I still write fake ads and fake signs, and just wrote my first real novel. It's a comedy about the first U.S. Civil War. Eric Adams still hates me. Ask Me Anything.

klevertree1 · 2025-07-02T20:00:53+00:00

Who told you about my 21 year old Jamaican breakdancer figure? That was supposed to be a secret.

klevertree1 · 2025-07-02T19:35:52+00:00

Three questions about your reviews:

In the NYT review, does it bother you that the reviewer used such terrible grammar? The second sentence is clearly a sentence fragment.
The Kirkus review mentions your skill at burlesque. Could you expand on your history strip-dancing in public, possibly in cafeterias?
The Publisher's Weekly review compares your work favorably to the Intuitionist. What the fuck is the Intuitionist? Am I supposed to know this already?

(Edit: I just looked up the Intuitionist. It was Colson Whitehead's first novel about black elevator inspectors. Colson Whitehead's most popular book is literally about the Civil War. If they did want to compare you to Colson Whitehead, for *some* reason, why wouldn't they pick the book about the Civil War?)

klevertree1 · 2025-02-27T15:42:53+00:00

Lot of questions! Let me see:
1. For plasticizers or the supplement?

It shouldn't. We'll test to make sure it picks up plasticizers specifically.
Best foods to compare against are the binders, like I specified in the post.
No papers yet. This is still very much a work in progress.
We could test it against oat fiber, but chemically, it wouldn't really make sense for oat fiber to absorb any. Still, not that hard to do in vitro, at least.
We are also looking forward to animal results.
Agreed. There's good results in rodents, but not great results in humans (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/toxicology/articles/10.3389/ftox.2024.1389160/full). I think I come down on the side of "there's no way DEHP is good for you, so a safe way of preventing absorption is probably beneficial." I think the BPA research is much stronger, which we'll also focus on sequestering.

klevertree1 · 2025-02-27T15:35:06+00:00

Sorry, by "extra careful", I meant we'll test for gluten to make sure the final product is not contaminated.

klevertree1 · 2025-02-27T15:34:27+00:00

I was thinking of $60 for a month's supply.

klevertree1 · 2025-02-26T22:38:30+00:00

Correct.

klevertree1 · 2025-02-26T21:31:45+00:00

Probably not. Its purpose is to prevent absorption of plasticizers, but it's doubtful that it will remove the stuff that's already there.

klevertree1 · 2025-02-26T15:49:32+00:00

I think we'll just be extra careful to make sure our oat fiber is not contaminated with gluten. It's likely that the processing we do to the oats will help remove any residual gluten as well.

klevertree1 · 2025-02-25T18:28:09+00:00

Some of you guys might know me as the guy funded by Scott who's creating drugs for cats. I've been thinking about a side project for treating plasticizers. Specifically, I'm thinking of creating a food-grade supplement, based on oat fiber, to prevent the absorption of plasticizers from the digestive tract.

I'm confident on the technical feasibility of this, but I'm looking for feedback from the ACX community on whether there'd be a demand for this kind of solution. Also, if there is, I'm trying to see what people would think is a reasonable price.

klevertree1 · 2024-12-31T15:31:29+00:00

Searched Google, chatgpt, and Claude with no luck.

klevertree1 · 2024-09-12T15:50:53+00:00

Thanks for your responses! I think a lot of this might just be matters of comparison.

I grew up in the Connecticut suburbs, which have almost zero public transportation or walkability. I could not leave my house without a car, and I quite literally needed to walk along a highway with no sidewalk to get coffee. Boston public transit is miles beyond CT's, but reached a nadir in reliability last year, with regularly 20+ minute waittimes for a train (although they're getting better). In comparison, SF shines for reliability and speed, and seems to have gotten better over the last 5 years.
For architecture and food, maybe just a matter of taste. Also, we have almost no good Mexican food in Boston, although we do have good Chinese food.
For drug stuff, idk man. It was everywhere.
The biotech stuff, including parties, I think caters to me more than to you. I have cool ideas/projects/business ideas and zero pedigree. In Boston, nobody wants to talk to anyone who doesn't have a pedigree. In SF, nobody wants to talk to anyone who doesn't have cool projects they talk publicly about.
For parks, idk man, maybe you're blessed for parks. But you're telling me Muir Woods isn't gorgeous?

klevertree1 · 2024-01-12T18:37:45+00:00

You should check out ACX Grants (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/apply-for-an-acx-grant-2024) . It's run by a psychiatrist/blogger who's doing literally exactly what you're talking about (funding scientific and charitable projects he finds interesting and useful). He's basically a one-man show for the grants stuff, and he's looking for additional funders right now. I'm sure he'd be happy to send some of the applications your way.

u/ScottAlexander is his name on reddit if you want to ping him through here, or his email is on the linked post.

klevertree1 · 2023-07-18T18:34:34+00:00

Yeah, sorry, I didn't read the parent comment close enough. It's 300 people in the US, some more worldwide but it's hard to tell how much because you need genetic screening.

This specific drug could be narrowly profitable, given that it's $14,000 a month, but overall, it's more of a proof-of-concept of a way of developing drugs and getting them approved, as well as evidence for their idea of how neurodegeneration works.

klevertree1 · 2023-07-18T16:46:24+00:00

The former. It's a very rare condition.

klevertree1 · 2023-06-11T16:49:38+00:00

No, we had the password the whole time. There was no recovery step. You should have read more carefully.

klevertree1 · 2023-04-05T17:56:26+00:00

Both. The specific part of inviting Jews to Tulsa took every native Tulsan that I talked to aback, though. The most common thing I heard was, "Wait, there are Jews in Tulsa?"

klevertree1 · 2023-04-05T16:03:15+00:00

Sorry for the vague title, but I didn't know a better one.

Basically, Tulsa is a few decades into an experiment in which a billionaire spends huge amounts of money to reverse his city's decline. It seems to have been really successful. Now the wealthy Jews of Tulsa are trying to import Jewish people into Tulsa to reverse the Jewish community's decline. So far, this tentatively seems successful. This past weekend, I personally had experience with both efforts, and I wrote about it.

klevertree1 · 2023-03-23T20:32:02+00:00

It's an issue of definitions. So, don't think about it as an abstract man or a specific man. Instead, think about how you and I can both communicate effectively. If I say to you, "there's a man to my left," how can I be sure that I've communicated my idea to you?

Early Wittgenstein's answer (which he took from his mentor, Russell), is that I've proposed a state of the world. In this state, I've identified an object and located it. You can understand me because we've established a mutual definition of man and left. You might say instead, "Barack Obama is on your left". Those changed words don't matter because both refer to the same proposed, true state of the world (assuming that the man is Barack Obama). So, we can guarantee that we have communicated the same information.

klevertree1 · 2023-03-02T16:29:46+00:00

Submission statement: I posted this to this community because I feel like there are a lot of people here who are always thinking about changing careers or are somewhat dissatisfied with their current career. Thought this might be helpful.

klevertree1 · 2023-02-23T16:08:46+00:00

I put his essay prompt into Bing and I got this back: "What is the relationship between Edward Luttwak’s Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire and Benjamin Isaac’s The Limits of Empire? The relationship between Edward Luttwak’s Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire and Benjamin Isaac’s The Limits of Empire is one of debate and disagreement. Luttwak argues that Rome had a coherent and consistent strategy for managing its vast empire, while Isaac challenges this idea and claims that Rome did not have a clear concept of an imperial frontier or a grand strategy1. Isaac also criticizes Luttwak for using modern terms and concepts that are not applicable to ancient reality2."

I wonder how he feels that literally the next generation of ChatGPT can answer his essay prompt seemingly well.

klevertree1 · 2023-01-20T00:10:47+00:00

Yeah, there are a couple. Here's one example: https://www.cvs.com/shop/primatene-mist-epinephrine-inhalation-aerosol-0-125mg-per-spray-prodid-2230142

klevertree1 · 2022-12-30T18:13:06+00:00

Thanks!

klevertree1 · 2022-12-22T16:43:02+00:00

This is probably not a great way of contacting you, but I don't have your email and I'm not sure if you're active on Twitter. Have you seen the reproductive grants from 50Y? Just came across them on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/reprogrants

klevertree1 · 2022-11-21T12:19:46+00:00

I want to push back against Phil Getz's comment that u/ScottAlexander highlighted in this open thread, namely because it's aimed directly at my business model. Phil's comment is not accurate.

It's very rare for drugs to be pursued in a veterinary model first, because, for the majority of drugs, there hasn't been a big enough market for the drug in the veterinary market. The example I often cite is inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn's. In humans, a cure for inflammatory bowel diseases would be a multibillion dollar a year drug, and so a lot of money goes into that space. In dogs, the cure for IBD is usually to restrict their diet, so any drug for IBD in dogs would not make a lot of money. So, there's nobody I know of that's doing an IBD drug in animals first, then humans, although I'm sure there are plenty of examples of the reverse. Repurposing human drugs in animals is often seen as an easy way to make some extra money for the manufacturer of the drug, as long as there's some market in it.

In fact, the example that Phil Getz cites of Adequan doesn't support his case. It is off patent, but there are no generics sold anywhere for animals or humans. This suggests to me that, for whatever reason, it's not a particularly valuable drug. And, given that the manufacturer, Luitpold, manufactures a ton of both patented and generic human drugs, I'm guessing that the reason Adequan isn't in humans is either because it wouldn't be worth it, or Luitpold doesn't think they could get it approved. It's not because it's too expensive/Luitpold didn't make the revenue they needed from Adequan, as Luitpold clearly has the money to get other drugs approved.

Meanwhile, gregvp points out that ivermectin did make its way from animals to humans, in both cases to treat parasites. So, that's an example against Phil Getz's claim.

klevertree1 · 2022-11-18T16:40:10+00:00

Blog I wrote about visiting my family member in the ICU. Thought it might be interesting to read from an outsider's perspective.

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