Zach Irsik

strategic communications • brands • film • ai • e/acc

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

@IterIntellectus https://t.co/kAVVTxxFwZ

[Martin Borch Jensen @MartinBJensen]

Guys we need to get serious here: The new paper barely nudges our priors on GLP-1 for longevity.

I'm spending every waking moment pushing for progress on longevity, but what's going to get us there is scaling up truth-seeking, not giving in to slopulism.
Publishing this in Nature is IMO a failure of human taste and judgement.

First, the sema mice don't really live longer than healthy controls in other studies (see pic). If you stop there, this should be seen as 'nice someone did this, now do it more carefully'. This may be robust life extension it may not.

Second, we already know reduced food intake extends mouse lifespan. Why is there are whole figure comparing CR and sema effects, but no lifespan for matched food-intake? Because it should turn paper into 'sema reduces mouse food intake'

If you want to keep going, why females only? Blah blah male aggression, that doesn't stop various ITP interventions from working in males.

Or is it that constant injections shorten lifespan, possibly via ulcerative dermatitis which is more common in females? No non-injected control group, can 't say.

Fig 3 "GLP-1 ... alleviates the hallmarks of ageing and mimics the calorie restriction response" yes reducing food intake is similar to reducing food intake.
Fig 4 "modulates the genetic regulators of ageing" -> Show a bunch target genes many of which have been tested and don't nudge lifespan.

I'm glad someone did this study, I'm not saying it's not a contribution or should be retracted, but the reason this is in a tier 1 journal is because it'll get attention (boosted by hypefluencers). Apparently some journals are just giving up; I understand that the multi-year assault on truth-seeking is really hard, it's hard to imagine journals not getting replaced by AI if they lean into slopulism.

[Palmer Luckey @PalmerLuckey]

This gets to the core of the issue more than any debate about specific terms.

Do you believe in democracy? Should our military be regulated by our elected leaders, or corporate executives? Seemingly innocuous terms from the latter like "You cannot target innocent civilians" are actually moral minefields that lever differences of cultural tradition into massive control.

Who is a civilian and not? What makes them innocent or not? What does it mean for them to be a "target" vs collateral damage? Existing policy and law has very clear answers for these questions, but unelected corporations managing profits and PR will often have a very different answer.

Imagine if a missile company tried to enforce the above policy, that their product cannot be used to target innocent civilians, that they can shut off access if elected leaders decide to break those terms. Sounds, good, right? Not really - in addition to the value judgement problems I list above, you also have to account for questions like:

-What level of information, classified and otherwise, does the corporation receive that would allow them to make these determinations? How much leverage would they have to demand more?
-What if an elected President merely threatens a dictator with using our weapons in a certain way, ala Madman Theory/MAD? Is the threat seen as empty because the dictator knows the corporate executives will cut off the military? Is the threat enough to trigger the cutoff? How might either of those determinations vary if the current corporate executive happens to like the dictator or dislike the President?
-At what level of confidence does the cutoff trigger, both in writing and in reality?

The fact that this is a debate over AI does not change the underlying calculus. The same problems apply to definitions and use of ethically fraught but important capabilities like surveillance systems or autonomous weapons. It is easy to say "But they will have cutouts to operate with autonomous systems for defensive use!", but you immediately get into the same issues and more - what is autonomous? What is defensive? What about defending an asset during an offensive action, or parking a carrier group off the coast of a nation that considers us to be offensive?

At the end of the day, you have to believe that the American experiment is still ongoing, that people have the right to elect and unelect the authorities making these decisions, that our imperfect constitutional republic is still good enough to run a country without outsourcing the real levers of power to billionaires and corpos and their shadow advisors. I still believe.

And that is why "bro just agree the AI won't be involved in autonomous weapons or mass surveillance why can't you agree it is so simple please bro" is an untenable position that the United States cannot possibly accept.

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

ironically the NCAA's opposition basically confirms the market would be incredibly liquid.

[InGame @InGameHQ]

Kalshi has filed forms to accept bets on who enters NCAA Transfer Portal.

Documents say that Kalshi intends to offer the contracts possibly as soon as end of business on Wednesday.

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

It would be really disappointing if it’s revealed that the rise of vague posting comes from X algo favoring posts that require a user to go to replies or Grok to understand what’s being referenced, padding engagement stats by artificially boosting views.

It’s made the experience much more arduous.

[signüll @signulll]

when you create anything whether it's text, audio, video, a stray idea, a grocery list, a random midnight voice memo... you’re generating state. if that state isn’t instantly metabolized by an ai that can contextualize, link, tag, compress, resurface, & operationalize it… then you’re basically making life way more difficult for yourself.

you should already be living an ai native life. right now, it's really difficult to do this because the world is incredibly fragmented. it will become much much easier very soon.

[Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp]

Tomorrow

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

@Zephyr_hg News

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

@vanlancker @untitleddotnew Would love to read more. Thanks in advance Willem.

[Michael Dell 🇺🇸 @MichaelDell]

Hear me out... There's a guy named Dell building a great company in Austin 🥰

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

My application was accepted for the @allinsummit 2025! Looking forward to hearing from (and meeting) some of the icons of tech, AI, VC, and energy.

Would love to connect with anyone else planning on attending - let me know if you'll be in LA in September.

@chamath @Jason @friedberg @DavidSacks @nickcalacanis Thank you for the scholarship - it means a lot, and you can trust I'll be making the most of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

@flowersslop Feels more like 4o, but instead it just works and can take a few more tasks at the same time.

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

@Mike_kim714 78, assuming they were divided up in alphabetical order!

[Dylan Dethier @dylan_dethier]

The Friday night grind at the U.S. Open is something special. Hey your playing partners are combined 30 over par. You’ve been out here for 5 hrs, now you have a 20 minute wait on the tee. Guess what? It’s the hardest hole you’ve ever seen. The greens aren’t holding, the rough’s outrageous. Oh and the only fans still here have been drinking since 9 am. By the way you need birdie to make the cut. Glorious scene

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

@Jacobsklug @lovable build

[Sam Altman @sama]

congrats to czar @DavidSacks!

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

@mprkhrst @amasad Please share, thanks!

[Zach Irsik @zirsik]

@iruletheworldmo Something GPT5 might say 👀🍓

[Collin Rugg @CollinRugg]

BREAKING: Actor Alec Baldwin's criminal case has been dismissed after new evidence emerged that wasn't disclosed to the defense.

Baldwin was seen sobbing when the announcement was made.

"One of the two special prosecutors in the Alec Baldwin trial, prosecutor Erlindo Ocampo Johnson, resigned in the middle of a long, dramatic hearing in Santa Fe Friday over how police and prosecutors treated a handful of bullets," the Hollywood Reporter reported.

"The late discovery of this evidence has impacted the fundamental fairness of the proceedings. There is no way for the court to write this wrong. The sanction of dismissal is the only warranted remedy," said Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer.

Baldwin was facing up to 18 months in prison.