Robert Samuel

#Strategy #foreignpolicy #Impact #technology, #complexproblems #change #localgovernment Executive Director Postillion Councillor @WilloughbyCity tweets my own

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

In 1504, Michelangelo finished a sculpture that contained a fact medical science would not catch up with for another 124 years.

No doctor noticed it for centuries...

The sculpture is the David, in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. The fact, hidden in plain sight on his neck, was finally observed in 2019 by an American cardiologist named Daniel Gelfman, a clinical professor at the Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Gelfman had gone to the museum like millions of visitors before him. But where most people see a perfect male body carved out of stone, he saw something only a heart specialist could see: the external jugular vein on the right side of David's neck is distended, raised visibly above the collarbone, exactly as it would appear on a real human being in a state of intense physical excitement.

In ordinary anatomy, this vein is not visible. It only stands out under specific conditions — adrenaline, fear, exertion, the cardiovascular surge that comes before great physical effort. In other words, exactly the state a young man would be in moments before facing a giant.

Gelfman published the finding in JAMA Cardiology, one of the most respected medical journals in the world. He called it the David Sign, and noted that it had been hiding in plain sight for more than 500 years.

What makes this detail extraordinary is when Michelangelo carved it...

The mechanics of the human circulatory system — the way blood actually returns to the heart through the venous network — were not formally described until 1628, when the English physician William Harvey published De Motu Cordis. Michelangelo finished David in 1504. He had sculpted, with anatomical precision, a circulatory phenomenon that medicine would not understand for over a century.

"Michelangelo, like some of his artistic contemporaries, had anatomical training," Gelfman wrote. "I realized that he must have noticed temporary jugular venous distension in healthy individuals who are excited."

He had. And he carved it into the marble.

His contemporaries knew they were watching something more than a sculptor at work... They called him Il Divino, the divine one.

In a letter dated September 1537, the poet Pietro Aretino wrote: "The world has many kings, and only one Michelangelo."

If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here:

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For the full breakdown of Michelangelo's David, check out today’s article: 5 details hidden inside what many consider the greatest work of art ever created by man.

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[Reid Wiseman @astro_reid]

There are no words.

[Dr. Danielle Ireland-Piper @IrelandPiper]

The Mayors! Got to be one of my favourite panels thus far @NSC_ANU! 2026 conference. Great to hear from local leaders genuinely embedded in the front lines of their communities on infrastructure, multiculturalism, climate, and other tangible manifestations of security.

[Rory Medcalf @Rory_Medcalf]

Two in three Australians worried about ‘national security’ and perceptions of underpreparedness widespread: the results are out from our community consultations. These reports are data-rich and nuanced, a resource for the nation ⁦@NSC_ANU⁩ https://t.co/cob8GEKJKS

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

A tech consultant in Sydney spent $3,000 and two months to do what Moderna has spent billions trying to scale.

Paul Conyngham adopted Rosie, a staffy-Shar Pei cross, from a shelter in 2019. In 2024, tumors started growing on her back leg. Mast cell cancer, the most common skin cancer in dogs. He tried surgery, chemo, immunotherapy. Nothing shrank the tumors. Just slowed them down while the bills stacked into the tens of thousands.

So he opened ChatGPT and asked it how to cure his dog’s cancer.

The AI didn’t cure anything. What it did was compress months of literature review into hours. It suggested genomic sequencing, walked him through neoantigen identification, helped him build a research pipeline that would normally require a postdoc and a lab budget. He paid $3,000 to sequence Rosie’s tumor DNA at UNSW’s Ramaciotti Centre, then ran the mutations through AlphaFold to model the protein structures. A computational biology professor at UNSW saw his analysis and was, in his own words, gobsmacked that someone with zero biology training had assembled the whole thing.

Then came the part nobody expects. The science was the easy half. Australian ethics approval to run a drug trial on your own pet took three months. Two hours every night after work, filling out a 100-page application. The red tape was harder than designing the vaccine.

Once he cleared that, Páll Thordarson at the UNSW RNA Institute built a custom mRNA vaccine from Conyngham’s data. Sequencing to finished vaccine: less than two months. Conyngham drove 10 hours to deliver Rosie for her first injection in December. One month later, the tennis-ball-sized tumor on her leg had shrunk 75%.

Here’s where the numbers get interesting. Moderna and Merck just reported five-year data on their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine for melanoma. It encodes up to 34 neoantigens per patient. The Phase III trial is fully enrolled. Projected cost per patient: $100,000 to $300,000. Their pipeline is worth an estimated $2.3 billion in annual sales by 2031.

Conyngham did a version of the same workflow for his dog. Sequenced the tumor. Identified the neoantigens. Built a custom mRNA construct. Total cost: $3,000 for sequencing plus university lab time. The gap between those two numbers is where AI is about to rearrange the entire cost structure of precision medicine.

The regulatory moat is real. Conyngham could do this because veterinary experimental treatments face lighter scrutiny than human medicine. There’s no FDA Phase I-III gauntlet for a one-off compassionate use case on a dog. But the technical workflow, tumor sequencing to neoantigen prediction to mRNA synthesis, is converging toward something a motivated person with the right AI tools can orchestrate in weeks instead of years.

One guy, a rescue dog, and a $20/month ChatGPT subscription just produced a proof of concept that the pharmaceutical industry has spent a decade and billions of dollars building toward. The vaccine worked. The tumor shrank. And the only reason it happened is because a dog owner loved his dog enough to spend three months fighting paperwork.

[Rory Medcalf @Rory_Medcalf]

In the New Year, @NSC_ANU will convene a roundtable on antisemitism and national security. This will be about listening to a range of Jewish voices on the threats to their community and what this means for Australia. https://t.co/7kzhPk28He

[Robert Samuel @robwilsam]

Whoops!

[BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking]

Police chief admits misleading MPs after AI used in justification for banning Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans from match in Birmingham, UK, last year

Read more: https://t.co/DaxfmIz8YC

[ANU National Security College @NSC_ANU]

📢 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻 – 𝙎𝙚𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙁𝙪𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔

We’re excited to announce that tickets are now available for purchase for our flagship conference – 𝙎𝙚𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙁𝙪𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚: 𝙖 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝘼𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙖

📆 24–25 March 2026
📍Lowitja O'Donoghue Cultural Centre, ANU, Canberra

🎫 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 (limited places available)
➡️ https://t.co/2QAgxLKVJl

This conference will use our Community Consultations initiative as a foundation to connect the voices of the Australian people with national decision-making and help sharpen policy in key national security areas from defence and technology and economic security to community cohesion, counter-terrorism and counter-disinformation.

[Rory Medcalf @Rory_Medcalf]

Be part of a crucial conversation for Australia’s future security, resilience and preparedness - tickets available now for the next major @NSC_ANU conference, 24-25 March 2026. Exceptional list of speakers, more announced soon. Join us, register now

[Diary of Samuel Pepys @DiaryOfPepys]

Thursday 25 December 1662

(Christmas Day). Up pretty early, leaving my wife not well in bed, and with my boy walked, it being a most brave cold and dry frosty morning, and had a pleasant walk to White Hall, where I intended to have received the Communion with the family, but I came a little too late.
By and by down to the chappell again where Bishopp Morley preached upon the song of the Angels, “Glory to God on high, on earth peace, and good will towards men.” Methought he made but a poor sermon …
The sermon done, a good anthem followed, with vialls, and then the King came down to receive the Sacrament...
I walked home again with great pleasure, and there dined by my wife’s bed-side with great content, having a mess of brave plum-porridge and a roasted pullet for dinner, and I sent for a mince-pie abroad, my wife not being well to make any herself yet…
so to my office, practising arithmetique alone and making an end of last night’s book with great content till eleven at night, and so home to supper and to bed.

Merry Christmas

[Josh Frydenberg @JoshFrydenberg]

Today the former Chief Justice of the High Court Robert French, former head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) Nick Warner, former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, former Federal Labor minister Mike Kelly & Labor Senator Nova Peris, 100 Senior Counsel and current Labor MPs Mike Friedlander and Ed Husic joined the Jewish community and the Coalition in a growing chorus of legal, political, security and civil leaders calling for an urgent Commonwealth Royal Commission into the Bondi massacre. 

I urge the Prime Minister to heed this message and announce a Royal Commission now. 

It's illogical for the Prime Minister to say "we want urgency and unity, not division and delay" in dismissing a Royal Commission. 

Prime Minister you have been delaying taking strong action for the last two and half years.

If you want to use alliteration then what we want is accountability and action and not a Prime Minister who is in denial but one who shares our despair.

Mr French's words today were powerful and pertinent.

He described what needs to be done as a "moral imperative" saying "there is no requirement for governments to put on hold their responses to the (Bondi) attack pending the provision of reports by the Royal Commission. The events at Bondi Beach require a whole of Australia response which transcends politics and which by its very independence generates a powerful force for change."

Mr Warner said "at the heart of the horror and tragedy of Bondi lies antisemitism, allowed to fester and grow through years of inaction. This must be addressed and acted on, and a carefully mandated Royal Commission would play an important role."

In the days since Australia's deadliest ever terrorist attack, we have heard too many excuses from our Prime Minister and his senior Ministers.

We have been told 'you can't legislate against hate'; we have been told 'anti-semitism didn't begin in 2022'; we have been told that it comes to the threat  'we are dealing with a circle of two'; we have been told the priority is a gun buy back not the radicalism in our midst; and now we are told we can't have a Royal Commission because it will lead to 'delays' in the response.

Each excuse only compounds the pain of the last week and underscores the need for the Government to take urgent, unprecedented and strong action to secure the safety of all Australians.

[Robert Samuel @robwilsam]

@JaneCaro The hatred of women is deadly and the response sometimes silence. The final female Israeli hostage was returned dead today Inbar Hayman 27 the last of 92 women and girls.

[Fast Company @FastCompany]

Some streets need to be engineered for slow driving speed. https://t.co/n23C8Ihsvl

[OSINTdefender @sentdefender]

The Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced the closure of its embassies and diplomatic missions in Australia and Norway, as well as plans to open missions in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe, as part of an ongoing effort to reconstruct the country’s foreign service under the Government of Nicolás Maduro.

[Douglas A. Boneparth @dougboneparth]

Apple just keeps making the same products over and over again thinking their customers will keep buying them.

-Sent from my new iPhone 17 Pro Max

[Tottenham Hotspur @SpursOfficial]

Tissues at the ready 😭

A final goodbye message from Sonny...

[Robert Samuel @robwilsam]

Interesting intervention in the planning system. Wouldn’t mind it for my Council Papers!

[Keir Starmer @Keir_Starmer]

Our outdated planning system has held us back for too long.

Not anymore.

Today we’re announcing a new government-built AI tool that will help planning officers cut red tape, speed up decisions, and unlock homes for hard-working people through our Plan for Change.

[Robert Samuel @robwilsam]

@eHealthNSW @NSWHealth A wise appointment

[eHealth NSW @eHealthNSW]

We're very excited to welcome Richard Taggart as the permanent Chief Executive at @eHealthNSW and Chief Information Officer for @NSWHealth.

"eHealth NSW has an incredible track record of innovation and service delivery.”

Hear more from Richard: https://t.co/n1kXFZ9Cik

[Robert Samuel @robwilsam]

@elucydate @DavidPocock Their approach to procurement is why there aren’t more local businesses