Sugoi & Yokunai

High-dose IV vitamin C plus chemotherapy found to double survival time in advanced pancreatic cancer.  How does that work? Interesting result, but I suspect it won't catch on in the clinic just yet. It just seems too pseudo-sciency.

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Multnomah County heading towards $21 million shortfall next year.  They have the money, but they just spend it on frivolous stuff. And won't admit to doing so. No more spending on tents, only to have the tents taken away. No more boofing kits and free needles, etc.

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Newport will start powering some homes with energy generated from wave action. I think this is more whimsy than practicality.  Such low efficiency energy generation. They'll need to stay hooked up to the energy grid, for sure.

––– 凄い ––– This Chemistry Breakthrough Might Change Everything From Medicine to Farming.  Researchers at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion have unveiled triazenolysis, a groundbreaking chemical process that transforms alkenes, widely occurring organic compounds, like those derived from petroleum, into multifunctional amines, which could lead to producing raw materials used in polymers, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural compounds.

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IgNobel prize winners can see their careers get boosted, too.  Silly publicity is better than no publicity.

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Exceptional people are rare: found in less than 85 of 1,000,000 people. An exceptional person is one who has extreme intelligence, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. It's not that difficult to find people who satisfy one, maybe two criteria. But finding all three is very difficult. 

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Math GPT. This is a domain-specific LLM, so perhaps more trustworthy to do math than a general purpose model.

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MagicQuill is amazing. It uses generative AI to let you modify photos, but very easily. Just as interesting is the author list.

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Portland Clinic is pulling out of downtown Portland. Been there for 104 years, but all it took was a few years of Ted Wheeler's rule to make them have to move. All that tax base – gone. And neighboring shops that probably enjoyed spillover business – they'll see less revenue. And they'd better sell that building fast. When the local homeless find that it's abandoned, well... you know what's going to happen. See Gordon's Fireplace Shop.

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Here's the nasty fallout from ranked-choice voting. Remember that the whole purpose was so that the winner got support of 50% of the people? Well, they all got between 11% and 25% of voter support. So much for that. And the rules are that if you're unhappy with them, it'll take 75% of voters to oust them.

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Increasing PERS costs are going to take even more from the schools budgets.

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I saw this article about how trust in scientsts took a dive during COVID. And the authors recommend humility. No, that wasn't the problem so much as many of them did crap like this.  That'll lose trust.

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Crashed Israeli lunar lander contained tardigrades.  So what does this mean, given that these creatures can survive almost anything? All those years, mutating, mutating,...

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So paradox-free time travel is theoretically possible, at least. No mathematical problems, apparently. Well, let's go then.

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It's Surprisingly Easy to Jailbreak LLM-Driven Robots.  These LLMs are still breakable toys, and it's surprising and concerning that people are using it in mission-critical areas, like medicine.

Stress can disrupt memory and lead to needless anxiety.  Mice can be trained to react fearfully to harmless stimuli when experiencing a similar stimulus under conditions of stress. This probably explains PTSD.

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Phishing emails are now starting to use SVG graphics because of SPAM detectors focusing on graphics formats like JPG, GIF, etc. They think they can evade detection this way.

––– 良くない–––Portland State University downgraded their estimate of Oregon's population to match the official census. It was originally rosier, but nah, Oregon lost people.  No population increase since 2019.

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Samurai serial killers. And mass murderers. Yeah, they were a thing, all right.

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The magnetic north pole is moving to Russia in a way never before seen by scientists. Of course the article never really explains why it's "never before seen by scientists". And remember, the Earth's magnetic north pole is really a magnestic south pole, because that's why compasses point north.

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Stress warps fear memories. Of course – that's how we get PTSD. The article mentions taking mifepristone soon after the stress, to mitigate the memory warp. Taking propranolol can help as well. Here's another article on this.

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Homelessness is increasing faster than Portland-area counties are moving people into housing. That's because we subsidize it. And remember what Ronald Reagan said.

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Record number of Oregonians have college degrees.  Yeah, but what about the quality of those degrees. Sure doesn't seem like I'm surrounded by smart people when I'm in Oregon.

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AI is predicted to gain consciousness in 2035. That's ten years away.  Maybe it will come sooner. Hope it doesn't happen with Google's Gemini – that bot is f'cked up. And it's apparently easy to jailbreak LLMs. There is a ways to go before we can all decide on consciousness.

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The world's largest organism is Pando. And it's really old. I would have gotten this wrong on a quiz.

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Just like college loans, the Affordable Care Act needs to be replaced with something more competitive and maybe this time it will. It's always difficult to dismantle socialist systems, once they've been entrenched.

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Another Trump accomplishment. Trump-hating editor in chief of Scientific American steps down.

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Speaking of hatred. Google's Gemini spews vitriol at a user, wishing death.  Google just shrugs it off, calling it "nonsense". They clain to have filters that eliminate things like this from happening. Here is the chat session.  Google should take this version of Gemini down, already. Hasn't it embarrassed itself enough already, with its wokeness?  Maybe its tendency to hate others vehemently comes from its left-leaning politics, I dunno. But supposedly, it's the top of the current batch of LLMs.

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Looks like mail-in fraud elections might be happening in Oregon, too, just like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Washington. We have to get rid of the endless delays in getting results finalized, and the sudden influx of Democrat ballots that come in days later.

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Now some people think that the COVID-19 virus can actually help fight cancer.  Apparently in the presence of virus, monocytes change their phenotype to a cancer-fighting cell, something that it mimicked by muramyl dipeptide.

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The older we get, the later we think old age starts. No surprise here.

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a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-76900-1" target="_blank">AI-generated poetry is more highly-rated than human generated poetry. Probably it's that LLMs are able to pull more highly-rated word choices than humans are, and maybe they selected lousy poets for comparison. It's all subjective.

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Yet, another report that anxiety and depression are increasing in Americans, especially younger folks. We know why that's been happening, right?

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23 most dangerous cars on the road. I remember when those lists would be populated mainly be American cars at the top, but surprisingly it's Korean, German and Japanese cars (although Mitsubishi is really a Chrysler car).

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Casio makes a watch-ring. The idea is cute, but the execution is kinda lame. I don't think people want a mini watch on their finger like that. I thought they would design something awesome, but it's nothing I'd want to wear. They didn't even turn the display so that you don't have to turn your head.

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How to fix the student loan debt fiasco. I agree with this person's thoughts, but I also think that the government needs to get out of the student loan business. This is one of Obama's great mistakes, having the federal government take over the loans.

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AI chatbot tells mushroom hunters to eat poisonous mushrooms. Don't ever trust a general purpose LLM on life and death matters. They are good for general questions which you can confirm later, and for non-mission critical situations. But remember, LLMs only give you answers that look like they could be correct.

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Sleep is important in cardiovascular health, especially after a heart attack. Deep sleep decreases cardiac inflammation. Another reason to sleep well.

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A new type of art form, made possible by generative AI.

More info here and here and here. I love this stuff.

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Big news. Judge rules: Lake Oswego is now open to the public.  Bad news for lake front homeowners. People don't respect property anymore. I predict assholes from Portland will want to see what they can do, just 'cause they can. I wonder if people will still want to pay those easement fees to maintain the lake as it is, now that anyone can enjoy it.

Update (14 November 2024): The judge says that "the city could come up with reasonable restrictions such as permits, fees and boat cleaning requirements as well as time, place and manner rules."  So with fees, they can get the public to pay for lake maintenance and upkeep, too. That's more fair.

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Working muscles help grow neurons. Exercising muscles produce myokines, which stimulate nerve growth. Supposedly exercise also stimulates secretion of brain-derived neurotropic factor, so that helps, too.

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What Trump is teaching us all about civics. I always wondered why, with separation of powers, the Executive Branch needed approval of the Senate to get the people he needs to help him. Turns out it never was a requirement. It just became an assumption over time. The president doesn't really need Senate confirmation for his cabinet member picks, actually. It's not in the Constitution.

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I agree, nerds shouldn't rule the world. Nerds think differently, and although they can calculate and solve defined problems quickly, they don't necessarily become good leaders. Elon Musk is different though – nerd doesn't completely describe him. He's a proven leader at his companies, but over other matters, we haven't seen his talents in practice, just yet.

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FastGlioma is a domain-specific AI that identifies gliomas very quickly, picking up tumors missed by conventional means,

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In iOS 18.1, Apple is adding reboot on inactivity, which means that your phone needs to unlocked at regular intervals, or else it will reboot. Boy, the police won't be happy with this.

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The untold story of Tsar Bomba – world's biggest nuclear bomb.

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Making progress towards developing a super accurate nuclear clock. 

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Section 230 does need reforming. I agree – once you start implementing algorithms, your Section 230 coverage should be gone.

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The grift will be gone. Oregon homeless advocates worry about Trump's plan to end homelessness.  You would think they would be happy that the President will join them in fighting homelessness. But they know it will mean the end of the money flow, and pretty soon they will have to get real jobs. It was always in their best interest to make sure there was always a homelessness problem, so they would have a job.

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Heh. All that money to build a streetcar, and no one wants to go to downtown Seattle.

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Oregon takes on the problem of patients boarding in emergency departments because there are no hospital beds. Their solution?

"To combat the problem, Oregon lawmakers passed House Bill 3396 in 2023, which set up the task force."

"The recommendations also give state agencies work."

"...to direct the Oregon Health Authority and Oregon Department of Human Services to study regulations and look for ways to improve flow of patients with complex needs"

"Another recommendation would expand Medicaid coverage for long-term care."

Take a look at what the make up of the incoming Portland City Council looks like: socialists, former union leaders, social justice non-profits. Good luck, Portland.

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More useful macOS terminal commands.  I might use mdfind. Brew is essential but not always reliable.

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Toyota pick-up trucks are the vehicle of choice for Mddle East and Norh African military. What an endorsement.

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What a failure. Portland's experiment with Ranked Choice Voting resulted in less civic engagement than before. Did people find it too confusing? Or did people just give up caring, which might be the case. Who to vote for? The progressive, the socialist, the liberal, the radical? What does it matter?

––– 良くない––– Oregon's tax competitiveness has tumbled. Washington has really tumbled, especially with the 2023 capital gains tax law they passed. I know of folks who moved across the border to enjoy Washington's lack of income tax. And Seattle could have its own capital gains tax. I bet some people who moved to Washington regret do so now. Idaho is looking better and better.

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Dutch Bros is doing very well, now that they are transitioning out of Oregon and expanding to Arizona. Can't blame them.

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Cory Doctorow describes how you have to be a squeaky wheel to get by in the medical system. He describes his adventures with finding a lump on his body, and getting through diagnostic evaluation to treatment. But that may be due to the particular medical system that he's in, where medical care is modular and plug-and-play.

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Wow, 100% of little Niihau voted for Trump. How is that even possible?

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Interested in installing a local LLM?  Check out this guy's post.

LLMs are fun, but what the productive uses do they have?

First, LLMs are no good if correctness cannot be readily verified.
Second, LLMs have goldfish-sized working memory.
Third, LLMs are poor programmers.

So what are they good for?

• Proofreading has been most useful for me.
• Writing short fiction. Hallucinations are not a problem; they’re a feature!
• Generative fun
• Language translation.

Migration patterns of Oregonians. We lost 130,000 last year and most people who fled Oregon went to Washington, California, Texas, Arizona and Idaho. We got people mostly from California and I'm not sure that's a good thing. The fact that we can't seem to find good people for our top positions in industry suggests that the influx of immigrants are not the kind of people that's going to sustain the economy, but rather drain it.  Maybe Californians fled because their governor is nuts, like with this new gas tax.

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Mission creep indeed. A Medicaid insurer got into the business of buying houses for homeless people. No, no, no. They got their funding canceled, as they should. What a grift.

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You might want to think twice about getting care from a UCLA graduated physician Holy crap, this is the essence of DEI.

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