Weekly Dose of Optimism #112

Three Mile Island, Obesity Goop, Metformin, Antigravity, The Prize, Porphyrion

Today’s Weekly Dose is brought to you by… HubSpot

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Hi friends 👋,

Happy Friday and welcome back to our 112th Weekly Dose of Optimism. Pretty varied edition of the Weekly Dose here — Three Mile Island is back, obesity research, teaching old drugs new tricks, black holes, UFOs , and a history of the U.S. as told through energy. It’s fascinating to me that each week, without fail, there are at least five pieces of inspiring, compelling, and ultimately, optimistic content to share with you. This week was no different.

Let’s get to it.

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(1) Three Mile Island’s Nuclear Plant to Reopen, Help Power Microsoft’s AI Centers

Jennifer Hiller for The New York Times

Packy here with an emergency last minute addition: Three Mile Island is back!

This morning, The New York Times reported that Constellation Energy Group is reviving the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island and selling the power to Microsoft under a 20-year agreement to power its data centers with clean, reliable energy.

As Constellation’s CEO Joe Dominguez said, “The most important energy commodity in the world today is a reliable and clean electric megawatt just because of the difficulty of replicating it and the need for it.” Amen.

This is a real win and a symbolic one. Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 reactor melted down in 1979 in the “worst” nuclear incident in the country. “Worst” is relative — no one died, no injuries were reported — but it came just 12 days after the release of Jane Fonda’s nuclear-fear-inducing movie, The China Syndrome, and effectively put the nail in the coffin of US nuclear growth.

Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 reactor actually ran for another 40 years after the meltdown, but shut down in 2019 because it was too costly to run. US electricity demand was practically flat, and renewables and natural gas were able to meet the stagnant need. Over the past couple of years, though, demand for electricity has picked up as we start to electrify everything — cars, appliances, intelligence, and eventually robots — and reshore manufacturing.

When we didn’t need the electricity, we could afford to pretend that nuclear was unsafe and not as clean as renewables. Now that we do, people are waking up to the fact that nuclear is as clean, safe, and reliable as it gets.

California kept Diablo Canyon open. Michigan is restarting Palisades. Iowa is considering reopening the Duane Arnold Energy Center. And now, Constellation is going to spend $1.6 billion to bring it back and deliver power to Microsoft by 2028.

Microsoft will use the power to run data centers to train and run AI models, and is looking at using AI to streamline the NRC’s burdensome regulatory process. As Mark Nelson points out, Microsoft is paying a premium (~$100/MWh) over what they’d have to pay for renewable energy because, “Nuclear almost perfectly matches the specific service needs of the next generation of centralized AI datacenters in a way distributed weather-based energy cannot do while keeping costs reasonable.”

We are tapping the massive amounts of clean power trapped in atoms to create machine intelligences. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll even be able to continue using washing machines instead of tedious labor to wash our clothes.

In short: welcome to the future we were promised.

(2) Brain goop that traps hunger neurons drives obesity

Max Kozlov for Nature

The buildup of sticky extracellular matrix ('goo') in the brain's appetite-control center blocks insulin from reaching hunger-regulating neurons, leading to metabolic disorders, but inhibiting this goo restores insulin sensitivity and promotes weight loss—highlighting a new therapeutic target for treating diabetes and obesity.

Obesity has had a tough couple of years. First GLP-1s. Now this.

Researchers discovered that a buildup of a sticky extracellular matrix—or "goo"—in the brain's appetite-control center, specifically the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus, prevents insulin from reaching neurons that regulate hunger in mice. And, by inhibiting the production of this goo, the researchers were able to restore insulin sensitivity and induce weight loss.

Unlike GLP-1 therapies that mimic incretin hormones to enhance insulin secretion and promote satiety, this new finding targets the sticky extracellular matrix in the brain's appetite-control center to restore insulin signaling directly to hunger-regulating neurons.

Even with the proliferation of GLP-1s, the world is still hungry for safe and effective solutions to obesity, and this “goo” seems to be another point of attack.

(3) The brain aged more slowly in monkeys given a cheap diabetes drug

Max Kozlov for Nature

Monkeys that received metformin daily showed slower age-associated brain decline than did those not given the drug. Furthermore, their neuronal activity resembled that of monkeys about six years younger (equivalent to around 18 human years) and the animals had enhanced cognition and preserved liver function.

Speaking of diabetes medications being repurposed, a study has shown that a daily dose of metformin slowed biological aging in male monkeys, notably delaying age-associated brain decline. Metformin is a low-cost, widely-used generic drug thta’s been on the market since the 1950s. Traditionally it’s been used to treat diabetes by lowering blood sugar levels by improving the body's sensitivity to insulin.

In the study, monkeys given daily metformin exhibited neuronal activity resembling that of monkeys six years younger, enhanced cognition, and preserved liver function. The drug appeared to slow aging in multiple tissues—including the lung, kidney, liver, skin, and brain's frontal lobe—and reduced chronic inflammation, a hallmark of aging.

If I’ve learned anything over the past couple of years it’s that insulin regulation is a lot more important than we previously imagined. Yes, it can treat things like diabetes and obesity, but it also seems to play a surprisingly large role in brain health and aging processes.

In the U.S., a monthly supply of metformin can range from $4-$20 without insurance…so less than a dollar per day. It’s super cheap and widely available. Human trials to come (I hope).

(4) Aerospace’s Secret Search For Antigravity

From Jesse Michels

Packy here. A few months ago, Jesse Michels recommended two books to me: The Man Who Mastered Gravity and The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology. Both books cover the pursuit of antigravity technology decades ago, and both bent my brain, but the latter is particularly notable because of its author: Nick Cook.

Cook did not come from the world of heretical physics or UFOs; he was the aviation editor for Jane’s Defence Weekly, a well-respected magazine that provides high-quality journalism on military equipment, technology, and defense for defense industry professionals. When hints that the US government might possess antigravity technology were first mysteriously dropped on his desk in the form of an old article, he tried to avoid the subject because it was well-known to tarnish the reputation of journalists who pursued it.

But when Cook tried to get in touch with the Lockheed Martin VP mentioned in the article, George Trimble, through a press contact at Lockheed, the contact relayed back a message: “He doesn’t want to speak to me. He doesn’t want to speak with you. Not now, not ever. I don’t mind telling you that he sounded scared.”

That got Cook’s Spidey Senses tingling, and sent him down a years-long search for the truth about antigravity technology that took him across the world, from the US Defense Primes to the Nazi Foo Fighters and a small apartment in Canada where, serious observers suspected, a man controlled objects with his mind.

Cook himself doesn’t say whether he’s convinced the government has antigravity technology in its possession. He’s a journalist, trying to report the facts. But if it does, it would be a technological breakthrough that dwarves anything we’ve written about in the Weekly Dose. Control of antigravity would mean spacecraft could sail through space (and even time) by harnessing electrogravitic effects as easily as a sailboat travels water propelled by wind.

The book is fascinating, and I recommend it, but if you just want to dip your toes, Jesse sat down with Cook for an 80-minute video that I promise will at least get your mind racing a little bit.

There was a time, in the 1950s, when legitimate scientists and aerospace executives were convinced that antigravity was just around the corner. Then, all of a sudden, anyone who talked about the topic was labeled a quack. Odd at the very least.

I like odd, particularly if it comes with even 0.01% odds of going interstellar. Seems like it’s at least worth a little more research. Watch the video. You be the judge.

(5) Daniel Yergin – Oil Explains the Entire 20th Century

From Dwarkesh Patel

Daniel Yergin, author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power¹ went on Dwarkesh’ podcast this week. Published in 1991, The Prize follows the rise of oil as a dominant economic force starting in the 1850s and up through to the ‘90s. The history of the 20th century is, in some ways, the history of oil.

In the 33 years since the book’s publication, some things have changed and some things haven’t. Energy is still, obviously, a shaping force and oil still has an outsized impact on global activities — see: turmoil in the Middle East and the War in Ukraine — but the energy landscape is shifting. Yergin believes that oil and gas will still play a prominent role in shaping geopolitics for decades to come, but that the renewable transition will shift nations’ priorities and relationships.

Yergin predicts a shift from "big oil" to "big shovels," emphasizing the growing importance of mining and critical minerals for renewable technologies. This shift, he emphasizes, creates new geopolitical dynamics around the supply chains and resources needed for clean energy. Yergin also predicts that the shift towards renewables is a part of a larger trend away from globalization. Countries are now more focused on energy security and resiliency and less singlemindedly focused on efficiency.

If the best way to predict the future is to study the past, and the past 150+ years of global history is really just the history of oil, then a deep understanding of the history of oil could be the most useful framework for predicting and navigating the years to come. This podcast is a good place to start if you want to understand that history, so give a listen. Plus, Dwarkesh is awesome.

Bonus: Black hole jets on the scale of the cosmic web

Oei et al in Nature

When sustained for megayears, high-power jets from supermassive black holes (SMBHs) become the largest galaxy-made structures in the Universe.

Throwing in a little bonus because this one’s just cool.

Researchers have discovered the largest-ever observed jets emitted by a supermassive black hole, named Porphyrion, extending across a staggering 23 million light-years. A jet is a powerful stream of particles shooting out from near a black hole far into space. And the discovery of these jets implies that such colossal jets may be more common than previously thought.

Porphyrion’s jets are so massive that they can eject material not just from their own galaxy but potentially into neighboring galaxies and into the cosmic web of dark matter that structures the universe. The finding suggests that massive blackholes not only impact their host galaxies but can also impact the formation and growth of other galaxies.

Will the discovery of Porphyrion’s jets have any real impact on us today? No, not really. But it serves as a reminder of just how large and complex the system we live in is and how much there is to learn about it. It’s a reminder of “The Absurd” — that phenomena of feeling significant in our personal experiences while recognizing our minute existence within the immense cosmos.

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Have a great weekend y’all.

Thanks to HubSpot for sponsoring! We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday.

Thanks for reading,

Packy + Dan

1. Packy note: This is maybe the best book I’ve read in the past year. If you haven’t read it, read it.