Sugoi & Yokunai

The new Parkinson's disease treatment, entacapone, can cause iron deficiency and disrupt gut microflora, promoting harmful bacteria such as E coli.

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Japan is a case study. Despite economic stagnation, the country is doing OK and it still is a nice place to live. It suffers from a population that is producing less and less, and has a lot of "zombie companies".  But thanks to its culture and low crime, society doesn't suffer.

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Private equity tied to 21% of healthcare bankruptcies. When private equity takes over a hospital (such as Optum in Eugene, OR), there are more bankruptcies. This makes sense, because they want profit. I hate when profit mongers get between the doctor and the patient. That's why healthcare is so expensive. It's bad enough with pharmacy benefit managers setting the price of drugs. Insurance is a necessary evil. Oh how I wish I could revamp healthcare!

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The datacenter in The Dalles is using up way more water than they're letting on. The fact that they want to hide it from the public is disturbing. And now Amazon wants to build a datacenter in Arlington.

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Mira Murati is starting an OpenAI competitor, called ThinkingMachines. Competition is good.

And xAI dropped Grok-3 yesterday. The reviews are that it is quite good, and is at the #1 spot.

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From an Amazon delivery driver: Don't put your deliveries on the countertop or bed. They're filthy.

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Hmmm. The chances of Asteroid 2024 YR4 increased to 3.1%.

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Just like humans. Older AI models show cognitive decline. But why is it, though. It's not like they develop amyloid plaques.

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Boy, if we have to remove homeless people from parks like this park ranger, we'd never get anything done. Give her a toothbrush and tell her to clean the city's streets, already.

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Use AI to make your very own kung-fu video. This isn't kung-fu, though. Maybe the next version will be watchable.

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Oregon Dems want to give food stamps to illegal aliens. This is probably why. This is typical from Pham, Reynolds, Campos and Chaichi.  Can't believe a "Republican" voted for it, though.

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COVID-19 vax mandates for colleges & universities may go away.

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Portland Trailblazers are now one of the least valuable teams in the NBA. Remember the Glory Days of "Rip City"?  So why would you want to start a baseball franchise here?

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Schools should pursue excellence. Indeed, Blue state/city policies have hurt the gifted. "No Child Kept Behind". Love it!

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Sabine Hossenfelder rants about obscure, expensive physics projects that no one understands, that have no real world benefits, yet are supported by tax dollars. They seem to only serve to keep a few academics employed. The trouble with sciences is that you never know where or how the next breakthrough will come. I understand where she's coming from, but research like how some obscure bacteria developed immunity against some obscure virus is how we got CRISPR-Cas9 technology. 

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A lot of doctors are using Ozempic themselves. Why not, huh?

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The moon may not be as geologically dead as scientists thought. 

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Writing code for a calculator app isn't as easy as it might sound. If you really want it to be mathematically accurate. And behave how you'd expect.

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When you try to game the system and it backfires. During the Biden administration, people applying for grants thought it might help to insert some DEI statements to gain favor with the woke grant administrators. Now such verbiage is a liability. Look at this math grant, for example:

Yeah, poking fun at someone with satire can be more damaging that actual criticism. This is the power of memes and comedians like Dave Chapelle.

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Oh boy. When you code open-source software and let people use it for free, they may come to depend on it. And if something bad happens, some of them may want to hold you liable.  No good deed goes unpunished.

Dems won't rest until they claw back Kicker money. This will be especially acute during the Trump administration, as it scrutinizes how money will be spent. Blue states like Oregon and Washington will suffer, as they continue to spend on illegal immigrants, while trying to continue services to people and spend money on homeless agencies, supporting the unions, and giveaways to favored groups.

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Here's a website that tracks national power outages. Wonder how accurate and current it is.

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Hope this doesn't happen. Apple Maps may start serving ads. Greedy. It's the ongoing enshittification of Apple.

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Is this why Western philosophers were able to come up with all those profound thoughts? Because they were unmarried, men? I've often considered that all the wise Zen Buddhist monks were able to maintain satori and were blissful, because they were outside the stream of life's stresses. I wondered how relevant their philosophies and sutras were to my life.

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There's been talk that using noise-cancelling headphones or earphones could cause deafness. It turns out that what they promote is auditory processing disorder, or APD. I've never heard of APD before. It seems that if you spend enough time without noise and only listening to signal, then you lose the ability to filter out signal from noise in real life. 

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Well, looks like the latest efforts from Anthropic to prevent jailbreaking were unsuccessful. Oh well. Keep trying.

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Here are the safest airlines in the world in 2025.

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Looks like Reddit is going to add paywalls soon. Starting with select subreddits. That sucks. End of an era.

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Why is mathematics education failing some of the world’s most talented children? In light of the human calculator article I posted yesterday, I'm convinced that there is a math gene in Indians. Think of Ramanujan, too. The reports of IQ in Indians being around 76 is erroneous, to me. I don't think the tests were conducted properly, and the IQ data in that country is probably a lot higher. There is no question in my mind. India is bogged down by cultural factors, and abject poverty. The population is way too dense – past the optimum, and the economy can't sustain everyone.

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Looks like they're going to make a Goonies sequel. It might be good for Astoria's economy, but I'm not sure it's a good idea. Goonies was fun when it came out, but honestly, a sequel is going to feel contrived. Let it rest, people. Let us enjoy our memories in peace. I suspect it will have woke elements. Some black character will join the gang, for diversity sake, even there were no black kids in the original series, and there are hardly any blacks in Astoria. Or there might be a transgender character, etc. Hollywood needs to stop with the sequels and come up with new storylines.

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The era of unicorn startups is ending. Too bad. But the Trump era has just started and tech is getting support like never before. Perhaps it's premature to be so pessimistic. Yeah, the DOGE team is uncovering so much waste and fraud. And all the Dems can do it cry that it's unconstitional. Which is weird because it totally is constitutional.

Yeah, OHSU is going to hurt real hard. They've depended on indirect cost money so much. And patient services money is not bringing in as much revenue since the payer mix is heavy on the poorly-paying Medicaid and Medicare. If only Oregon's economy were better.

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I can't believe it. Oregon tried to rejuvenate the manufacturing and tech sector. And now child care and preschool educators want more money, too. What? Didn't taxpayers already approve a tax that goes to them? They want more? Why should the government pay more for child care? That's waste and fraud, right there. The government shouldn't be in the business of paying for this. We already give way too much to teachers as it is. With no results to show for it.

Let that sink in.  Portland scored more homicides than Seattle.

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Trump is going to do to Bonneville Power Administration what Elon Musk did to Twitter.  And I bet it will run just as well, and expenses will be far less.

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I remember when companies used to want to register in Delaware.  Well since it became more liberal, that trend is reversing. Too bad, Delaware. You had it, you blew it.

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Will Trump make daylight saving time changes a thing of the past? That would be great, but I hope he makes Standard Time permanent and not Daylight Saving Time. It's better for you.

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Another one bites the dust. JoAnn Fabrics is closing everywhere. Inventory issues, apparently.

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$20 million to the homeless. $1 billion in total. And all for what? Nothing has improved. It all went to just helping the homeless maintain the homeless lifestyle. They like it, and want the keep getting those tax dollars to continue it. And Portland and Multnomah County wants to keep giving them that money.

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Uh-oh. The Providence strike continues, but employee benefits will end this month. This didn't have to happen.

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Where you can have nice things. Japan has "listening bars".  What a great place to go and relax.

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Who knew?  Apparently, Egyptian mummies smell quite good. And someone might make a perfume of it. "Scent of Eternity" – I love it.

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It's sad that Japan has these quaint rituals to help them find their mates, but in real life, love doesn't come to them nearly enough to stave off population decline. C'mon, Japanese people – it's not enough to visit temples. You have to actually pick someone.

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Concierge medicine is big in New York. Although this kind of concierge medicine seems to be borderline snake-oil. Prescribing dubious supplement and infusions because that's what the craze is on TikTok, or some other social media. However, there needs to be an effort to take control back from hospitals and private equity. This kind of thing is only good for primary care, however. For specialists, you need to interact with the traditional orthodoxy, and things kind of fall apart. So it's good if you're mainly healthy and just need on-demand minor stuff. But for serious illnesses, you need regular medical care. Despite all the money you've paid.

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Wow, this aging ronin might benefit from this device to continue strenuous hiking. You can get it here.

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Liberal women are most unhappy and lonely. And bitter, too, I might add.

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Speaking of aging, new research suggests that it is not just genetic mutations that contribute to aging. Epigenetic changes also contribute. Ah well, it's all entropy anyway. Makes it less likely that we'll be able to reverse aging. Only prevent it, possibly, or slow it down.
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Another one bites the dust. Queen Anne Café closes in Seattle. To be replaced by another pizza joint. Life marches on.

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Pike Place Market was going to host an event about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans. But it was canceled. It was going to morph into a "Resistance" message against Trump, but they decided that approach wasn't going to work. I guess the organizers found out that the political party that incarcerated the Japanese was the Democrat party. Yeah, big oops.  C'mon Japanese people, this ronin says "Wake up!" already.

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Oregon cities need cash to fund their efforts, and taxes aren't cutting it. So they're resorting to fees. Which is like a sales tax. They're already collecting too much. They need to work on cutting expenses. We need DOGE in Oregon.

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A list of cognitive biases. All the ways your brain tricks you when you try to be reasonable.

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Why fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees. Being a PhD means years of living in near poverty. Hoping to get that big break, when your experiments go favorably. Then you make the lecture tours, and after that, the world forgets about you again. Back to more grant writing. While the world passes you by.

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Small cell lung cancer grows so fast. Where does it find all that energy? It turns out that it has its own energy supply.  There's a unique dependency on oxidative phosphorylation in neuroendocrine cells, and cancer cell-intrinsic electrical activity.  But it may be possible to shut it off, which would be great.

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Creepy.  Larry Ellison wants to create a giant database with information on all Americans, including DNA information. I'm not comfortable with this. Very dystopian. Larry's getting crazier as he gets older.

Aaryan Shukla is a 14 year old Indian kid who has been breaking records for being a human calculator.  He practices for 3 to 4 hours daily to keep his skills sharp. Well, whatever floats your boat, I guess.

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OHSU researchers discover a test that can be used as an early warning test for pancreatic cancer. Great! The next step would be clinical trials to make sure that it's worthwhile. And that the predictive value positive and negative values are acceptable.

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Race to the bottom. Oregon wants to make it so that you don't have to have a high school degree to get licensing board certification. The bar is so low to get a HS diploma, why do you have to lower the bar again?  This diversity effort really makes it dangerous for Oregonians. Why even have a licensing board then? Milton Friedman was right.

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City of Portland still throws good money after bad. What good is having a James Beard Market when so few people feel safe going downtown. Just wait for the next anti-Trump protest, and all that glass will need to be replaced.

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Oregonian Editor in Chief Theresa Bottomly will retire in August.  Maybe we'll have a real paper again, instead of that waste of newsprint that serves as advertising litter.  Willamette Week as done a much better job at journalism, and for local coverage, I find myself at the website of KPTV, KGW and KOIN.

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More on that AI copyright law from yesterday. Now it appears that the judgment does not apply to GenAI. So you can't train your AI model on data that is someone's IP, but if it comes out of a GenAI, then it's too late to complain?

So, if all four factors of “fair use” favor the record companies, why would there be bad news for copyright holders here? Because in his ruling, Judge Bibas made a point of stressing that his ruling does not apply to generative AI – which is the kind of AI that’s being sued over by the record companies and other rights holders.

“It is undisputed that Ross’s AI is not generative AI (AI that writes new content itself). Rather, when a user enters a legal question, Ross spits back relevant judicial opinions that have already been written,” the judge wrote.

“Because the AI landscape is changing rapidly, I note for readers that only non-generative AI is before me today.”

However, companies like Anthropic, Suno, and Udio use generative AI. This means the AI creates something new, if not necessarily entirely original. And that means the courts in the cases brought against generative AI could assess fair use differently from how it was assessed in the Thomson Reuters case.

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Thomson Reuters wins AI copyright 'fair use' ruling against one-time competitor.  This is interesting and a ground-breaking ruling. That AI-generated art is not copyrightable has already been litigated in courts.  But you can't just go out and ingest someone else's IP  to train on without permission. I think this is fair. It's going to make a lot of GenAI startups pause before they get data to train on.

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Seattle is going to hit their economic beneficiaries with a new tax. Why even do business in that city. Bezos was smart to flee Seattle.

And the state of Washington is considering "pay-per-mile" taxation. How are they going to tax out-of-state people?

Yes, Washington legislators are just crazy. Witness:

Oregon is dumb, too. They're considering reparations to Blacks. i think the only reason they propose this stupidity is that they can say that they tried, and those Republicans shot it down.  My family and ancestors had nothing to do with slavery – why should my tax money go to this? Just another grift.

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It's later than you think.  AGI threatens to make teachers largely extinct.

Universities must instead lead with brutal honesty: students should pay precisely for the “last mile” of human knowledge that surpasses AGI’s capabilities. The true value of a university lies in faculty who can offer advanced education, mentorship, and inspiration at the highest level, while every other aspect of college life becomes a secondary consideration that no longer justifies tuition on its own.

Universities are already hurting. The fake wealth from federal dollars is diminishing. Sen Klobuchar can't figure it out, though.

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The Earth's inner core is changing shape. What does this mean?

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Kaspersky found that there are hidden backdoors in five generations of Apple Mobile Silicon.  Starting with the A12 CPU (iPhone X) and continuing to the A16 CPU (iPhone 14/15). The question is: who put this vulnerability there.  Apple? Or the Chinese who manufactured the chip?

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If you want to learn about interesting and obscure islands, here's your site.

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What is the true impact of the cut of NIH indirect cost funding to 15%?  Some universities have really been scarfing those federal dollars. OHSU will take a $41 million hit.  But more money will go to researchers, and there will be more money to fund more grants, so it's a good thing.

And it sure looks like chances of that Legacy merger happening is getting less and less likely. 

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In December, Oregon lost 3700 jobs, but gained 700 more government jobs.

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What does Tina Kotek want to do with the opioid settlement funds that are allocated to Oregon? She wants to spend it on syringe giveouts, boofing kits, and paying for prevention programs and rehab programs that no one will use.  Throwing good money after bad.

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Here's an interesting fact: If all the outpatient doctors worked for free, the U.S. would still have the most expensive healthcare system in the world.   The problem with our bloated healthcare system is not the "rich, greedy doctors".

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Seattle School District has a $94 million deficit to close, and they are begging for more state money.  Trouble is that the State will have a hole, too, with less federal money coming their way. Everyone is ultimately dependent on federal taxpayer dollars, and now that the grift has been discovered, and waste and fraud will no longer be financed, Blue states will suffer.  But sure, go ahead and "resist". See how far that gets you.

Same with Oregon:

I knew this would happen. The NIH cutting back on funding "indirect costs" will hurt universities, who have long relief on this money to fill budgetary holes. OHSU says that it will be "devastating".  The commenters don't seem to realize that not having to pay as much for these indirect costs will allow funding for more researchers instead. This will be great for those doing research, as they're more likely to get grant money. OHSU will just have to get more money from the state. And the state will have to stop wasting money on the homeless industrial complex, teachers unions, and funding illegals.  Start being more responsible with taxpayer money. Isn't that what it's all about?

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Oregon state provides paycheck loan service to workers. 45% of Oregonians live paycheck to paycheck. So this is Oregon's solution to help people out. Providing access to predatory loans.

AI sentiment analysis shows that movie dialog has gotten more violent over the years. Well yeah. With Hollywood, it's been a race to the bottom to be "edgy". The emotions that movies try to evoke no longer fill you with longing, yearning, or amazement. Movies aim to expose you to the disgusting, the vile, and the mentally ill. Violence comes with the territory.

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Happy Anniversary! Today is the second anniversary of this blog.  Came across this posting today: Why blog if nobody reads it?  I don't know who really reads this blog, but it's for me. I put things that I think a graying tech-savvy geek would have some interest it. There's nothing out there for my demographic.  Not interesting in gaming. More interested in factors influencing the liveability of the PNW, including politics, of which I am definitely more conservative now than before. I try to be nice, but boy, it's hard sometimes...

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Home hospitals are now trending.  Understandable, but I imagine that it's still pretty costly, and out of the reach of many. It seems to be something that is done more in foreign countries, such as the UK and Australia, but it is being done in the Northeast.

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Quipu – the largest known structure in the universe. It has a name.

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AsciiDoc is a new superset of Markdown. It does have some advantages over Markdown. I need to find an editor that can handle it, though. Finding a good Markdown editor was hard enough. Why not just use HTML? Why create something new?

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Can't believe this guy, Mark Gamba. He says:

JD Vance's Apple Watch is a security risk.  Just wear a Breitling, JD>

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Terrence Tao on how we measure the cosmos. It's actually quite interesting and the visuals are worth a watch.

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Be careful with those Magic Eraser sponges. They spew microplastics!

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Asteroid 2024 YR4 may impact in 2032. Chances of impact just doubled to 2.2%.  It's got a Torino score rating of 3, which means that it could cause Tunguska-like damage.

From https://www.highpointscientific.com/astronomy-hub/post/astronomy-101/what-is-the-torino-scale