A request: What are your favorite examples of people (yourself or others) spending money to make the world more awesome that don't look like normal charity or profit-maximizing investment? (Spending money on a personal project can count)

I'm kind of shocked at how many people who think a lot about technology and the future have never heard of Gerard K. O'Neill

There's a great, underappreciated scene in Project Hail Mary that's a wink at the classic problem of how hard it is to make doing science exciting on screen (and in real life): The protagonist, after many hours of hard science-ing has a breakthrough. Everybody is asleep.

An earnestpost about the things that made the Project Hail Mary movie great: 1. Man (+sentient rock) vs. nature story 2. Beautiful space things 3. Puppets! 4. Actually imaginative alien technologies 5. Two buddies teaming up to save the world with technology and science

It will never stop being striking how quickly assumptions about the future can change. "Translating machines are very hard" "Wireless energy transmission by 2000 and interstellar probes by 2025, duh" and "Infinite energy+matter, finite brainpower" (From O'Neill's 2081)

Applications close in one week! If you (or someone you know) has what it takes to run an ambitious research program, we want to hear from you.

Ben Reinhardt@benjaminreinhardt.com · 10mo ago

Applications for the 2026 cohort of the Brains Research Accelerator are now open! If you have a deep technical background and an ambitious research idea that's beyond the scope of a startup or academic lab, you should apply! spec.tech/brains

Feet! #inktober

Applications for the 2026 cohort of the Brains Research Accelerator are now open! If you have a deep technical background and an ambitious research idea that's beyond the scope of a startup or academic lab, you should apply! spec.tech/brains

Speculative Technologies

Speculative Technologies is a nonprofit resarch organization unlocking new materials and manufacturing technologies

spec.tech

We realized that (to our knowledge) nobody had unpacked where the money for “misfit research” — work that is a poor fit for academia, startups, or large companies — was coming from. So I wrote a short but hopefully comprehensive overview. blog.spec.tech/p/who-funds-...

Who Funds Misfit Research?

A practical guide

blog.spec.tech

It's funny how at meetings in DC I'm the whippersnapper and in SF I'm basically a walking corpse.

I do think AI could increase scientific productivity. But so much of science isn't easily mechanized tasks like pipetting -- it's adjusting optics, troubleshooting custom equipment, and keeping critters from dying. Here's a plan to capture and use this "tacit knowledge." ifp.org/teaching-ai-...

Teaching AI How Science Actually Works | IFP

How block-grant labs can generate the real-world data AI needs to do science

ifp.org

We finished building the Millennium Falcon! #caturday

Sometimes I wonder if the thing that makes startups possibly the most dynamic modern institution is just because it's the one place in today's world where it's normalized for young/undercredentialed people to be in charge of organizations and significant resources.

(Re)published a piece on the Spectech Blog about how efficiency warps the types of ideas that get support, which ones get killed too early, and which ideas people choose to pursue in the first place. blog.spec.tech/p/efficiency...

For the historians out there -- There are some hardcore, dig-into-the-undigitized-archives-and-try-to-piece-things-together-from-account-books history research projects about the financial history of technology that nobody is tackling: blog.spec.tech/p/some-open-...

Some open questions on the financial history of technology

A quest for those with the skill and daring...

blog.spec.tech

For some reason I get a lot of joy out of the flight path from Helsinki to Tokyo

A lot of new thoughts about: - State capacity - Scale dependence for governments - The difference between governments and people of a state - American LARPing That are probably too politically-charged and out of my lane for the internet.

Ok! Time to stop procrastinating. You’ve done harder things than applying to AI Brains. Knock it out this weekend. Applications close Monday June 16th!

Ben Reinhardt@benjaminreinhardt.com · last yr.

Applications are now open for a special cohort of the Brains Accelerator targeting ambitious AI research programs, with a special focus on security and governance capabilities! spec.tech/ai-brains 1/

😭

Don't forget! AI Brains Q&A session today at 1p ET. You bring questions, we'll bring answers.

Ben Reinhardt@benjaminreinhardt.com · last yr.

If you have questions, we have answers! We are doing two Q+A sessions about AI Brains in the coming weeks: 1. June 3 at 8p ET: lu.ma/eli2c08p 2. June 9 at 1p ET: lu.ma/vxx85ug5

I’m noticing that there’s a funny motte-and-bailey attribute of most disciplines that I think are BS: If done really really well, they’re super insightful and valuable; it’s just that the vast majority of ideas are garbage and practitioners are charlatans.

This is today at 8p ET! Q+A session about the impending AI cohort of the Brains Research Accelerator. We'll talk about anything: how it works, who should apply, our theory of change, etc.

Ben Reinhardt@benjaminreinhardt.com · last yr.

If you have questions, we have answers! We are doing two Q+A sessions about AI Brains in the coming weeks: 1. June 3 at 8p ET: lu.ma/eli2c08p 2. June 9 at 1p ET: lu.ma/vxx85ug5

This is the kind of not-incremental metascientific experiment I want to see more of!

Seemay Chou@seemaychou.bsky.social · last yr.

We did something radical that shouldn’t feel radical: we stopped funding science built for journals so that we can reimagine scientific publishing. First @arcadiascience.com. Now at @asterainstitute.bsky.social.

Testing gentle ways of reminding people in group chats to clean tracking information off of links

I've always been a bit annoyed by the advice that goes "What would you do if you had a year to live? Why aren't you doing that now?" Obv there are some things you shouldn't delay, but there are some things that take more than a year no matter how much effort you slam into them.

If you have questions, we have answers! We are doing two Q+A sessions about AI Brains in the coming weeks: 1. June 3 at 8p ET: lu.ma/eli2c08p 2. June 9 at 1p ET: lu.ma/vxx85ug5

Ben Reinhardt@benjaminreinhardt.com · last yr.

Applications are now open for a special cohort of the Brains Accelerator targeting ambitious AI research programs, with a special focus on security and governance capabilities! spec.tech/ai-brains 1/

Some proposals to replace metascience: Epistotechnics Technogenesisics Epistodynamics