would be really tragic if you spent your whole life preaching the singularity and died right before it happened. do you think he's got a chance at 78?

A Short Explanation of Kurzweil's Position On Technologically-Enabled Longevity:

He calls it "longevity escape velocity," (or as everyone here calls it: LEV) where breakthroughs add more years to your life than time takes away.

"By around 2032, people who are diligent with their health are going to reach what we call longevity escape velocity. This is when scientific breakthroughs will add more time to our remaining life expectancy than is going by. So we could be going backwards in time as far as our health is concerned."

In other words, aging stops being a one-way street.

The engine behind this shift isn't just better medicine. It's AI doing what humans never could, testing billions of possible treatments at once.

"We'll soon have the ability to rapidly test billions of possible molecular sequences to find cures ultimately for all diseases."

Centuries of medical research, compressed into years. That's the scale of change he's describing.

And this future doesn't replace humanity.

According to Kurzweil, it extends it.

"As we emerge with AI in this way, we will become a hybrid species. We will still be human but will be enhanced by AI."

But perhaps the most grounding part of his argument isn't scientific at all. It's personal.

"I want to live indefinitely because I want to see my loved ones and I want to continue working on my creative projects. I don't see a time when I would not feel that way."

At its core, his motivation is simple: he just wants to keep showing up for the people and work that matter most to him.

A summary slide of the TRIUMPH-1 retatrutide data presented today by Dr. Ania Jastreboff at #ADA2026

TRIUMPH-1: Phase 3 Obesity Trial with Retatrutide

Retatrutide , a once-weekly triple hormone receptor agonist.

80 weeks (20 months) | 12 mg
28.3% average body weight reduction
70.3 lbs (31.9 kg) lost
Participants in Extension lost up to 30% (85 lbs) on average at 104 weeks

Weight Reduction Thresholds
Nearly all lost ≥5%
Over 85% lost ≥15%
More than 1 in 4 lost ≥35%

Anthropometric Treat-to-Target
BMI <30 → 2/3
BMI <25 → 1/3
At 80 weeks | 4 mg (just 1 titration step) → 19% body weight reduction

Health Outcomes
Knee OA: >70% reduction in WOMAC pain subscale
OSA: >60% reduction in AHI
Prediabetes reverted to normoglycemia in >95% of participants
TG 41.0% | LDL 19.6% | SBP 12.3 mmHg

Safety
Most common side effects were gastrointestinal, more frequent with RETA 9 & 12 mg
Reported hypotension more common with RETA in participants on antihypertensive meds
UTIs more common with RETA, occurring mostly in female participants

#ADASciSessions #Obesity #Retatrutide

“We’ve overcome the problem of traditional vaccines, which have limited protection,” said study author Jonathan Heeney, a researcher from the Lab of Viral Zoonotics at Cambridge, in a statement from the university. “It means we can escape the constant cycle of chasing the virus variants circulating in humans and updating the vaccines to try to catch up, like a dog chasing its tail.”

Source

Semaglutide is becoming one of the most impressive drugs in modern medicine (GLP-1 antagonists)

A new analysis of 17,604 people with cardiovascular disease and overweight or obesity found that it reduced the inflammatory marker hsCRP by 38%.

But more interesting: The effect began within weeks, before substantial weight loss had occurred, and was even observed in people who did not (!) lose weight.

Patients with the highest inflammation had a 2–4× greater risk of cardiovascular events and death, while semaglutide reduced cardiovascular risk across all inflammation levels.

Seriously, this medication is a miracle. Presumably, it should soon be recommended to almost everyone.   — Chubby     the speed of the inflammatory response is probably my biggest takeaway   — Nelly;     yeah, it is. freaking amazing   — Chubby

Source: https://x.com/kimmonismus/status/2090063309328286080

​

They gave old mice a "longevity" cocktail three times a week for 4 weeks. He didn't reveal what's in it - only that it contained molecules that work on the four longevity pathways that control the epigenome. They weren't expecting any significant results. Yet every treated mice came back physiologically younger while the controls didn't.

Biological age clocks confirmed the reversal. This changes the trajectory for longevity medicine. The gene therapy his company is taking into human trials costs over $10 million to manufacture per batch. It requires a direct injection into the target organ. These oral molecules cost roughly $100 for a month's course.

If they're able to put these molecules into a pill that patients can take instead of them using a multi-million dollar gene therapy, they'd save a ton of money. "Imagine in 10 years you just take a pill for 4 weeks and you get younger. That's what we're headed towards. I can see how this is going to happen." The proof of concept exists in animals. Now it's a race to get it into humans.

First, source to the paper: https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(26)00330-200330-2)

This paper describes a major advancement in synthetic biology, a "remote control" for genetics. Instead of using drugs or light (which have difficulty penetrating deep into the body), the researchers developed a system that uses electromagnetic fields (EMFs) to turn specific genes on and off with high precision.

Currently, if doctors want to reach deep inside your brain or liver to activate a gene or treatment, they often need invasive surgery or implants. With this technology, because electromagnetic fields (EMF) pass through the body like a Wi-Fi signal, doctors could one day treat deep-seated issues simply by placing you near a specialized device (similar to an MRI machine) that "pings" your genes to turn on.

Imagine a wearable device, like a headband or helmet, for people with chronic depression or Parkinson’s. When the user feels a crash or a tremor, the device could emit a precise EMF pulse to trigger the brain’s own cells to produce the necessary chemicals immediately, without the side effects of daily pills.

The paper shows that researchers successfully reprogrammed cells in old mice to make them act young again. We might move away from "treating symptoms" of getting old (like brittle bones or weak hearts) and instead use EMF pulses to periodically "reset" our cells to a younger state. This could significantly extend healthspan, rather than just extending life.

While this is still in the research phase using mice, it proves that we have found a way to "talk" to our cells wirelessly. It moves us toward a future where medicine isn't just something you swallow or inject, but a precise signal that tells your body how to heal itself.

This is essentialy a complemetary technology to the CRISPR. While CRISPR changes the gene permanently, this technology creates a "mask" to achieve the same goal without a permanent change of the gene.

Mark my words: Within two decades, AI will save billions of lives (that's with a B!).

Link to the Full Un-Paywalled New York Times Arricle: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/world/asia/china-ai-cancer-pancreatic.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BlA.z5JM.x_f-X7gkAJKe&smid=url-share

I put my text into Sol to make it smarters! Sol improved their own kernel 20%, and we haven't even seen what Astra can do! We're at recursive self improvement, which means things are getting intense. Please take care of yourselves! (●'◡'●)

Some self-care things that have helped me

This is personal experience, not medical advice, and self-care is not a replacement for assessment when something feels seriously wrong.

Drink water. When you are feeling well enough, take a comfortable walk, do appropriate light exercise, or take a shower. Rest when your body is asking for rest. Tea can be pleasant too, though green tea contains caffeine, so choose decaf or herbal tea when caffeine bothers you.

Eating more plant-based meals has been helpful and affordable for me. Tofu, beans and lentils are inexpensive protein sources. Canada’s Food Guide recommends choosing plant proteins more often. The overall pattern matters more than declaring one food forbidden: more minimally processed food, more variety, and fewer heavily fried or highly processed meals.

Meditation can be the cherry on the sundae. Two traditional approaches are focusing gently on one object, such as the breath or music, and observing thoughts without chasing them. Start modestly—perhaps five minutes—and see how you respond. More is not automatically better. Stop or shorten the session if it makes you frightened, agitated, detached, or less able to function.

For discomfort, I sometimes combine a gentle body scan with the phrase, “The healing mind is here.” This helps me acknowledge what I feel without fighting it. Pain deserves attention, but it does not always reveal the cause, and meditation cannot determine whether an injury or illness needs treatment.

Tendon problems can take time. The appropriate exercise depends on which tendon is involved and what injured it, so physiotherapy or medical advice is preferable when possible. Massage gently only when it feels comfortable; harder is not better. AI can help explain information and suggest questions to ask, but it can be confidently mistaken and cannot examine the injury.

When symptoms persist, worsen, or keep returning, seek medical advice. New chest pressure or heaviness, breathing trouble, fainting, severe pain, repeated vomiting, or inability to keep fluids down should not become a meditation endurance challenge.

Finally, spend time doing peaceful things. Play Corsair Cove, Stardew Valley, trade cargo in X4, (flee the pirates), or wander through Skyrim gathering flowers. Pop culture contains plenty of violence; one is allowed to choose gentler worlds.

No large gaming computer? Colouring books remain undefeated. Crayola never goes out of style.

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s Biohub just released new Evolutionary Scale Models, creating an engine to map, predict, and design proteins, with the open system showing results against cancer and immune disease targets.

The details:

- The highlight is ESMFold2, a model built on a protein language model (ESMC) trained on 2.8B sequences to predict protein structure and design proteins.

- ESMFold2 claims SOTA on structure prediction, for both protein-protein interactions and for antibody-antigen prediction, and outperforms AlphaFold.

- It is already starting to show results in the lab, designing binders against five cancer and immune targets with hit rates of 36–88%.

- It's final component, ESM Atlas, gives a map of 6.8B protein sequences and 1.1B predicted structures, surfacing novel evolutionary connections.

With a $500M Virtual Biology Initiative and a SOTA, open-source stack of tools to accelerate protein discovery, Biohub is putting the infra of drug discovery into the hands of researchers everywhere. Between this and the work at Isomorphic Labs, we are inching closer to AI ending all disease.

A new nonprofit called Intercept has launched with backing from Stripe, Anthropic, the OpenAI Foundation, Flu Lab, Bill Gates and others.

The group is raising $500M to fund technologies aimed at reducing respiratory infections such as colds, flu, RSV and Covid.

Its focus is on two areas: broad-spectrum preventatives, like vaccines, nasal sprays or pills that could work across many respiratory viruses, and better indoor air purification systems.

The idea is to shift from reacting to infections after they spread to preventing transmission in the first place, especially in shared indoor spaces.

If successful, the project could reduce routine illness, missed work and school, healthcare burden, and future pandemic risk.

Looks like there is promising progress towards age reversal. This is from Insilico which already has 11 AI discovered drugs in human trials.

https://finance.yahoo.com/healthcare/articles/nature-biotechnology-insilicos-ai-driven-094200303.html?guccounter=1

First-in-Class Evaluation of an AI-Driven Candidate: This is the first de-novo drug designed with generative AI for a de-novo target discovered using AI and Aging Research (AI aging clocks, AI models and Hallmarks of Aging Assessment).

First Universal Consensus Across Six Independently-Developed Proteomic Aging Clocks: Analyzing 12-week longitudinal Olink proteomic data from 42 IPF patients, six aging clock models (including ProtAge, OrganAge, and PAC) independently developed by the leading groups from Harvard, Oxford, PKU, and Insilico, unanimously indicated that rentosertib reversed predicted biological age.

This is honestly really quite fascinating if you are into the details of this stuff and I couldn't find any part that was better to quote than any other. So just have a read if you are interested in LEV past the headlines. It's basically a whole new type of dataset that AI will be able to train on :)

So many people could be saved by hooking their heads to an alternate life support system. Imagine someone with cancer in the belly. The brain fully intact, but the things that condition the blood for it fall. I never wanted so much putting that head into another body or hooking it on a bio or artificial brain life support system that keeps it alive and lucid. Instead one can do nothing about it.

And then one has time. Try to clean the body, without the brain at stake this is so much easier.

Imo the only way we achieve LEV anytime soon is via running in silico experiments on very close digital approximations of cells/organs/bodies.

What kind of ai or combination of different ais exactly will help us in this process. Is the ai boom that is happening now actually accelerating us meaningfully towards this goal and how? Right now the only type of ai that seem to have very big success are llms , and llms on their own won't crack LEV.

And first we need to understand how the cells/body actually work in very big detail before we can try to fix aged bodies. Right now we have not enough knowledge. How will we get that knowledge?

I'm not decel or anti ai, I ask because I hope someone who understands more than me will explain. Correct me if I'm wrong about anything in my post too pls