iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 09/08/2026

Responding to AI-generated emails with "beep boop"

Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 19/05/2026

A request: What are your favorite examples of people (yourself or others) spending money to make the world more awesome that don't look like normal charity or profit-maximizing investment? (Spending money on a personal project can count)

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 21/04/2026

I'm kind of shocked at how many people who think a lot about technology and the future have never heard of Gerard K. O'Neill

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 27/03/2026

There's a great, underappreciated scene in Project Hail Mary that's a wink at the classic problem of how hard it is to make doing science exciting on screen (and in real life): The protagonist, after many hours of hard science-ing has a breakthrough. Everybody is asleep.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 23/03/2026

Look, you always have to give science fiction some leeway for unrealistic scenarios

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 22/03/2026

An earnestpost about the things that made the Project Hail Mary movie great: 1. Man (+sentient rock) vs. nature story 2. Beautiful space things 3. Puppets! 4. Actually imaginative alien technologies 5. Two buddies teaming up to save the world with technology and science

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 08/03/2026

It will never stop being striking how quickly assumptions about the future can change. "Translating machines are very hard" "Wireless energy transmission by 2000 and interstellar probes by 2025, duh" and "Infinite energy+matter, finite brainpower" (From O'Neill's 2081)

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 12/11/2025

Applications close in one week! If you (or someone you know) has what it takes to run an ambitious research program, we want to hear from you.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 01/10/2025

Applications for the 2026 cohort of the Brains Research Accelerator are now open! If you have a deep technical background and an ambitious research idea that's beyond the scope of a startup or academic lab, you should apply! spec.tech/brains

spec.tech

Speculative Technologies

Speculative Technologies is a nonprofit resarch organization unlocking new materials and manufacturing technologies

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 24/09/2025

We realized that (to our knowledge) nobody had unpacked where the money for “misfit research” — work that is a poor fit for academia, startups, or large companies — was coming from. So I wrote a short but hopefully comprehensive overview. blog.spec.tech/p/who-funds-...

blog.spec.tech

Who Funds Misfit Research?

A practical guide

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 22/08/2025

It's funny how at meetings in DC I'm the whippersnapper and in SF I'm basically a walking corpse.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 12/08/2025

I am frustrated with lumping a huge number of things under the terms "AI" and "science" :-/

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 12/08/2025

I do think AI could increase scientific productivity. But so much of science isn't easily mechanized tasks like pipetting -- it's adjusting optics, troubleshooting custom equipment, and keeping critters from dying. Here's a plan to capture and use this "tacit knowledge." ifp.org/teaching-ai-...

ifp.org

Teaching AI How Science Actually Works | IFP

How block-grant labs can generate the real-world data AI needs to do science

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 09/08/2025

We finished building the Millennium Falcon! #caturday

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 27/07/2025

Sometimes I wonder if the thing that makes startups possibly the most dynamic modern institution is just because it's the one place in today's world where it's normalized for young/undercredentialed people to be in charge of organizations and significant resources.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 24/07/2025

(Re)published a piece on the Spectech Blog about how efficiency warps the types of ideas that get support, which ones get killed too early, and which ideas people choose to pursue in the first place. blog.spec.tech/p/efficiency...

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 21/07/2025

Every once and a while, we're allowed to have nice things ...

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 15/07/2025

For the historians out there -- There are some hardcore, dig-into-the-undigitized-archives-and-try-to-piece-things-together-from-account-books history research projects about the financial history of technology that nobody is tackling: blog.spec.tech/p/some-open-...

blog.spec.tech

Some open questions on the financial history of technology

A quest for those with the skill and daring...

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 07/07/2025

Checks out: arguably, venture capital has its roots in funding whaling expeditions ...

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 07/07/2025

For some reason I get a lot of joy out of the flight path from Helsinki to Tokyo

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 17/06/2025

A lot of new thoughts about: - State capacity - Scale dependence for governments - The difference between governments and people of a state - American LARPing That are probably too politically-charged and out of my lane for the internet.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 12/06/2025

Ok! Time to stop procrastinating. You’ve done harder things than applying to AI Brains. Knock it out this weekend. Applications close Monday June 16th!

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 09/06/2025

Don't forget! AI Brains Q&A session today at 1p ET. You bring questions, we'll bring answers.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 05/06/2025

I’m noticing that there’s a funny motte-and-bailey attribute of most disciplines that I think are BS: If done really really well, they’re super insightful and valuable; it’s just that the vast majority of ideas are garbage and practitioners are charlatans.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 03/06/2025

This is today at 8p ET! Q+A session about the impending AI cohort of the Brains Research Accelerator. We'll talk about anything: how it works, who should apply, our theory of change, etc.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 03/06/2025

This is the kind of not-incremental metascientific experiment I want to see more of!

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 03/06/2025

Oo oo I can ruin it here too 😜

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 01/06/2025

Testing gentle ways of reminding people in group chats to clean tracking information off of links

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 28/05/2025

I've always been a bit annoyed by the advice that goes "What would you do if you had a year to live? Why aren't you doing that now?" Obv there are some things you shouldn't delay, but there are some things that take more than a year no matter how much effort you slam into them.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 27/05/2025

If you have questions, we have answers! We are doing two Q+A sessions about AI Brains in the coming weeks: 1. June 3 at 8p ET: lu.ma/eli2c08p 2. June 9 at 1p ET: lu.ma/vxx85ug5

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 21/05/2025

Some proposals to replace metascience: Epistotechnics Technogenesisics Epistodynamics

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 21/05/2025

I finally had a chance to search for "wirecutter wirecutter"

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 18/05/2025

Whenever I run into two opposing but plausible pieces of wisdom like this, it's a flag that there's some missing confounder. I don't know what it is in this case yet.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 18/05/2025

It's funny that there are two complete opposite arguments for where to locate an ambitious thing: "It should be where the good people want to be, otherwise you won't get good people" "It should be in the middle of nowhere because then only the really committed people will join"

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 16/05/2025

Oh yeah that's right I can actually link to things on Bluesky 🤦‍♂️

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 16/05/2025

Context; A while back, there was a splashy paper claiming that a real company was using AI to drastically improve its materials business. Many actual scientists were skeptical.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 16/05/2025

Although curmudgeonly, the actual scientists who do takedowns of hype-y things have a great record I think the Heinlein quote holds — scientists saying “that is impossible” is often wrong. But “this actually existing work is not as exciting as you think it is” is often right.

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 14/05/2025

Sometimes I'm tempted to just send this gif in follow-up emails instead of the nice polite "Hey just wanted to make sure this didn't get lost in your inbox..."

media.tenor.com

a cartoon of harry potter and his friends with the words bother in red

ALT: a cartoon of harry potter and his friends with the words bother in red

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 14/05/2025

Has anybody ever used a CRM that actually sparks Joy?

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 13/05/2025

If you or someone you know: 1. Has hands-on XP building modern AI software or hardware 2. Has ideas for ambitious AI programs beyond the scope of a single company or lab 3. Wants to start a program to execute on that idea (or take an existing thing to the next level)... 4/

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Ben Reinhardt @benjaminreinhardt.com · 13/05/2025

This 4-month, part time program is meant to help talented researchers with experience in AI hardware and software build skills, refine ideas, and make the connections to spin up coordinated research programs in governments and nonprofits. 3/

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