18 November 2025

Sharper MRI scans may be on horizon thanks to new physics-based model. This is good, as it might decrease magnetic fields strength requirements.

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Two related articles: Why top firms paradoxically fire good workers and Why one of the nation’s most prosperous industries is shedding jobs. It's not just AI. It's apparently some power dynamic to get the ones who remain to accept lower-paying jobs.

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Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is the most common leukemia diagnosed. One of the things that oncologists will do is check to see if there is evidence of mutations in the immunoglobulin heavy chain variable region. You want them mutated, because unmutated IgHV has a worse prognosis, as they are not as likely to have come from the more mature germinal B centers, but rather from naïve B cells.

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CRISPR breakthrough reverses chemotherapy resistance in lung cancer. CRISPR was used to disable the NRF2 gene. Paper here.

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Dang. Tirzepatide quashes appetite only temporarily. After several months, you'll want to start eating stuff again.

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Engineers made the first fully synthetic brain tissue model. Well this is how it starts, doesn't it?

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Gemini 3 came out today. Google wants to turn it into your 'thought partner'.  Uh, no thanks.

Are you using Google's Nest for home security. Might want to read this. 

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I wondered what was happening with Suisun City and California Forever. Despite the billionaires being involved, there was still not enough money to realize the dream. It's still a wasteland. Don't build something like this in California. It's not the state you thought it was. 

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai sums up my AI anxiety perfectly.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC at Google’s California headquarters, Pichai acknowledged that while AI investment growth is at an “extraordinary moment,” the industry can “overshoot” in investment cycles, as we’re seeing now. He drew comparisons to the late 1990s Internet boom, which saw early Internet company valuations surge before collapsing in 2000, leading to bankruptcies and job losses.

“We can look back at the Internet right now. There was clearly a lot of excess investment, but none of us would question whether the Internet was profound,” Pichai said. “I expect AI to be the same. So I think it’s both rational and there are elements of irrationality through a moment like this.”

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Be Careful What You Tell Your AI Chatbot. A chatbot is not your best friend that you can confide all your secrets. And you might indirectly give away more than you might think. Remember, these things are smart.

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RSL: Really Simple Licensing. This is meant to be a new licensing standard designed for the AI era. Where you might get licensing fees for AI training on your content. Let's see it in practice.

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An injectable antenna could safely power deep-tissue medical implants. Kind of like using a Qi charger. This could solve a big problem.

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The earth tilted 31.5° in less than 20 years.  I sure didn't notice. I can't believe that it's just because of pumping groundwater. I think it's probably something else.

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Oregon has a shortage of dentists willing to help low-income kids. The article attributes this to low reimbursement, but the question really is why reimbursement was reduced? It's because money needs to go to support non-citizens and the growing and endless number of homeless.

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Now the NGOs who want to get in on the Homeless Industrial Complex business model now find themselves at a conflict between federal and state laws.  Instead of getting real jobs, some folks get grant money to set up an NGO that pays them a salary. They were probably hoping to get both federal and state money. But that's no longer possible. 

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Wells Fargo is laying off 444 more people. Just in time for the holidays. Not that there's ever a good time to get this news.

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Hawaii small businesses struggle as costs and minimum wage rise. Hawaii learns the painful lesson that you can't just legislate wealth. Think about it. Minimum wage has gone up in all the West Coast states. Does anyone feel rich? Comfortable? Stable? All people do is complain about how prices keep going up. Think there might be a connection?

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Oregonians could be looking at slower court systems, crowded prisons, fewer resources for state law enforcement investigations and decreased local grant funding for anti-theft programs under the proposed cuts public safety agencies put forward.

Charging people with crimes and bringing them into prisons or the court system could also become more difficult with less public access at the Oregon Judicial Department. Staff for the department say that a $35 million dollar cut or 5% reduction in funding could reduce the courts’ ability to respond to rising caseloads and implement court security projects. 

The state’s human services department is no stranger to cuts from federal uncertainty, and it’s already staring down roughly $500 million in losses every two years under new regulations from the GOP tax and spending law meant to reduce payment errors for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. 

A 5% cut at the agency would amount to $372 million mainly through workforce reductions and paying providers and contractors less. It could result in the most vulnerable residents of the state, including children and foster families, receiving even fewer benefits. 

One program on the chopping block is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families UN program, which provides family coaching, engagement and cash assistance to families with little to no income. The proposed reductions would see the loss of benefits for about 3,200 2-parent families
Of course, Oregon could have made changes that would make it more business-friendly and raise the wealth of the entire state. It's way too late for that now.

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17 November 2025

Cool. RNA-based gene therapy might reverse nerve damage seen in ALS.

The study found that muscle cells produce small RNA molecules called microRNA-126 and send them in vesicles, through the synapsis, to the tip of the nerve cell. The role of these molecules is to prevent the expression of the TDP-43 protein at the neuromuscular junction when it is not needed. Dr. Ionescu explains: “We discovered that in ALS, the muscle produces a smaller amount of microRNA-126, which leads to an excess of TDP-43. The excess protein forms toxic aggregates that attack molecules essential for functioning of the mitochondria — the nerve cell’s powerhouse. Damage to the mitochondria causes an energy deficit, gradually destroying motor neurons and leaving patients’ muscles paralyzed.”

Conversely, increasing the level of microRNA-126 in tissues taken from ALS patients and in ALS model mice led to a decrease in the levels of TDP-43, and the neurons stopped degenerating and even regenerated. The researchers concluded that adding microRNA-126 rescues neurons damaged by ALS, prevents degeneration of the neuromuscular junction, and could serve as a basis for developing effective drugs for this currently incurable disease.

Paper here.

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The company is focusing on A.I. that will help in engineering and manufacturing in a number of fields, including computers, aerospace and automobiles. It is unclear where Project Prometheus will be based.
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There is a AI-based mushroom identifier, called MushroomCheck. The images on this page are full of AI mistakes. Hope the app isn't.

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There are weird rock circles in the  Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, near San Diego.  They look man-made, but so many?

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Sea urchins are just brain and gonads. Do they have consciousness?

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16 November 2025

If you put a book down for a long time, and then take up reading it again, you may have forgotten the plot and characters. The Where was I website will summarize everything that has occurred up to the point of the page number you specify, without giving away any spoilers ahead.

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Owning a cat could double your risk of schizophrenia. And it may not be due just to toxoplasmosis. This would explain a LOT of the craziness amongst female lefties, actually. It's known that conservatives prefer dogs to cats.

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This may be why Yann LeCun left Meta. How humiliating that one of the great brains of AI had to answer to a young Asian hustler who made his money just by commoditizing datasets to companies to train their LLMs. Why did Zuck let this happen. But LeCun has an interesting vision. He's probably rich enough to have enough FU money to leave Meta and pursue his dream. I wish him luck.

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Drinking 1 cup of coffee daily actually decreases your risk of atrial fibrillation. Not what I would have thought.

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AI wrapper apps were the low-hanging fruit. But some were able to make money off of it anyway. I'm thinking about Mark Cuban getting rich from the sale of Broadcast.com. Make your money fast before the world knows what's going on.

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There's something worse than recession and we're already in it. This supposedly about inflation but the article focuses on NYC, and the problem is not so much inflation as that the bulk of the city was dependent on government subsidizies. A lot of people lived the subsidized life, in order to survive in a world living adjacent to the world's richest people. Talk about income disparity. And so the government had to keep up with the subsidies in order to finance their lifestyle. And the subsidies are being pulled back. But the cure isn't Mamdani. The author states:
"I suppose one way to fix inequality would be to wreck the property values by returning us to the crime and filth-ridden era of the early 1990’s, but that’s probably (hopefully?) not what he has in mind."
Of course that it what Mamdani wants. Trashing the rich will certainly lessen the income disparity some, but the rich will take measures. And all of NYC will suffer as a result. Really too bad. 
No the problem isn't inflation. It's living the subsidized life for too long. You had to know it wasn't going to last forever.

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The Multnomah County deflection center program has been an expensive disaster, and they don't want to hear about it.  
“Two people a day for the millions we’ve spent can’t continue,” Brim-Edwards said. “I think we need an improved model.”

Vega Pederson held firm, calling for Brim-Edwards to stop interrupting her and vowing to continue deflection meetings without county commissioners or the public.

“That is the way we will continue to operate so we can continue to have frank discussions,” Vega Pederson said.

What a grift and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

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15 November 2025

There's a lot of mystique about the legendary Johnny von Neumann. But was he really superhuman? Perhaps much of the legend was made up. That seems to be a common thing. 

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Norway is finding that their wealth tax is backfiring on them. The wealthy are fleeing. Oregon and Washington will learn similar lessons.  Those Scandinavians seem to be making a lot of dumb decisions lately, especially with immigration and dealing with rape, assault and murder.

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There is increasing resistance to data center construction now. Oregon will face this, too. There is an Oregon law against the construction of new nuclear power plants. That was after the Trojan power plant was decommissioned as there was a lot of concern after the Three Mile Island disaster. But that was 45 years ago, and the technology has changed. We need to rethink this.

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Sheesh. Comet sends all your URLs to Perplexity servers and there's no way to stop it. Why do people think the Comet AI browser is worth it? Just so you can have a browser plan your next vacation for you with AI?  Silicon Valley nerds live in a different world. 

And many people hate that Windows 11 is devolving into an agentic OS. Microsoft is willfully ignoring their users. 

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Another tech nerd, Bradley Tusk. wants to use crypto-technology to make it so that voting can be done on a mobile phone. Doesn't he realize that people already stay far away from crypto? That they don't trust this tech? That the few people who do understand the tech can undermine it? Sometimes the best tech for something as elementary as voting is low-tech, pencil and paper. Verifiable and easy to understand.  No Dominion or Smartmatic voting machines. We learned that lesson the hard way. 

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Editing the genes of babies is something that we'll end up doing someday, but I don't trust Sam Altman and his husband to be the one to do it. Just because you have money doesn't mean you're the right person.

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A guy asked 9 different frontier models to vibe-code an analog clock.  The results are straight out of Picasso, or some modern artist. It's amazing how so few get it right with zero-shot coding. The best efforts are from DeepSeek and KimiK2, which are both Chinese models. The American models are lousy.

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Seattle mayor-elect to enter office facing challenges with empty storefronts, restaurants. The city is in dire straits, and look who they elect for mayor. Seattle is f*cked. 

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Reading this article, I was surprised to read this statement from Multnomah County economist Jeff Renfro, who says that he "had expected the county to start 2027 without a deficit or surplus". Whuuut?  And whom does he blame? Why Trump and tariffs, of course.

Oregon's state economist is more realistic. John Tapogna states that “Across all of our domains, we are falling off the U.S. pace.” 

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Rogue Brewery abruptly shuts down. Very sad. There's a lot of history with Rogue. The surf contests. Those were nice times, and we shall miss them. One by one, all we will have is memories. Sentiment like this always seem to conclude with a reflection of Oregon's natural beauty and the belief that we will recovery. Or that we have a "legacy of innovation" but can only point to Nike. I'd feel a lot better if there were numerous more examples of Oregon's enduring excellence. Lumber's gone. Tech is imploding. 

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14 November 2025

Automating Warren Buffet. Someone used ML techniques to screen stocks using criteria similar to what Warren Buffet says that he uses to evaluate businesses. I'm surprised that his top 10 are almost all tech stocks. They have been performing well, but it's not what's in Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio. This is just an interesting exercise, but I wouldn't take it to the bank.

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just four amino acid substitutions – at positions S463, E511, Y527 and T530 – that occur in the naked mole-rat’s cyclic guanosine monophosphate–adenosine monophosphate synthase (cGAS). These small changes enable the protein to linger longer on chromatin following DNA damage, rather than being swiftly removed by the TRIM41-mediated ubiquitination that marks it for segregation from chromatin. By prolonging its presence, the enzyme facilitates the formation of a repair complex between two key proteins, FANCI and RAD50, which act together to mend broken DNA strands through homologous recombination.
This is key! Improving DNA repair will have implications for cancer treatment as well.

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North Korean social engineering scams can be quite subtle. Suspect anything that is unexpected. Being aware is key.

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Intel is not done with layoffs. 669 more workers will be laid off, and these are engineers and technicians in Hillsboro. Very sad, and just before the holidays. Many thought their positions were secure, but times have changed. And of course, Oregon suffers further with a declining tax base and more in need of unemployment support. How much can the state tolerate?

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Awful. Oregon is at the very bottom for 4th grade math and reading.  And 8th grade performance is nothing to be proud of either. The Oregon Department of Education ought to be fired and replaced. This is shameful.

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And they essentially throw good money after bad, spending it all on supporting the homeless and supporting "refugees," instead of fixing Portland so that businesses would be willing to move back in and invest in the city.

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Seattle's new Socialist mayor Katie Wilson vows to 'Trump-proof' the city, plans to enact high taxes, free childcare. Copying the Portland formula.  The West Coast states and cities have a lot more suffering to go through it seems.

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Oregon critics say new U.S. law will ‘wipe out 95% to 99%’ of hemp industry, take CBD gummies and oils off shelves. Maybe we'll see less marijuana usage in Oregon. The overall IQ of the state might increase. Less craziness, violence and traffic accidents.

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13 November 2025

This is a shocker. This German study showed that 

This implies that roughly only one in seven German individuals with a PCR-positive test later had detectable IgG antibodies, that is, was actually infected with SARS-CoV-2.

The IgG results observed and published by ALM have not been acknowledged or communicated by the RKI to date, despite the fact that transparency in reporting such data should be mandatory, both scientifically and in terms of public accountability. Second, the proportion of the German population with a detectable immune response to SARS-CoV-2 was already substantial by the end of 2020. Approximately one-quarter of the population carried IgG antibodies at that point, following a trajectory determined almost exclusively by natural infections. By the end of 2021, practically the whole German population could be considered IgG positive.
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I've noticed this. As you are falling asleep, there is a tipping point. When I've closed my eyes, I sometimes feel a sense of "here it comes" when I know that sleep is coming on. Lucid dreamers probably experience this, too.

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DNA sequencers now need to take into account all the non-standard nucleotides. Machine learning to the rescue!

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So this is what Yann LeCun left Meta for. Fei-Fei Li and Yann LeCun are independently seeking to produce world-models. Li's World Labs has produced Marble AI. It might be good for gaming, and if you were into creating an alternative universe experience. Is this the new trend? Web 3.0 was supposed to be something like this, but that fizzled. LeCun's model might have medical applications, perhaps in psychiatry.

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Three days ago, I mentioned how Portland City Council was figuring out if their limited money should go to cleaning up the homeless mess everywhere in the city, or giving housing and food assistance to refugees (probably illegal aliens). Angelio Morillo voted to support the refugees. Well of course, Keith Wilson are other city council members are upset and don't want $4.3 million cut from the homeless cleanup fund. Either way, this is throwing good money after bad, as the underlying problems will still be there. Homeless trashing the city, and "refugees" clamoring for food and shelter. Blue city problems.

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Yes! Getting rid of 340B pricing will level the playing field between hospitals and private doctors clinics. This program ballooned under Obamacare, and the original intent became abused to the great benefit of hospitals.  This is another example of how when the government gets involved in something and skews market forces to the benefit of a favored party, unforeseen consequences benefit those who are able to take advantage. Instead of just being able to help the poor, hospitals were able to become very rich.

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Well, it won't happen in Seattle, I guess.

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12 November 2025

Why can't Wikipedia explain math. Really. It's not just me.

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I agree with this: the decline of AI will not be a crash. It will be a burn, like the dotcom era. There's so much scrum, right now. Time for the fluff to burn off, and leave the strong entities standing. Yeah, it'll be painful, but ultimately, healthy.

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Venting doesn't reduce anger. I never thought it did. Only calming maneuvers do.

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Datacenters are hoarding up SSD drives. I still see them on the shelves at Apple stores, though. Probably talking about a different thing, no doubt.

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Here's something scary. People can be identified based on the way WiFi signals reflect off them. When you think about it, it's just a photon of another wavelength, so why not? But WiFi is ubiquitous and invisible. You'd never know. Bet Palantir is working on this. 

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How's this for hypocrisy? 
In northern Brazil, near the city of Belém, a strip of rainforest about eight miles long was cleared to build a four-lane highway in advance of the COP30 climate summit that began on Monday. The highway, dubbed Avenida Liberdade, is intended to handle the surge of delegates and dignitaries expected for the gathering.
...Critics are pointing out the blatant irony of cutting down a protected rainforest for a climate conference that is itself aimed, among other things, at halting deforestation.
“They ripped the hell out of the Rainforest of Brazil to build a four-lane highway for Environmentalists to travel.
Gavin Newsom will be there.
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Scientists at Stanford feel that lupus may be caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. Great. It's about time we found out.

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There's a FOSS alternative to Mathematica, called SageMath. It's not as polished as Mathematica. MatLab from MathWorks is another alternative.

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I missed this from last October, but GLP-1 agonists really lower colon cancer mortality. Lowering 5 year mortality from 37.1% to 15.5% is not shabby. Is something being done to build on these results?

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Look at these mysterious holes in the Andes Mountains. What were they? I don't buy the marketplace theory. These are too regular and too long to be the site of a marketplace. It's got to be something else.

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Portland is proof that socialism is destroying American cities.  Seattle, too. New York City will find out very soon.

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Don't ask. How attractive is Portland to real estate investors?

Are you paying attention, NYC?
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11 November 2025

FDA Strips Health Risk Warnings from Menopause Hormone Therapy. Boy, this issue is more nuanced. The real risk for breast cancer was the simultaneous use of estrogen and progesterone together, as in PremPro. The risk is lower with estrogen alone as it is more of a tumor promoter than a carcinogen. But there is still the risk of endometrial cancer. But it's nice that the FDA is reviewing the recommendation, as it should be doing. Long overdue. 

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The FBI wants to know who is running the archive.is website. I didn't realize it was a secret.

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This is funny. 60 Minutes had an episode where this Harvard breast cancer researcher is upset because her funding is cutoff, and the segment makes it seem like her research is absolutely vital and critical to breast cancer work. A colleague puts it into perspective:

It's refreshing to see such honesty.
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Who knew that blocking the thyroid receptor β would slow prostate cancer growth? "NH-3 produced dose-dependent tumor growth inhibition, reaching about 80 percent at 3 mg/kg with no overt toxicity in body weight or organ histology. Oral dosing was effective too." Sounds like a winner.

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Can Intel produce AI chips for Tesla at 10% of the cost of nVIDIA? That's what some are saying. We shall see.

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South Korean scientists think that the expansion of the universe is slowing down, contrary to the orthodoxy. Wonder what Sabine Hossenfelder thinks of this.

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Seattle's mayoral election has counted long enough so that Katie Wilson is now ahead. Now the Supreme Court is going to weigh in on whether counting ballots after election day is legal. It might end up being just for federal elections, though. Seattle will be Mamdani-doomed if Wilson wins. 

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The head of Tesla's Cybertruck program, Siddhant Awasthi, is departing. Leaving behind kind of mixed legacy.

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Japanese scientists can turn body fat into bone, that can be used to heal fractures, such as in the spine. This would be great for kyphoplasties and vertebroplasties.

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This is why I'm wary of AI. When a shipping company sends a tracking code to your iPhone, Apple will snatch that code and put it into the URL https://trackingshipment.apple.com/... that it wants you to click. Now they have a record of what you purchased. Creepy.

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Puter.js. Could this be the missing link between developing for AI and developing for the Web that I've been waiting for? That was simpler than using Vercel and more robust than using Gradio, and didn't resort to using Huggingface Spaces?

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Meta's Yann LeCun is leaving to start a startup. Seems like a lot of good people are leaving Meta. What does it mean? 

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Are anxiety and associated disorders tied to low brain levels of choline? Seems like something that would have been noticed long ago. And I doubt that anxiety can be ameliorated by increasing one's choline intake. What if lowered levels of choline was the brain's response to increased anxiety, rather than the cause? Are we fueling something we shouldn't be?

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How long is your oral presentation? Now you don't have to guess. You might be able to make fairly good estimates with this tool, Words to Time.

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10 November 2025

The PCSK9 inhibitor, enlicitide, is now available in oral form. Previous means of inhibiting PCSK9 involved infusions of an antibody, either evolocumab or alirocumab, given every 2 weeks. Now, treatment is much more convenient.

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Nevada is suing TikTok for addiction. This would be a first.

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Apple is planning to hide the camera under the glass in next year's iPhone. On a side note, Apple can't keep secrets anymore, it seems.

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Two articles: Elon Musk talks about Universal Basic Income and What does Elon Musk do with his extreme wealth?  Life would be quite different. 

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Could the cause of colon cancer in the young be due to colibactin toxin?  It was discovered in 2006 and is suspected as the culprit, as colibactin-linked mutations in A/T-rich motifs are characteristic.  Toxin exposure may have taken place in the young. The bacteria is produced by E coli, but how to decrease this risk factor is not clear. It seems like we need to start testing stool for colibactin presence and take appropriate preventive and surveillance measures. 10% of new cases of colon cancer and 20% of rectal cancers are now occurring in people younger than 50 years now. 

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9 November 2025

Trump proposes radical healthcare shake-up that would bypass insurers and hand cash directly to millions of Americans. No, this is not the way. The government is still there being a deep pocket. This does not encourage healthy market competition for excellence. There is another way.

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Free math books. No excuses now, Ramanujans-in-training.

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What's going on? Americans are getting shorter. 

Not only that, but Americans younger than 40 are facing progressive cognitive decline.

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The findings suggest that intensive meditation can trigger very similar brain activity to that which has been previously documented with psychedelic substances. 

“We're seeing the same mystical experiences and neural connectivity patterns that typically require psilocybin, now achieved through meditation practice alone,” added Patel. “Seeing both central nervous system changes in brain scans and systemic changes in blood chemistry underscores that these mind-body practices are acting on a whole-body scale.”
Interesting.

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PDFs will now incorporate the JPEG XL spec. Lots of advantages as this video will show.

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AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is. Could be true. One does get the sense that the CEOs aren't really sure what to do.

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Dems vs Dems.  This is so funny. Keith Wilson wants to use Portland's money to build more homeless shelters. Council member Angelita Morillo wants to use that money to protect "refugees" (wink-wink). Homeless shelters? Or "refugees"?  One way or another, Portland is doomed.

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