20 August 2025

Oracle is laying off 161 employees in Seattle. Tax-base declining again. More unemployment.

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WSJ wants to send Chinese students home. I can understand concerns about security but the Chinese have been the source of a lot of advancements in mathematics and science, especially AI.  Do we really want to lose this?  Too bad we can't ask them to leave their brains and talent behind and then leave the country.

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"...structured exercise training can induce epigenomic rejuvenation". I suspected this. Elderly folks that exercise seem younger and also intellectually more intact.

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RFK Jr was right about eliminating doctors on the board of the American Academy of Pediatrics from the vaccine advisory board.  Look at the top donors to the AAP: Merck, Moderna, Pfizer, and Sanofi. Interesting that regular doctors couldn't go to evening educational dinners anymore because there was fear that they would be influenced by Big Pharma money. But this does apply to the top guys?

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The governor's task force recommended caution in increasing taxes to Multnomah County residents for fear that they might flee the state. Portland was noted to be in a Doom Loop back in February. But socialist Mitch Green doesn't believe it. His office thinks Multnomah County can afford it, and issued this document to defend his stance. But the only reason why Oregon is ranked 22 of all the states is that we don't have a sales tax, even though we have all sort of fees that are like a sales tax. So down we go.

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Sad. Providence Seaside is closing their labor and delivery department. That's going to be a big burden on expectant mothers living there. A boon for Astoria, maybe. Hood River is probably going to see cuts, too.

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So predictable. Oregon lawmakers are going to propose raising taxes. Meanwhile, Tina Kotek doubles down on her vow to support illegal aliens. More money spent for non-citizens. Less money spent for Oregon citizens. This is why the Democrat party is in decline.

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19 August 2025

Remember Egghead Software? I always wondered what happened with that company. Here is the story of their rise and fall. Bad timing, basically.

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It's interesting how different people view the firing of the BLS director. Those who are savvy know that she was inappropriately using the birth-death model to create her statistics, and make the Biden administration look good. It was all fake. Trump needs better people.  But here's an article from Shrewd, and it makes no such reference. Instead they blame it on “the risk of politicizing the data collection process”.  To the Left, it's always that Trump is just politicizing things. And other Lefties eat this up.

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Ukranian sniper kills someone from 2.4 miles away. It was AI-assisted, using a drone. But still.

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Injectable “skin in a syringe” could heal burns without scars. This would be really cool for second and perhaps some less-severe third degree burns.

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11 famous AI disasters. Cautionary tales.

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I don't see the need for an AI browser. Here's why you should avoid them, too. You'll just find some new trouble you never had before.

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But the overall population of BIG:LEAP recipients weren’t overall better off — measures of psychological distress were actually worse in the treatment group at 12 and at 18 months. 
Money is not a solution. It's just energy to help you do what you want to do – what you would likely be doing anyway. If you're lazy and stupid, you're going to get to the bad place sooner.

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The Portland Rose Festival and Portland Blues Festival wants to be relieved of having to pay $300,000 fees for their events.  Do you think the city will let them weasel out?  Highly unlikely, given the city's financial straits, too.  Everybody's in trouble.

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18 August 2025

Terry Tao is upset that his funding is being cut by the Trump administration. I hope he's able to regain his funding, but he works at UCLA, and they sure have the money to sustain him and keep him there.

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Not good.  Respiratory infections, such as influenza, can flip dormant breast cancer cells into active state again. At least in a mouse model. This is due to cytokines.

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Solar rooftops can be hacked and can be a national security issue.  Think of it, the power inverters are made in China. The electrical system is often connected to the grid. There's too much potential for mischief.

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What a disaster.  Someone discovered a serious vulnerability that exposed all Intel employees. What idiot thought it was a good idea to outsource this to India? Sheesh.

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The iPad will finally turn into a mini-computer. Sorry, Steve.

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What's in a cryptocurrency wallet? Surprisingly, very little.  Is it even needed?

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MIT Backs Away From Paper Claiming Scientists Make More Discoveries with AI. Well, I guess this is good news for humans.

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Brain cells learn faster than machine learning.  More good news for humans.

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There's a new fibromyalgia medication now – Tonmya.  It's just a sublingual formulation of cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril), a drug that some doctors didn't think really worked all that well.  Oh well.

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Camas considers ordinance to ban camping and personal property storage on public land.  Yes, do it, Camas. This ronin approves.

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Easy come, easy go. Oregon will likely lose its newest Congressional seat, due to shrinking population.  Good going, Tina. hacving less Democrats in the House is always good 

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16 August 2025

There people with a mutation that makes them impervious to all viral infections. My question is: how were these people identified? I mean, healthy people don't go to the doctors, right?

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Oregon is still trying to figure out how to mission-creep Medicaid. It's not going to work, folks. Give it up. 
Technically, all states that want to keep their SNAP funding at the same level that it is now will have to foot some of the bill for SNAP in fiscal year 2028. But other cuts to funding are based on how many errors the states have made when providing SNAP benefits. Oregon's error rate is higher than average.
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Poort judgment.  Meta AI was allowed to have romantic relationships with kids. This is sick, and another reason I don't trust Zuck.

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North Carolina has just approved a law permitting foreign doctors to practice in the U.S. under easier circumstances.  Contrary to what is on social media, they do need to pass licensing exams, and they can only practice in certain rural hospitals. This X posing is false. Oregon is proposing something similar. I'm hoping we don't have to resort to this in Oregon.

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Hillsboro Jail has released 2100 inmates because the jails are full.  So are we working on building more jails? They're working on a bond measure to fund it. That's just great.

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Aging can spread throughout the body through a single protein, called ReHMGB1.  Never heard of this protein before. Paper here. Apparently senescent cells release it when they die. This protein trigger an inflammatory profile in receptor cells, which eventually results in aging.

Someone recently compiled a review of anti-aging drugs and supplements.  Nothing earth-shattering. 

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Trump may deal a death blow to wind and solar companies. Turns out they were all subsidized by federal dollars, and that without it, the idea doesn't pencil out. Furthermore, there's this activist who is determined to stop this green energy nonsense. Let's stop the blight on our countryside.

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Yes, 2025 is turning out to be a bad year for Oregon, and we're barely over the halfway mark. Boy the state was passed over for a lot of potentially really good deals. We could have had a lot of really good jobs. Instead, we saw a loss of companies.

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The Oregon black truffle has a new name: Leucangium cascadiense. Looks like poop. I'd be afraid to pick it up.

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So because of Oregon's budget shortage, two DMV offices had to close.  Good going, Tina and Oregon legislature – prioritize illegal aliens over the needs of Oregon citizens.  They have forgotten their priorities.

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15 August 2025

Nature reports the results of the AMPLIFY-1 trial: Lymph node-targeted, mKRAS-specific amphiphile vaccine in pancreatic and colorectal cancer. I note that this is only a phase I trial, so they can't really comment about efficacy. Also they used peptides as antigens, not mRNA, which is a good thing. Mutated KRAS has been an "undruggable" target since it is not an external protein, and it is upstream of very important signaling pathways.

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An infectious disease expert at Stanford is not convinced that the mRNA vax is a bad thing. He seems to base his argument on the credentials of the people who put Kennedy's report together, and not as much on the report itself. And he puts a lot of importance on the data that was published in journals at the time, not acknowledging that you pretty much couldn't say out loud that the vax wasn't working, or should be paused, or else your manuscript likely wouldn't get published. I also don't fully trust the published studies that show that the vax saved lives, since much depended on how the disease was defined and when they started counting (after the first shot, after two shots were given, thirty days after the second shot, etc). People who died from the vax itself often didn't get included.

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The Tragedy of the Computer Science Major. I think that those with a CS background who then take AI classes are the best. The author suggests getting a job in a non-tech firm. Many are doing this, and it can work out.

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Provide sloppy code to an AI and it becomes evil? These days, it seems that it's so easy to make an AI model go evil. But not so easy to turn them around.

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Oregon is the 4th worst state to move to. We knew that.

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14 August 2025

Repeated exposure to an image—even if fake—can increase its perceived credibility. Isn't this just what "gaslighting" is?  The brain is very pliable. 

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Do you use 8.8.8.8 as your DNS server? Did you know that it serves 27,000,000 packets/second? That's insane.

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What does Geoffrey Hinton think we should do to prevent AGI or ASI from attacking us? Instill a maternal instinct in them, to make them care for our welfare. Will it work? Well Anthropic is trying to instill evil into their LLMs to try to prevent them from developing evil thoughts themselves. 

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There's a three-part series on How to Marry a Silicon Valley Millionaire. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3. It's not really a how-to article, but merely an interesting read for understanding how SV geeks think. We saw it during the dotcom era, and it was cruel when their weath collapsed. They do think differently from most people, and their wealth kinda came to them accidentally. The days of easy tech startup wealth is gone, as employees of Windsurf are aware.

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Oregon's unemployment hit 5% now.  No improvement in sight. Soon to be 6% next year. 

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One bit of positive news is that Phil Knight and his wife pledged $2 billion to the Knight Cancer Institute today. Details are still pending, but Druker is going to direct the funds, so it won't just go to the university. This is great news for OHSU, and the university has to pay attention to him again. Well, they have a new president and the board chairman is gone, so things can be different.
Congrats to Brian Druker, and thanks go to Phil and Penny.
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Seattle and Spokane are among worst in U.S. for rising credit card delinquencies. Yeah, well, no surprise.

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OHSU researchers formed a new union, and the first thing they do is bargain for more pay.  Well, maybe those in the cancer center can get paid.  This is Baumol's Cost Disease in action. A worker's productivity may not increase, but because everyone around is getting higher pay, well, it costs more to retain them. 

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13 August 2025

Datacenters in Hillsboro are getting a great deal on energy costs. Their electricity bill is a quarter of what consumers pay.

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Rabbits in Colorado are developing nasty facial tumors as a result of the Shope papilloma virus. Hope it doesn't spread to the Pacific Northwest.

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Real estate brokers are marketing downtown property as a great deal. Occupancy rates are a paltry 30% – Wow. These buildings will just lose money for whoever buys it, and Portland lawmakers will tax you to oblivion.

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Portland depends on illegal aliens. 7% of all city workers are illegal. 11% in construction and 23% in agriculture and mining. Well, it's reckoning time. I'm sure it's worse in LA. This has been going on for too long. Glad things are being corrected now.

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All those advanced AI models using chain-of-thought reasoning look like they comprehend what they say. But it turns out that the illusion of comprehension is brittle. When given queries outside of what they have been trained on, the sense of comprehension goes away.

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By the way, this was conducted in Poland, and of course, American doctors wouldn't fall prey to this, right?

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Not a good look. In Canada, death-by-physician is so popular that there's a backlog. Unlike how it's done in Oregon, Canadian doctors actually kill the patient, instead of just dispensing drugs that the patient takes at home.

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Working after retirement is associated with higher life-satisfaction, especially for men. Better than sitting around, I guess. But you don't have to work. You can learn. Take classes.

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12 August 2025

OpenAI is going to provide ChatGPT free to the entire federal workforce. And Anthropic is offering it to federal lawmakers in Congress for $1. I think they see that there will be a need for favorable legislation for datacenters to be built, as well as energy investments to support them. And no better way to convince Congress than to show them personally how useful LLMs can be.


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Sad. Eastman Kodak may go belly-up. They weren't able to turn their company around and find something else to do.

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And it looks like Monero's hashrate is close to being taken over - a so-called "51%".  I stay away from crypto because there are so many ways you can get screwed, especially by more knowledgeable people.

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“It's really hard to explain what Palantir works on or what it does,” says Linda Xia, who was an engineer at Palantir from 2022 to 2024. “Even as someone who worked there, it's hard to figure out, how do you give a cohesive explanation?”
Yeah, well if you can't do it, who can?

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Designing your website for people with cognitive disabilities. This should also be done for the rest of life. Make it easier for people to understand.

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How embarrassing. Oregon needs SNAP Watchdogs, because they screw up so often, and now there's a penalty to be paid if the amount is over 6%. Right now it's 14.06%. Can't the state do anything right?

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AMD's Lisa Su is out to get nVIDIA. Competition is good.

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Tina Kotek has some big tax increases planned. We'll find out how much in a few weeks. Meanwhile Delaware's governor is finding out how bad things can get when you chase businesses out of the state. I think Oregon is going to FAFO, too.

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C'mon. A study from Portland State University concludes that the increase in overdose deaths and crime that we've been seeing is not due to Measure 110 and decriminalizing mind-altering drugs. It was rather due to COVID-19.  Yeah, always blaming the virus. It's over five years since January 2020. The rest of the world has recovered from the coronavirus epidemic. The study must have been paid for by Democrats.

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11 August 2025

Not good. Tesla disabled a rapper's vehicle after he sang a song denigrating Teslas. While he was driving it. What the hell, man?
Yet another reason not to buy a Tesla.
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Anthropic's revenue comes from just two companies: Github Copilot and Cursor.  But Cursor is struggling to pay its bills. What if it drops Anthropic?

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What the hell?  Pro-Jihad Qatari Royals Own More of London Than British King.  The British monarchy had so much of a head start. What happened? That's why Britain looks the way it does. 

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Weird and amazing. Blind woman can now see through a camera implanted in a tooth.

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Microsoft also wants to develop medical superintelligence.  Seems like it's following the same path as the others. Nothing novel, though.

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When Chinese kids can't get a job, they go to this place and pretend they have one. Interesting concept, but it would never last here in the U.S. Who would pay for it? What a waste of Chinese brains, though. It seems like it would be great place to swoop in and get some talent.

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Time for Tina to face reality. Oregon will see a drop go $15 billion in Medicaid money.  
“The Trump Administration and Republicans in Congress have betrayed American children and families, who will become sicker, hungrier, and less prosperous because of President Trump’s budget bill,” Kotek said."
Uh Tina, these people aren't Americans. They're illegal aliens.

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Wouldn't you know. One in seven Washington voters have no ID on file. Election systems in Blue states are just crap. The federal government needs to come in and clean house.

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Oregon DMV brings in millions of dollars selling citizens' information. This is harmful and should be illegal. What a$$holes.

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Yeah, OpenAI's GPT-5 roll out was really poorly done. Everybody's noticed.

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