Sam Altman's Worldcoin is now just called World. And he's not stopping his efforts which look as though he wants to set the standard for retinal scans to be the go-to biometric identifier. And he'll control the data, of course. Truly James Bond villain stuff.
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Text produced by generative AI can make you sound smarter than you really are. Because you start using words like "delve", "comprehensive", "interplay", "pivotal". Of course, this ronin uses those words all the time, so it would be hard to tell. Indubitably. As my high school friend would say, those are "five-dollah words".
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Hearing loss susceptibility from age or loud noise may be due to polymorphisms of the TMTC4 gene. And a drug developed for traumatic brain injury (ISRIB) may help to reduce this, preventing hearing loss. Ah, too late for my mother.
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Interesting article on healthcare, trying to dispel some myths. Key takeaways:
- Healthcare expenditures in wealthier nations because people spend more on services (e.g. physical therapy, etc) because they are there. Consumption increases when income increases. Duh.
- Healthcare personnel make up the great majority of healthcare costs. Drugs, too, but not as much (those pharmacy benefit managers).
- When income increases, there's more hiring in healthcare.
- Healthcare profit margins are not higher than the rest of sectors. Hospitals and provider offices in the U.S. are not more profitable than in other parts of the world.
- More Americans work in healthcare than in other parts of the world.
- Physicians' fees are a small part of the healthcare budget.
So American healthcare is just more expensive because we're wealthier, and we can afford to hire more people in the field? I never thought of it this way, but if true, it would mean that all the efforts to dismantle it are misguided. I still feel that leveraging market competition in the insurance market could go a long way to lowering the price of healthcare and also putting control in the hands of the consumer, rather than the insurance company or government.
Biden/Harris "forgives" an additional $4.5 billion worth of student loans. This again is transferring the payback obligation to all taxpayers and stoking more inflation. This is not fair at all. One of the awful things Obama did was to get the government in the business of handling student loans. The government was never designed to do this. All this does is to give Democrats the issue of student loan forgiveness as an election teaser, like promises to help Black people. Student loans should go back to banks and related financial institutions, where they belong.
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Autism Spectrum Disorder might be classifiable into four distinct genoptypes. This is potentially important as it can help tailor treatment and provide insight as to what to expect.
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Gosh, maybe we should all get it. A single dose of psilocybin caused "increases in cognitive flexibility, psychological insight, and well-being." These changes could be picked up on diffusion MRI scans. Psilocin is a 5-HT2A serotonin receptor agonist, so it is indeed a key player in depression, despite the limited effectiveness of SSRIs.
Meanwhile, Oregon's psilocybin training program is stalling, because too many people want to get in on it, thinking they can make money being a facilitator.