DJ PAOLETTI
Cambridge, MA
// hi.

I'm Dylan. I think about
how to not die.

By day I'm building a company doing genetic circuits for cancer. The rest of the time I think about how to make humans live a long time. My current plan to stop aging is written down here.

There's also a separate page for things I like and things I think: music, half-baked opinions, and predictions that I'll probably regret.

Email's in the footer.

nowBuilding genetic circuits for cancer readingComparative longevity genomics writingthe longevity notebook updatedApril 2026
DJ PAOLETTI
// things I like and things I think living draft · 2026

Stuff I like & stuff I think.

Not in any particular order. Updated whenever.

AuthorD.J. Paoletti · Cambridge, MA
§ 01

Music

What I actually listen to.

01
Rihanna
Always.
02
ABBA
Genuinely incredible. "The Winner Takes It All" is a masterpiece.
03
Coldplay
I'm not sorry about it.
04
Lady Gaga
Obvious reasons.
05
Adele
Crying-in-the-car music.
06
Whatever's loud enough to drown out my thoughts late at night.
See § 03.
§ 02

Places

The city matters less to me than what's around it.

The city doesn't matter so much as what's in it. Two things make a place worth being: talent density, and proximity to people who write the checks. The rest is decoration. Boston works. The Bay works. Most places don't. Picking a city for views or weather underrates how much of who you become depends on who you're around. I can do science anywhere — I can only do it among the right people in a few places.
§ 03

Half-baked ideas

Things I think but haven't fully written out. Some of these are probably wrong.

01
Most "personality" is just energy level
Watch how someone acts after ten hours of sleep and a real meal vs. when they haven't slept or eaten. The first one is who they actually are.
02
Anime is doing things movies and TV can't right now
Quiet golden age. Most people outside it haven't noticed yet.
03
A walk at night with really loud music fixes most things
No phone, no destination, headphones loud enough to hurt.
04
The fastest read on someone's pretentiousness is "movies" vs "films"
Almost always works. "I love movies" and "I love films" are not the same sentence — the second one wants you to know they took a class. (Doesn't work on me though. I say "movies" on purpose to dodge the sort. You'll have to figure out how pretentious I am some other way ;)
§ 04

Predictions

Things I think that will happen. I'll come back and mark the wrong ones.

01
A working drug for one specific aging hallmark by 2035
Probably senolytics.
02
First widely (legally) accessible sleep-compression drugs around 2040
Drugs that compress sleep go mainstream, adding maybe 4–6 awake years of conscious life. Yes I have the scoop. No, I can't tell you.
03
AI eats >95% of software venture capital within 4 years
AI makes shipping SaaS so easy that software venture mostly stops being a category. The money rotates into sectors where humans still have to do the execution — deep tech, hard tech, biotech.
04
I live to 200+ and die a horribly tragic death
No middle path. If we hit escape velocity — each year of medical progress buying you more than a year of life — the odds of dying from age-related disease fall off a cliff, and the ugly ways (car crash, drowning, fire, shot, freak accident) climb to fill the gap. Death doesn't get prettier because everyone's healthy. Just more surprising. (I'm OK with that.)