Thank you for both entertaining and thought provoking writing as always. I've been reading your posts via email but some of the stuff here stirred up some old memories with me, so I thought I'd leave a comment here.
I work minimum wage warehouse & manual labor jobs while running a sequencing lab focusing on microbial evolution - and have been lucky enough to discover a few things, enough to write some research papers and present at academic conferences.
I've been at this for about 17 years now - and had the mis/fortune of getting involved with diybio, biohackerspaces and iGEM since the very early days (Sung from NYC- we met a few times, I even got copies of your books!).
As someone more familiar with 'punk side of things, I have to say venues like SBB, or specifically its underlying current to constantly co-opt and associate itself to some sort of cultural moment to be a bit of a joke. It's a trades show. Like association of condo salespeople at Grand Rapids, except with huge egos on parts of the leadership. At least condo salespeople have the decency to not paint themselves up as some renaissance men who deserves to be held on a pedestal on topics of education, arts, politics, literal future of humanity and etc etc.
Now - this is an incendiary statement and some would be fully justified in their disagreement. And I'm sure some great people who do have insights on those topics end up attending these conferences too (such as yourself).
What I want to draw attention to is the danger of co-opting 'punk for sake of the establishment, since it essentially de-fangs legitimate criticism against the status quo.
Here's what I had to see in the last few years - a nice kid with some skill in yeast engineering technique got chewed up by a garbage truck uptake mechanism while working to pay the bills. A hard working evolutionary biology student from a city university system gave up her study and got into food delivery - a nutso spat on her for being late on a rainy day. I can sit here and write up a laundry list of horror stories all night.
We actively punish people from not-middle/upper middle class and not-elite institutions for the transgression of loving biology, or studying life for its own sake. And against that backdrop, the bizarre counterculture attitude of people in a bubble who never worked retail in their lives purporting to represent some new age for humanity is simply shallow and soulless. The great entrepreneur movement might as well be a welfare program for graduates of elite institutions, again shrouded in some shallow cover of 'culture' and 'punk'.
Anyways, pardon the rant! I had to get this one off my chest.
p.s. regarding George Church, he's old enough to know what eugenics is and what sort of harm it could pose - and he made his call. At the very least the man is tasteless.
Thanks for this thoughtful note/rant. I somehow missed it when you published it.
I appreciate your perspective. I approach SBB as a curious and somewhat skeptical observer. I think there are many good, sober, moral scientists who attend. People sincerely devoted to figuring out how to use science for the good of humanity.
But certainly there are also lots of corporate types there, and the 'punk' voices like Zaynor's are pushed aside (I hope to go to DEF CON this summer, where the punk/hacker ethos is alive & well -- I was there nearly a decade ago when they had their first 'biohacking village').
In the context of Trump/Musk etc, the dismantling of the whole of science in the USA, I am extremely curious to see what kind of reception the New Eugenicists (TESCREAL, etc) get at SBB. These people scare me, not because they're punk and into transhumanism, self-modification, etc, but because there is a very strong Nazi air about many of them, and they are extremely wealthy and powerful.
Thanks. And thank you for bringing attention to this post & my substack in general. Maybe it's just vanity, but I get the feeling that many people would enjoy how I approach these topics it they knew I existed. I've written close to 100 essays on here, & I'm getting a sense of what kinds of posts people like and what kinds they don't like. Posts related to science & biohacking seem to do pretty well. (Some of my other hobbyhorses, like literary theory, etc -- well, let's just say that the audience for that kind of stuff is a bit smaller, lol.) But the point is, I need all the help I can get in spreading the word.
I hope you enjoy SynBioBeta - the early days were really wild, but things have gotten increasingly corporate over the years (less interesting?). But, recent chaos / funding downturn / "trough of disillusionment" might make for a more interesting show. I think the biotech frontier is probably somewhere else now: biohackers doing lab experiments in their bedroom or scientists like Mike Levin at Tufts. I have to work very hard at not being a "hater" - keeping a beginner's mind and an openness to the strange. This includes tolerance of mistakes or moral grey areas (eg George Church). Hopefully you'll keep your eyes open, keep dreaming, and keep writing about how biotech may change humanity's future from within and without.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. What I'm most curious about is whether the dismantling of NIH, NSF, the assault on universities and so forth is as dire as I fear it is, and, whatever the case, what the attendees plan or hope to do about it.
Thanks for posting about SynBioBeta. I like reading about conferences of experts from the POV of a sort-of outsider. Looking forward to reading the next installments. Rather than trying to engage detestable Silly Valley types in conversation, might be advisable to mostly listen and nod, thus provoking them to reveal what they truly think but are normally too hedged to say out loud.
Not in the slightest. My first exposure to transhumanists came via the Eye, and that’s one of many reasons I’d gladly remove all memory of my time at “The Last Dangerous Magazine.”
As a very uninformed person of scientific knowledge I know that there was an experiment called the Waring Blender, or something similar. I was intrigued and did some research at the time as I thought they were referring to Fred Waring. So as not to cheat, I will end this comment now and google Waring again.
The Hershey/Chase Waring Blender experiment in 1952 demonstrated that it was the DNA molecule that carries genetic information, (and not protein, as was widely believed before this result). There's a pretty accessible explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey%E2%80%93Chase_experiment
"So now, in truth, I don’t know what the hell to think about him. If I ever see George Church again I don’t know what I’ll say to him. It’s so monstrously disappointing."
"Or am I being unfair? I would appreciate hearing your thoughts in the comments."
I had a good friend in my high school class - Erin - who was smart as a whip and a hard worker, with whom I had a friendly competition with throughout those years in my small class of 13 people in rural New Mexico. She beat me to become class (co-)valedictorian, but I landed in a better college.
Fast forward a few years, and she's doing well, having earned a law degree and had been clerking for some federal judges. Her husband goes into politics and I'm friendly with them, mailing some reading suggestions for her beau about digital technologies, surveillance capitalism, and all of that. Despite falling onto the Trump train (they were conservatives), I stayed in touch until after the 2020 election, where he goes full election denialist. I stopped reaching out, spoke out about how wrong he was - I serve as an election judge in Chicago - and kept my distance the rest of that year.
Then we get to January 6th, 2021. The Capitol is overrun, the counting of the Electoral votes is disrupted, and eventually order is restored. After the chaos, Ted Cruz has the good sense to back off the objection he didn't get to before the insurrection. However, I get home to see the proceedings continue and stay up late to watch the election finally be certified by Congress. And there's my friend's husband continuing to argue in the joint session against the certification of votes from another state.
My high school friend married Josh Hawley, so I know EXACTLY how you're feeling. She also argued (and lost) the recent case against the abortion pill in front of her old boss John Roberts. On one hand, I was proud of her for having reached a point in her life that she was arguing in front of the highest court of the land (we used to argue about abortion and NAFTA back in the school library back in the day), but on the other hand, I couldn't help but question whether there were better routes to reach that destination.
I sometimes play out a scenario in my head to contemplate how I would respond at some future high school class reunion where I see her and her husband. It you read news about a Missouri Senator being physically assaulted by a crank in northeastern New Mexico, you'll know how that situation played out.
Josh Hawley, The Man Who Wasn't There, the personification of Cosmic Vacuum Space (although Ben Sasse also shares that attribute). Some while ago, after Jan 6, I read an essay about Josh Hawley having been a champion debater in school. (I too had been in my high school's debate club during my freshman & sophomore years. I wasn't good at it and eventually realized that I didn't like it.)
The point of the essay -- I should see if I can find it -- is that 'debate' & 'rhetoric' are amoral tools. They actually teach you to think amorally. Because, for example, according to how things were done when I was in debate club a couple of centuries ago, at the beginning of the year a bunch of propositions were published, and you had to prepare to argue both 'pro' and 'con' sides. You didn't know which side you were going to have to argue in any given contest until you got there.
Well, according to that essay about Hawley, to get really good at debate, you have to learn to absolutely not care which side you're arguing. All you care about is winning. And by golly, I think in Hawley's case there's a lot to be said for that point of view. The guy just reeks of moral emptiness. I wonder who gets attracted to that kind of guy, who marries a man like that? Oy.
"I wonder who gets attracted to that kind of guy, who marries a man like that?"
A fellow master debater. Erin followed a similar path through FFA, 4-H, and similar organizations (the rural art of livestock judging figures VERY heavily in here). They were both clerks for John Roberts. (Erin - before and after he was elevated to SCOTUS by Bush. Josh - afterwards.) I had a good time at their wedding before the Bad Weird Times hanging out and drinking with the Chief Justice's personal secretary back then.
And FWIW, Missouri elected the lesser Hawley. For all the noise Josh makes about being a hardscrabble man of the people, he's a banker's kid that was born on third base. His wife, however, is the real deal. A Beth Dutton without the mean streak (for your Yellowstone fans) - raised mostly by a single mother. I sometimes wonder what the timeline would look like if she ran for Senate (and won), and her husband stayed home to take care of the kids.
Thank you for both entertaining and thought provoking writing as always. I've been reading your posts via email but some of the stuff here stirred up some old memories with me, so I thought I'd leave a comment here.
I work minimum wage warehouse & manual labor jobs while running a sequencing lab focusing on microbial evolution - and have been lucky enough to discover a few things, enough to write some research papers and present at academic conferences.
I've been at this for about 17 years now - and had the mis/fortune of getting involved with diybio, biohackerspaces and iGEM since the very early days (Sung from NYC- we met a few times, I even got copies of your books!).
As someone more familiar with 'punk side of things, I have to say venues like SBB, or specifically its underlying current to constantly co-opt and associate itself to some sort of cultural moment to be a bit of a joke. It's a trades show. Like association of condo salespeople at Grand Rapids, except with huge egos on parts of the leadership. At least condo salespeople have the decency to not paint themselves up as some renaissance men who deserves to be held on a pedestal on topics of education, arts, politics, literal future of humanity and etc etc.
Now - this is an incendiary statement and some would be fully justified in their disagreement. And I'm sure some great people who do have insights on those topics end up attending these conferences too (such as yourself).
What I want to draw attention to is the danger of co-opting 'punk for sake of the establishment, since it essentially de-fangs legitimate criticism against the status quo.
Here's what I had to see in the last few years - a nice kid with some skill in yeast engineering technique got chewed up by a garbage truck uptake mechanism while working to pay the bills. A hard working evolutionary biology student from a city university system gave up her study and got into food delivery - a nutso spat on her for being late on a rainy day. I can sit here and write up a laundry list of horror stories all night.
We actively punish people from not-middle/upper middle class and not-elite institutions for the transgression of loving biology, or studying life for its own sake. And against that backdrop, the bizarre counterculture attitude of people in a bubble who never worked retail in their lives purporting to represent some new age for humanity is simply shallow and soulless. The great entrepreneur movement might as well be a welfare program for graduates of elite institutions, again shrouded in some shallow cover of 'culture' and 'punk'.
Anyways, pardon the rant! I had to get this one off my chest.
p.s. regarding George Church, he's old enough to know what eugenics is and what sort of harm it could pose - and he made his call. At the very least the man is tasteless.
Thanks for this thoughtful note/rant. I somehow missed it when you published it.
I appreciate your perspective. I approach SBB as a curious and somewhat skeptical observer. I think there are many good, sober, moral scientists who attend. People sincerely devoted to figuring out how to use science for the good of humanity.
But certainly there are also lots of corporate types there, and the 'punk' voices like Zaynor's are pushed aside (I hope to go to DEF CON this summer, where the punk/hacker ethos is alive & well -- I was there nearly a decade ago when they had their first 'biohacking village').
In the context of Trump/Musk etc, the dismantling of the whole of science in the USA, I am extremely curious to see what kind of reception the New Eugenicists (TESCREAL, etc) get at SBB. These people scare me, not because they're punk and into transhumanism, self-modification, etc, but because there is a very strong Nazi air about many of them, and they are extremely wealthy and powerful.
Agreed on all points - I for one am eagerly looking forward to your post-SBB insight!
Thanks. And thank you for bringing attention to this post & my substack in general. Maybe it's just vanity, but I get the feeling that many people would enjoy how I approach these topics it they knew I existed. I've written close to 100 essays on here, & I'm getting a sense of what kinds of posts people like and what kinds they don't like. Posts related to science & biohacking seem to do pretty well. (Some of my other hobbyhorses, like literary theory, etc -- well, let's just say that the audience for that kind of stuff is a bit smaller, lol.) But the point is, I need all the help I can get in spreading the word.
I hope you enjoy SynBioBeta - the early days were really wild, but things have gotten increasingly corporate over the years (less interesting?). But, recent chaos / funding downturn / "trough of disillusionment" might make for a more interesting show. I think the biotech frontier is probably somewhere else now: biohackers doing lab experiments in their bedroom or scientists like Mike Levin at Tufts. I have to work very hard at not being a "hater" - keeping a beginner's mind and an openness to the strange. This includes tolerance of mistakes or moral grey areas (eg George Church). Hopefully you'll keep your eyes open, keep dreaming, and keep writing about how biotech may change humanity's future from within and without.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. What I'm most curious about is whether the dismantling of NIH, NSF, the assault on universities and so forth is as dire as I fear it is, and, whatever the case, what the attendees plan or hope to do about it.
Thanks for posting about SynBioBeta. I like reading about conferences of experts from the POV of a sort-of outsider. Looking forward to reading the next installments. Rather than trying to engage detestable Silly Valley types in conversation, might be advisable to mostly listen and nod, thus provoking them to reveal what they truly think but are normally too hedged to say out loud.
Martha Chase 1952
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
Please email me your address & how you would like me to inscribe your copy of The Pains.
Gad. That gave me such flashbacks to my days with “Science Fiction Eye” and similar magazines in the 1990s.
Well I certainly hope that those flashbacks were pleasurable, not traumatic ones.
Not in the slightest. My first exposure to transhumanists came via the Eye, and that’s one of many reasons I’d gladly remove all memory of my time at “The Last Dangerous Magazine.”
As a very uninformed person of scientific knowledge I know that there was an experiment called the Waring Blender, or something similar. I was intrigued and did some research at the time as I thought they were referring to Fred Waring. So as not to cheat, I will end this comment now and google Waring again.
The Hershey/Chase Waring Blender experiment in 1952 demonstrated that it was the DNA molecule that carries genetic information, (and not protein, as was widely believed before this result). There's a pretty accessible explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey%E2%80%93Chase_experiment
Some fun facts about Bryan Johnson: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/mar/03/do-you-know-your-penis-age-bryan-johnson
I may get around to reading that at some point, but for today I think I know quite enough about the guy, lol.
"*According to my calculations, it ain’t worth it.* But he also has the penis of a 22-year-old."
"*He should give it back.* To be clear, he has the penile health of someone 25 years younger."
Brilliant.
"So now, in truth, I don’t know what the hell to think about him. If I ever see George Church again I don’t know what I’ll say to him. It’s so monstrously disappointing."
"Or am I being unfair? I would appreciate hearing your thoughts in the comments."
I had a good friend in my high school class - Erin - who was smart as a whip and a hard worker, with whom I had a friendly competition with throughout those years in my small class of 13 people in rural New Mexico. She beat me to become class (co-)valedictorian, but I landed in a better college.
Fast forward a few years, and she's doing well, having earned a law degree and had been clerking for some federal judges. Her husband goes into politics and I'm friendly with them, mailing some reading suggestions for her beau about digital technologies, surveillance capitalism, and all of that. Despite falling onto the Trump train (they were conservatives), I stayed in touch until after the 2020 election, where he goes full election denialist. I stopped reaching out, spoke out about how wrong he was - I serve as an election judge in Chicago - and kept my distance the rest of that year.
Then we get to January 6th, 2021. The Capitol is overrun, the counting of the Electoral votes is disrupted, and eventually order is restored. After the chaos, Ted Cruz has the good sense to back off the objection he didn't get to before the insurrection. However, I get home to see the proceedings continue and stay up late to watch the election finally be certified by Congress. And there's my friend's husband continuing to argue in the joint session against the certification of votes from another state.
My high school friend married Josh Hawley, so I know EXACTLY how you're feeling. She also argued (and lost) the recent case against the abortion pill in front of her old boss John Roberts. On one hand, I was proud of her for having reached a point in her life that she was arguing in front of the highest court of the land (we used to argue about abortion and NAFTA back in the school library back in the day), but on the other hand, I couldn't help but question whether there were better routes to reach that destination.
I sometimes play out a scenario in my head to contemplate how I would respond at some future high school class reunion where I see her and her husband. It you read news about a Missouri Senator being physically assaulted by a crank in northeastern New Mexico, you'll know how that situation played out.
Wow, that is some story.
Josh Hawley, The Man Who Wasn't There, the personification of Cosmic Vacuum Space (although Ben Sasse also shares that attribute). Some while ago, after Jan 6, I read an essay about Josh Hawley having been a champion debater in school. (I too had been in my high school's debate club during my freshman & sophomore years. I wasn't good at it and eventually realized that I didn't like it.)
The point of the essay -- I should see if I can find it -- is that 'debate' & 'rhetoric' are amoral tools. They actually teach you to think amorally. Because, for example, according to how things were done when I was in debate club a couple of centuries ago, at the beginning of the year a bunch of propositions were published, and you had to prepare to argue both 'pro' and 'con' sides. You didn't know which side you were going to have to argue in any given contest until you got there.
Well, according to that essay about Hawley, to get really good at debate, you have to learn to absolutely not care which side you're arguing. All you care about is winning. And by golly, I think in Hawley's case there's a lot to be said for that point of view. The guy just reeks of moral emptiness. I wonder who gets attracted to that kind of guy, who marries a man like that? Oy.
"I wonder who gets attracted to that kind of guy, who marries a man like that?"
A fellow master debater. Erin followed a similar path through FFA, 4-H, and similar organizations (the rural art of livestock judging figures VERY heavily in here). They were both clerks for John Roberts. (Erin - before and after he was elevated to SCOTUS by Bush. Josh - afterwards.) I had a good time at their wedding before the Bad Weird Times hanging out and drinking with the Chief Justice's personal secretary back then.
And FWIW, Missouri elected the lesser Hawley. For all the noise Josh makes about being a hardscrabble man of the people, he's a banker's kid that was born on third base. His wife, however, is the real deal. A Beth Dutton without the mean streak (for your Yellowstone fans) - raised mostly by a single mother. I sometimes wonder what the timeline would look like if she ran for Senate (and won), and her husband stayed home to take care of the kids.