Krishnendu Sarkar

strong convictions, loosely held.
work in progress.

[Krishnendu Sarkar @krishnendusnote]

Introducing Trailer of BODY.
World Premiere on 14th December 2024 at 29th IFFK International Competition in Thiruvananthapuram.
Written and Directed by Abhijit Mazumdar.
https://t.co/ZPadkULLzm

[Jash Dholani @oldbooksguy]

A Dangerous Method (2011) did a brilliant job showing the Freud-Jung friendship, and the eventual fallout. Highly recommended

[Bryan Johnson @bryan_johnson]

Blueprint has been a pain in my ass.

It's kept me from not focusing on the single thing I’m consumed with: how does the human race survive the rise of super intelligence.

Every minute spent dealing with problems like ‘why a supplier shipped us something out-of-spec’ (now stuck on a boat) is a minute not spent figuring out how to make Don’t Die the fastest-growing ideology in history, increasing our odds of survival and thriving.

At the same time, Blueprint products bring my body and mind great joy. I rely upon them for my well-being. I trust it. So do tens of thousands of happy customers. After years of consuming, I am - at a molecular level - Blueprint.

Blueprint is the best longevity stack in the world. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s meticulously designed. Based upon scientific evidence. Third-party tested. Comprehensive, easy to consume, delicious and priced to be accessible.

There’s nothing else in the world like it.

Initially, I tried combining existing ingredients from third-parties to match what the scientific evidence recommended.  That didn’t work. The ingredients were off. They didn’t have third party testing. I had to manage 100+ vendors. There were too many pills. They had varied or non-existent quality controls.

I built Blueprint to solve my own problem. My goal was to achieve the best biomarkers of anyone on planet earth. Nutrition was going to play a very important role.

I was trying to demonstrate - IRL - what Don’t Die means minute to minute and day to day. To practically demonstrate and be the philosophy.

Four years in, my team and I have accomplished that goal. I have the best biomarkers of anyone in the world. I am the healthiest person on earth. I’ve publicly shared my markers and lab work for review. 

Throughout this process, I’ve shared everything I’ve learned, with everyone, for free.

Blueprint has played a major role in this. Each day, I consume around one septillion (10²⁴) nutrient molecules, tiny packets of chemical energy that determine how my body runs. Each molecule has fought for its life for inclusion.

After my team and I built a protocol for myself, my friends and family asked if they could get access too.  Then their friends and family asked and I said yes again. The circle kept on expanding until we stumbled into Blueprint becoming a company.

My goal was never to sell nutrition. It’s the last thing in the world I ever imagined doing.

I don’t need the money.

I would much rather be building in deep tech: the engineering of life and intelligence using biology, physics, materials, software, and computation.

After I sold Braintree Venmo for $800M, I invested in synthetic biology, precision chemistry, genomics, and computational therapeutics, aiming to make biology programmable like software. I believed these fields could enable breakthroughs like a global immune system, life-extending medicines, and cleaner, better materials.

I then founded and funded Kernel, building the world’s first mass-market, non-invasive brain interface. It’s a bike helmet fMRI, to pair the human brain with AI and accelerate our evolution. It took 9 years and pushing the boundaries of physics, but we succeeded. Kernel Flow is now in clinical trials for mild cognitive impairment and depression. I keep a Flow on my desk and measure my brain daily to track my health protocols.

I started Blueprint and people began calling me a grifter. Whatever. They don’t understand.

Then Blueprint and Don’t Die became a global thing. Netflix did a documentary. The grifter blowback got increasingly loud. Somehow making my protocol available at a low cost lessened the trust that some people had in me.

Call me Patrick Bateman, Dorian Grey, Prometheus, a vampire, or elf, I’ll laugh with you. The questioning of my intentions hurts the mission.

My sole purpose in existence is the survival and thriving of the human race.

So earlier this year when WIRED’s Katie Drummond asked me about the tension of Blueprint and being called a grifter - I was like fuck it. Should I shut the company down or sell it? I’d been thinking about how to solve this tension. That sucks because we have tens of thousands of happy customers who also depend upon Blueprint. But it takes me away from Don’t Die. It hurts my credibility.

While this question may seem unique to my situation, it’s really what so many are now grappling with.

With AI advancing so rapidly, what do any of us do right now? What’s worth doing anymore? Everyone in my circle is asking this same question, but in their own way.

The truth is that I need Blueprint.

The world needs Blueprint.

It is the practical manifestation of Don’t Die.

The interview referenced was 3 months ago.

Since then, I’ve explored the options.

We’re going all in. We’re making Blueprint accessible and impactful for everyone. To replicate everything in my protocol - all the measurements, protocols, therapies - and make it easy and accessible for others to do in community. For your family and friends to do this too.

We are marrying Blueprint (daily practical health) and Don’t Die (philosophy and global action), as they really are the same thing.

+ Blueprint Nourish: Premium fuel for your body, covering 50-100% of your daily nutrition, hair care, skin care, oral care, etc.

+ Blueprint Biomarkers: Health as an AI-first, fun, social, and competitive experience. Leaderboards and rewards. Your progress tracked each day.

+ Blueprint Quantified: A global certification standard for food purity. First for pets, then humans. To help everyone know exactly what's in their food and raise the global standard.

+ Blueprint Clinics: Heal damage inflicted by the world. Get access to cutting edge longevity technologies, protocols, and therapies. Locations around the world. Blueprint centers and licensees.

To do this, we’re raising money and we need hard core builders.

I’m hiring a CEO and CTO who can lead the business day to day while I focus on Don’t Die.

.. Red Bull made adventure a universe.
.. Duolingo made language-learning fun.
.. Blueprint will make longevity a game.

A new era is here.
Death is our only foe.
We are the first generation who won’t die.

[Pico Iyer @PicoIyer]

Shinryu Suzuki offers the best medicine I have ever found. His new book Becoming Yourself is the book to send to anyone in distress��and to yourself when you lose sight of what you could be. Whether Buddhist, Christian or nothing at all, you can still be fully, deeply yourself.

[♡ @taesdawn26]

happy 63rd birthday to tony leung

[Bryan Johnson @bryan_johnson]

If you want to be hot, jacked, and have a great sex life, the Bryan Johnson Podcast is live on Spotify, Apple, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

[Bryan Johnson @bryan_johnson]

It’s amazing how culture shapes your identity, beliefs, and norms, yet you experience it as free will and uniquely your own.

[Tao Lin @tao_lin]

Low IQ isn't a compelling insult, in my view. People with low IQ can be resistant to brainwashing and conformity, and can be kind and creative. People with high IQ seem to be just as susceptible to tribalism and conformity, and are just as or more likely to be mean and snarky.

[Rahul Desai @ReelReptile]

"Girls Will Be Girls" is finally streaming on Prime. Can't recommend this film enough, one of my favourites of the year. Had written about it in January:

https://t.co/EMmK7kxHeK

[Zane Koch @zanehkoch]

BRYAN JOHNSON IS A BUBBLE WAITING TO BURST, but that might be a good thing.

I’ve been reading the book “Bubbles and the End of Stagnation,” which argues that many scientific and technological breakthrough’s of the last century (the Manhattan project, the Apollo mission, bitcoin, dot com explosion and implosion) were speculative bubbles, where over-investment and societal enthusiasm led to transformative advancements that would not have otherwise occurred. This view turns the typical narrative of bubbles as a negative phenomena on its head, instead positing that they play a crucial role in driving progress.

One sentence book summary: yes, each bubble may burst and many will lose a lot, but the progress made during the bubble will be left behind, and that progress would not have been possible without such crazed zeal.

I think that @bryan_johnson is, wittingly or unwittingly, creating just such a speculative bubble with his Don’t Die movement, which fulfills all the properties of bubbles that Hobart and Huber identify in their book:

1/Self-fulfilling prophecy (i.e. reality distortion field): Johnson’s claims are audacious—like the possibility of halting or reversing aging— yet they promote a reality where such ideas gain credibility and resources. By presenting his vision as inevitable, he helps to reshape societal expectations, which, in the best case, pulls forward investment and innovation in longevity.
2/FOMO & YOLO: If you don’t buy in to Don’t Die you will die, so don’t miss out. And you only live once, so don’t die.
3/Excessive risk taking and over-investment: Its hard to find something that Bryan does that isn’t risky and expensive; complete plasma replacement, 100+ pills a day, spending $2mil/year, follistatin gene therapy.
4/Definite optimism: “By following the blueprint plan [definite] I, and you, can live forever [optimism]”.
5/Strong social interactions between motivated and capable individuals: Don’t Die meetups, his social media presence, etc.

The bull case: Bryan Johnson’s narrative of “if you survive until year X, technology and AI will be so advanced as to make you live forever” will set off a self-fulfilling process. This narrative will shift societal priorities and accelerate the demand for life extension technologies, which will in turn lead to the investment and research necessary to make his claim’s possible.

The bear case: unfounded claims will inevitably go unsupported, tearing to shreds what little credibility the longevity field might’ve had, and putting us into a longevity dark age. In the process people will get hurt copying his “treatments.”

So, which future timeline are we on?
I honestly can’t make up my mind. I don’t think we’ll all live forever, but I do kinda think that the Don’t Die hype might do net good.

What I know for sure is that the response I get when I tell people I do aging and longevity research has substantially changed in the last couple of years. I used to get blank stares, now I get “oh, like that millionaire on twitter with a blood boy?”. To me, it feels like the narrative fly-wheel is already spinning, the bubble is already forming, and something is going to happen.

[Krishnendu Sarkar @krishnendusnote]

@ReelReptile Thank you so much for such an incredible review! I just spoke with the director, and he found the review to be deeply true to the film's essence. He is absolutely amazed!

[Krishnendu Sarkar @krishnendusnote]

"I have great admiration for actors who live to create. The willingness to bleed on screen, and to mine the personal until it’s no longer a possession... Manoj Sharma bares it all in more ways than one, fuelling our notions about life itself being the grandest performance."

[Rahul Desai @ReelReptile]

Wrote about BODY, Abhijit Mazumdar's naked and daring new independent film that had its world premiere in the international competition section of the ongoing IFFK 2024. Has a solid lead performance:

https://t.co/IsMMsPiroB

[Rahul Desai @ReelReptile]

Wrote about BODY, Abhijit Mazumdar's naked and daring new independent film that had its world premiere in the international competition section of the ongoing IFFK 2024. Has a solid lead performance:

https://t.co/IsMMsPiroB

[Krishnendu Sarkar @krishnendusnote]

https://t.co/wRBqUfLQ1R

[Olivia Moore @omooretweets]

New productivity hack - I asked Gemini Realtime to watch my screen, and yell at me when I waste time.

It gets increasingly mean the longer I spend slacking off 😂

(but since it's Gemini, it can't be that mean)

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

At best, Gaza showed (actually confirmed) that Western Universalism is just verbalism for post-meeting speeches & commencement lectures.
But it showed something more sinister: that the so-called moral values, in their very selective applications, are just tools for influence.

[Krishnendu Sarkar @krishnendusnote]

https://t.co/aubeCRhKou

[David Deutsch @DavidDeutschOxf]

He has been right about two things: behaviourism and postmodernism.

[David Deutsch @DavidDeutschOxf]

Sometimes acceptance in a group depends on displaying an otherwise meaningless symbol. Sometimes on uttering otherwise meaningless words. But when it's stating, and doggedly defending, crass falsehoods, the group is an evil cult and one should run for one's life.

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

The ludic fallacy: I'd rather speak Mongolian* yet fail at Mongolian scrabble than the reverse. So many do well at games, competitions, & IQ tests yet fail in the real world.

Many things are not portable.

* A member of the Altaic family of languages, written in vertical Syriac.

[Peter Daou @peterdaou]

WHERE THE F*CK ARE YOU, WESTERN MEDIA?

An Israeli historian who teaches at Hebrew University says "Israel is ethnically cleansing North Gaza."

https://t.co/4SSzTVwAwo