“Her answers were carefully constructed, so as not to actually tell me anything.” (Perhaps a cautionary tale for overly scripted life sci execs.)

“the script is beginning to falter”

“In what appears to be a first, one of the conference’s five coveted headliners will be a presentation of a clinical trial conducted only in China.”

“A few of the more tech-oligarch-addled perpetrators seem to have convinced themselves that it doesn’t matter anyway because we’re just about to invent AGI & that will of course immediately start inventing everything that humans could have invented anyway…But it’s mostly stupidity,arrogance & greed”

An unapologetically angry post about what’s being done to US science:

Longest summer season until 2037. Quirk of the calendar means earliest Memorial Day and latest Labor day possible. 106 days of the summer season. Last year is was 99 days.

“It is unusual for The New England Journal of Medicine to publish such a preliminary result. But ‘it looks like it works pretty well,’ said Dr. Eric Rubin, the editor in chief.“

Interesting hire: “The Science desk of the New York Times is looking for a creative, energetic reporter to cover Chinese science for an English-speaking audience. We’re looking for someone who can read widely…to find stories that dramatize the precipitous rise of China as a scientific powerhouse.”

“Biology moves in decades while capital moves in quarters. Investors demand visibility and speed in a field where neither can be guaranteed, so companies are pushed to act as if discovery were predictable. This is not a failure of discipline; it is a design flaw.”

“‘Adele Bloch-Bauer’ stays where it is,” Lauder said. “It is our Mona Lisa.” And now I have to rewatch Woman in Gold.

“inside the agency that regulates roughly one-fifth of consumer spending”

“The reality is where we’ve seen all the benefits in AI so far is not actually in drug discovery—it’s actually in the rest of the process,” said Diogo Rau, Eli Lilly’s chief information and digital officer.

Central Park: Coffee companion. Spring supermodel.

“The biotech’s experience offers an early test of whether FDA’s push for flexibility in rare disease development will translate into practice for small companies racing against disease progression and limited capital. The stakes are immediate.”

“Her photos dispel the notion that journalism is a prestigious job populated by elitists…Here are working people in shabby surroundings, places that would make an office designer shudder. Post-it notes hang from a computer monitor... A bottle of antacid pills sits on top of a microwave.”

Speaking of AI & healthcare or health care, this is a good read: “While the American public ordinarily hesitates to support left-wing policies like a jobs guarantee or single-payer health care, A.I. seems to expand the political Overton window.”

“Makary ​linked the initiative to what he described as growing international ​competition. He said China surpassed the United States in the number of Phase 1 trials being conducted around 2021 and described the ​growth since as exponential.”

“Through the program, AI would extract data directly from electronic records so they can be submitted in real-time to both the FDA and the pharmaceutical company.”

This is the only longevity story I want to read: “Visible mending does not just admit of errors and failures and ageing but puts them on display. The visibly mended suit, like its wearer, is a fallible thing, and the lords of Wall Street and Berkeley Square do not wish to be thought fallible.”

Look forward (as always) to listening to this episode of Ground Truths; my @wsj.com review of this v interesting if disquieting book -> www.wsj.com/tech/biotech...

A great loss & great quote: In 2014, he was a leader of a study that found an alt cholesterol-lowering drug could protect people from heart attacks and strokes. The study validated previous findings…settling the issue, Dr. Braunwald insisted, once and for all. “People,” he said, “can stop yapping.”

Good criteria: “What he really likes is preparing for his interviews; he has said that he chooses guests based on how much he’ll enjoy spending two weeks getting ready to ask them questions.”

Healthcare: “One word, no hyphen, in all cases.” Finally. Thank you, AP Stylebook.

Weekend recommendation — AIPAD at the Park Armory: These are “images that are embedded in our collective consciousness and which form a shared visual heritage for human society,” founder Sid Monroe told Observer, when asked about the significance of photojournalism in an era of manipulated media.

“From the moment I left the hospital, I felt like a tourist in my body and in New York, my home of nearly two decades. Creating connections and seeking belonging feels like navigating a foreign landscape governed by new rules.”

USAID employees represented some of the best of the US, advancing our interests and saving a life on average every six seconds. Now? Most were laid off, and this heartbreaking piece says half are still jobless. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/u...

“Women are very often elevated into leadership at exactly the moment an organization is broken. Handed the keys to a burning building and told to fix it. And when external forces make the fix impossible, the woman in the chair wears the failure. The ‘glass cliff’ isn't a metaphor. It's a pattern.”

“Health care in the United States really scares both of us,” Mr. O’Flanagan said of himself and his spouse. “My wife’s English, so it really scares her, and I’m learning how bad it is when I go to use health care systems in other countries.”

Central Park. Never a dull moment.

“Ms. Harris shared a house in the Hudson Valley with her former partner, but when he fell ill, the two had to sell the home to pay for health care…and her beloved writing desk ‘reluctantly went into storage.’” 😶

Corporate Jenga nightmare. “While it sounds like a gross breach of corporate etiquette, organizers are seeing growing demand. The workplace dynamics are literally inverted: roles are assigned based on height and build rather than titles.”

Floral print skies. Central Park.

Central Park. Saucer Magnolia Season.

This is: 1. Deeply moving. 2. The first time I've ever seen a real-life astronaut be anything other than serious or happy in space. Obviously they have been (they're human), but folks on earth have only ever seen this in movies or on TV. Imagine watching your tears of grief float around you.

When the 🐰 surveillance network finds you in your travels.

China surpassed the US in global approval ratings in 2025, with a median of 36% approving of China’s leadership, compared with 31% for the U.S. China’s five-percentage-point advantage over the U.S. is the widest Gallup has recorded in China’s favor in nearly 20 years. news.gallup.com/poll/707945/...

Spring’s Finest: Always the 5th Avenue Easter Parade.

“We’re waiting for the midterms,” said Éric Berton, president of Aix-Marseille University in France, which started a program in March last year to hire U.S. scientists; six have arrived so far. “We are going to have a lot more applications if the Republicans win, so we will need a new program.”

Travel to Boston to pick up sibling post colonoscopy. Spend the next day at the beach. And the lobster roll place. The things we do for love.

Meanwhile at the Market Basket magazine stand: “Making Friends with AI” and other self improvement options

“To valorize agency without also emphasizing its purpose allows us to ignore harder questions like: How do I live a good life? And what about the collective good? The smash-and-grab mentality elides these questions. Have we forgotten that life might be better lived in concert with others?”

Today’s NYP➡️ BOS Amtrak quiet car prize goes to the guy whose devices are broadcasting “speed cameras ahead” and “railroad crossing ahead.” 😹

Been teaching my shelter cat how to be a proper literary cat and assist my writing. Rule 1. No walking on my laptop keyboard, at least when I’m mid-sentence…

“In the first two months of this year, 41 deals were struck, and valuations of Chinese companies rose sharply. The average upfront payment has doubled to $77.7 M, up from $38.8 M in 2025, and total valuations reached a record of $52 B, according to data compiled by the South China Morning Post.”

“Lilly, like its rivals in the global pharmaceutical sector, is aggressively hunting in China for new drugs. A record number of pharmaceutical companies from outside China licensed drugs made by Chinese businesses in 2025, totalling $5.6bn in upfront payments.“

The US has canceled hundreds of millions in science grants and driven thousands of Ph.D.s out of the federal workforce. China, meanwhile, has poured evermore resources into its research efforts. If they pass us as a scientific superpower, we shouldn't act surprised. buff.ly/W2wvyST

Central Park’s 40 degree cherry blossom skies.

“Women working full-time, year-round, now earn 81 cents for every dollar men earn. That's down from 83 cents a year ago, and 84 cents the year prior.” ✍️📻 Andrea Hsu www.npr.org/2026/03/26/n...

"Universal health coverage ​is … a moral imperative for societies that wish to ​call themselves just.” -Pope Leo

Moments till magnolia season.