Modern medicine (and doctors who practice it) is incredible at triage care. If you’re in a car accident, you’re in luck: doctors and the medical system is well set up to ensure you have a safe and healthy recovery. There are thousands of studies, clinical trials and all sorts of scientific rigor going into many of western medicine’s recommendations. In areas like nutrition? Not so…
Idea for a new Mayo Clinic
I get asked for health recommendations a surprising amount for someone who’s not a doctor. Specifically, people ask me about the labs they should get, supplements to take, foods to avoid, functional movement help… pretty much anything you can imagine. I mostly haven’t had great answers. It’s hard to find a good functional medicine doctor, hard to understand what labs you should take, and hard…
2021 Review and goals for 2022
I’ve been doing an annual review exercise every year since 2012 and found it tremendously helpful (I use a modified version of this one). Going through my annual review allows me to really hone in on 1-2 things I want to achieve in a given year. Most importantly, this process helps me think through tradeoffs: what am I willing to give up this year in order to…
Why lab-grown meat won’t work
Cultured (or lab-grown) meat is all the rage. Investors poured $3.1 billion into alternative-protein startups in 2020 (and the trend has continued in 2021) and there are calls for an “Apollo Project” for meatless meat. All the funding and buzzy press exclaiming the end of meat makes one wonder: are we in the final years of animal agriculture? Will the 2030s be spent eating Tyson Burger…
Work and a life well-lived
The below is an excerpt from my monthly newsletter I’ve been thinking a lot about work lately. At this point in my life, I’m fortunate that I can dictate pretty much everything about my working life. I get to decide what to work on, who to work with, how to structure my day… pretty much everything 20-year-old Justin could have hoped for when he first…
Is beef bad for the environment? 🐄 💨
Recently, there has been a spate of announcements about companies and restaurants going meatless to – in their own words – “save the planet”. Looking at you, Epicurious and Eleven Madison. So, I wanted to know – does the beautifully marbled ribeye on your plate actually harm the environment? Or is this yet another ploy by Deep Soy to keep you eating branded fake meat hotdogs? To answer…
kids as a service
*note – see why i’m writing without capitalization here. basically, this post is written off the cuff and quite unedited, so treat wisely. charlie munger once said something wise about incentives that’s definitely worth googling. something i think a lot about as i get within spitting distance of having kids is… why has society made having kids so hard?! if you live in one of…
An idea for a side hustle
I wanted to share the outline of an idea for an investment / side hustle I shared with a friend in January of this year. The opportunity has only gotten more attractive in a post-COVID world, given many people’s desire to get out of locked-down cities and into nature. 5 years ago it’s something I would have run at pretty hard. Now, I unfortunately have too much…
2020 Annual Review and 2021 Goals
It’s become somewhat fashionable lately to poo poo goals, say they’re stupid. Well, I think that’s stupid. When done right, goals are tools to make decisions and narrow down options. Today, most of my friends suffer from too many options, not too few. And for most of them, all those options are paralyzing. I’ve been doing an annual review exercise every year since 2012 and…
An Idea to Improve Science Funding
I’ve been thinking about how to solve the problem of “how do we accelerate progress” and wanted to share a potential way I’ve been thinking about it. I sort of see 2 main problem areas as far as research funding today: The funding model (90% of funding from the government, allocated via grant funding) is broken. Slow Rewards incremental research that’s legible to a grant…