Sugoi & Yokunai

Real Inflation is up 18.8% since the Biden administration started.

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Japan reports an increase in cancers after the mRNA booster SARS-CoV2 shot. There's an increase in cancers involving the pancreas, liver, uterus, skin, oropharyngeal, prostate, leukemia, ovary.  We only seem to see this published in foreign journals. Why is that?

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Oh, brother. Now the U.S. and U.K. want to ban Russia from the metals market. This is just going to hurt the west, just like all the other sanction efforts.

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The gun manufacturer, Remington, is leaving New York state after 208 years, and is moving to Georgia. That's a loss of jobs and decreased tax base for NY.

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Are science journalists resigning en masse? Not sure if this is a trend or just a one-time.

"Our findings provide support for the hypothesis that cat exposure is associated with an increased risk of broadly defined schizophrenia-related disorders." I thought as much. It would explain a lot of things.

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Quantum topology. Physicists discover a new quantum state by studying arsenic crystals.

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People are waiting to see United Healthcare's earnings report to see how much the Change Healthcare hacking fiasco has affected it. But now, it's reported that there's another ransomware attack underway.  Did they not learn from the first one?

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Taking CO2 out of the atmosphere is too expensive to fight climate change. And fighting pollution has removed an important cooling effect.  Well, you could talk to China and India, but good luck with that.

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Seattle Public Libraries will close (temporarily) starting April 14. Staffing issues, they say. No one wants to work. More nice things being taken away. But will they decrease taxes accordingly, since they're decreasing services? Yeah, right. 

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Amazon's got a giant warehouse in Woodburn. But's it's just going to provide work for robots. Not for you.

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I've not heard of the Ballmer Peak before. Maybe there's some science behind that?

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This is crazy. Some would like to see hospitals in British Columbia have designated illicit drug use sections that addicts can use. How's that for harm reduction, eh? Give 'em some hospital space.

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So, turbo cancer after vax boosters is real.  These studies always have to come out of some foreign country, because it'll never get published in the U.S.

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There are lipid profile changes that occur with age. But light exercise can get them back to younger profiles.

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How much of it was all fake? I used to watch Ken Anderson give talks, and would wonder in awe how he was able to get such amazing data. Well, imagine my surprise. And these were just the ones that were recently caught. How many more are still undetected? The guy needs to step down. He's besmirched the reputation of Dana Farber Cancer Center.

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Holy crap!  96% of US hospital websites share visitor info with Meta, Google, data brokers. What the hell, man? This is crazy! Why don't hospitals do something about this?

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Biden just forgave 277,000 more student loans. Guess how much that's going to cost taxpayers now. Go on, take a guess. This is loan transfer folks. From those college students to you.

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It's costing way more to own a home now. Robert Kiyosaki said that a home is not an asset but a liabilty. It seemed counter-intuitive at first, but it's true. Especially now.

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Physicists find a surprise with gluons. It looks like the strong force reaches a plateau at larger distances. Well, that's unexpected.

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This is what's going all around – Oregon Health Authority finds no link between the vax and sudden death.  If you look at the original study, you find that the researchers only searched the death certificates for certain terms: “sudden death,” “arrhythmia,” “dysrhythmia,” “asystole,” “cardiac arrest,” “myocarditis,” “congestive heart failure,” “unknown,” “undetermined,” or “pending”. They did not search for "pericarditis, myopericarditis, ventricular fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, or pulmonary embolism. So they relied on physicians writing specific terms on the death certificate, didn't find anything, and concluded that there is no connection.  What about people who may have had cardiac arrest but were resuscitated soon enough and did not die? They would not be recorded in this study. Others followed vaccinated people prospectively and found an increase in myocarditis. Others have used ICD-10 codes to see if there an increase in cardiac injury. Some have looked for all-cause mortality and found an uptick in cardiac mortality in males by subgroup analysis. I therefore don't consider the OHA study to be definitive. The limitations of the study need to be understood.

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Here's an interesting music idea. RSSBlue lets fans subscribe to your musical RSS feed. This way they can directly access your music, and a payment system assures that payments go to you.

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So who's right? Will AI be a boon to the world, or will it destroy the world. Here's what experts think.  Spoiler alert: there are opinions on both sides.

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China's youth are saying "Screw it. We're not going to save for retirement." They expect the state to take care of them. OK. I think American youth are soon going to come to this conclusion, too. Then what? Do we let these people die or go hungry? Eventually, you run out of other people's money. Then what?

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I've heard that it was good to give Ukraine our current military equipment, because it would mean that we would build new equipment that would be more modern. Well, that's not what's happening. The article makes it sound like using old planes taken out of storage is a good thing, but the Chinese will have more modern weapons, and we have this. I think we're screwed.

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Heh. This made me smile. Teenagers learn about the tax system. And they aren't happy. More conservatives, maybe?

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Welcome to Oregon.

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DuckDuckGo is going to offer a Privacy Pro package, with VPN service, data removal service and ID theft assistance. Meanwhile, Google One is shutting down their VPN service after a year – because of lack of customers! Ha! Who in their right mind would purchase VPN from Google? It's like purchasing VPN service from the CIA.

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Apple is slowly making the move to Florida, too. 'Bout time.

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Andrew Ng is going to join Amazon's Board of Directors. They're getting serious about AI. Andrew could have helped Google again, so that tells you something about Google's culture.

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PSU is planning a major performing arts complex downtown to replace Keller Auditorium.  Hmmm. I don't think this is a good time to build something nice in downtown Portland. Look at all that glass that will need to be replaced after Trump wins the election.

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Speaking of election, you know what surprises me about the news that Biden may not appear on two states' ballots? That the Democrats aren't the least bit worried about this. Because they know that the election process won't matter. No matter how the vote goes, they'll somehow make Biden win. At 3 am. With suitcases of ballots that will be counted and double-counted, if need be. With electronic voting machines hooked up to the Internet.

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Suddenly, daycare is too expensive, and is now in short supply. Guess it's time to raise wages again, huh? And also another tax to pay for free daycare. Yup, that's the solution.

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Problems at Portland's largest outdoor housing. Just providing housing is not the answer as you can see.

Too easy.  This site (udio.com) makes it too easy to create musical fast food. I suppose if you want quick and dirty music this could be useful. But, man...

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I can't believe that the FISA renewal was killed. But Speaker Johnson isn't going to let that stop him. And FBI's Chris Wray isn't happy either. Stay tuned.

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Legacy doctors file NLRB complaints regarding reduced shifts.

Camas and Eugene were voted two of the best places to live in the U.S. I can't vouch for Eugene, but Camas (apart from the eyesore paper mill) is certainly nice. But I would place Bend higher on the list, though. And in Washington, the San Juan Islands. Or Bainbridge Island. Or Port Townsend. Or Sequim.

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Lake Oswego may have to grant public access to the lake. That will result in a lot of homes losing value. We'll see litter and graffiti along the lakeshore, and maybe more theft. In today's world, with less respect for property, this is not the time to grant public access to anything.

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Why have so many doctors been unquestioning believers in the mRNA vax? Why do they not see with their own eyes?

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It's true. Pregnancy is linked to faster epigenetic aging in young women. Moms sacrifice a part of their lifespan for their children. Show them some love and gratitude.

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Elon Musk predicts that the Singularity will be next year. Maybe it'll just spit out facts more accurately than humans, but smarter is something else. I think we're close, but not next year.

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After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative. Love it!

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Acetaminophen May Be Less Heart-safe than Previously Thought. Even 500 mg dose equivalent daily produced cardiac changes. These were in mice, though, so it's possible that we wouldn't see this in humans, but you never know.

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So why are adolescents so mentally ill? Why not all these reasons? But yeah, they sure are mentally ill, and the problem is, many of them aren't aware that they are ill.

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And here's Sweden, trying to purge themselves of Big Tech and keep their data local. I admire the sentiment, but that's going to take time and a lot of money and hard work (and smarts).

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This is evil. AI colonialism. Cash-strapped Argentines queue for eyeball scans. Selling their privacy for cash.

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We'll see. Google Translate now doesn't need human input anymore.  Hokay.

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So procrastination is genetic? Well then.

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How Google lost ground in AI. Sundar was like Bill Gates, who initially didn't understand what the Internet was all about and didn't push Microsoft to get into it initially. Boy was that painful. Sundar Pichai had AI in his hands, and he let it slip away. And here we are.

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Scientists looked at brain scans, and found that you can accurate predict age, sex, and body weight. But that's it, at least for now. But clearly gender is not something you can make up. Of course, we knew that. I'm surprised about the weight. I guess fat gets into your brain.

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A couple of scientists from Japan predicts AI will destroy the social order. Maybe, maybe not. I don't think we can say.

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Apple launches AppClips. Looks like widgets to me.

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Unhappy Firefox user. Firefox is better than it used to be, but sometimes if I want to buy things online, I have to use Safari, as transactions won't complete with Firefox, and sometimes whole modules from a page won't load. I suspect that this is due to privacy add-ons I have installed. So many sites want to infringe on your privacy before you can interact with them.

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Today is Eclipse day, but it's overcast in much of the Pacific Northwest. Oh well.

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Another one bites the dust. Buffalo Wild Wings closes downtown store. Too much crime. Not enough foot traffic. Great move, Portland – shut down the parking garage instead of cleaning up the crime.  And you want Portland to recover?

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I knew it. Paxlovid doesn't work. I suspect people fell for the placebo effect.

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Most people won't be able to retire in their 60s. I think most people won't be able to retire at all. It'll be welfare for just about everyone eventually.

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The era of seamless deepfakes is approaching. If not already here. It's one more thing teens are having to deal with. As if there wasn't enough already.

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The Polar Vortex has reversed. Here's what it means.

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Avram Piltch is unhappy that the main image generative AI models depict Jews like caricatures, heavy on stereotypes. Hey, try typing in "Asian man". Many times, you'll get an image of a man with a conical hat.

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The EU has a talent shortage that's gotten worse since 2018. Nobody's got skills anymore. I'd bet the same is going on in the U.S.

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One more chart showing which states saw out-migration and in-migration.

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Does listening to Marconi Union's Weightless help relieve anxiety? Doesn't do it for me, but it might for you.

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Soon, you might be able to purchase an Invisibility Shield. It's on Kickstarter, though, so caveat emptor.

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Scientists have found a way to make the Internet transmit 4.5 million times faster on fiber. Well, good.

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Even the DailyMail has heard about Mike Schmidt's poor track record as DA. Spread the word, but Portland has a ways to go before it avoids being another Detroit of Baltimore.

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CraZy. San Francisco Bill Would Let People Sue Grocery Stores for Closing Too Quickly. What's in the water down there? Do these lawmakers even listen to themselves?

And here's why gas prices are so high in California.

And California shopping malls are disappearing. Hardly anyone goes to them anymore.

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Interesting post about why paying for identity theft protection isn't a good way to spend your money. Makes sense – they're all after-the-fact. You need to prevent problems, and the article describes what you can do.

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It's scary how precarious some mission-critical software is, being dependent on volunteer(s) to maintain something upon which everything rests. 

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A bit extreme, don't you think?  Is generative AI a waste of our time and money? Because it's sucking all the air out of the room and spewing bad things everywhere, and it doesn't adequately address social problems. Right, so let's throw it all away.

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For web designers. Nice summary of CSS logical properties.

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Bad science. No, global warming isn't going to lead to economic decline.

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Thank goodness. An appeals court blocks a debt relief plan for students who say they were misled by colleges. This is one of the greatest debt transferences we've seen lately. I don't want to take on other people's wealth.

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No, Michigan mayors can't stop the solar eclipse. I know they love to legislate other things into existence, but reality can be so uncooperative.

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Cool. Mt. Etna has been blowing smoke rings. I've never seen that before.

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German domestic intelligence chief defends his efforts to police the "thought & speech patterns" of citizens, outlines the novel offence of "systematic delegitimisation of state conduct". Domestic intelligence chief? They're going back to being East Germany all over again. I'm afraid that something like this will coming to the U.S.

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The end of Geek Squad. As Best Buy implodes, the famous Geek Squad is being put away. Everything is falling apart in this economy.

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Hawaii judge strikes again. A federal judge ruled Friday that the state of Hawaii won’t have to face federal claims from a trio of federal class actions filed against it in the aftermath of the devastating wildfires in Maui that destroyed the town of Lahaina and killed over 100 people. Will anyone find justice?

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Unbelievable. A Buffalo hotel cancels eclipse reservations at the last minute without explanation. Some suspect they wanted the higher prices that latecomers were willing to pay.

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