Sugoi & Yokunai

Is being 70 the new 60?  Is science making inroads into aging biology?

a 68-year-old born in 1950 had a similar capacity to a 62-year-old born a decade earlier, and those born in 1940 had better functioning than those born in 1930 or 1920. Beard noted, “If we had compared someone born in 1950 with someone born in 1920, we would have likely observed even greater improvements.”

These are incremental improvements, and would probably not be obvious to a casual observer. Even if presented with an individual from decades ago, the inter-individual variability would be such that it would be hard to discern improvement. I'd bet Ray Kurzweil wishes things would be speed up.

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You can use LaTeX to put coffee stains on your papers.

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There is some evidence for the (former) existence of a solar twin.  Double stars are common in the sky, this wouldn't surprise me.

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By implementing agentic frameworks on computers and phones, AI companies begin the process of harvesting people's digital life data to train their models. This is like having microphones on to record conversations. Not good.

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I don't think the elevator system in this Portland apartment building is going to be fixed anytime soon.  It's not just Portland, apparently, but nationwide. 

Yup, all the usual fallout of the Biden administration.  The nation goes to hell.  But at least today is January 6!

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Oregon Health Authority is "preparing" from a Trump administration. What they will realize is that without federal subsidies, we are actually quite a poor state. Many people need subsidies of some kind to survive. Instead of growing the economy, the government is looking for ways to shift money around.  But this period of pain will actually be good for Oregon, as subsidy-dependent people move away from the state. But until then, expect pain. Not a good time to own a hospital in Oregon.

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This study purportedly linked cheese consumption to reduction in sleep apnea. They used Mendelian randomization instead of a randomized controlled trial. They found that cheese consumption was associated with a decreased sleep apnea risk, and that it affected 23 biomarkers they identified.  Interesting that the cheese nutrition dataset was UK-based, and the sleep apnea dataset was from FinnGen, a Finnish biobank. Is it legitimate to look at cheese consumption from one country and link it to disease risk from people in another country. I couldn't even find a list of what cheeses were eaten, since cheeses are not all the same.  I have my doubts about this study. Eating too much cheese will make you more obese, and that will make sleep apnea worse.

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People who are anxious and worried can't sleep well, and the lack of good sleep hampers their ability to keep intrusive, unwanted thoughts away.  This often makes the situation worse. I believe that resilient people have the ability to dismiss harmful and unhelpful thoughts, and thereby keep going, and doing what needs to be done. Whereas many people are held captive by their thoughts which destroy productivity and make life worse. Perhaps a good soporific is just the thing to help deal with anxiety, provided it's just temporary. 

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Long ago, England tried to make New Years Day be March 25. It actually makes sense (read the article). But the people didn't like it, so the government caved. Fascinating historical item.

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Most people don't care about quality.  My opinion is it's convenience that always trumps quality.  People are willing to sacrifice quality to get "good enough" if it's convenient. Most of the time, quality doesn't make a difference.

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One of the first Starbucks locations is permanently closing due to lack of safety.  Crime is winning.

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Washington Dems wants to codify gender extremism in public schools. Read the room, Dems. This crap isn't working anymore.

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This won't work.  Anthropic signed a deal with a music publisher group to not provide lyrics to songs when asked. So what about about websites that provide lyrics?  What difference does it make? LLMs are just an interface.

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The writer here doesn't give his age, but I suspect that he's in his late twenties or early thirties. I suspect he is experiencing that feeling that life has told him it no longer needs his contributions, and he feels adrift. But even if one has a job, does life really need one's contributions? Having a job provides the illusion that you're wanted and needed, but it's a tenuous concept. He should mingle with others in his situation. This is why the world's billionaires go to gatherings like Bilderberg and Davos and even Monte Carlo. Where else are they going to find social equals?

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Oh dear. Three year med schools are being considered again. Remember, you get what you pay for.  This has been tried twice in the past, and each effort lasted only a short time.

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Sigh. Siri records your conversations and sells them to advertisers. So now Apple lost a class action and has pay.

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Mission creep. What is Oregon Health Authority supposed to cover? Home repairs, now?

Back in the old days, you sold your home if you couldn't maintain it. You didn't ask taxpayers to pay for it.

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Another blood group? Back in September 2024 I wrote about the MAL blood group.  It's due to the absence of the AnWj antigen.

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How many minerals are required to build an EV battery?  It's more than just lithium.

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Volcanic activity under Yellowstone is "on the move".  Well, they've been saying that for a while now.  Others think it's not a concern.

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Why is U.S. healthcare so dysfunctional? Because it's based on the socialist model, instead of the competitive capitalist model, that's why.

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City of Portland Projects a $27 Million Budget Shortfall, but It Will Balloon to Much More.  More taxes and fees in the future. And more homeless:

Looks like the U.S. is already cutting carbon dioxide emissions substantially. So why do we need to act like we're not?

Happy New Year!
Yeah, we made it.

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Brave Care did not make it, however. It started in 2019, which in retrospect was the worst possible year to start something like that. It meant well, and was going to be a disruptor. But it's hard to start your own ecosystem and be the only member of that system. You have to have other partners, and that's where many efforts like this fail. You eventually have to interact with the outside world: with insurance plans, with hospitals, and pharmacies. And their inefficiencies will eventually bring you down, because to survive requires an extraordinary staff of doctors, of which few exist anymore. I could have told them that, but they wouldn't believe me.

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Telemedicine was always an expedient, not the direction which healthcare should go.  Amazon One is finding this out. You can't cheap out on doctors. Telehealth needs to be used sparingly, and only when there is no human physician available.

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Quixotic makes software that will deliberately send LLM scrapers a corrupted version of your website when they come by to scrape. This is one way to fight back and protect your content.

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What is the secret of happiness? Scientists are going to try to find out, but that's the wrong approach. I think that how we define happiness changes as we age. Slowly, what makes you happy is better appreciation for what's going well with your life.

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Japanese scientists discover an AMP-kinase activator, HPH-15, that works better than metformin in reducing blood glucose levels and fat accumulation.  It also decreased hepatic fibrosis.  The study is preclinical though, so it's too early to determine if this will be a diabetic option.

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Fugh. Seattle restaurant prices are going up in 2025 since tip credit is expiring. It seems that people are not likely to tip as well. This is not a good time to be in the restaurant business, or to work as a waiter or waitress.

Providence nurses are striking after all.  Yeah, hospitals have some cushion, but to spend it down to nothing is not good business. Nurses want more money and less stressful working conditions, but quality employees are not easy to come by. Meanwhile, Providence is training temp nurses again. It's going to be expensive for everyone. Not a good time to be ill.

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The South Atlantic Anomaly is changing shape. What's going on?

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The Axial Seamount volcano is swelling and is likely to erupt in 2025. It's right off the coast of Washington and Oregon. Will it be as gentle as it was in 2015?

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Yeah, this is a common occurrence in the learning process of using LLMs to code. It's not that simple.  You still have to have coding skills.

We don't need fewer engineers in the AI era - we need engineers who can debug AI-generated code.

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I've been reading about the H-1B visa controversy going on. Here's a thread that shows why the H-1B visa system needs to be overhauled and reduced.  On the other hand, tech CEOs may be facing this when looking for new hires:

So if you were a young American looking for a job in tech today, would you want to make sacrifices to be an expert only to get mediocre pay? How about if you were a bright immigrant from a poor country, and this was a way to make more money than you ever could back home, and even send remittances?  The difference in commitment and dedication to the job is why tech CEOs want H-1B hires. I'm convinced Americans could do the job, and they should be properly compensated.  And it's clear that Americans do want the job – they're just being ignored.

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Oregon is in the top rankings, but for all the wrong reasons.

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Apple analyzes your photos in the Photos app. This is to provide you with a feature you didn't ask for. You can turn Enhanced Visual Search off, however.

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Cancer risk can actually decreased past the age of 80. This is because older cells express NUPR1 protein, which induces a functional iron deficiency.  This restricts cell growth, even cancerous growth.  NUPR1 may be present to prevent ferroptosis, which is iron-induced programmed cell death.  The interactions are complex, and this has implications for proposed therapies that are dependent on leveraging ferroptosis.

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Can LLMs Accurately Recall the Bible.  This is a nice lesson in how well you can rely on LLMs to look up information. If you can't trust it on the Bible, how can you trust it for other information?

And here is an app (Chorus) that lets you compare the responses of a few of the top LLMs, to see how closely they agree.  Sometimes the errors are glaring. 

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Some Chinese scientists identified proteins associated with brain aging. Interestingly, levels of these proteins seems to peak at three distinct ages: 57, 70, 78 years. However, the protein elevations decrease back to baseline after surging. If the spikes reflecting brain aging, wouldn't you expect the levels to stay elevated?  Could these protein level changes indicate something else? 

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We knew that AI was going to derail efforts to get tech companies to net zero on their carbon footprint.  But it's also decreasing the quality of power by introducing harmonic distortion in the AC current.  This could cause problems for some older appliances.  Proximity to data centers is a major factor, and this is important since Hillsboro is going to be site of at least one data center.

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Mathematician Reveals Strange New Enigmas for Time Travelers.  Apparently if you are able to travel back in time, your memories will be erased when you return to the present. A lot of the predictions about what will happen with time travel seems like speculation.

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Geoffrey Hinton ups his prediction that AI will render humanity extinct in the next thirty years. I personally don't think so. We're already seeing some degradation of AI quality.  Google has inadvertently revealed some progress with Jarvis, its next LLM model.  They've done poor jobs lately that I'm not that excited about what they've done. Gemini has been a disappointment.

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But there is an AI song maker. I haven't given it a whirl, but I think this will be good mainly for making political short videos by the meme makers. Nothing likely to generate catchy tunes that make the top 100, but at least you own the rights.

––– 凄い ––– A new federal report shows that Oregon's homelessness rate increased by 18% compared with the year before.  It's interesting when you compare Vermont and New Hampshire, virtually the same region of the U.S. Vermont has a relatively low homelessness rate compared with Oregon, but NH is doing much better per capita, and the contrast is conspicuous especially compared with New York, Connecticut, and Maine.