"Where we're going... we don't need clinical trials!"
As always with rats you get call-backs to more or less bad SF. In Varley's Steel Beach, the universal AI keeping everyone "happy" on the Moon invents a nanobot that cleans your teeth and gives your breath a minty fresh flavor. The leader of la Resistance naturally hacks it to disable it, no Man is gonna prevent me from having filthy teeth!
Also in on of Paul McAuley's short stories, the main character reflects on the total destruction of the Earth's ecosphere, which was caused by a genetically modified perfect coffee plant which took over all of life.
I thought this looked kind of interesting and not especially grifty apart from the usual anti-FDA narrative up until
The plan is:
Phase 1: (January 2024) Sell to biohackers in Prospera for $20,000.
By good luck, Prospera will soon be hosting a two month super-conference of biotech and crypto entrepreneurs/enthusiasts.
whence my eyes did an uzumaki. And also Aela is somehow involved, apparently.
Give them the benefit of a doubt, sure, maybe they are pandering this hard to an audience that self selects for gullibility and cultbrain and against consumer protections strictly for the greater good, merely accelerating what should have already happened if it weren't for those meddlin' kids at the FDA.
It isn't just cultbrain, but also a big dose of science fiction and tech hopium. A decade+ ago Lepht Anonym gonzo biohacked themselves to have magnets in their fingers, and this (together with some other science media and science fiction media) set off quite a wave of biohackers. This is just the tail end of the more speculative part of that wave. ('biohacking' (bit nebulous term) can have some good results when people learn how to homebrew hormones or insulin, so don't throw out the meds with the bathwater and mint breath baby)
Does anyone have any updates on wtf is even going on there? Is it actually the libertarian utopia that I was promised? Or is it just a place for people with nice comfy remote jobs to exploit cheap Honduran labor to live large.
you have guessed correctly. Honduras is trying to kick out all the libertarian charter cities, but Prospera has Thiel backing and is clinging on for dear life.
@dgerard Thiel and Andreessen. I love the way that as soon as the Hondurans started saying mean things these proud libertarians went crying straight to the US State Department.