Four For Friday | Oct 31, 2025
LF194 | The death toll of climate inaction, CB Insights on Longevity Tech, Dominic Cummings on growing the UK, gyms meet retail + 21st.Dev
Welcome to this week’s Four For Friday - nuggets of interesting things I’ve picked up this week, plus my favorite AI tool du jour. Writing this happily back in Melbourne, on Melbourne Cup Weekend and spring is kicking off in earnest.
1. Calculating climate inaction by number of dead
How do you make the climate crisis feel immediate? You count the bodies.
The 2025 Lancet Countdown report, produced with the WHO, reframes the issue with brutal clarity: climate inaction is already killing millions of people every year. The rate of heat-related deaths has jumped 23% since the 1990s, now averaging over 546,000 deaths annually. The report’s most damning data point: in 2023, governments spent $956 billion on fossil fuel subsidies—more than triple the amount pledged to help climate-vulnerable countries. Fifteen nations spent more on subsidizing fossil fuels than on their entire national health budgets.
People faced 16 dangerous heat days, 2024.
124 million people have become food insecure.
Heat exposure lost 640 billion labor hours.
Productivity losses totaled US$1.09 trillion globally.
The So What? Framing climate change as a health crisis makes the abstract tangible. It’s not about polar bears in 2050; it’s about human lives being lost now.
2. CB Insights maps the Longevity tech
The race to extend human healthspan is moving from fringe tinkering to serious industry.
The CB Insights report (map below) lists 84 companies, split into biological aging interventions (cell reprogramming, cryopreservation and rejuvenation) and healthspan support / optimization (longevity clinics, age testing, hormone optimization and hyberbaric oxygen therapy HBOT).
It’s a tough one to get right as this space is moving so fast and borders and fluid, but including a specific quasi-scientic intervention (HBOT), seems an odd choice, when any number of devices can claim similar efficacy (red light therapy, PEMF, cold plunges…), and it doesn’t include the biggest money spinner, supplements. Given that it has biotech companies included, feels like a miss.
There’s real breakthroughs in there, albeit with some inevitable noise. Altos Labs, flush with $3bn raised in 2022, is advancing preclinical programmes and broadened into senescence therapies by buying Dorian Therapeutics in May. Retro Biosciences teamed with OpenAI in early 2025 to design proteins that repair cells. Neko Health fields a six-figure waitlist; Midi Health (menpoause) forecasts $150m revenue this year.
The So What? Validation of the space of longevity tech - it’s (finally) commercialising, and fast. Prevention platforms and rejuvenation therapies will reshape healthcare economics and consumer expectations (as anyone who’s experienced a Neko scan will tell you).
2. Dominic Cummings is baaaack
I arrived back to the UK in 2017 - fresh from Donald’s arrival in the US - to a Britain that had just been transformed by Brexit. I had little time and patience for the Leave argument, having spent five happy years in Brussels and being a deep Europhile. I had even less time for Dominic Cummings - the evil genius behind the mind-bending campaign. Now I may be starting to rethink my view of him.
This piece covers a new initiative he’s supporting - Looking for Growth - which recently held a summit attracting 1,300 software engineers, entrepreneurs, VCs and civil servants. These weren’t fringe lunatics, but a variety of people keen to get Britain moving again.
Looking for Growth is a new movement aimed at Britain’s 17-year post-financial crisis economic stagnation. Led by former academic Lawrence Newport, the initiative combines grassroots activism (graffiti cleanup, crime reduction) with policy reform targeting planning, housing, infrastructure, and AI-driven growth to reverse national decline.
The So What? With echoes of Silicon Valley’s techo-optimism, this new political movement is attracting thinkers and doers from the left and right who are fed up with the current status quo, and looking to AI to drive country-wide renewal.
4. Gyms are merging with retail stores
From the founder of Fitt Insider: fitness and retail are converging into performance hubs for everyone. Stores are adding studios, diagnostics, recovery zones, and coached training. Sports Direct’s UK flagship adds Everlast Gyms, HYROX, Pilates, saunas, and ice baths.
Lululemon is turning stores into community hubs and pop-up studios and recovery sessions.
The So What? Driven by the rise of consumer wellness and the need to reinvent retail in the age of Amazon, retail is shifting from transactions to ecosystems that train, measure, and convene.
Bonus AI Tip of the Week: 21 Dev
AI makes it into the design area - here’s an AI designer that lets you find, copy, and drop ready-made components into those new websites you’re vibe coding.
That’s all for now - happy weekend everyone.
- Stephen