Currently reading, currently thinking

Short note. Desk contents as of April 2026:

• Santayana, The Life of Reason. A book about practical rationality that happens to read like poetry. I return to the chapter on industry every few years.
• Medawar, Pluto’s Republic. For when I feel the need to be reminded what scientific writing can be when it is written by a scientist who reads.
• A stack of papers on selective senolytics, where selectivity claims need careful reading.

I am thinking about whether reprogramming needs epigenetic priming to work reproducibly, and about how to write a paper that makes this question legible to people who are not already inside the mechanism.