24 November 2025

Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia erupts for the first time in recorded history. Mount Semeru erupted recently. The volcanos are waking up. It's far away, but somehow this disturbs me.

––– 良くない–––

Let's talk about the Asian experience in the US throughout history. Heh, not the guy I thought would be discussing something like this, but we can't judge by appearances, can we? It's true. Asians have been discriminated against for a long time. I don't think that Trump is discriminating against Asians. I think he's just concerned that China is a dangeous economic threat to the U.S., which is something that previous administrations (think Obama) neglected to consider in their drive to globalization. Witness Trump's embrace of the Japanese PM. However, I am disappointed that his online swag shop had hats with "Blacks for Trump", "Women for Trump" and a variety of other groups, but never had "Asians for Trump". Forgotten again.

––– 良くない–––

Wisconsin and Michigan may pass laws banning VPNs, just so they can force their age-verification policy. I've always said that the Internet is just not a place for children, even though people want to get children online. Forcing age-verification is violating online privacy. And there will be other ways to get around this. Politicians were never the brightest bulbs.

––– 良くない–––

Study shows that California loses a taxpayer every 1 minute and 44 seconds.  For New York, it's 2 minutes and 33 seconds, and this is data from before Mamdani won the election. I predict it will be the same situation for Seattle. It's already something like this with Portland.

And for those who stay in Seattle, juggling two or more jobs isn’t just for low-wage workers. Hope you love your socialism, Seattle-ites. Good and hard. 

––– 良くない–––

Seattle and Portland are amongst the heaviest users of cannabidiol. Are people in so much pain in the Pacific Northwest, or have epilepsy? One wonders.

––– 良くない–––

Verizon is cutting 165 jobs in Washington state. Layoffs start in late January. Holiday season bummer. More tax base reduction and business contraction. 

––– 良くない–––

23 Novemnber 2025

Turn a cluster of Macs into an AI supercomputer in macOS Tahoe 26.2. The catch is that you will have to have a computer using the M4 or M5 chip that is capable of using a Thunderbolt 5 cable. I figured there'd be a catch.

––– 凄い –––

Mayor Keith Wilson is dead set on opening a lot of overnight homeless shelters. The problem is, many of the shelters are on average, less than half full. So what's the point? This seems to be a grand waste of city money to fund the operation of these shelters, when the homeless aren't using them.

––– 良くない–––

22 November 2025

China Just Invented the Battery That Will Kill Gas Cars. It's "next-generation" lithium batteries. I keep reading about these batteries, but don't see anything in production yet. A case of over-excited reporters?

––– 凄い –––

Open Access is no more. This is unfortunately, although to be honest, whenever I tried to use the button in my browser, I didn't get access. The button didn't work. The Unpaywall button does work, though, and it's still working.

––– 良くない–––

Arginine supplementation curbs Alzheimer's disease pathology in animal models. Interesting theory, but I doubt it's that simple. Paper here. It's a Japanese paper, but I still think that this experiment isn't going to be reproducible. We'll see if arginine supplementation is the cure we've been looking for.

––– 凄い –––

How embarrassing. Oops. Cryptographers cancel election results after losing decryption key. This is exactly why elections should be low-tech. Keep it simple. Paper and pen. Forget fancy cryptography.

––– 良くない–––

I came across this article stating that Markdown is not always suitable for technical writing. I think that there is truth to this. Markdown should be a format that computers (LLMs especially) should write in. But for humans? I find it too cumbersome. Humans just need a WYSIWYG editor that saves in RTF format. But I also came across this nice list of Markdown editors that someone bothered to compile. Not too long ago, I did a web search to find the best Markdown editor to see if there was an editor that would make it easy to use this format. All I got were websites of various editors, but not one that reviewed and showcased them all, like this site. This shows how the best search engines still don't get everything.

––– 凄い –––
Thanks for reminding me why I stopped using Firefox.  By the way, LibreWolf finally updated to 145.0 and you don't need the --no-quarantine parameter. I think the developer finally bought himself an Apple developer account and signed the software, so now 
brew install --cask librewolf
just works. Apple has announced that the --no-quarantine parameter wasn't going to work after August 2026, so it's about time.

––– 凄い –––

Scientists create new bullet-proof fiber that is stronger and thinner than Kevlar. This is thinner than a human hair, and it stops bullets? Really? But it's Chinese. When are we going to develop something like that here? Still, I bet this will be a hit in the UK.

––– 凄い –––

The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting. There's not much you can do about it. I like the Brave approach, where it makes up random fingerprints so that you're never the same. I wish other browsers would adopt this approach. Mullvad sort of works, but not quite.

––– 良くない–––

Why it takes months to tell if new AI models are good. He's talking about LLMs, of course, not referring to all AI. So take the initial reviews with a grain of salt. Try it yourself and see.

––– 凄い –––

21 November 2025

125 interesting biology links.

––– 凄い –––

Norway was feeding Bovaer to their cows to reduce cow farts. And the cows were suffering. Now they are stopping this, learning a lesson from the Danes.  But it's not even cow farts that produce most of the methane. It's their belching. And a significant contributor is the settling ponds and lagoons that process their manure. 
But why are we worried about cows when humans produce 60% of all methane emissions? Not from farts, but from everything humans do. Human wastewater represents 14–20% of total methane emissions. Vegans fart more than those following a typical Western diet.  So it's crazy to make cows miserable for the sake of reduced methane emissions. This is the kind of insanity that makes people not take liberals' concerns seriously.

––– 良くない–––

The game Zork is now open-source. This ronin spent a lot of time playing Adventure, which is like Zork. But now, as an older guy, this is bittersweet news.

––– 凄い –––

Oregon's school chronic absenteeism is the among the highest at 33%.  In 2022-2023 Oregon was the second highest. Even in Lake Oswego, the percentage of those chronically absent from school is 18%. That's embarrassing.

––– 良くない–––


Dave Ramsey pointed out the flaws of Obamacare in 2016.  It's even worse today.

––– 良くない–––

20 November 2025

Light magnetically influences matter? Yes it does. What can be done to exploit this?

––– 凄い –––

Rare brain cell may hold key to preventing schizophrenia symptoms. Does this brain cell appear when who have a pet cat?

––– 凄い –––

Ringit could be useful. It makes your phone emit a loud ring, even though it's on silence. Could be abused, though.

––– 凄い –––
Creepy. AI tech is making mind-reading no longer science fiction.

––– 凄い –––

One of the fastest growing AI universities in the world is the Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. 
Tsinghua has produced more of the world’s 100 most-cited AI research papers than any other school, and the university generates more AI-related patents each year than MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard combined. Between 2005 and the end of 2024, Tsinghua researchers filed 4,986 AI and machine-learning patents—including more than 900 last year
And they don't have to worry about DEI initiatives of pro-Palestinian protestors cancelling lectures. 

––– 凄い –––

A stretchable bandage like finger cover may allow haptic feedback. It's called VoxeLite.

––– 凄い –––

OpenAI launches Codex-Max, an AI that can code on Its own for 24+ hours straight. Talk about energy consumption. Who pays for this? How many people need something like this?

––– 凄い –––

The experimental TMSR-LF1 thorium-powered molten salt reactor in Wuwei, Gansu Province, has achieved the first successful conversion of thorium-uranium nuclear fuel, the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced.

"This design not only improves fuel utilisation but also significantly reduces the generation of radioactive nuclear waste, which is one of the advantages of thorium-based molten salt reactors."
This is what we need here.

––– 凄い –––

Gary Marcus thinks that Yann LeCun needs to be taken down a peg. I didn't know that convolutional neural nets were actually invented by Kunihiko Fukushima in 1979-1980, and that adding backpropagation was actually invented by Wei Zhang and colleagues in 1988.  All the stuff you read credits LeCun. I felt bad that he didn't get the Nobel Prize, but now I guess I don't.

––– 良くない–––

Holy crap. Portland isn't building very many luxury apartments anymore. Construction is WAY down.

––– 良くない–––

67% of Oregon voters think the state's economy is on the wrong track. I'd like to know why the rest think it is on the right track. Who in their right mind would think so?

––– 良くない–––

Homeless in the Portland area has increased by more than 60% since 2023, despite all the efforts to reduce it.

Doesn't anyone care to think that maybe a change in strategy is warranted? We've tried it this way and it isn't working. Let's listen to the conservatives and see if their approach might be more successful. How about that?
––– 良くない–––

"We've had the highest number of management positions within TriMet's personnel than we've ever had with the lowest number of employees that we've ever had."
Who rides TriMet anymore? Would anyone want to sit in those chairs? You never know what you might sit on. One of the commenters is prescient. Notice the use of the word "positions" that are being cut? It's probably a reduction of open positions rather than any union member being laid off.

––– 良くない–––

Portland wants to ban the use of AI software that landlords use to calculate setting rent. And the landlords are not happy. As usual, Portland city council see the word "AI" and goes nuts. This is not dissimilar to using a spreadsheet. Robots aren't setting the rent. It's just a deep learning protocol. 

––– 良くない–––

19 November 2025

Tilapia skin apparently works well enough to cover the exposed dermis in burn cases.  I wonder what's the status with spray-on skin that was working so amazingly well.

––– 凄い –––

Another advancement in longevity research. Aging is accompanied by a buildup of senescent cells. One component of the regulation of this is the differentiation of CD4 T cells into Eomesodermin (Eomes)+CCL5+ T lymphocytes (CD4-Eomes). This system was not known when I was in school. Who heard of this before 2019. Now it looks like it plays an important role in preventing some of the bad outcomes of aging, like tissue fibrosis and inflammation. 

And Swiss scientists created an artificial bone marrow model. This is really fantastic, and could be a new research platform. Paper here.

––– 凄い –––

Hoo boy. Look at the top 25 insanities that DOGE discovered. We were paying for this?

––– 良くない–––

Yes!  The job market is heating up — for jobs that people usually don’t want. This needs to happen. It'll be painful in the beginning, but it's better this way.

––– 凄い –––

SCOTUS must stop mail-in voting.  And also, the counting of votes for days after the election has been completed. Where we count and count until the "preferred" candidate wins.

––– 良くない–––

So much government money goes into wasteful and fraudulent non-profits. NGOs may have noble names, but are money-wasters.

––– 良くない–––

Providence Oregon is announcing layoffs of 150 jobs.  "recent policy changes and regulatory pressures"
Providence Swedish is announcing layoffs of 296 jobs. "state and federal Medicaid cuts to state and city business occupation taxes, commercial insurer denials, and a drop in procedural volumes"
Clearly Obamacare has lost its lustre. These hospitals operate in Blue states that view any entity with assets and cashflow as their piggy bank. And they depend on unionized workers that also want to put the squeeze on. Not good.

––– 良くない–––

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.

––– 凄い –––


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.

––– 良くない–––


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.

––– 凄い –––

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

––– 凄い –––

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

––– 良くない–––

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

––– 凄い –––

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. 

––– 良くない–––

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. 

––– 良くない–––

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.”

––– 良くない–––

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.

––– 良くない–––

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.

––– 凄い –––

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

––– 凄い –––

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.

––– 良くない–––

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.

––– 良くない–––

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. 

––– 良くない–––

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.

––– 良くない–––

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?

––– 良くない–––

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.

––– 良くない–––

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.

––– 凄い –––

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.
––– 凄い –––

There is a AI-based mushroom identifier, called MushroomCheck. The images on this page are full of AI mistakes. Hope the app isn't.

––– 凄い –––

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

––– 凄い –––

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

––– 凄い –––

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.

––– 凄い –––

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.

––– 凄い –––

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.

––– 凄い –––

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

––– 凄い –––

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.

––– 凄い –––

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.

––– 良くない–––
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.

––– 良くない–––

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. 

––– 凄い –––

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.

––– 良くない–––

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.

––– 良くない–––

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. 

––– 良くない–––

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. 

––– 良くない–––

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.

––– 良くない–––


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.

––– 良くない–––

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. 

––– 良くない–––

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.” 

––– 良くない–––

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. 

––– 良くない–––