21 May 2025

Oops. Chicago Sun-Times summer reading list was generated by AI and included non-existent books. They blame it on staffing cuts. Yeah, right.

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The WSJ wrote up the fire sale of the Big Pink building. I didn't know the homeless were sleeping in the empty floors. The building is only about 50% occupied. There were feces in the common areas. Who would want to work there? Of course, Mayor Keith Wilson takes umbrage.
“I wish they’d covered our rapid improvements in public safety, new residents, business opportunities, regional destinations, and creatives”
Huh? What "improvements in public safety"? People don't bother calling the cops anymore.  What "business opportunities"? What "creatives"? You talking about the graffiti painters?

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In Seattle, they don't bother with fist fights anymore. It's guns, baby.

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20 May 2025

Good. Heat and granular activated carbon can detoxify water from PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). Not too expensive, and it sounds like it could be incorporated into standard water treatment facilities.

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Bird flu really was a nothing burger. All those chickens killed and eggs destroyed.

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The Ritz-Carlton Hotel is being turned over to the lender.  No official foreclosure, but the end result is about the same. 
Court filings also revealed the Ritz-Carlton hotel is suffering from canceled bookings, as guests hesitate to commit to events or stays at a property “whose ability to provide services is uncertain.”

“Likewise, the sale of residential condominium units and the lease of office space has been depressed by the Project’s uncertain financial situation,” Ovalle wrote.
Sounds like Portland.

And remote work is here to stay for Oregon employees. No one wants to go into Portland to work at the office.

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More students are choosing alternatives to Portland public schools.
the capture rate of students enrolling in PPS schools this academic year was 69% for high school, 71% for middle school, and 75% for elementary school.

The rates, calculated using census data, vary by high school attendance area and grade level, but are generally lower than PPS rates in the past. The news also comes as PPS’s enrollment is dipping faster than at school districts statewide.
Can't blame them. Kids aren't learning in these schools.

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Oregon and Washington are so behind in renewable energy.  Pretty much the entire nation is doing better. But we still have to pay all those taxes.

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An increasing number of retirees are not waiting to full retirement to start taking out Social Security money.  Some need the money now. Some aren't sure they'll live long enough to make it worthwhile to wait. Some aren't sure how long Social Security is going to last. Interesting fact: immigrants (legal) can get Social Security payments if their work history in their home country is allowed them to get work credits, even if they did not take paycheck deductions to pay for this scheme. This is why SS is running out of money. So many eaters at the trough. This is why socialist systems ultimately break down. Every politician wants to give away favors for a vote.

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Tina Kotek is not going to stop providing health care for illegal immigrants. So instead, there will be increased taxes and budget cuts so you get less of what you paid taxes on. And the Oregon government is suing Trump because they need more money.

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19 May 2025

Here's Anthropic trying to figure out how its LLMs think. Still a mystery.

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Imagine you’re a single man in Tokyo, scraping by on a modest salary, your dreams of family life deferred by rents that eat half your paycheck. Inflation’s clawing at your savings, and the cost of dating—let alone marriage—feels like a luxury you can’t afford. Then comes the government, hand outstretched, demanding more because you haven’t found “the one.” This isn’t just a tax; it’s a slap, a public shaming of your status, a reminder that society sees you as a problem to be fixed. The anger simmering in online forums is palpable—men are already vowing to opt out, not just from marriage but from the system itself.
Stupid.

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America's college towns are going bust. For many years, these small town colleges were staffed by teachers who couldn't make a go anywhere else. This was their job. Much it was sustained by federal money. Now, someone has finally put a stop to it. There are better ways to spend money, although sorry for the local economies that grew up around this bubble.

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Looks like there's a looming shortage in omega-3 fatty acids. We'll have to get it from plant sources, then.

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Why is the Camas TSMC doing so poorly, when the rest of the company is doing well? I didn't know it was their first chip facility in the U.S.

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Damn, these latest LLM models are getting scary good. Really scary.

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Nifty trick that lets you estimate square roots pretty accurately. To impress your imaginary girlfriend, I guess.

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Wow, look at all those new Oregon taxes. Crap.

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18 May 2025

No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay in the Air. Really? Seems unlikely. It seems that every few years someone writes an article like this.

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Private equity tied to 21% of healthcare bankruptcies for second consecutive year. Yeah, how's Obamacare working out for ya? One of the major changes enacted by the ACA was the dismantling of private physician practices. It became financially too risky for doctors to run their own business, and many sold their practices to private equity or became hospital employees instead. Now doctors can't treat you as they really recommend – it has to pass muster by hospital administration or some MBA. Each tried to extract as much profit from the new arrangement, sometimes to the detriment of the public. But I didn't know it was that bad.

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The Oregonian is using AI to draft stories. Oh well. I hardly read them anymore anyway.

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The AI Hiring Pause Is Officially Here. This is really sad. The industry is eating itself alive.

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iOS 18 has a new feature that reduces motion sickness when you read stuff on your phone in the car. I haven't tried it out, but the author of this article says it works well.

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New headphones to consider: the Sony WH 1000XM6, the Apple AirPods Pro, or the latest Bose Quiet Comfort headphones. I have older Sony and Bose headphones and they sound great.

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17 May 2025

Really? The people that Microsoft is letting go are mainly the software engineers and project managers. They are keeping the marketing people and I don't see any accountants being laid off. This is crazy. They really are depending on AI writing their code, I guess. Seems short-sighted to me.

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What can you do with a slide rule?  Quite a bit. 

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Terence Tao has his own YouTube channel now. There's a couple of videos out on Lean, the AI-powered proof builder.

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Compressed music maybe harmful to your hearing. 

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These nerds calculated π to 300 trillion decimal places. It's a new world record. I'm older to remember when you needed something like a Cray Supercomputer or at least a cluster to achieve this. This video showcases the computing setup, and not the math. I assume they used the Chudnovsky Algorithm.

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Prosper Portland can't function without government money. Maybe they'll have to shut down. And hey, Portland has more homeless people "despite" all the homeless services. You think that maybe??  Nah, that can't be.  I wonder what Fox Butterfield would say?

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Excessive use of cell phones ranked as the top pet peeve of managers, at 78 percent. Some 61 percent of managers found their new hires were entitled or easily offended, while 57 percent noted these new employees were unprepared for the workplace. Lack of a work ethic scored 54 percent, followed by poor communication skills at 48 percent and lack of technical skills at 27 percent.

Other concerns managers had about the graduates included lateness, failure to turn in assignments on time, unprofessional behavior, and inappropriate dress and language.

I'm not paying off their student loans.

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16 May 2025

Motorola is coming out with a heavily AI-laden Razr. The reviewer thinks the AI integration is excessive. It's a foldable, too, and the screen real estate is small. I won't use this, especially as it's an Android phone.

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China has personal data on 80% of Americans. Do you think the U.S. has data on Chinese citizens? What will the Chinese do with that information?

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Portland's Big Pink is for sale. This means it's a liability now, not an asset. Everyone seems to be fleeing Portland.

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DataRepublican (small r) has a new tool that lets one follow the money in government. It's clear that the NGO situation has gotten out of hand, and if not for Trump, we'd have never known about it. This is the great grift. Tool is here.

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15 May 2025

Switzerland has changed privacy laws – will they be enforced?. If they do, Proton and NymVPN will leave the country. I've already switched to NordVPN and the service is a little better. I don't have to keep re-establishing a VPN connection, as I had to do constantly with ProtonVPN.

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Oregon Dems are screaming because cuts to federal food benefits are coming. Oregon has the money. They just don't want to spend it properly. You can't coax Blue States into changing their behavior with words. But you can force them to do so by constraining their money supply. Nothing like having to budget wisely to convince one to spend responsibly.

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This is a bad time to be a software engineer with no AI training. This used to be the ticket to wealth in the 1990s. How times have changed.

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The future is here. A baby with CPS1 deficiency is healed with gene editing. Doudna and Charpentier must be proud of their discovery.

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I'm surprised that the discovery of kill-switches in Chinese-made solar panels was only discovered now. Now do people see why we need to make stuff in the U.S.?

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The NYT is upset that grants are being cancelled for those that want to study misinformation. I think these kinds of studies are useless and a waste of money, primarily since there isn't a clear definition of what "misinformation" or "disinformation" is. Most people think that what they believe in is "information" and things that go against it is "misinformation". I don't trust most academics to tell me what these terms mean, especially after how the truth was hidden about COVID-19, among many other things.

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14 May 2025

Wow! In situ 3-D printing is possible now in the body, for structural tissue, like cartilage or bone. I doubt that organs will be amenable to this technology, as the cellular elements and architecture will need to be replicated.

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This guy thinks that LLM agents already possess free will. I still think it's just a simulation, and that we can see where it ends. But as complexity grows, it will be more difficult to find the margins of that simulation. Agents still depend on a central control module that triggers them. It's not quite free will.

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Toyota has made an EV that would finally make it make sense.  745 mile range. Fully charges in 10 minutes. That's what I need. Anything less is just "proof of concept".

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Is it sulfur amino acid containing foods that make you fat? There's a supplement, a glutathione biosynthetic inhibitor, DL-buthionine-(S, R)-sulfoximine that can mimic a sulfur amino acid restricted diet, and it takes the pounds off. This effect is abrogated by N-acetylcysteine, which produces glutathione.  It's impractical to avoid sulfur-containing foods (e.g. eggs, chicken, meat, dairy, legumes, allium- and cruciferous-vegetables and leafy green vegetables). It's not clear that taking the pounds off with this supplements is a healthy way to lose weight.

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Doctors are not well. Nearly 2/3 of practicing physicians feel depersonalized towards patients. 15% in the West consider themselves burned out. 25% feel emotionally exhausted. That's not a small amount. And long work hours alter brain structure.  “The observed changes in brain volume may provide a biological basis for the cognitive and emotional challenges often reported in overworked individuals." they conclude. 

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Prominent chatbots routinely exaggerate science findings.  Well, chatbots think they're great, you know. I understand why they promote themselves.

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Other states are luring Oregon businesses away from the state. And it's working. Nice job, Tina Kotek.

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The Trailblazers are for sale now.  What if the buyer wants to move the team out of Portland? Think that we will get a baseball franchise started here?

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Oregon agencies made a $1.8 billion accounting error. That's not a small number.  And now the Republicans want states to pay a part of the SNAP money that goes out, so Oregon will have to cover that, too. Not looking good.

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Portland City Council needs to watch this video.


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13 May 2025

Dozens of new obesity drugs are coming. Looks like Lilly has the bases covered.

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Electric eels can inject genetic material into organisms around it. They do this by a process called eletroporation. I remember doing this in the lab. Amazing that it happens in nature, too.

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Organic Maps is forking. The new version will be called CoMaps. It's not available on the App Store yet, and the download links aren't working. This one seems to be more privacy oriented. I'm willing to check it out when it's available.

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Nice. A guy built a robot to solve a 4 x4 Rubik's Cube. It took 45 seconds.

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An interferometer device can read text a mile away. Incredible! I would have thought diffraction would make it entirely unreadable. Not so.

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Microsoft is laying off 3% of its employees today.  It laid off 5% just four months ago. Looks like they're doing this to prioritize work in AI.  
Speaking of AI, Tsinghua University Hospital in China is going full AI. No more human physicians. Only AI agents to take care of you. We're not ready for this.

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The U.S. Treasury has a surplus surprise. This is from tariffs and DOGE cuts, unlike in 2022 when it was because Joe Biden raised taxes. Great, so maybe we can afford those tax cuts after all.

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Oregon's economy continues to decline and 42% of people can afford all that they need.

Another one bites the dust.  Next Adventure outdoor retail outlet is closing all stores. The cause? "...rising security costs due to increasing crime and theft."  Same old.  How much longer are people going to tolerate this?

Oreogn voted less business friendly than before.
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Washington State Library may have to shutter. Lack of funding, as usual. All the money going to support the drug-using homeless. More benefits being taken away even as taxes increase. Life in Blue Citites.

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Renton Landing Urgent Care and Maternal Fetal Medicine Clinic is closing. No money. Same reason as usual.

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12 May 2025

Some trivial about Nobel Prizes. What caused the marked shift from 1985 to 1995 in terms of which universities and institutions the winners came from? It's probably political, but what was it exactly? I'm happy to see that you don't need to be at a university to do prize-worthy work. I suspect an increasing amount of science is probably going to be done by privately-funded scientists.

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Pectra lets hackers drain wallets with just an offchain signature. This is the reason I avoid crypto. Changes can be made over which you have no control, and suddenly, all your wealth is gone. People like Elysium because it's newer and it's like being at the start of Bitcoin again, which you could profit from being an early investor. But Bitcoin's advantage is that its protocols are set (mostly). So people can't tamper with it nearly as much. The wallet is the vulnerability, though. Crypto itself is too fragile a mechanism to store wealth long-term. My opinion, of course, but stories like these confirm it.

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Tina Kotek insists that green energy will prevail, but her lack of action makes it so that it won't happen.  Now BPA, which owns most (75%) of the power lines, and so essentially controls the power grid, has decided to align with an another company instead of the California-aligned one. BPA doesn't want competition and wants to make sure hydropower dominate. So plans for solar and wind will probably meet strong resistance. Too bad, Tina.  And BPA is self-funding – it doesn't need Oregon's money. Unlike Oregon, which so badly needs federal money to operate.

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This is why Oregon's schools don't want to discipline unruly kids. We'd probably hit that "unsafe school" designation really quickly. Then the dominance of public schools and teachers unions will disappear.

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Lots of ruffled feathers amongst academics about termination of NSF grants. But take a look at the grants that have been terminated here.  Do you think they should have continued?
  • Advancing Indigenous perspectives to address climate vulnerability
  • Culture Change for Inclusion of Indigenous Voices in Biology
  • Equity and Inclusion in Open Access Publishing: Workshop to explore barriers and solutions
  • Collaborative Research: Gender-Inclusive Open Source through Gender-Inclusive Tools
  • A qualitative inquiry into sex/gender narratives in undergraduate biology and their impacts on transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming students
  • A Catalyst for Intersectional Gender Equity in STEM at the University of Nebraska at Omaha
  • Reimagining Educator Learning Pathways Through Storywork for Racial Equity in STEM
  • Spartan Adaptations of Best Practices for Faculty Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG)
  • Exploring the Participation of LGBTQ Undergraduates in STEM
  • How Do Unrepresentative College Grades Shape Race and Gender Gaps in the STEM Pipeline?
Should taxpayer money be really spent to support this research? It's not the Biden/Kamala era anymore.

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Why were men hit harder by COVID-19 than women? I remember an early explanation was the difference in cigarette smoking habits. But it seems to be that in men, upregulation of IL-18 is higher, and there is more neutrophil activation. 

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