AI Drug Repurposing

"Doctors Told Him He Was Going to Die. Then A.I. Saved His Life."

In labs around the world, scientists are using A.I. to search among existing medicines for treatments that work for rare diseases. Drug repurposing, as it’s called, is not new, but the use of machine learning is speeding up the process — and could expand the treatment possibilities for people with rare diseases and few options.

Babies And Bad Medical Care

Alex Tabarrok: "What Did We Learn From Torturing Babies?" (Via G.F.)

Corner Crossings Legal

Federal judge rules that diagonal "corner crossings" from one square of public land to another square does *not* constitute trespassing of the adjacent private land on the opposite corners. (Via Dave Jilk.)

Good Question

A darned good question.

It's a reasonable question .. pic.twitter.com/Q9BufTFyJ6

— Andy Burge 🌊🇬🇧🇪🇺 (@AndyGJBurge) March 20, 2025

Hansen On Drug Development

Excellent video by AbCellera CEO Carl Hansen: "Why medicines are miracles of science and technology"

Astonishingly Agile Robots

Boston Dynamics robots are amazingly agile.

Volokh On Pardons And Autopens

"Pardons and Autopen Signatures: A 2024 Appellate Decision Says Pardons Don't Have to Be Signed (or Even Written) at All".  

Professor Volokh notes:

Of course, something is required, and that something is presumably a statement by the President that he is pardoning someone. If (and this is a very big if) a President actually didn't make such a statement, and an assistant just affixed the President's signature to a document purporting to be a pardon without the President's authorization, then I don't see how that would be a valid pardon (at least unless it's somehow ratified by the relevant President). But that turns on a factual question about whether the President was actually involved in the creation of the pardons, not on a legal question about whether an autopen signature renders the pardon invalid.

Waterbending

"Wild 'Waterbending' Technique Uses Waves to Steer Floating Objects With Precision". (Via H.R.)

Introvert Jobs

"The Best 10 High-Paying Jobs for Introverts in 2025".

"Radiologist" is number 1 on the list.  (Disregard the inaccurate salary estimate.)

Bye Bye FiveThirtyEight

"ABC Shuts Down FiveThirtyEight, and Pulls the Plug on Its Website"

IBM On Quantum Computing

"Quantum computing's future is almost here, IBM chief says"

More Students Enter Defense Tech

"Stanford students used to chase jobs at Meta and Google. Now they want to work on war"

At Stanford, building tech for the U.S. government is cool again. Students are dropping out to form defense tech startups and compete for coveted internships at government security agencies or major private contractors. Undergraduates, business school students, recent alumni now working in defense tech, and faculty show a booming interest in building war machines for the United States...