Man, this is creepy. There's a startup called R3 Bio where you can grow a brainless copy of yourself, so that if you need spare parts, it can be harvested and sewed back into you. Your clone starts out as a baby and has only enough brain to keep your dupe body alive. So what if it starts moving? How do you know how much brain to preserve? What if it's more than you think and consciousness develops? I'm all for progress, but this is crossing a line.
––– 良くない–––
The IRGC was created as a separate branch of the military to protect the regime. But now they run the show. This is exactly what happened with the Pretorian Guard in ancient Rome. They took over. It took Emperor Constantine to finally eradicate them.President Pezeshkian: “I want to be involved in the negotiations with the U.S. Without a quick deal, our entire economy will collapse in 3 weeks.”
IRGC chief Vahidi: “That’s exactly why you can’t be involved. You’ll give up everything for a deal.”
After the call ended, the report says the Iranian president told his companions he feels like a ‘hostage’, “I’m unable to resign, I cannot make my own decisions, all I can do is read from a script I’m given”
Channel 14 concludes its report by saying that the IRGC is effectively running the country now.
If you want to really know what Kurt Gödel did to upend the logical foundations of mathematics in the 1930s, read this excellent post. It's goes deeper than what I remember reading in Doug Hofstadter's Gödel Escher Bach. And it provides the detail behind the wonderful book Logicomix, which I highly recommend.
––– 凄い –––
Nobody Is Coming to Save Your Career. Man, are you kidding me? Everyone's got their own crap to worry about. Maybe it's an Asian thing to expect that.
––– 良くない–––
I'm reading the people are reporting that using the latest Claude Code really consumes tokens more than ever. I don't use Claude Code directly. What I have noticed is that the model is slowing down and is less-responsive. I just figured I was using it during peak hours.
––– 良くない–––
Shor's algorithm is possible with as few as 10,000 reconfigurable atomic qubits. Ah, this is why Google thinks that Q-Day is going to come sooner than expected. Shor's algorithm can help with factoring of large composite numbers. Doing this more easily can break encryption, and then all hell will break loose.
––– 良くない–––
The NYT reports that in their poll, people don't care so much about going back to the Moon. They'd rather we spent the money on climate change. Climate change? People only know about that because the media obsess about it so much. Monitoring asteroid collisions ranks up there, especially now that we seem to have so many. But I hate that the race to the Moon seems to be driven by what China is doing, more than any particular urgent reason.
––– 良くない–––
For some reason this came up on my news feed: that researchers are studying cognitive deficits with immune thrombocytopenia. it's been known since 2024, no 2022, no 2012 that patients with ITP have some cognitive impairment. Why this is so is not clear. It's an interesting correlation. ITP is not rare. Could it be a virus, as many doctors believe? Or some immune dysfunction?
––– 良くない–––
Supreme Court rules that conversion therapy to treat minors with LGBT mental issues is legal. And boy are the Redditors upset. "Conversion therapy" is probably too harsh a word, but there definitely are minors who are really mixed up mentally and need therapy. So much mental illness now.
––– 凄い –––
Powerful cholesterol drug cuts heart attack risk by 31%. It's evolocumab, a monoclonal antibody. Having to get an injection every 2 weeks can be a drag, but if you can't tolerate statins, this is better than nothing.
––– 凄い –––
Oregon Drops to 46th in National Competitiveness Ranking. I believe it.
- Health care: 27th
- Economic performance: 31st
- Workforce: 35th
- Housing: 42nd
- State budget: 42nd
- Education: 46th
- Overall competitiveness: 46th
- Taxes & fees: 49th
- Public safety: 50th
State, local leaders work to reverse historic slowdown in Portland housing production.
But Oregon will probably still re-elect its current leaders. Prove me wrong.
PCC will likely end their 3-week strike as a tentative deal has been negotiated. No word on whether the instructors were "made whole" as they wanted. But read this plaintive cry:
“We are pleased to be moving forward and refocusing on our core mission of educating students and serving our community. At the same time, our hearts are heavy because we know that this agreement is so far outside of our budget that it will result in significant additional cuts in the future.”Time to shut down PCC? Or maybe just close campuses?