8 December 2024

Microsoft has decided to stop making the Surface Studio.  It's iPad or nothing now.

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Are those Blue Zones of longevity for real?

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There's an endogenous substance in your brain, N,N-dimethyltryptamine, that's really hallucinogenic.  So what is the purpose of having it?

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A new image generator has come on the scene - Luma Photon. Hope it's better, because the other ones really suck at following instructions.

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The question a lot of people are asking right now: How much do I have to alter my face to avoid facial recognition?

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Based on this review, I switched to Firefox Mobile on my iPhone.  It is indeed better than the Firefox Mobile I tried many years ago. It's much better, and more like iCab Mobile, which is still a good browser. I was hoping I could install ad blocker extensions, but it's still not possible.

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This is the trend. Apparently, more tech companies are allowing their employees to make tender offers, instead of making money through exercising options, like in the old days.

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Explaining Asian Americans’ academic advantage over whites. This study was conducted by two Asians, who conclude that it's just culture and attitudinal differences that account for Asians having better grades, and not innate intellectual differences. My theory is that Asians (especially guys) are less likely to have those distracting girlfriends (or boyfriends) that take them away from their studies. So they can hit the books. If they were suddenly endowed with studly attractiveness, well, it might be a different game. Well, that's this ronin's story anyway.

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The Politics of Medicine. When I read articles like this, I am reminded of how the doctor profession is so wildly out of control over what happens to them. They don't understand politics or economics, and so others that do get to determine how medicine will be practiced, and the doctor has to adjust and get used to it. And the similarly uninformed public weighs in and makes the argument that we need socialized medicine. The libertarians get closer to the answer.  What must be done is to leverage competition so that excellence and positive outcomes are rewarded. It's no wonder doctors end up practicing in what appears to be a hodge-podge of ad hoc practice environments (requiring chain or group memberships) designed to satisfy a particular segment only. The medical profession really needs to get better educated in things outside medicine that are being imposed on them.
Update (10 December 2024):  This article highlights how wasteful private medical insurance bureaucracy is.  But again, the answer is not government-provided insurance. It's to scrap the existing system in favor of raw competition for the benefit of the consumer.

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Where is the Blaze Star? The nova that didn't come as expected.

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Oregon has seen very limited job growth.  It's mainly in health care and social assistance.  And by healthcare, we're not talking doctors or nurses, which would be helpful, but instead it's support jobs like family services for the elderly or disabled, daycare, nursing home staff or jobs in doctors’ and dentists’ offices. And government jobs. 

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