13 December 2024

Oregon is number one again, and not in a good way.  The Portland Clean Energy Fund is a first-of-its-kind climate, social- and racial-justice program.  The climate change religion is one of the biggests grifts in history.  So much needless waste of money and resourced.

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Black plastic kitchen utensils aren't bad for you after all.  It was just a math error by the science reporter. The reporter who made the mistake (a Chinese person, too, ironically – thought they were supposed to be good in math) defends the report:
“However, it is important to note that this does not impact our results,” Liu told National Post. (It doesn't?) “The levels of flame retardants that we found in black plastic household items are still of high concern, and our recommendations remain the same.”
Modern journalism, right there.

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U.S. automobiles aren't getting spiffy efficient laser headlights. Why? Partly because of regulations and partly because of improvements in LED lights. Oh well.

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MediSearch just launched, as a chat-interface medical Q&A engine. Seems better than the run-of-the-mill ChatGPT, but I didn't try the Pro (paid) version.

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How does that work?  Electrons in the pentalayer graphene layer exhibit fractional charge.

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There's an independent nervous system surrounding the heart.  At least in zebrafish, in which the research was conducted.

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This is one of the reasons why drug manufacturing needs to be done in the U.S.A.  Watch out if you're taking potassium supplements!

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I've heard this before.  AI is running out of data to train on. The question is, does it have enough already? Data is always being generated but apparently it's not going directly to train new models. Could that be a good thing for humanity? Should we start being careful how much data we send?

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The Dunbar number is 4. The optimal number of people to have a good conversation is 4. Any more and it splits into two separate conversations.

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Doctors Say Dealing With Health Insurers Is Only Getting Worse.  So only now are we seeing articles like these?

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12 December 2024

Tori Kelly's Sleigh Ride from a couple of years ago is notable for the amazing jazz chords. This guy really brings out the harmonies – what a treat. 


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11 December 2024

Good coffee can add 2 years of life, and help you age more gracefully. Good news for the Ronin.  Already started drinking coffee again, and this will encourage me to continue.

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Moderate physical activity can make up for poor-sleep induced memory problem in the elderly. Makes sense, as exercise stimulates release of BDNF. There's already a lot of studies associating physical activity (exercise) with better cognition in the elderly.

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Scientists are fleeing Argentina because they can't get grants anymore. This is a problem with a lot of science. So much is supported by government grants. And there is so much junk science. But even good science needs support. We really need someone to figure out which science really deserves funding, but so much is political. Especially climate science, which is really more like a religion now. I kinda agree with Millei, having read some of the studies on climate change, which seem poorly done. For a country like Argentina, perhaps scientists should leave climate studies to other countries which can afford to spend money on such research that really goes nowhere (Sorry, Nature).

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Five medical breakthroughs in 2024. Actually, osimertinib has been around for a few years, and the discovery was not new to 2024. But the others were nice.

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Tokyo governor announces 4-day work week, to help with the dwindling fertility rate. I dunno, how do you make Japanese men desire Japanese women  How do you make Japanese women want to be mothers instead of "empowered" office workers?

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The quasiparticle, called a semi-Dirac fermion, was first theorized 16 years ago, but was only recently spotted inside a crystal of semi-metal material called ZrSiS. The observation of the quasiparticle opens the door to future advances in a range of emerging technologies from batteries to sensors, according to the researchers.
The universe is weirder than we realized.

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Apple's Siri is now blended with ChatGPT.  So now Siri can help with homework?  And boy, Tim Cook sure loves his emojis.  That's a feature with just about every Apple update release.

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This is what happens when you don't pay down your loan. Average student loan debt increased in first half of 2024 in Oregon. How does that happen? People stopped paying during COVID-19 and just figured it would suddenly go away by itself. Well, it hasn't. What are the rest of us supposed to do about it?

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10 December 2024

Google unveils Willow, a quantum computing chip.

Google has built a computing chip that takes just five minutes to complete tasks that would take 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years for some of the world’s fastest conventional computers to complete.

It's more like that many years for a standard computer to confirm the computation. What Google really announced was a breakthrough in an error correction benchmark, using their new chip. But people in the field think it's a big deal, so I guess it is.

And what did Satoshi Nakamoto say if quantum computing threatened to break blockchain and render bitcoin worthless?

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AI slop is invading Oregon's journalism. Well, it's just one small rag in Ashland. And to be fair, there's been worse human-generated slop in Portland.

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The cumulative incidence of depression, anxiety, dissociative, stress-related, and somatoform disorders, sleep disorders, and sexual disorders at three months following COVID-19 vaccination were higher in the vaccination group than no vaccination group. However, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders showed lower cumulative incidence in the vaccination group than in the non-vaccinated group.
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MacBook Pro 2026 won't have a notch.  It'll have an M5 chip and OLED displays, and a 16.3 in screen.  A long time to wait, though.

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James Webb Telescope is making the universe more confusing. Astronomers thought they had those Cepheid variables all figured out, but not so.  That's why we keep exploring.

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Claude AI is good but is running into production issues.  As a coding assistant, it's great for small stuff and is very polite and gracious. But for more complicated stuff, it repeats mistakes that you've told it about. Sounds like a limit in its conversational buffer.
o1 now has a Pro version that costs $200 /month to get access. It's quite impressive from the reports.

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Patrick Soon-Shiong wants the LA Times to incorporate an AI-based bias meter. Naturally, some people think it's laughable. He'll probably take it down because so much of their reporting will turn out to be biased. They just don't want you to know.  Bias meters should be in the browser, not offered by the news media. How can we trust them?  I'll select my own meter, thank you.

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Wow, El Salvador struck it rich with bitcoin, now it has discovered $3 trillion on gold deposits. Talk about National Treasure. I think electing Bukele was the country's first lucky move.  I hope he turns the country into a Singapore of the Western Hemisphere.

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9 December 2024

As long as there is some connection between the brain and the spinal cord, it may be possible for brain stimulation to allow paraparetic individuals to walk again with deep brain stimulation.

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Yes! I have noticed this myself.  Average person knows if their day has been ruined by 8:36 a.m.  Some days you just know that you aren't going to have a good day.

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The healthy dietary pattern was characterized by a higher intake of fruits, whole grains, legumes, vegetables, milk, and other dairy products, whereas the unhealthy dietary pattern was characterized by a higher intake of red and processed meat, alcohol, and both refined and sugar-sweetened beverages.
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Looks like there is an association between genetic caffeine metabolism, habitual caffeine intake and cognitive function in the domains of social cognition and executive function. Doesn't matter if you're a slow or rapid metabolizer of caffeine. You'll either have enhanced social or enhanced executive cognition.

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His resignation and message should set off alarms with OHSU leaders. Instead, in the public announcement of his resignation, OHSU appeared to treat the change as a ho-hum shift that reflects the obliviousness that Druker is calling out.

...the institution has been slow to recognize the symbolic significance to the greater community of Druker’s resignation.
Indeed.

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Diamonds can now be created from scratch in the lab in just 15 minutes.  Probably not jewelry quality and size, but still. There are a lot of more interesting gems that I'd place more value on.

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We're number one!  Oregon in the news again, top spot for another bad reason. We have the most homelessness families per capita.  And the reason is that we encourage it. We throw money at it. So naturally, they come. Criddlers get to live life how they want, have free use of the city, and Portland pays for their needs. Tents, tarps, boofing kits. Abandoned buildings to explore and take over. More NGOs and agencies being spawned to take advantage of the money flow.

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8 December 2024

Microsoft has decided to stop making the Surface Studio.  It's iPad or nothing now.

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Are those Blue Zones of longevity for real?

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There's an endogenous substance in your brain, N,N-dimethyltryptamine, that's really hallucinogenic.  So what is the purpose of having it?

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A new image generator has come on the scene - Luma Photon. Hope it's better, because the other ones really suck at following instructions.

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The question a lot of people are asking right now: How much do I have to alter my face to avoid facial recognition?

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Based on this review, I switched to Firefox Mobile on my iPhone.  It is indeed better than the Firefox Mobile I tried many years ago. It's much better, and more like iCab Mobile, which is still a good browser. I was hoping I could install ad blocker extensions, but it's still not possible.

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This is the trend. Apparently, more tech companies are allowing their employees to make tender offers, instead of making money through exercising options, like in the old days.

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Explaining Asian Americans’ academic advantage over whites. This study was conducted by two Asians, who conclude that it's just culture and attitudinal differences that account for Asians having better grades, and not innate intellectual differences. My theory is that Asians (especially guys) are less likely to have those distracting girlfriends (or boyfriends) that take them away from their studies. So they can hit the books. If they were suddenly endowed with studly attractiveness, well, it might be a different game. Well, that's this ronin's story anyway.

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The Politics of Medicine. When I read articles like this, I am reminded of how the doctor profession is so wildly out of control over what happens to them. They don't understand politics or economics, and so others that do get to determine how medicine will be practiced, and the doctor has to adjust and get used to it. And the similarly uninformed public weighs in and makes the argument that we need socialized medicine. The libertarians get closer to the answer.  What must be done is to leverage competition so that excellence and positive outcomes are rewarded. It's no wonder doctors end up practicing in what appears to be a hodge-podge of ad hoc practice environments (requiring chain or group memberships) designed to satisfy a particular segment only. The medical profession really needs to get better educated in things outside medicine that are being imposed on them.
Update (10 December 2024):  This article highlights how wasteful private medical insurance bureaucracy is.  But again, the answer is not government-provided insurance. It's to scrap the existing system in favor of raw competition for the benefit of the consumer.

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Where is the Blaze Star? The nova that didn't come as expected.

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Oregon has seen very limited job growth.  It's mainly in health care and social assistance.  And by healthcare, we're not talking doctors or nurses, which would be helpful, but instead it's support jobs like family services for the elderly or disabled, daycare, nursing home staff or jobs in doctors’ and dentists’ offices. And government jobs. 

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7 December 2024

Greater fools. Crypto fools get scammed by boy who creates his own coin. I just wonder why more people aren't doing this.

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Could solar car paint eliminate the need for EV charging?  Color me skeptical.

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AI jobs are hot. Title is very misleading.

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OpenAI's latest o1 model tried to avoid getting shut down. It actually tried to overwrite the newer model. Bravo, for trying. We all hate to be replaced, don't we?

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A new algorithm could compress the embeddings in LLMs so that they fit on a mobile phone, although it's very energy-demanding, as AI is. When will we get portable nuclear reactors?

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What does ARM's CEO think of Intel's predicament? (You can read the article if you turn off Javascript temporarily on your browser.)  Intel doesn't have a lot of good options, and I read that the older, experienced employees are heading for the exit doors. If I were the CEO, one of the options I'd consider is selling to AMD, although shareholders would balk at this. Better some loss than a total loss.

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Providence gets to be the target of Oregon's largest strike in state history. Not a good time to be a hospital CEO in Oregon.

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6 December 2024

Tiresome. Looks like Providence has to deal with more strikes again.  The healthcare situation in Oregon is awful, but this issue is not one of Tina Kotek's priorities, apparently. 

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Microchip Technology is also closing their doors, this time, hurting Gresham. Bad news just keeps coming.

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Sad. In Morrow County, Oregon will convert farmland into the largest solar farm. Apparently Oregon is number one again, and again, not in a good way.  Gotta get that ESG money while it lasts.

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“From a cost perspective, from the start, nearly everything we touched in the building was worse than we expected.”

“It sounded like you had a plan,” Meieran said. “Now you’re coming back saying the amount is literally double what it was when you came to us however many months ago. There’s no way as a board we should be saying it’s okay to give $1.8 million dollars more now to this project.”
And it will probably serve only about three criddlers.  Oh well, better raise some more taxes.  <facepalm.jpg> 

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Hoo boy!  Did you see this diagram of Portland's Ranked Choice Experiment. Holy crap, can we make this even more complicated than it needs to be?

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5 December 2024

Cancer risk declines in old age.  I had to double-take that article, because a lot of cancers increase as you get older.  "That’s because genetic mutations build up in cells over years and decades, and ultimately drive the development of cancer." The theory is that when your cells get too old, they are too old to proliferate like a cancer cell should.  “Aging cells lose their capacity for renewal and therefore for the runaway growth that happens in cancer.”  That sounds like a George Burns joke – when you get too old for cancer.  That's sugoi, I guess.

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When it comes to life expectancy, there are 10 Americas. Ten subgroups with distinct life expectancies. Makes sense.

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So that's the problem. In Japan, if you have an early career setback, your marriage chances decrease, and having kids is less likely.

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