8 November 2023

Now I know why I am not hungry after a strenuous hike. It's lactoyl-phenylalanine, an appetite suppressant which can be found in soy sauce, among other foods. Could this be why asian Asians are so thin, but gain weight when they come to America? As this ronin gets older, it does indeed become harder to maintain his weight.

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El Niño is disrupting the supply chain in unpredicted ways. We're going to be in for a rough winter season.

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Seems like there are shortages of everything - now strike mediators. Not to worry. There was a reason why the public school teachers union donated all that money to Gov. Kotek's gubernatorial campaign. Now they expect to collect. But when there's no money, there's only so much you can do. I'm sure Tina will come up with something. Take money from something else to fund the teachers, who no longer have to make sure that students meet academic standards.
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"I’d love to know how Apple, which famously doesn’t take kindly to iOS apps housing their own app stores, feels about that…" OpenAI wants to be the app store for AI. Too early to tell what will happen. I think that Apple is experiencing what happened when Google was ascendant, and Microsoft could only watch its decline helplessly. Apple doesn't generate the kind of excitement it used to, when Steve Jobs was alive. In fact, during the DevDay talk, I wondered what Jobs would have said/done if he were alive. He'd either try to buy the company or be on the phone with Altman trying to develop an idea. I don't think Tim Cook is doing that. The latest M3 debacle is a clear sign that he's run out of ideas. Nobody cares about new emojis or more pixels or slimmer devices anymore. Tim is a process man, not an idea man.

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A quarter of US medical students consider quitting school and most may not treat patients. The new workforce is not as robust as before, willing to do the hard work, especially considering that conditions have greatly improved since the Libby Zion case. I saw this new A.I. healthcare app that's out. Built by engineers to make medicine work like how engineers would envision it. They have one medical advisor - a primary care professor who works at Harvard. Hardly an example of how things are out in the battlefront. Doctors are taught a certain workflow in medical school, and practice it during internship and residency. Imaging being told that you have to do things a different way, to integrate some company's app in your workflow. Suddenly, instead of just dealing with chart notes and phone calls, you're having to read what all your patients and support staff are writing in the app, too.  While there probably needs to be a revamping of medical care workflow in the age of A.I., it would be ideal to having this introduced during medical school.  And tested in a small implementation before large-scale deployment. Amazon's OneMedical is probably trying to do something like this, but I don't know a physician working there to get feedback. Can someone put something in the comments? Even from a patient's standpoint?

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It never gets easier. No, it doesn't, but where would be the fun if it did?

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Cognitive decline, already a problem in the over 50s crowd, declined even more significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic. Lack of exercise and more alcohol. That'll do it.

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ProPublica has a tool that will help you find out why your medical insurer denied your claim.  Turnaround time is 30 days. Wish it were a bit sooner. Time is of the essence in situations like this.

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Why Has Stoicism Gained Popularity in Modern Times? Stoicism is like Buddhism, but for the Western person. With none of the Eastern mythology and pantheon attached. The ideas are basically the same, though. And it works. And there is an active Stoic community.

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