Why covid-19 is “a vascular disease masquerading as a respiratory one” I've believed this for a long time. The SARS-CoV2 can really inflame vascular endothelium. The literature is rife with case reports of uncommon vasculitides appearing either after a COVID-19 infection of after vaccination. I've had a friend develop arterial dissection after getting COVID-19. This is not surprising as the SARS-CoV2 binding site, the ACE2 receptor, is located in the respiratory, cardiovascular, renal, gastrointestinal, hepatobiliary and nervous system endothelium. Basically everywhere. And remember the mRNA turns your cells into spike protein factories. When your immune system recognizes spike protein on the surface of those cells, they get attacked. It's crazy that people knew that this is how the mRNA vax worked and still though it was OK to market it.
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A fluid can store solar energy and then release it as heat months later. That seemed too magical, and I had to find out what kind of material this would be. Wow, what a surprise. I recall from my biology class that UV in sunlight causes DNA damage in the form of thymidine dimers (called Dewar isomers in the article). Turns out that these are stable, and that there's an enzyme called photolyase that can revert things back. This reversion process releases heat, so this is like a molecular battery. So the scientists created 2-pyrimidone which can form the Dewar isomers. Very cool.
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Anthropic hired a Scottish woman to teach its AI morals and ethics. Does anyone see anything really strange about this? First of all, we know it's going to be RLHF stuff, but I have some qualms about relegating the teaching of morals and ethics to any one person, especially people of a certain demographic, given what I've been seeing in the news lately. AWFL things (sorry, not sorry). I don't know this person and what her belief system is. Who would have thought we'd have to worry about this sort of thing? Well, maybe Robert Heinlein.
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"The rumor mill is now predicting 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips." Maybe it will be true.
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The martial arts robot dance at the 2026 Spring Festival Gala by China Media Group is really impressive. The smoothness of the moves shows that the technology has come a long way from those initial Boston Dynamics days, when the dogs would stumble or when humanoid bots still had to have bulky cabling connected to them.
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The moon is geologically still alive. New ridges are appearing in photographs that suggest tectonic plate activity. This could have implications for future moon visits and research activities.
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Jet engines are now needed to power datacenters. The energy demands are getting to be crazy ridiculous. I hope that this won't mean increased noise levels, but then I can't imagine that they'll want these things screaming indoors. So yeah, they'll probably be outdoors.
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Bitcoin’s plunge should end the hype that it is digital gold. I never understood why people wanted to invest in a cryptocurrency where the underlying algorithms are kept hidden from you. It's all meant to make the crypto orignators wealthy, and not you. I think Bitcoin would have made a lot more sense if they left the algorithms alone. It was meant to get more difficult to mine as time went on, not easier. But the geeks met a changed the algorithm to make things "more efficient". I knew then that this crypto made sense only for a select few to understand completely.
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Password managers less secure than promised. This is why I still don't trust them for mission-critical stuff, like banking.
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State of Oregon's economy report looks dire. Oregon continues to suck money from its residents. All the money goes to the homeless, to various unions, and to NGOs to squander. Business are leaving or just closing.
I sadly read this today about the last two Chinese restaurants in Old Town. They're hoping for a comeback. Nope. Not gonna happen. Restaurants with better odds of success have failed.
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