Sugoi & Yokunai

For patients with traumatic brain injury, don’t pull the plug too soon. Try to wait at least 72 hours. Even so, quality of life afterwards may be such that prolongation of life might not be in the patient's best interest.

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Femtosecond lasers might create displays you can touch. One step to developing holograms?

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Ilya Sutskever will leave OpenAI soon. I feared as much. Hard to recover from last year's debacle.

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What are the dangers of AI going rogue?  I predict we won't know until something happens. Rear view mirror. And we might have super-intelligence faster than we think.

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Out of control spending.  Federal interest payment on the national debt now exceeds defense spending.

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Larry Huss comments on Tina Kotek's unpopularity, but only to try to explain how she got elected. He thinks it's because people don't bother to vote. I think it's mail-in balloting, and the potential for cheating.

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Top Five reasons why the homeless die.  Overdoses, heart disease, suicide, homicide and vehicle crashes.

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Restaurant apocalypse. Restaurants are struggling, as with many other things. I read yesterday that Red Lobster may declare bankruptcy. Who's not struggling these days? Oh yeah, government.

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Oregon is in the top ten most dangerous states. We're number 8, actually.

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Washington state has to pay more for child care because Congress is sending less money.  How did government get in the business of taking care of people's childcare?  What else are we going to subsidize?

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Washington state road deaths reach a 33 year high – up 10% from last year. WA has the third most dangerous roads in the nation, but it's not the roads' fault.  Here's a clue: "Last year, 400 fatalities involved a drug- or alcohol-impaired driver, 251 involved speeding". I'll bet the marijuana legalization has something to do with it. 

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NGOs that are facilitating the border crisis. It's a business model. They don't want the problem to go away, or they will be out of a job.

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Why does the Oregon ballot have judges up for election that have no opponent? Lars Larson explains why.

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iPadOS still has a ways to go before it is considered truly useful for techies.

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FAFO. A year ago, Seattle School District told Seattle parents that if they didn't like their liberal curriculum, they could go elsewhere. So they did. Now the school district enrollment has dropped so much that they may have to close 20 schools.

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Talk about bad timing. An online education company, called 2U, was started in 2018, and once had a market cap of $5 billion.  Due to increased competition and rising costs, the company became non-competitive, and is now worth only about $30 million.  And today, OpenAI released the multimodal GPT-4o, which can do online education really well, as seen in this video with Sal Khan.  Looks like it's time to shut down.

Chronic loneliness can affect the brain like a type of stress.  And it can lead to dementia. Boy, as if we didn't have enough factors for this.

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Time-restricted eating is a diet idea that was promoted to help people lose weight. You would fast for a limited period during the day, then eat without restriction for the remaining hours. The TREAT study and a later study showed that it doesn't help you lose weight, although you might lose weight if you are diabetic.  And now this study shows that on this diet plan, you have a increased risk of death.  A 91% increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease! 

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Always have a backup. Things could have been worse for UniSuper Pension Fund members.  Google Cloud accidentally deleted their $125 billion account.  Luckily they had a backup account with another provider, and so the information was not lost.  Whew!

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Techies in the Bay Area were told to return to their offices. So many of the top talent quit instead.  Meanwhile in India, it got so hot that many of them were more than happy to go back to air-conditioned offices.

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What took her so long?  Melinda Gates is resigning from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  But an organization called the "Bill Gates Foundation" has less appeal.

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Singapore is a model nation. It's wealthy and full of really smart people. So I think the Prime Minister is worth listening to.

Download Singapore.mp4

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This is how Ronald Reagan dealt with "mostly peaceful" protestors.

An Australian government wanted to power to censor information on X/Twitter from the world. The hubris of some people. Fights not completely over yet, though.

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A sleeping agent, suvorexant, was found to reduce build up of amyloid-beta and tau proteins, linked to Alzheimer's disease. Improving cognition has been linked to reading more fiction, and walking faster. But correlation is not causation. Smarter people read more and walk faster than demented people. Reading more fiction and walking faster isn't going to make you smarter.

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Really?  "Kotek inherited the societal residue of her fellow progressive Democrat, Gov. Kate Brown.  Generally speaking, governors in Oregon haven’t been popular for a long time." Yeah sure, blame Oregon.

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Good taste. Steve Jobs was a fan of shin-hanga style of Japanese art, especially that of Kawase Hasui.

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Best ways to stay awake without caffeine. Someone has also discovered my sunflower seeds trick!

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Can't wait for this to go online.  The Catfish Test.  This is a test to see if someone is really who they say they are. I can see several applications for this.

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I just deleted the Signal app from my phone.  I didn't realize that the Chairman of the Signal Foundation is the same person as the CEO of NPR. That person has no background in tech, and has a dangerous political tilt.  I thought Moxie Marlinspike was still in charge.  Times sure change.

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Obesity now linked to 40% of cancer cases.

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Really? There are 15 places in Oregon where a couple can just live on Social Security.  You probably have to be Tier One on PERS, though, I bet.

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Einstein said famously that "Problems can't be solved with the same kind of thinking that created them." When Democrats face consequences of problems that they created, their solutions often make things worse. Here's an example. Oregon is flooded with illegal immigrants – a consequence of Democrat policy. Now there a report that Deschutes County doesn't have enough public defenders. The article includes this statement: "We had an individual who did not have English as his primary language”.  So to deal with the shortage, Oregon's solution is to remove the bar requirement to get a license.

Here's another problem: a lot of people have been maxing out their credit cards to get by in this lousy economy with high inflation.

That's not healthy, so what does the Biden administration want to do – legislate capping credit late fees to just 8%. This is unfair to credit card companies, who are essentially providing unsecured loans.

Here's another example: California's tax base is diminishing due to their Democrat policies, and now they went from a huge surplus in 2022 to a huge deficit in 2024.  Newsom doesn't want to cut spending. And in California, spending is indeed crazy, like giving free vodka to the homeless. 

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Here's a video recommender service called Discovahub, in case you need it.

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Does college pay off?  Sometimes. Depends on your field of study, how much you invest, and what your degree is. Masters degrees may not be as worthwhile.  At this time, I'm not sure that paying for an expensive school (especially an elite school) is worth it anymore.

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Lesbian and bisexual nurses have a substantially higher all-cause mortality compared with straight nurses.  No cause given. Just speculation.

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New VPN vulnerability has been making the news lately. It's called the TunnelVision Vulnerability and relies on an "option 121" setting, which causes the network's DHCP server to override default routing rules that send VPN traffic, instead, diverting the data to the DHCP server itself. And if the DHCP server is a rogue server maliciously attached to the network, then traffic security is compromised. But to work, someone has to have access to the network to insert the rogue server. So you're safe at home, but perhaps not safe in the coffee shop, or other public networks. Unless the VPN runs on Linux or an Android device, since Android devices don't use option 121.

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What does that tell you? The majority of Congressional aides would favor term limits for their bosses.

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Bike brands are starting to implement C-V2X tech, which can warn cyclists about incoming cars and traffic problems ahead. Even behind walls.

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More on the nuclear fusion breakthrough. It seems the secret was the tungsten encasement.

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It seems that others have noticed that the media is flip-flopping on the vax now. They're trying to retcon what they said in 2020. Trust lost.

And now, more info is leaking that Pfizer intended there to be a separate batch of vax product for their workers, as opposed to that for the general public.

Optum has agreed not to enforce the non-compete clause regarding the Oregon Medical Group in Eugene.  Well, since the SCOTUS scuttled non-competes, I don't think they had a choice. But is it too late now for those patients?  What kind of providers will Optum get to replace the docs who have left?

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Making chat hallucination-free. Invetech is incorporating Deterministic Quoting, which is putting a blue box around text that is taken directly from the source, without modification. (Sorta like turning the temperature setting to 0.) 

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Peter Jackson is planning a new Lord of the Rings-based series. I was hoping it was going to be based on the Silmarillion or some other Tolkien-authored story, but it looks like it will be something written by a modern author, like the Amazon series, with woke characters, etc. The working title is The Hunt for Gollum. Looks like a pass. Why can't they stick to canon, or invent their own mythos instead of appropriating someone else's fantasy world?

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Stanford may have developed a prototype of the future of AR glasses.

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Just in time for summer. Sony has release the latest version of their personal body cooler/warmer, the REON POCKET 5. Kinda pricey, and I'd like to know that it really works, first.

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City of Portland's budget director quit abruptly, with no reason given.  Very odd.

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Twality Middle School has a teacher that has assigned kids to liken Trump to Hitler.  TDS is strong in this school in the Tualatin-Tigard district. Crazy.

––– 凄い ––– And what's going on with the mental health of females?  Clearly something is driving many of them absolutely bat-shit crazy.  Many of these women are in positions of leadership.

Fusion breakthrough. They're up to 6 minutes of plasma now.

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In the new USNWR rankings, Oregon has fallen from 23rd to 31st place.  Now, Oregon is worst than half of the states. Sure feels like it. And the reasons are mainly poor scores on crime, education, economy and opportunity. So, it's not your imagination. Things have really gotten worse.

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Can't believe the public school system wants even more money, seeing that student enrollment has dropped. Makes no sense.

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Unions. Now Legacy Health primary care providers want to unionize. A couple of Guidepost Montessori's wanted to unionize, and now the schools are shut down.

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Newport is rebelling against DEI policies.  Naturally some folks are unhappy.

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Of course. Worst cities in the nation to drive in. Portland is #10.

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Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business. This is like watching an interactive movie. Still kinda creepy, but I understand the attraction.

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I wasn't aware that pediatric constipation was a problem, nor did I know that MiraLax could promote behavioral problems. There's that bowel-brain interaction again.

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As hospitals are facing more economic hardship, they are turning to harsher measures to get their money. On one hand, you can't blame them, but the government needs to fix the underlying problem that is causing this issue. Everything else is band-aid stopgaps that often just make the problem worse.

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Sweden is smart. Even as the EU has abandoned its NetZero goals, Sweden already sees the need for nuclear, and will pursue it. Even some natural gas.

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Apparently many dementia patients achieve a brief period of clarity and recognition just before death. Why that occurs is unclear.

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Lars Larson think the PSU president should be fired. Ann Cudd may have been good during fair weather periods, such as for fund raising, but during tough times, you really need something else. Probably some testosterone.

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Just a whiff of fentanyl causes brain injury (leukoencephalopathy). This is a report from OHSU.  FLAIR hyperintensity usually means increased blood (such as inflammation).  This patient didn't just get better after naloxone.  It took at least a month before he was even close to recovered.

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This is not a good time to be in the news business. But Trump is making journalism great again. He sure helped CNN.

And why do people hate Trump? This guy came up with three reasons. I love how he includes the "Trump Disclaimer" (Hey, I'm not a Trump supporter, so don't get me wrong.)  Coward.  I'm not sure I agree with his three reasons. It seems that the main reason is that people are just ill-informed about issues, and haven't thought through their stances deeply enough to know how to think.

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Sad. Boy Scouts of America is now just known as Scouts BSA. Just as well. The original Boy Scout agenda was for a different age. In these modern times, more than ever, we need something to help boys become men. Teach them what it takes to be a man in this new culture. Team them how to survive and instill a moral compass. Where to turn when things go sour, and how to deal with adversity in a constructive manner. There should just be something for boys. Taught by manly men.

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The Saudi's wanted to build one of those 17 minute cities, built in a straight line. I love the comment: "This is one of those projects that could only happen in a country where everyone's afraid to tell the emperor that he has no clothes."  It's going to make for some interesting Ozymandias-type ruins in the future, where people visit and shake their heads at how precious resources were spent and wasted.

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It's easier to synthesize diamonds, now.  At least diamond coatings. 

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Cool. MIT invents a thin fabric that can act as a sound barrier.

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Is this why Apple products haven't changed their look in ages? Apple is losing the last designer of the Jony Ive team.  Too bad.  I notice that the new iPad Pro is just another extension of the "let's make it thinner and add more pixels" approach.

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Interesting article of a woman who has two genomes. She was the fusion of two zygotes that merged.  She is her own sister, and seems to be someone with just one personality and sense of identity, and not two. This implies that our sense of identity is not just a consequence of having a certain set of DNA. So how does a sense of identity arise? What if the other zygoes was of the opposite sex. What would the combo turn out to be?

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So FTX found the money.  Intresting that this article was written by Matt Levine.

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Develop a circle of friends and advocates. This is your F-you Network.

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Google is leaving One Market Plaza in SF. Hasn't the city gotten the message yet?

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More Americans are using the Buy Now - Pay Later debt system.  This hides true debt, so things are probably worse than we think.

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OpenAI is partnering with StackOverflow.

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New York Times publishes a piece on the vaccine injured, and how no one is listening to them.  Remember when the NYT was promoting the vax? They sounded like Dr. Roach, the online advice doctor.

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Jack Dorsey has left BlueSky. He's apparently off the board, too.

Update (11 May 2024):

Not only has he left, but he's recommending users go back to or stay on X/Twitter. Wow, what happened?

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Finally. An answer to the question as to whether gravity is classical or quantum.

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Here is a table of IQ scores of various AI fundamental models. If the test is entirely offline, the scores are a bit lower. But I'm surprised that the IQ score are still around 100. I'm not sure we're testing the right things.

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University of Washington Yacht Club is set to be terminated after 76 years, in the name of equity. No one is allowed to have nice things in the modern Democrat world. Everything must be brought down to the lowest common denominator.

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A slew of Tina Kotek articles recently:

Why EVs are not catching on. People are waking up now, but why did they allow themselves to get fooled in the first place?

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Best and Worst States to save money. Oregon is in the top 5 for the worst states. Taxes are why.

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Is this the real Civil War that America faces?  Could be.

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Supertone Shift lets you alter your voice in realtime.  They have an open beta program that ends soon.

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This is a problem. Multidrug resistant bacteria are mutating into functionally distinct strains, different from the bacteria of earth. What does this mean for an astronaut who gets sick?

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Nearly a third of Oregonians are living alone. And it's increasing. Not good for mental health.

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Mission creep. Oregon Medicaid has started providing air conditioners, air purifiers and power banks. This is another Oregon "first in the nation" experiment. That's the problem with government-provided social services. Everyone wants to empty the treasury for their own cause. Everyone.

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Biden wants the wealthy to pay their fair share. What's fair?

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Which states have the highest minimum wage? The Democrat states do. Oregon is #11.

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This great news for doctors. The FTC has abolished non-compete clauses nationwide.  Probably too late for Eugene, however.

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Unscientific American. It seems that to get published, scientific writers need to stick to the liberal narrative, or risk getting excluded. You can't say that racism is improving. You have to push climate change. You have to report favorably on gender surgery. The public must hear only one side of the issue.

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Many PhDs are going hungry.  This is sad, and not the way to advance science. We have money to help, but sadly, it's going elsewhere.

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Google's Med-Gemini has achieved remarkable accuracy in medical diagnosis comparable to that of experienced doctors. There's still the risk of hallucination, however, and a human doctor is still required.

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