sharks + planes as formerly seen on Twitter

on that weird Silicon Valley dude who got infused with his son's blood

Amazing quotes from this article, just stellar stuff:

He has the body of an 18-year-old and the face of someone who had spent millions attempting to look like an 18-year-old.

The hair on his head is “not dyed,” Johnson says, but he does use a “gray-hair-reversal concoction” which includes “an herbal extract” that colors the hair a darkish brown.

is that just henna

“I have, on average, two hours and 12 minutes each night of erection of a certain quality,” he says. “To be age 18, it would be three hours and 30 minutes.”

he's definitely nofap, isn't he

Blueprint’s first commercial product, sold on his website, is an allegedly cholesterol-reducing olive oil, sold in a black box emblazoned with a red-lit photo of Johnson and the slogan “Build your autonomous self.” Fifteen percent of Johnson’s daily diet consists of this olive oil. Two 25 oz. bottles cost $75.

Given the looming AI revolution, Johnson argues that outsourcing the management of the body to an algorithm is the ultimate form of human-AI “alignment.” If everything from marketing to legal research to retail will soon be optimized by algorithms, why shouldn’t algorithms run our bodies as well?

because apparently all the algorithms can come up with is "olive oil is good for you," which was also my mom's health advice in 1995. we had this olive oil margarine we had to eat instead of butter. I ended up with high cholesterol anyway until I started taking the holistic traditional remedy known as atorvastatin.

“Whether we're talking about falling in love, or having sex, or going to the baseball game, you're talking about biochemical states in the body,” Johnson says. “You can remove everything and just say, ‘I'm experiencing this kind of electrical activity in my body and these kinds of hormones.’ We have a whole bunch of ideas about what it means to exist, we have all these ideas about what is happiness, and other things. We're walking into a future where we no longer have control,” he continues. Which means “we are willing to divorce ourselves from all human custom. Everything: all philosophy, all ethics, all morals, all happiness.”

why do all this shit then, if not to make you happy? why do anything? love when people posture about "I don't care about anything, there is no good and evil to me" and then start making claims about how things should be. bro with no "good" there's no "should," this is like middle school level philosophy

In 2016, Johnson founded Kernel, a neurotechnology company that uses a specially designed helmet to measure brain activity. Its goal is to detect cognitive impairment at the earliest stages; for now, the company is looking for biomarkers for psychiatric conditions. It can also be used, as a fun side hobby, to measure the age of his brain.

well, he's 46 years old, so as an internationally renowned expert in what the word "age" means, I think his brain is 46 years old.

I looked at Kernel's website and I don't know enough about neurostuff to know how much they are or aren't bullshitting. However I do note that their website is not promoting any products or services that they can currently offer, and it has been seven years.

In Kernel’s open-plan office, I’m brought into a small room, where a technician fits my head with what looks like a ski helmet with dozens of circular probes inside. I’m instructed to sit and watch a screensaver-type video of soft crystalline shapes morphing into each other. Later that day, my results appear in my email. It tells me that although I am 34, my brain age is 30.5.

for a dollar more I'll tell you that it's 29.5

Johnson says his lifestyle makes it very difficult for him to date, rattling off what he calls the “10 reasons why [women] will literally hate me.” The reasons include: eating dinner at 11:30 a.m., no sunny vacations, bed at 8:30pm, no small talk, always sleeping alone, and, of course, “they’re not my number one priority.”

the thing where Very Smart Guys brag about how they're "not into small talk" has begun to enrage me

most people do a thing where they reinforce their social bonds by having conversations which are not themselves meaningful but the fact that you talked is meaningful. this is fine. it is a nice, friendly thing to do.

and it's okay to personally opt out if you can't or won't, but don't preen about how your big brain only wants to discuss deep thoughts because my friend you just spent an entire feature length article talking about your supplement pills and your sleep boners

anyway. I have fun yelling at things that are Illogical but it's a little hollow here because the article author is also pretty much making fun of him. there's not much risk anyone is going to take Weird Looking Immortality Dude seriously.

at the same time, that's why this is fun. there's not really stakes here. no one's actually doing this "Blueprint" except for him and his one weird employee, not even his kids. it's a waste of money but it's great when rich people waste their money, much better than them making "smart investments" that only pass the money between different ultra-rich people forever. there's no pressing need to stop him.

he's not quite a harmless eccentric, because he sounds like a giant pain in the ass and also a world class sucker for pseudoscience, but as far as I can tell his effects are localized, and this, at least, is a relief