27 March 2025

Bill Gates thinks that AI will replace many doctors and teachers. I agree on the teachers, but AI will replace more nurses than doctors.
And Oregon thinks we're so short on doctors that we need to ease up on standards to let foreign doctors practice. How about a no on that? We need to start spending money on training more doctors (and nurses) instead of wasting money unproductively.

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COVID funds are being pulled and Oregon is complaining. Can't believe some people think we still need COVID money.  It was just a slush fund for other things. Time to stop this nonsense.

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Seattle is losing their brightest students. DEI policies are hard to get rid of.

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Text2Note is a neat concept for those who want to make sure they don't miss actionable items from a long document, where the writer did not highlight important things. I don't know about paying for a subscription, though.

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Nitisinone is an FDA-approved drug to treat hereditary tyrosinemia type 1 that could be repurposed to prevent mosquito-borne illnesses.  When taken, blood levels are enough to kill the insects that suck one's blood. Paper here.

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26 March 2025

"There could be billions more people on Earth than previously thought." Not to panic. It's just that they may have counted wrong before. It's not like a whole continent was recently discovered. I won't notice any difference, and neither will you.

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"I traded my U.S. medical career for life in Canada. Here’s how the two health systems stack up." Interesting read on how the two systems compare. This is just an ED doc's perspective. It's sad that Americans have more of an adversarial relationship with physicians. And medicine seems to be increasingly more about the billing codes. This really got worse when Obamacare came on the scene. As physicians became hospital employees and got paid far less than before, all attention was paid to these codes, and ways to game the system to get higher billiing codes.

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“If you’re asking about products over Alexa, you’re going to see that behavior also reflected on the web,” Choffnes says. “If you go to Amazon.com, for example, you’ll see recommendations based on what you asked.”

Even when Google was able to draw on a user’s behavior, it still frequently profiled people incorrectly. According to the study, Google was able to correctly profile a married person with 70% accuracy but could only do so with 10% accuracy for people who are “in a relationship.”
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Nearly 100% of bacteria can be identified in 3 hours. This uses FISH probes using artificial peptide nucleic acids to target sequences in the bacteria. This tech is from South Korea, and reminds me of ddPCR used to identify mutations in circulating tumor DNA. This will be revolutionary if it can be widely adopted, as it may obviate the need for much of empiric antibiotic therapy, and allow for a more tailored approach.

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Wow, this Super Grandma lives in Oregon. Looks like Bend more than Portland. Staying active and avoiding sarcopenia is key.

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Three articles from Fortune paint a gloomy picture for GenZ and millennials:
Not looking good, and Trump will not forgive their student loans.
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Gee, who didn't see that coming?  Seattle’s payroll tax collects less than expected.  Better figure it out soon – those homeless will need their food and supplies.

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We had a taxpayer-funded FHA mortgage program for illegal aliens???  WTF, man.

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25 March 2025

Espresso and office coffee-maker coffee can elevate your cholesterol. It's not a lot, and the benefits outweigh the risks.

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Wow, I would have thought it would be in the prefrontal cortex. There is a link between intelligence and the posterior parietal cortex. It's probably not the only place.

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Chewing gum releases microplastics in your mouth. But the microplastics they identified were "polyolefins, polyethylene terephthalates, polyacrylamides and polystyrenes" and not DEHP phthalates or perfluoroalkyl microplastics (PFAS) that appear to be the bad players.

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18% of Oregon residents receive SNAP benefits, the third highest in the nation.  Oregon is so dependent on federal subsidies. It's not even funny.

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24 March 2025

Teslas and Tesla showrooms are tech-equipped. It's not a good idea to vandalize them – as some vandals discovered. One didn't think his fingerprints on the Molotov cocktail bottle would be discovered. Not too smart.

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You want to glue to things together? Perhaps check this site first.

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The vanishing male writer. I noticed this several years ago when I was looking for a good new horror novel to read. The only male writers were the usual: Stephen King, Clive Barker and maybe Laird Barron. I don't enjoy reading horror by female writers. They're always more focused on people have relationship issues, and when the horror occurs, I always say to myself "Is that it?" Or "what just happened?"  The scary stuff is always understated. Male horror writers will give me stories where true horror is uncovered,  often when someone does something or goes somewhere they're not supposed to. I don't want to read stories where some heroine has to eradicate a ghost or demon by reconciling some bad relationship that happened years ago that she tried to forget. If I'm wrong, let me know.

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Vancomycin-resistant enterococci secrete bacteriocins that kills off its competitors. How they do so may be a strategy to attack them, something that is sorely needed.

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Oregon has the second-highest rate of WFH workers. A whopping 17.7%. It used to be more like 6.3%. Only Colorado has a higher percentage. These are the folks whose jobs AI will likely take away.  When I read this article, it sounds like Portland has a lot of people that are struggling to find something to do. It's not a vibrant city, full of opportunity and action. There's a lot of wishful thinking in the article. The Trump era is not going to treat Oregon or Portland well. They have been so used to federal money to keep things going, and now there won't be any of that. And there aren't that many billionaires to tax either.

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Washington state Democrats are crazy. 
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23 March 2025

The Oregonian reflects on why Portland hasn't been able to recover.  Why it lags behind other cities.
The whole article has the attitude of "Gee, we did everything right. What could it be that keeps Portland from recovering?"

This is what they focus on:

A big win would help a lot, he said. Blosser suggested projects like a Major League Baseball stadium, or the Albina Vision Trust’s plan to add housing, cap Interstate 5 near the Rose Quarter and restore a historically Black neighborhood, could demonstrate Portland has shifted out of reverse and into gear.
They focus on concerts, baseball games – all one-time draws into the city.  And spending money to revitalize the Albina area is something you after you fix the problem of businesses exiting downtown Portland.

That's why businesses stay away. Bash the police!  Protest!  Smash things!  Disrupt other people's lives.

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“We’ve spent decades building trust with people, especially with the LGBTQ+ community and immigrants. They’re not comfortable going to someone they don’t trust.”
Things sure have changed since I grew up, that's for sure.

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This is why vaxxed people get COVID-19 over and over again. The vax causes them to respond to infection with IgG4 subclass antibodies which are not protective, and has limited ability to fight the virus. And if you keep getting COVID over and over again, it increases your cancer risk.
Now the NIH seems to no longer be interested in research grants dealing with mRNA vaccine technology. And why isn't Marty Makary approved yet? This taking way too long.

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Tina Kotek decries Trump's Medicaid cuts as threatening one-third of Oregonian's who rely on it, as well as impacting housing initiatives.  Medicaid money wasn't intended to provide housing. I think Tina has enough money – she just doesn't want to stop spending it on non-citizens.

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22 March 2025

Oral minoxidil 5 mg once daily is just as effective as twice daily topical minoxidil for androgenetic hair loss. Don't wait for the FDA approval, because it will never happen. No profit margin to make it worth the effort.

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So, OHSU and UnitedHealthcare finally came to an agreement. Well, well.

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Cargo Therapeutics is leaving California. The first crumbles down the cliff before the landslide?

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Wow!. Apple Mac Studio M3 Ultra workstation can run Deepseek R1 671B AI model entirely in memory using less than 200W. Truly an AI workstation for those choosing the Mac platform.

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This should be a warning to Portland. Young people are leaving the UK in droves because they're sick of paying high taxes for crap.
Joe feels this pessimism, too, and says that the chances that he will return to the UK are slim unless there’s a rebalance between pay, public services and opportunities for growth.

“It’s a big problem for me. The social contract in Canada is strong,” he said. “In the UK, it’s broken.”
Well, I'm not sure Canada is the best solution, and people are fleeing there because it's the easiest immediate solution.

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21 March 2025

Companies are exploring new form factors for phones. Huawei's new phone looks interesting. Apple is planning a foldable phone with a liquid metal hinge. As my wife would say: more things to break.

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Chinese companies are reacting to Trump's tariffs by cutting prices – and moving out of China. Xi is not pleased about that. This is what the pro-tariff people were hoping would happen, while nay-sayers were thinking that all it would do is raise prices for Americans. That might happen if we were a tiny country, but the U.S. market is not one to deny, as even Canada is finding out.

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Harvard is turning into a community college, offering remedial math courses. It's not the place where the smart go to innovate. It's a DEI institution, where they have to accommodate those who got in for reasons other than merit. And since they're going to make it free for lower income folks, what's cachet of the Harvard name anymore?

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India is planning to issue a government-developed browser that they want everyone to use.  This Redditor warns against this, as they will likely insert a government-created root certificate that will allow them to spy on people. If they wanted to, of course.

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If you live in these areas, don't drink the rainwater.

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Brain scans reveal when babies first form memories. Their hippocampuses start becoming functional around 12 months of age.

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If you're up for a Blade Runner ambient track to study with or just have in the background, this four-hour Eurorack-generated soundscape is for you.

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Revenues from Portland metro homeless services tax in 'fiscal valley of death'.  Portland leadership is unhappy that they can't continue to get money to feed their municipal money sink.  Up for discussion is the Metro Supportive Housing Services tax. They don't understand that when you feed the squirrels, you get more of them.

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Yikes. Multnomah County is spending money on AI licenses for its employees. Looks like some AI companies are going to get a lot of Portland-flavored training data. I'll bet some higher-up thought this would be a great thing to "modernize" the county.

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Crazy. This is how health insurance operates in California.
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Oregon Democrats – how can they justify this?

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20 March 2025

Happy Vernal Equinox.

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UCLA scientists discover a drug, DDL-920, that led to the complete recovery of movement control in mice after they experienced a stroke.
The drug, tested on mice, restored these gamma oscillations, and in turn reconnected neurons to essentially heal the brain damage without arduous physical rehabilitation.
Amazing, if confirmed. Paper here.
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Interesting survey of executives regarding their experience with AI.
  • 59% of the executives say they're "actively looking for a new job with a company that's more innovative with generative AI."
  • Less than half (45%) of employees — versus 75% of the C-suite — think their company's AI rollout in the last 12 months has been successful.
  • According to a May 2024 study from IBM, nearly two-thirds (64%) of leaders said their organization needs to embrace AI despite the fact that it will change jobs faster than employees can adapt.
  • According to a 2024 LinkedIn report, 53% of employees said they hid their AI use from employers for fear that it would make them look replaceable.
  • Execs are often so far removed from the actual implementation of AI on a worker level that they don't see or understand this fear and resistance
So true.

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WTF, man. Some guy asked ChatGPT to look up information on himself. ChatGPT told him that he was a child murderer. 

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The parts of the brain involved in word recall have been identified. No surprises here. They're in the expected places – the areas where if dysfunctional, cause Wernicke's and Broca's aphasia. 

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So there was a world happiness survey, and the United States came in #24. The winners were the northern European countries, of course. But man, even Mexico beat us.  Of course, the survey data were obtained between 2020 and 2022, when Biden was in charge, so this is no surprise. Those were bleak years. Apparently this was the first time the U.S. dropped below the top 20.

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Oregon lawmakers (the usual crowd) wants to make Lunar New Year a paid state holiday. Oregon is a big joke.

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The NIH guidance justified its new 15 percent indirect cost cap by comparing what foundations typically pay for indirect costs: zero. The Gates Foundation has a maximum indirect cost rate of 10 percent. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation pays up to 12 percent. If universities accept zero to 12 percent indirect cost rates from foundations, they should accept a similar rate from the government, argues the NIH.

Colleges reject the relevance of the comparison. They can forgo indirect cost funding from foundations only because the government already provides it, they say. In other words, taxpayers are easy marks when their money is being stewarded by federal bureaucrats. Private funders drive a harder bargain with their resources.

If the NIH doesn't have to pay as much in indirect costs, it may have more money to allocated to more researchers. It won't help the current grantees, though. Sad to see that Dr. Aaron Grossberg is seeking opportunities elsewhere.Privatized research may be the thing, and industry may indeed be the place where ground-breaking research gets done. Universities have been living off government subsidies for too long.

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19 March 2025

Google settles lawsuit that says people who were not White or Asian got paid more. One shouldh't discriminate on the basis of race, but should race alone necessarily guarantee equal pay?  No, it shouldn't.  I think Google just wanted to get this out of the way and move on.

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Some frank discussion about what Artificial General Intelligence will mean for the world. We aren't talking about it much, partly because it's hard to imagine, and we don't want to waste time and energy discussing a scenario that may not happen. Nothing has even been truly smarter than humans before, so this has never been a problem. But what if it were?

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Wow, this is incredible.Greenpeace tried to block Trump's efforts to revive the Dakota Access Pipeline. Not only did they lose today, but as a result, they will go bankrupt and face financial ruin.  FAFO, man.

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What best predicted mortality in old age?  Not episodic memory, verbal fluency, verbal knowledge, or one's general composite intelligence score. The best predictor was verbal fluency. Being able to communicate well and fluidly was the best sign that the rest of you is healthy, too.

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Boy, the EU is really being a tyrant when it comes to technology. They are screwing over their population's ability to obtain the latest technology. They want "interoperability" with all other tech.  They have a list of demands that Apple must follow to access their market. I guess Europe isn't going to see the latest tech then. Too bad.

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Well this isn't good.  Employment for computer programmers in the U.S. has plummeted to its lowest level since 1980. This is really bad news for those just graduating with CS degrees. It depends on what will happen with the H-1B visa situation. I would have thought that a CS program would teach AI, but that's not the case, apparently.

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Mastodon is doomed.  This surprised me, especially as it has been trendy lately to leave X/Twitter. But Mastodon is kinda clumsy to use. I've tried it, and there is very little quality content on the platform. Lots of stuff only of interest to teenagers and neurodivergents. 

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Harvard study says seed oils are healthier than butter. Who funded the study??? I can't find this information. It matters! Studies like this are usually sponsored.

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18 March 2025

Another one bites the dust:  Fat Tire Farm is closing after 40 years in business. Everyone is hurting.

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Creatine might help mitigate the cognitive decline of sleep deprivation, but man, that's a LOT of creatine. They used 0.35 grams/kg body weight, which came out to about 20 to 30 gm of creatine. This was a one-time dose, however, but still.... It's not clear how they determine that particular dose, but I wish they tested a lower dose, as in other studies.

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This is why people don't trust medical authorities anymore. Cornell students will get an exemption from the required flu vaccine if they are Black or other BIPOC. What does skin color have to do with flu susceptibility?

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$8.4 Billion: Enormous Cache of Rare Earth Elements Discovered in America.  They don't mention which rare earth elements, though. They're not all the same.

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Another study shows that meditation strengthens the posterior cingulate gyrus.

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Chinese men can't find brides, so they are taking matters into their own hands. Boy, is China's racial makeup going to change.  A lot more Southeast Asian genes mixed in.  But that's how life works. What's going to happen to the prospects of Southeast Asian boys?

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