The sun's magnetic field flipped in 2013, and I didn't notice. It's about ready to flip again. Flip away!
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An AI candidate is running for mayor in Cheyenne, WY. Can't be worse than a lot of human politicians, these days.
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Possible breakthrough in sepsis management.
Keynome gAST, an AI-driven genomic Antimicrobial Susceptibility Test that quickly predicts antimicrobial resistance by analyzing bacterial genomes from blood samples. This breakthrough, demonstrated at ASM Microbe, could drastically improve sepsis diagnosis and treatment, speeding up decision-making and potentially saving lives amidst increasing antimicrobial resistance.
This study is making the rounds. Prior infection with SARS-CoV2 protects you against the getting the common cold from other coronaviruses better than the protection from the vax. Natural immunity for the win.
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Polycystic ovarian syndrome has been a tough disease to treat. It looks like an antimalarial drug, dihydroartemisinin, made "menstrual cycles more regular, and almost all the patients had lower levels of testosterone in their blood. Additionally, cyst development was reduced." This drug isn't used much in the U.S., so it would be difficult to obtain here.
There's rumors going around that AirPods with noise-cancellation can produce and worsen tinnitus. I was going to buy a pair, but I'm going to wait and see. Some have reported tinnitus with Sony's noise cancelling headphones, too, so it may be more of a phenomenon with noise-cancellation. But there's no proof the active noise cancellation actually causes tinnitus.
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If there's ever a man motivated to cheat death, it's Ray Kurzweil. He now thinks AGI will be between 2029 and 2032. And he defines the Singularity different from just artificial general intelligence. He says "it's when a human will not only be able to do everything that other people can do, but also create something new, like curing certain forms of cancer". OK that's different from what I remember the Singularity to be, but I notice that he now feels that humans are still involved. Humans will be empowered, and that's what the goal really is, not to be replaced.
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Sigh. Apple still thinks that we just want thinner devices and new emojis. What's with Tim Cook and emojis. He also think that users want to sent fancier text messages, too. We'll see how the AI actually works out. Siri and Vision Pro weren't quite what we thought they were going to be. Apple has some convincing to do.
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Scale AI CEO says he wants to hire on merit, not DEI. Good on him, as long as he can do it.
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Drip, drip. The Park Square office complex in downtown Portland is facing loan foreclosure.
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There's actually a name for that. The March of Dimes syndrome.
For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished.
It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings. It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for anal sex. Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge. Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports.
“There’s only one reason for appointing [an NSA director] to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on earth.” Snowden finished off his tweet ominously: “You have been warned.”
The Internet is worse than you think. It's full of predators.
The Internet was never a place for kids. That's even truer now, with so much more going on behind the scenes. The mom started the Instagram account three years ago as a pandemic-era diversion—a way for her and her daughter, a preteen dancer, to share photos with family, friends and other young dancers and moms. The mom also began to notice a disturbing trend in the data that showed up on the account dashboard: Most of the girl’s followers were adult men.
Men left public comments on photos of the daughter with fire and heart emojis, telling her how gorgeous she was. Those were the tamer ones. Some men sent direct messages proclaiming their obsessions with the girl. Others sent pictures of male genitalia and links to porn sites.