his family in Rosario for the long haul.
As a physician, let me tell you what those injections actually were.
Growth hormone is one of the most powerful signaling molecules in the human body. It drives bone growth, muscle development, and tissue repair. In a child whose pituitary can't make enough, replacing it isn't enhancement — it's rescue. Without it, Messi's growth plates would have fused early and he'd have lived his life severely short. With it, his body was given the raw material to become what his genetics intended.
This is the same class of medicine I've written about on this platform — replacing what the body can't produce. Insulin for diabetics. Thyroid hormone for hypothyroidism. And now, in the frontier I keep returning to, we're moving toward cell therapies that could one day let a body produce these molecules itself instead of injecting them nightly. Messi's childhood was the old model of that fight — a needle, every night, for years.
Then football history turned on a napkin. At 13, after a trial that stunned Barcelona, sporting director Carles Rexach grabbed the nearest paper he could find — a restaurant napkin — and wrote a promise: Barcelona would sign him and pay for his treatment. The family moved to Spain. The injections continued. He grew to 5'7".
And here's the part that gives me chills as a doctor.
The very thing that nearly ended his dream became the engine of his greatness. That low center of gravity — the short stature everyone once saw as a defect — became the source of the balance, the impossibly quick changes of direction, the dribbling no taller player could replicate. His body's limitation, medically corrected and then weaponized, turned into the most unguardable weapon in the sport's history.
Eight Ballon d'Ors. A World Cup in 2022. The completion of a story that, without a diagnosis, a treatment, and a napkin, almost never began.
I see the medical lesson in this constantly. A diagnosis is not a verdict. A body that seems to be failing you is not a sentence — it's a problem to be understood and, increasingly, solved. Messi's parents didn't accept "he'll never grow." They found the medicine. And Messi didn't accept "you're too small." He turned the smallness into genius.
Every night that boy pushed a needle into his leg wasn't a mark of weakness. It was proof of the discipline that would one day make him the greatest to ever play.
Modern medicine gave him the inches.
What he did with them was entirely his own.

[Tracy Shuchart (𝒞𝒽𝒾 ) @chigrl]

Notice "climate change" quietly dropped out of the Davos script right when winning the AI race started requiring gigawatts. Turns out the crisis was negotiable all along....just sayin

[Mikhail Khodorkovsky @khodorkovsky_en]

A fuel crisis keeps spreading across Russia.

I ran the country's largest oil company. Let me explain what is actually happening — and why the Kremlin cannot stop it. 🧵[1/12]

[The Rational Mind @TRationalMind]

Haaland ❌

Hulk ✅

[Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson]

To the Americans:

I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.

And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.

This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.

Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.

This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.

But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.

This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:

Thank God for the United States.

Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.
Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man.
Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning.

Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.

Thank God for the USA.

Happy 250th.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Researchers are working urgently to identify a unique compound in a recently discovered wild mushroom that triggers remarkably consistent visions of miniature human figures.

Lanmaoa asiatica a species found in the forests of East Asia has gained attention for its dual nature. While traditionally enjoyed as a flavorful edible mushroom it produces vivid lilliputian hallucinations when consumed undercooked. Individuals report seeing dozens of tiny elf like people moving across surfaces and even appearing on plates.

What distinguishes this mushroom from typical psychedelics is the predictability of the experience. Nearly every person who ingests it encounters the same type of miniature humanoid visions lasting between one and three days. The phenomenon has led to numerous hospital visits during the peak harvesting season.

Scientific teams are now sequencing the mushroom genome in hopes of isolating the responsible chemical agent. Early indications suggest the compound is novel and unrelated to psilocybin or other well known hallucinogens.

Beyond the immediate scientific interest the discovery may offer broader insights. Understanding the mechanism could illuminate how the brain generates rare lilliputian hallucinations observed in certain neurological conditions. This knowledge might eventually contribute to new therapeutic approaches for disorders involving altered perception.

[Wang Y et al. Lanmaoa asiatica sp. nov. a new species from East Asia inducing lilliputian hallucinations. Mycologia or similar journal. DOI 10.1080 00275514 2025 1234567]

[Brett Hall @ToKTeacher]

“I’m hardly, arguably, the most successful physicist of all time.”

Nor was he, then. And no one can predict the future of any person.

[Andreas Steno Larsen @AndreasSteno]

This chart will never return to pre-war levels. The bypassing is very real and will increase from here

Iran played its card and the Hormuz will never be the same

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

This is why no one in any Western country can cut any welfare spending ever and why we keep going further and further into debt.

Because any time anyone reduces spending on anything, an example can be wheeled out of a person who suffered or even died as a result.

On this basis, there can never be too much spending, too much aid or too much tax.

Indeed, the author of the tweet I am quoting will almost certainly oppose paying taxes of 100% or having 100% of his country's GDP be used in aid to the developing world. Despite the fact that his failure to give all his/his country's money away is demonstrably killing people right now. How many lives could be saved by having all of his money go to Africa? How many millions could be saved by having all of the federal budget be sent to the poorest parts of the world?

[Jude Heavenly 🇳🇬🇱🇷 @JudeHeavenly]

🚨 Carlo Ancelotti on why he did not celebrate wildly after Gabriel Martinelli’s late winner for Brazil against Japan:

🗣️ “People asked me why I didn’t celebrate, but football is also about respect. Yes, we were happy to win, but I looked across and saw a Japanese team that had given absolutely everything. They fought with incredible courage, and I know exactly how painful a defeat like that can be.”

“Of course I celebrated inside because my responsibility is to Brazil and qualifying was our objective. But I’ve been in football for many years, and I’ve experienced both victory and heartbreak. Sometimes the best way to respect your opponent is to remain humble in your biggest moments.”

“Japan made us suffer for ninety-five minutes. They deserved our respect, not exaggerated celebrations. Brazil are through, but we know we must improve. Tonight we celebrate the qualification, but tomorrow we go back to work because the World Cup only gets more difficult from here.”

Carlo Ancelotti is a legend

{@FoxNews }

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Banger

[Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross @alexwg]

Orbital upmass is growing so fast that the naive trendline has us disassembling Earth by 2144.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

A new shot literally regrows knee cartilage.

Researchers at Stanford Medicine have identified a novel strategy to regenerate articular cartilage in knees and potentially prevent or treat osteoarthritis (OA).

The method targets 15-hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase (15-PGDH), an age-related enzyme—or "gerozyme"—that accumulates in aging tissues and drives degeneration.

In aged mice, small-molecule inhibitors of 15-PGDH, delivered systemically or via intra-articular injection, promoted cartilage thickening and regeneration of functional hyaline articular cartilage.

This occurred without recruiting stem or progenitor cells; instead, existing chondrocytes underwent transcriptional reprogramming to a youthful state, with reduced populations of inflammatory and hypertrophic/degradative cells and expanded matrix-producing articular chondrocytes.

The inhibitors also reversed natural age-related cartilage thinning, improved joint function, and—when administered after simulated ACL injuries—strongly mitigated post-traumatic OA progression and associated pain.

Human OA cartilage explants from total knee replacements responded similarly in vitro, showing decreased degradation markers and evidence of new articular cartilage formation.

Given that an oral 15-PGDH inhibitor has already completed Phase 1 safety trials for age-related muscle atrophy, the findings open a path toward disease-modifying, regenerative therapies that could delay or obviate the need for joint replacement surgery.

[Agarwal, P., Su, S., Ancel, S., et al. (2025). Inhibition of 15-hydroxy prostaglandin dehydrogenase promotes cartilage regeneration. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.adx6649]

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

I'm a cardiologist. Something just happened today that I genuinely did not see coming — and it could change the future of preventive medicine more than anything I've written about on this platform.
Midjourney — the AI company that became famous for generating images from text prompts — just announced a medical hardware division and unveiled a working prototype of a full-body scanner unlike anything that's ever existed.
It's called the Midjourney Scanner. And it works like this.
You step into a shallow pool of water. You stand on a platform that slowly descends — about two inches per second — through a ring containing roughly half a million tiny ultrasonic transducers, each the size of a grain of sand. Every one of them acts as both a speaker and a microphone, sending ultrasonic waves through your body from every angle and recording what comes back.
60 seconds later, you step out. The scan is done.
No radiation. No magnets. No claustrophobia. No IV contrast. Just sound, water, and an almost incomprehensible amount of computing power — roughly 2 petaflops processing 17 gigabytes per second of raw acoustic data — reconstructing a 3D map of your entire internal anatomy down to half a millimeter resolution.
Organs. Tissues. Blood vessels. Bones. Muscle. Fat distribution. All segmented by AI in real time.
As a cardiologist who has spent months writing about how the standard screening playbook misses the majority of future heart attacks — this is the technology I've been waiting for without knowing it existed.
Here's why this matters for the future of your heart.
Right now, getting a detailed look inside your cardiovascular system requires either a CT scan (radiation), an MRI (magnets, claustrophobia, 45-60 minutes, $1,000+), or a coronary CT angiogram (radiation, IV contrast, limited availability). These are powerful tools. I order them regularly and they save lives.
But they're reactive. You get them when something is already suspected. They're expensive. They're uncomfortable. And for most people, they happen once — maybe twice — in a lifetime.
Imagine instead: a 60-second scan with no radiation that you could repeat monthly or quarterly. Tracking cardiac structure over time. Watching body composition shift. Detecting changes in organ size, fluid distribution, or vascular architecture before symptoms ever develop. Building a longitudinal dataset of YOUR body that AI can analyze for patterns no single snapshot would reveal.
That's what Midjourney is building toward.
The company plans 50,000 scanners worldwide over six years, with capacity for a billion scans per month. The first location — the "Midjourney Spa" in San Francisco — opens at the end of 2027 with 10 scanners alongside saunas, cold plunges, and a gym. The scan costs a few dollars. The experience is designed to feel like wellness, not medicine.
The technology is built on Butterfly Network's ultrasound-on-chip platform — 40 modules per scanner — combined with Midjourney's own AI segmentation and reconstruction stack. David Holz, the founder, claims the system aims for image quality comparable to MRI in many aspects but at nearly 100x the speed with zero radiation.
Now the caveats — because I'm a physician and the caveats matter enormously.
This is a Gen 1 prototype. About a dozen people have been scanned so far. Current scan time is actually closer to 20 minutes, not 60 seconds — the system is bottlenecked by bandwidth and reconstruction algorithms. The 60-second target is aspirational for future hardware generations.
It is not FDA-cleared for diagnostic use. Midjourney is starting with body composition maps — a category below diagnostic imaging in the regulatory hierarchy. The path from "beautiful 3D body scans" to "clinically validated diagnostic tool that your cardiologist can act on" runs through years of clinical trials, comparative studies against MRI and CT gold standards, and FDA review.
No independent clinical validation has been published. The imaging claims come from Midjourney's own demonstrations. Comparative data against established modalities does not yet exist.
And the privacy implications of full-body internal scans at planetary scale — a billion scans per month — is a conversation that hasn't even started yet.
So I want to be precise. This is not ready for clinical medicine today. It may not be ready for years. Many ambitious medical hardware projects have failed in the gap between prototype and product.
But.
The fact that a working prototype exists — producing real segmented 3D anatomy from sound waves and compute alone — means the physics works. The engineering works. The question is no longer "is this possible" but "how fast can it be validated and scaled."
And if it is validated — if the resolution holds up against MRI, if the AI segmentation proves reliable, if the regulatory path clears — then what we're looking at is the most significant new imaging modality in 50 years.
For my entire career, preventive cardiology has been limited by the fact that seeing inside the body is expensive, slow, uncomfortable, and infrequent. We catch disease late because we image rarely. We image rarely because imaging is hard.
A 60-second, no-radiation, spa-based full-body scan that costs a few dollars would demolish every one of those barriers.
I've written about AI detecting inflamed arteries. About gene editing curing cholesterol. About GLP-1 drugs rewriting metabolic medicine. About cellular reprogramming reversing aging.
This is the missing piece: the ability to see inside every human body, routinely, safely, and affordably — so all of those interventions can be deployed before the disease arrives instead of after.
The company that taught AI to generate images from imagination just built a machine that generates images from the human body.
The future of medicine showed up today from the last place anyone expected.

[Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital]

Step one was the censorship at the app level. Because people are able to bypass that they are now censoring at the device/OS level (Step two). Step three is censorship at the ISP level. Think China. All sites pre-authorized by a "Ministry of Digital Safety" entity.

[Danielle DiMartino Booth @DiMartinoBooth]

Obvious via @apolloglobal

“With the three largest passive S&P 500 funds now holding more than $2.6 trillion combined & Vanguard's VOO alone crossing $1T this month, prices are increasingly set by mechanical flows rather than by anyone judging what companies are actually worth.”

[UnveiledChina @Unveiled_ChinaX]

China has officially built the largest debt mountain in the developing world, and the foundation is beginning to crack. Data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) reveals that China's total non-financial sector debt has exploded to a staggering 287% of GDP. This hyper-acceleration completely blows past other major economies, with the United States sitting at 249%, the European Union at 243%, and India at a modest 175%. Unlike Western nations that stabilized their leverage after the 2008 financial crisis, Beijing doubled down on an aggressive, investment-led growth model that is now colliding with severe structural decay.

The true epicenter of this fiscal crisis lies within local government balance sheets. For years, regional authorities relied on relentless infrastructure and real estate expansion to artificially inflate GDP. Now, with the ongoing property market collapse and skyrocketing servicing costs, these debt-fueled investments are yielding sharply diminishing returns. This massive capital misallocation has created an unsustainable reckoning for regional banks and local authorities trapped under severe property stress.

This unprecedented leverage has triggered intense debate over China's economic trajectory. While some note that China’s heavily domestic financing structure shields it from an external currency crisis, others counter that the old playbook is completely exhausted. The economy is now choked by slowing growth, intense export pressures, and the burden of keeping insolvent entities on life support, ultimately starving the dynamic private sector of critical capital.

#ChinaEconomy #DebtCrisis #BISData #Macroeconomics #Finance #Geopolitics

[Javier Blas @JavierBlas]

FREE TO READ:

The top-10 reasons why oil prices are below $100 a barrel.

1) China, China and China
2) Demand destruction
3) Lots of oil bypassing/leaving the Strait of Hormuz
4) The original oversupply
5) Huge SPR release / commercial stocks draw
6) Refinery flexibility
7) Trump's jawboning
8) Options market development
9) The fog of war is thinner
10) Soaring Americas oil output

https://t.co/ohkxSmCgKV

[Luke Gromen @LukeGromen]

Valuation change on foreign portfolio holdings of LT USTs (Foreign Non-Official holdings), 1995-present.

Fascinating chart, esp. if we think of it as a global financial system seismograph of sorts (as we should, IMO.)

[Google Earth @googleearth]

Prepare for takeoff. ✈️ Flight simulator is now available globally on web to all users. https://t.co/hQP0No142P

We've recently added many our most powerful professional desktop features to web. Elevation profiles, new import types, but there's always been one other feature you've been asking us to add to the web version of Google Earth, just for fun...

Where will you fly? Share your best maneuvers, views, and flyovers with us!