2 November 2023

Dot wants to be your smart best friend.  Built by an Apple alum, it is an app that you can share your life with, converse with, get information from. And it has a memory, so it remembers things from session to session, like a "living history of your life". I would be really concerned about privacy, since all the storage and computations are done on the cloud. Intriguing concept, but I'd rather have everything run and stores on my local device, something that will not happen for a while. Right now, it seems creepy.

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But X/Twitter has agreed to allow PragerU to run an ad for a documentary discussing de-transitioning, which apparently is garnering more interest. Good on Elon Musk.

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California ranks near bottom for high schools offering computer science classes. 11th from bottom actually. You'll never guess the top state - it's Arkansas.  Things have gotten better since Sarah Huckabee-Sanders became governor.  Good on her. Oregon is in the middle, surprisingly, and surprisingly, Washington state is 13th from bottom. 

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I came across this interesting study, that water can evaporate with light only, and that heat is not necessary for evaporation to take place. I wonder how much water vapor is produced just due to light, and not heat? Because water vapor is the most predominant greenhouse gas. Could it be that the reason why we have more global warming is because there has been an increase in water vapor production due to increased global lighting? Well in Boulder, CO, at least, there has indeed been an increase in water vapor over the years.
But here's a graph that shows that water vapor concentrations have increased over the oceans as well.
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Portland Metro is in 51st Place in the Urban Land Institute's rankings of metro areas with real estate development potential.  It used to be 56th place.  And to think that in 2017 Portland was in 3rd place. How far it has fallen.  Remember, Ted Wheeler took office in 2017. This is your legacy, Ted.
And guess which city has the highest cancer rates in Oregon? Yup, it's Portland.

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Mobile phone use may affect semen quality. Doesn't matter where you keep your phone. The study was done on Swiss men at military recruitment centers. Men who used their phones more had less sperm that those who didn't. But it was done in 2005 - 2018 when there was 2G service, and they didn't specify what kind of phones were used. The effect was lessened in the time period when 4G networks were available. So many questions. Was this a real effect, or just happenstance - epiphenomenon.

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Improving deep sleep may prevent or delay dementia. Makes sense.

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Imaging with A.I. may obviate the need for biopsies in some cases. I'd be nervous about recommending treatment based on what an A.I. model said. A lot is riding on the correct diagnosis being made. Histology from a biopsy is still necessary in most cases, but I suppose that in those cases where biopsy is impossible or too hazardous, it could help. Like deep within a scarred lung, where percutaneous biopsy would be fraught with danger.

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Why do doctors in American earn so much?  It's supply and demand, and the article asserts that the supply is restricted because medical schools are like cartels. So we're going to see more nurse practitioners and physician assistants, and also foreign graduates. I think that some clinical tasks could be handled by those with less training, but medicine is getting complicated, and the reason why there are fewer medical school graduates is that the curriculum is getting to be more challenging. The article doesn't acknowledge this, and focuses more on the expense of a medical education, and the willingness to make the monetary and time investment.
But many people won't see their doctor until they first consult with Google. Yes it's true that the higher ranking articles are not the most accurate.

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Racist hiring practices seem to be alive and well with respect to University of Washington faculty hiring, according to the report. And it's not the kind of racism you might be thinking.

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