2 January 2024

The rise of Long Flu.  I suspect this is another sequela of the mRNA vaccine. People's immune systems are not responding to infection as before, and complete recovery is impaired. This may be another consequence of WASF3 overexpression in susceptible individuals. My theory anyway. But why are we seeing this now?

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The cause of the Big Bloop has been identified. Disappointed – not aliens.

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40% of student loan borrowers haven't paid their required payment. They're apparently hoping that Biden will come through for them. As Robert Kiyosaki said: "Poor people do things that keep them poor." Great example of that, and another example of the downward spiral our country is heading.

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Comets, eclipses and more auroras to be seen next year.  No great comets, though, which is a disappointment.

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Andrew Ng teaches you how to read research papers. This does take time, and the more background you have, the easier it becomes. The best way I learned was to write one myself.

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Cheddar, the CNBC for Millennials, has flopped. Seems that no one wanted to advertise on the network.  They were going to features shows, like a "docuseries that follows job seekers trying to navigate the economy". 

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Japan says copyright doesn't apply to A.I. training. This is big and may help Japanese chat bots have better training and be more useful. But what will creatives do when their work can be absorbed by training? It'll be interesting to see what happens, especially if any output from generative A.I. can't be copyrighted.

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1 January 2024

Happy New Year!

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The Navajo Nation is appealing to Biden to have NASA delay the upcoming moon launch. The reason?  Some human remains may be on board, and since the Navajo considers the moon sacred to them.

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How not to be stupid with A.I. By Yann LeCun. Yann's a smart guy, especially w/r to A.I., but this is a bit arrogant, no? Especially when there are people on the other side like Geoff Hinton and the late Stephen Hawking. Calling them stupid? Maybe it's WIRED magazine trying out a catchy title.

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Print Gallery was one of my favorite Escher prints, but the version I saw always had a blank in the center. I didn't realize that there was version that was filled in.
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The World Bank wants to manage a Climate Reparations fund, to pay poor countries who they claim suffer climate change damage. This is such a dumb idea, and of course, there are a zillion ideas as to who gets the money. Did someone from Portland come up with this idea? Or California? Or Seattle? Geez.

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Assessing the risk vs rewardHalf of high school seniors won’t apply to colleges costing more than $40,000. Smart. The way many colleges are these days, it's not worth it. 

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Portland woman arrested in Chicago for hate crime, such as putting swastikas on Jewish school.

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31 December 2023

A.I. and the replication of people. It's already happening, and the law is currently unable to stop it. Attempts can be made to create a replica based on collected online data. Anyone could predict this would be happening. Could be used for good, like the Salvador Dali recreation, but I see a large potential for causing harm.

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An interesting question, one which I've asked myself.  How Many Load-Bearing Walls Have to Come Down Before America Collapses?  We're about to find out soon, probably in 2024.

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California is turning into something that is NOT the United States. The effort to ban guns continues apace. You'll soon not be able to own anything that you could use to defend yourself.

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Is this really true?  Portland police report significant drop in homicides, gun violence in 2023. Maybe people are just not calling the police anymore, because they know nothing will happen. But it's good, I guess.

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Heh. The new Blue Screen of Death.  Is Microsoft in charge of their software? This is not so funny when it's your car that doesn't work.

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30 December 2023

Gotta be careful about where your chocolate is sourced. Those South American chocolates can be dangerous, especially the dark varieties.

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Looks like Google itself is a victim of its own A.I. Those with low-skilled jobs are doomed.

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Now for some Seattle nostalgia (taken from a Reddit post).
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I remember seeing Quintiles everywhere, and then they were suddenly gone. I hadn't realized they merged to form IQVIA. Now IQVIA wants to absorb Lasso and DeepIntent to get even bigger.  And the FTC is stepping in. This company is getting to be quite powerful and it's falling under almost everyone's radar.

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Holy cow!  This ronin would love to get better at Japanese with Aiko, the A.I. Japanese tutor.  Kawaii-ne?
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But be aware of this when you share photos online. A.I. can geolocate you pretty well

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Oregon school districts seek to use federal guidance to expand free meal access. I'm reminded of Javier Millei's decree to ban the word "free" when it comes to government policies, because nothing is free when it comes from the government. It's all paid for by taxpayers. I wish that Oregon's government would have that kind of honesty.

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Yup, there are folks who want to deprive the rest of us of our election rights to vote for whom we want. Dems are desperate because they fear that Trump will do to them what they've been doing to him. Like Steve Duin, who recognizes that Multnomah County leadership is paralyzed, and he nails all the reasons, but then at the end he has to ruin it with a snipe at Trump. I guess Steve likes his solutions well lubed, and Trump is not the kind of person to go along. Right, Steve?

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It's the Asian Hornet Principle. Problems are much easier and cheaply solved when addressed early. Now Portland can't control graffiti. Or the tweaker problem. Yup, Portland has crossed the Roche limit. The event horizon. It's a downward trajectory from here, and only extraordinary forces will reverse the decline to total destruction.

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If you bought Adderal in Mexico, you might be getting meth, too. Problems upon problems. Life in the Biden administration.

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29 December 2023

Income-based electricity billing. Not based on usage. Just based on your income. Sound good?
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9 big conservative victories in 2023. All the tax measures that were defeated. If anyone needs a refresher, watch this John Stossel video on the harms of Democrat-favored taxes. Here's a politician admitted that highway tolling isn't really needed. They just want to change behavior, she says.

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EV owners won't be thrilled. PGE hiking rates by 18%. Still think that Tesla makes sense?

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Sleepwalking towards military disaster. America is unprepared to fight a war on three fronts.

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Even Elon Musk knows that Portland is terrible. It's common knowledge now.

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This was always going to be a roadblock to preventing digital access. So there's a product called Monolith. It lets you combine any two binary files into something unrecognizable. And therefore, uncopyrightable. So you can freely distribute it. Kinda like encryption, but they don't call it that. But then you can retrieve the original with another process. And if you do this in private, no one can really enforce any copyright laws.

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28 December 2023

I never understood the appeal of Tesla cars. And articles like this confirm my suspicions.

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I wasn't aware of the Bay Area's "huge" underground mushroom market. The kind you eat, not to trip on. I'm glad it's not like that in Oregon.

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Portland really is a shithole. And now we have the bacteria to prove it. Another reason to stay away from the city. You never know what's on the things you touch. Wait till will have a rotavirus epidemic.

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Mexico's first lunar mission? I thought, Wow, good for them. But it's just adding a few items to what NASA is launching. It's not Cape Cuernavaca, or anything.

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Here's How Lahaina Can Rebuild Better And Stronger. Sorry, it's going to take more than just "banding together and sharing the same vision". It's going to take money, and that's what Lahaina doesn't have. I bet many in Lahaina were underinsured. But even so, you don't expect the whole town to be obliterated. No one has insurance for that. Money's gotta come from somewhere. It's not going come from the State, and it's not coming from Washington DC. 
Lahaina town is going to look like a place the carnival came and went for a long time.  Here's some advice from someone who survived a fire. Yes, it's a way to start the rebuilding process, but the idea was not to have Lahaina's look more like Waipahu than the charming town it once was. Guess that's they way it's going to have to be.

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Seattle ruins another business. Much like how California ruined it for Pizza Hut. Seattle City Council raised minimum wage and  implemented a new mandatory sick leave policy, which apparently made the numbers not pencil out for Shipt. Redditors complain (like they always do) but they always seem to think that good service should always come at a price that should suit them. And when it doesn't, it must be corporate greed.

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California's healthcare delivery system is terrible. At least around Monterey. The insurance companies are in control and can charge what they want. And it sounds like hospitals are participating in this collusion. Why change when you don't have to? This should be a great reason to switch to a Kaiser facility, and this is exactly why insurance plans should be own by the person instead the employer. Jen Villa is a teacher, and the school district determines her insurance. Health insurance should follow the car insurance model. Why people don't see that is beyond me.

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27 December 2023

The 2024 Federal deficit is already on track to be the third worst on record since COVID. And this time we have no reason for it. No black swan virus, no Great Recession. Just out-of-control migrant problem expenses, student loan forgiveness and endless money to Ukraine.  And nothing to show for it.

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The real minimum wage is zero.  California Democrats were never good in economics. They tried to legislate wealth to unskilled laborers. Now people have lost their jobs.

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7 Oregon Towns People Are Fleeing As Soon As Possible. Of course Portland is one of them. All these municipalites are bleak and gray. Being poor is not fun.

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Maui realtors can't wait to make money off the Lahaina burn. Those poor folks – the odds are too high against them.

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26 December 2023

A computer has been built in Sydney, Australia that mimics the human brain. It's called DeepSouth.  Hopefully it will perform better than Google's Bard.

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Don't let anybody say that we should have socialized medicine. Here's what happens in Canada when you have this system. Why do you think they have an option where you can opt for "MAID" (medical-aid in dying)?

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Early exposure to aspartame in males may cause autism.

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Javier Millei seems to have thought very hard about what he is about to do with Argentina's economy. Hope he's right.
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Poor oral hygiene correlates with dementia risk. The problem is periodontal disease – get it taken care of ASAP.

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The SAT question everyone got wrong.

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Kottke's 52 Interesting Things I Learned in 2023

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25 December 2023

Merry Christmas! And in Portland, there just wouldn't be any holiday spirit without a holiday drag show, right? Any other nice thing we want to give the old "Portland" treatment?

Portland Jesus

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It's who you know. Sam Altman’s Knack for Dodging Bullets—With a Little Help From Bigshot Friends. Reminds me of SBF.

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So T-Mobile will start reading your texts, and if it finds content that goes against the Lefty narrative, you will be fined.

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California has lost 25% of income taxes.

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The tech that died in 2023. Quite a long list. To some of them, I say good riddance.

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Methamphetamine, fentanyl drive record homeless deaths in Portland, Oregon, annual report finds. This is the real problem. The underlying problem that underlies everything. Portland's answer: "harm reduction".

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Some states are making gold and silver transactions like money (legal tender) now, instead of as a commodity. That would be great, and remove a lot of the allure of cryptocurrency.

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24 December 2023

I was wondering why Apple was not releasing any A.I. like everyone else. Turns out they did – it's called Ferret. It's multimodal, and it's designed to be lightweight enough to run on your phone. Looks like it was missed by others as well.

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"Around seven million men in their prime working age neither have jobs nor are looking for one, creating a huge hole in the labor market" says this YT video. Something similar was covered a year ago. This is why unemployment is so low, because you have to be actively looking for work to be considered unemployed. Unemployment statistics are meaningless.

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This guy is launching a new video uploading site, called Flare. Hey, I thought YouTube was going to be a dumb idea, but look what it became. Flare will let you monetize no matter what the content. It won't censor. We'll see how well that philosophy goes a year from now.

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Age discrimination. Company refuses to hire older guy. Now they have to pay for that discrimination. Yay.

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KOMO news has this article about a recent uptick in criminals targeting Asians. Then on Reddit, people have a problem with the Japanese being reluctant to accept foreigners. Maybe Japan doesn't want that any of that "recent uptick" in their country.

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City management like this explains failure. This woman loser tried to be on Burien's City Council, and now is just causing trouble. But this is what she posted about Safeway's using blue lights in their restrooms to counter them being used for drug abuse. Oregon's Measure 110 has similar "harm reduction" vibes, which is why nothing gets done.

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Gotta credit Vivek Ramaswamy about calling out transgender mental illness in one of his campaign stops. He's not afraid to address the issue head-on. Take a listen.
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