Phong Phan

Doctor at NHS, PhD in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering focusing on the use of light to understand cellular metabolism in health and disease.

[Phong Phan @phong_phanthanh]

Attending ESCRS 2026 in London was an inspiring experience and a valuable opportunity to learn, reflect, and broaden my perspective on where ophthalmology is heading.

#ESCRS2026 #Ophthalmology #OphthalmicSurgery #SurgicalTraining #Innovation #AI

[Space Investor @SpaceInvestor_D]

All the next-gen technologies are converging to one place.

Space.

AI. Robotics. Quantum. Energy. Defense. Communications. Advanced materials.

Together, they are enabling the next industrial revolution.

And this one will happen in Space.

[ProudCanRobz 🇨🇦 @RMapleCan]

Two leaders. Two speeches. Same day.

[Phong Phan @phong_phanthanh]

Good points to exercise the brain

[LongevityLab @LxngevityLab]

Neurophysiologist Louisa Nicola trains NBA players' brains and studies Alzheimer's for a living, and she says this 5-minute drill can sharpen your brain:

"Using just a tennis ball and an eye patch, you can train your cognitive reserve, your processing speed, and your reaction time."

"Start by throwing the ball against the wall, right arm to right arm, then alternate hands. That alone engages almost all of your executive functions."

"Then put on an eye patch to block out 50% of your vision, so your visual system has to work under load and stress. To make it harder, stand on one leg and bring your cerebellum and balance into it."

"This is the same drill I used with NBA players to sharpen their reaction time."

PS. We post daily breakdowns on brain health and longevity, so if that's you, follow us @LxngevityLab for more.

Like and repost if you found value in this post:

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Starlink

[Farzad 🇺🇸 🇮🇷 @farzyness]

Dario, Sam, and Elon all publicly agree frontier AI development should be slowed down.

The question now becomes - how does the US gain alignment with China?

How much of the upcoming summit will be used to create this alignment?

Is it even possible?

[Dario Amodei @DarioAmodei]

We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so.

Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training.

You can read the full post here: https://t.co/OGyPb7yaYt

[Your Accountant @TJiMTS]

Andy Burnham, in two weeks of being PM, has perfectly illustrated the main problem in UK public finances.

Week 1: there's a cost of living crisis, so to help you we've taken £45 a year off your electricity bill and capped bus fares at £2.

Week 2: we don't have enough money to fund everything we want to do, so we're taking £630 a year out of your salary.

Same government, same month.

Credit where it's due first - taking VAT off electricity from October is real money, so is the £2 bus cap in January if you're on a bus twice a day. Immediate cost of living relief is genuinely needed by most people.

But I'm not sure how someone who couldn't manage without that £45 a year of relief is supposed to now manage with £630 a year less in their pocket?

The £630 is a 1.8% levy on income to fund a National Care Service costed at £18bn a year. On a £35,000 salary it's £630, on £50,000 it's £900.

It's charged as a percentage of your income.
It's collected out of your income.
It is not, apparently, income tax, because they're going to call it a levy.

It also only applies to taxpayers over 34... So you turn 35 and take a pay cut, at the exact age most people are stretched on a mortgage with childcare costing more than the mortgage.

But the UKs ACTUALLY problem? Spending is too high. And it's too high in ways that are fixable if anyone was willing to challenge the status quo rather than buy more votes with handouts.

This is where £1,383bn goes this year:

Health, £269.6bn
Pensions, £236.3bn
Welfare, £204.0bn
Education, £126.7bn
Debt interest, £104.6bn
Defence, £75.2bn
Everything else, £367.1bn

Health, £269.6bn: We need mandatory health insurance as an employment benefit and a hybrid model. Everyone hears "insurance" and pictures America, someone bleeding out over a copay, as if no other model exists on earth.

The Netherlands has mandatory private health insurance. Insurers are legally required to accept everyone. They cannot charge you more for being chronically ill. A risk equalisation pool moves money towards the insurers covering the sickest people. It's consistently ranked top three in Europe.

Welfare, £204.0bn: Income tax raises £330bn. So almost 2 of every 3 pounds of Income Tax taken from every working person in this country is spoken for by the welfare bill.

Welfare should be for people who cannot work. Disability, genuine incapacity, the people it was built to protect. It has drifted into a general income top-up, and the number that proves it is 4.2 million working age people now claiming at least one health related benefit, up a million since 2019.

Change how we determine eligibility, fix a lot of spending issues immediately.

Pensions, £236.3bn: The state pension is a Ponzi scheme, and I mean that technically rather than as an insult. There is no fund - the ONS says so plainly. Your National Insurance is not being put aside and invested for your State Pension, It just pays the payouts for last year's pensioners. Yours depends entirely on there being enough workers behind you.

Which, btw, there won't be. The ratio of pensioners to workers goes from 27% to 48% by 2050 (and these estimates are before we've seen the proper impact of AI/automation on jobs.

Australia already fixed this: 12% of earnings into a private fund with your name on it, mandatory, employer paid. It's your money, it compounds, it doesn't need a bigger generation behind you to work.

We could mandate the same tomorrow and let the state pension run down over the next 40 years, eventually saving £236bn a year.

You can't levy your way out of these problems. A 1.8% charge on everyone over 34 raises £18bn. It doesn't even cover the interest on our existing debt.

And in the meantime... If we're going to borrow anyway, why is none of it buying anything?

Norway found oil in 1969 and put the money in a fund... That fund is now worth $2.049 trillion. It holds a stake in roughly 1.5% of every listed company on the planet.

We found oil in the same decade and spent it.

The UK's National Wealth Fund is capitalised at £27.8bn. Norway's is about 73 times bigger.

So where is our position in AI, in data centres, in grid scale renewables, in batteries, in electric vehicles, in any of the things the next fifty years actually runs on? We borrow £133bn a year and almost none of it buys an asset.

Fix government spending immediately, increase government income over time (without milking people for every penny of 'levy' you can find), and quality of life will genuinely improve as people have more money in their pockets.

The UK has a spending problem, not a tax problem.

[Nadia @confidencenac]

Dear @andyburnham
Just to remind you and your new chancellor;

The latest HMRC data indicates that to be in the top 10% of UK income taxpayers, you need an annual pre-tax income of roughly £75,000–£80,000.

For comparison:

Top 10%: around £75,000–£80,000+
Top 5%: around £100,000+
Top 1%: around £200,000+

Around £3.7milliin people only.

Total taxes to government from income tax, NI and capital gains tax in Uk -£468 billion

Paid by the top 10% of earners taxpayers - roughly £245–258 billion.

They already do their bit SO
Reduce the welfare bill please!

[Lord Sugar @Lord_Sugar]

Is there a chance if FIFA watched this they would disqualify Argentina for cheating or have a replay with another referee

[��𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚍 𝙲𝚊𝚗𝚎𝚜 @CanesDavid]

This is kind of a big deal

[James Steen @BMA_James_Steen]

If resident doctors end up striking again in this dispute on jobs and pay, remember;

1. This 21 hour wait at a London A&E outside winter or any strike action.👇🏼

And;

2. The fact that 8555 resident doctors have been turned away from emergency medicine in late 3 years alone.

[Diane Abbott @HackneyAbbott]

West Streetng has long faced charges that his cosy relationship to private medical firms and their funding means he will give them too much say and NHS money.
And here we are. 1/2

Dozens of MPs oppose Streeting's new power to set what NHS pay for drugs
https://t.co/Xo5HZubNqX

[Dr Dan Goyal @danielgoyal]

Remember the NHS before 15 years of Tory austerity..

Same day GP
95% seen within 4 hours in A&E
No queuing ambulances
92% specialist treatment within 18 weeks
85% started cancer treatment within 62 days

It’s not the NHS model that’s the issue, it’s our choice of leadership!

[Eileen Molloy @dirtybird12345]

The 4th richest country, orchestrating 3rd world healthcare. Shame on @Keir_Starmer @wesstreeting @UKLabour Shame on the media who're failing to reveal just what is going on in our NHS.

[RJH @rojaha58]

@trentconsultant Wes Streeting has become fixated on “defeating” resident Drs. He wants to “win” even if it impacts patients on huge waiting lists and costs more taxpayer money. Wes wants to “win” bcos he thinks it will help him become PM. Wes’s ambition outweighs his leadership of the NHS.

[Luke Mordecai @Shr_Nottingham]

If you half the number of hospital beds it doesn’t require a team of management consultants to work out why patients are stuck in corridors 🤷‍♂️

[Prem Sikka @premnsikka]

Private firms got £12bn NHS contracts.

Private equity, offshore tax haven firms big winners.

£1.6bn profit in 2 yrs. Enough to pay for 9,178 doctors or 19,428 nurses

Health service “taken for a ride”.

Say NO to privatisation. Must expand NHS capacity.
https://t.co/OFnfTFOSLk

[James Steen @BMA_James_Steen]

Realistic and reasonable about what the country can afford?!😂

You’re paying assistants to doctors more than you’re pay doctors;

Day one pay in central London:

🔸Newly qualified Doctor:
£20.36 / hour

🔹Newly qualified Physician’s Assistant:
£28.86 / hour

That’s 41.75% more.

[Dr Shivam Sharma @DocShivSharma]

We’re told we can’t afford doctors.

But we can afford £1.6 BILLION in profits for private companies.

These are deliberate choices to move NHS money into private hands, not frontline care.

The government's privatisation of the NHS isn't so secret anymore.