Sugoi & Yokunai

Portland Mayor Unhappy About Ad Campaign Claiming 'Portland Sucks'. Take down the plywood, folks, and try to say only nice things about Portland, OK?

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There's a lot of publicity around this Portland Police Association survey of folks of whom 55% were Democrats. Of these 56% would leave Portland if they could. It's interesting that 21% thought Portland leadership was on the right track.

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Smoking causes brain shrinkage. So does stress. So does lack of sleep. How about telling us what causes brain growth instead?  Oh yeah, exercise and meditation.

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I can't believe colchicine had to go through the FDA approval process.  What next? Digoxin? Aspirin? Of course, all that process did was to raise the price of colchicine.

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Just in time for 2024.  iOS 17.3 will make it harder for thieves to reset your phone for use after its stolen.  (Maybe it'll disincentivize thieves from stealing phones at the Apple store.)

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Under sections 504 and 702 of the FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act, those who provide Internet service that your communications go through will have to routinely provide all communication that goes through it, to the FBI. 

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Bruce Schneier thinks that A.I. will fuel the era of "mass spying".  He's right. And it will be done in the name of providing extra security.  And now your password can be guessed by the sounds of the keys being pressed. Of course it has to be trained to your keyboard, but if it's a common keyboard, it may already have been pretrained.

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Single-dose psilocybin is effective treatment against major depression. So I would support medicinal use. But Oregon wants to legalize it all over so people will just use it whenever. Fortunately, there is tachyphylaxis, so repeated usage is not likely, but why take a chance.

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Seattle student failed quiz for saying men can’t get pregnant.

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Oregon launches online database to track public investments. Transparency is good. The website is here.

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Major helium deposit discovered. This is great news, as there is a global shortage of helium.

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Apple is introducing a 3D Spatial video capture feature in the iPhone 15 with the iOS 17.2 update.  Reminds me of the Memories scene in Minority Report.  So much of that movie is coming true now.

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Holy crap, this is big. This came out in September, but I missed it.  A combination of two monoclonal antibodies cures symptomatic rabies. Cures! Rabies is a disease that previously we could only try to prevent from happening, with urgent vaccination. But once established, you were never really sure it wasn't going to emerge later. And symptomatic rabies was universally fatal. Why wasn't this all over in the news?

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What would a second Trump term look like?

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"Imagine opening ChatGPT but it already knows everything about your life. What would you ask it?" Creepy! This is what Google wants to create with Project Ellman. I think I've seen this movie, and it doesn't turn out well. 

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The quiet plan to make the internet feel faster.  So basically they're finally going to tackle buffer bloat.  Robert X. Cringely has been talking about this for years. Finally, it may be fixed.

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Halley's Comet has reached aphelion, and is now turning back to the sun. Happened a few days ago, but I'm just reading about this now. Oh well, I won't be around to see it next time. I saw it back in 1986, and it was a dud.

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They found magnetic monopoles? Great, but what does that mean?

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Yup. Real-world effectiveness of child mask mandates against SARS-CoV-2 transmission or infection has not been demonstrated with high-quality evidence.  Like the low benefit-risk ratio justifying vaccination in children. Halt administration of the vax product - NOW!  Meanwhile, Japan creates a monster. Did they not read "I am Legend"?

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Will this be the last Christmas you can get an Apple Watch?  If Apple loses this patent lawsuit, this will set company earnings back a lot.

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Interesting. Brain Area Associated With Impulse Control Discovered. In the right inferior frontal gyrus. And there are gender differences as well.  Women have better inhibitory control over their impulses. Really?

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Just when you thought it was over. Portland Public School unions still want more, even after the agreement that ended the strike. Because the strike ended because the teachers would lose their PERS health insurance, not because they came to agreement. Did you REALLY think the fight was over? Psht.

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King County, WA reaches new milestone. A quarter of city residents were not born in the U.S.  It's higher in Bellevue and Redmond, but that's because so many techies hail from India and China. Seattle needs more from Singapore. (Would they come to Seattle?)

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Looks like China has made preparations in case war breaks out against Taiwan.  Hawaii's going down, and that'll keep us occupied while they carry out the attack. Thank goodness, we have Biden at the helm directing our response, right? And we have to read this in a foreign news source.

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Prioritize removing fencing and plywood from downtown buildings before the 2024 Rose Festival. "The boarded up condition of the Federal Courthouse, The Justice Center and some downtown businesses send the wrong signal to visitors," the task force said.

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It's culture and behavior. Yes, we have fallen quite far.  (Is that Roy Hargrove's mellifluous trumpet? Or Arturo Sandoval? - No, it's Benny Golson's Park Avenue Petite.

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This is a handy map of 4G and 5G cell phone coverage in Oregon. I switched to AT&T for their superior coverage, and am glad I did.

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In Seattle, some people think it's fun to deliberately run over people on Aurora Avenue. "Y'all hit this bitch".

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The dminishing half-life of knowledge. Scary commentary about how much maintenance it takes to stay on top of your game, especially in the tech field. It's also like that in medicine. This is why companies only want younger engineers. Except for COBOL engineers, of course.

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The state of LLMs in mathematics. Thank goodness ChatGPT4 and GPT4 are mainly good at being search engines and "struggle" with hard problems.  Guess we still need human mathematicians.

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If you're teaching a topic, you're probably really passionate about it....At the end of the day, though, [the students] are not getting a Ph.D. in this stuff, and they've got half a dozen other classes on top of work, family, friends, and this weekend's party to think about.

Unless they see that the material is relevant, or that they're building or creating cool or useful stuff, they'll be bored.

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So glad that the Scottish fiddler got his flddle back.  The saying goes that the difference between a violin and a fiddle, is that no one cares if a little beer gets on a fiddle.  But I bet this guy would care.

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I've been wondering, too. Ilya Sutskever still has an office at OpenAI, but he's the invisible man, now. Hey, maybe he can work at Tesla. Elon Musk likes him.

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The Oregon Health Authority missed a crucial deadline reporting on "how the M110 program integrates into the overall behavioral health system in Oregon".  So the Legislature is unable to address what to do about M110, and so life goes on.

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Meanwhile, Oregon schools are stocking up on state-provided naloxone, but the state won't keep track on its usage or anything.

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Tina Kotek does a Kate Brown thing – unsuspends the drivers licenses of traffic violators who lost their license and didn't bother to pay a fine.  No rule of law.

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Looks like the OHSU-Legacy merger is not going as smoothly as hoped. Legacy seems to keep looking less and less financially attractive and more like a liability, with strikes, unionization and lawsuits.

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No School November? Let's make it No School December, too! Why bother? In Oregon, you don't have to demonstrate proficiency anyway, thanks to diversity and equity, so that we don't discriminate against minorities, right?

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Differences between Hanukkah and Christmas. Funny.

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People in the UK must submit a selfie before they view porn. Age will be verified by A.I.  Don't worry – they'll immediately delete it as soon as you submit it.  What could go wrong?

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Meaningless numbers. Once again, "Biden job approval hits new low".  Still 37%.  No matter how often Biden's approval sinks to "record lows", it's always 37%.

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It's been quiet about Q* recently. After Altman's return OpenAI, this topic has dropped off the radar. Here's more about Q*, but after reading this, it doesn't seem major enough to warrant what Sutskever did. Maybe it really was all just a clash of personalities.

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This tech writer was not impressed with Gemini's debut yesterday.  Sure enough, Google admits to staging much of it. They haven't created a positronic brain after all. And some people wonder if A.I. is just a "Clever Hans". Sometimes I feel the same way.

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Just as you can use A.I.-generated pictures free of copyright concerns, you can to the same with music. There's an A.I. stock music generator now. Probably good for video background music.

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This story is BIG! Nature published a report with a title that makes it seem like just another obscure technical publication. It's titled N1-methylpseudouridylation of mRNA causes +1 ribosomal frameshifting. But what it reports is that the mRNA COVID-19 vax product is associated with a very serious side-effect of common frameshift mutations that cause the ribosome to transcribe random proteins, in addition to the spike protein that it's supposed to code for. And some of these random proteins can resemble some important proteins that are involved in the immune system.  So you might be inadvertently immunized against something you're not supposed to be. Here's a tweet that discusses this.  The vax really needs to be taken off the market ASAP, and people informed about it. 

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Gender detransitioning lawsuits are on the rise.

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Here's a weird worm.  Its butt develops its own brain, detaches itself and swims away. Reminds me of some of the people in the news, whose brains seem to be strongly connected to their butts (and genitals).

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The Journal of Universal Rejection. Every issue is empty. Nothing is worthy.

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Just as I thought. Rocking motions synchronize brain waves. I find that with gentle rocking, I can meditate much easier and be free of distracting thoughts. You can focus on a candle flame, on a bell tone, on a mantra, or you can focus on rhythmic motions.

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How to spot exceptionally talented people. You know them by their actions.

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It was only a matter of time. Some students are trying degrade Stanford. "Students asked for favors like '[p]roper academic accommodations" for Black students". 

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https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/06/googles-gemini-isnt-the-generative-ai-model-we-expected/ , though. Gemini may be more evolutionary than revolutionary.

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I can see why. Psychologists say they can't meet the growing demand for mental health care. Too many mentally ill now. Not enough therapists.

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This author mocks Atty Gen. Ken Paxton for using absolute risk, instead of the relative risk that she prefers. Actually, Paxton is correct. Absolute risk is what we should be considering. Relative risk can be gamed. In truth the risk of getting COVID-19 may have been worthy of mitigating, but with each variant, the benefit of getting the vax product was outweighed by the risk. Paxton is right to sue. Vaccines are killing people.

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Donald Knuth gave his annual Christmas lecture last night.  If you missed it, here it is.

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How does Shazam work?  This answers a question I've had for a long while. Whenever I hum a melody or play a tune on the piano, Shazam doesn't recognize what I play. But only after a few seconds from an overhead speaker at a store, and the song identity comes up quickly. Shazam is not looking at melodic structure. It's just doing spectral matching. So it's got to hear the exact song being played, that has the same soundprint. Otherwise, it's a no-go.

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Looks like Asian immigrants in Seattle are being specifically targeted for thefts. Because they are "unlikely to be armed, less confrontational, and have cash on hand".  And Asian immigrants like to go to casinos. And it doesn't help that Little Vietnam is right next to Rainier Avenue, where the criminal class tends to live.  Asians have got to arm themselves.  

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More bad news for for Legacy. After all these years, black people in the Albina neighborhood want reparations for land that Legacy Emanuel Hospital was built on. 

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So sperm donations will no longer be anonymous in a growing number of states. Naturally, LGBT folks and those that are infertile are concerned, because this will definitely lead to a decline in donors. Who would want the hassle later on?

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Wasabi improves memory. But only the real stuff. Not the fake green-colored horseradish that's much more common.

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AI-generative imagery can predict what you are thinking about. One step closer to actual mind reading. We're not there yet, however.

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This Japanese musician, Michiru Aoyama, writes, records and releases an album every day.  It's ambient, stuff, much of it repetitious and very much reminiscent of William Basinski, if you like that kind of stuff.  But many do – he's got his fans.

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Better make sure you're using all those psychology terms properly. I might get triggered if you don't.

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Children with liberal parents more likely to suffer mental health problems.

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This is what Oregon schools have become. Oregon Health Authority to offer free opioid overdose reversal kits to middle, high schools. As they say, the world you grew up in no longer exists.  And now, schools have to factor in race and gender identity to determine how you should be disciplined for misbehaving.

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Turn off push notifications.  Apple Confirms Governments Using Push Notifications to Surveil Users. I can't believe the lengths the government will go to spy on citizens. Now they're tracking all the push notifications that people get on their phones. Which means they track all text-messaging.

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I opened (Google's) Bard webpage, typed:
"When is Gemini going to be rolled out?"
Bard answered:
"Please clarify the specific product or service you are referring to by "Gemini." There are multiple applications and services with the name Gemini. Here are a few examples:
Gemini Exchange: A cryptocurrency exchange platform that is currently available to users in select regions. There is no official date set for a global rollout.
Gemini Spacecraft: A planned private human spaceflight program that is still in development. There is no official date set for the first launch.
Gemini (chat app): A social media messaging app that is currently available on iOS and Android. There are no plans for a wider rollout at this time.
If you are referring to a different product or service, please provide more context so I can provide an accurate answer."

Then I provided Bard the reference article from Slashdot:
"Gemini reference: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]"
And Bard answered:
"I'm just a language model, so I can't help you with that."

Looks like Bard hates competition.

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A vote on Texas secession could appear on the ballot next March. It's more like a simple poll than anything substantive. Interesting, the things that happen during a rotten presidency.

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A tax break for veterans. Sounds reasonable to me.

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Mathematics, reading skills in unprecedented decline in teenagers. The world is getting dumber and dumber, just as A.I. is getting better and better. When the bots take over, we have only ourselves to blame. It's not just the USA, it's Canada, too.

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The science is in. Undergoing gender re-assignment surgery does not decrease the suicide risk.

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Edward Dowd continues to sound the alarm about the alarming rise in cancers in the UK, which he suspects is due to the vaccine. It wasn't a problem until 2021, about a year after the mRNA vaxxes became available. Someone should look into that here.

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Embracing change and resetting expectations.  Terry Tao has excellent comments on A.I. and how academics will be incorporating it into their workflow. Expect "embarrassing mistakes, controversies, painful disruptions, heated debates, and hasty decisions". The transition to an A.I. world will not be smooth. 

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Yikes!  Hundreds Of Illegal Chinese-Owned Marijuana Operations Taking Over Maine. I can't imagine an American company set up in China for marijuana production.

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Massachusetts is facing a manpower shortage as boomers retire. Folks have retired all the time. Why is this a problem now? Why aren't there qualified replacements? Hmmm.....

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Another article on Providence's anesthesiologist shortage. The fact that an out-of-state group was selected to replace an in-state medical group probably doesn't sit well. And when surgeons don't make money, they will probably look to leave. And hospital revenue drops, which makes other things more stressful, like paying those nurses who recently got pay raises. Why is this just Providence's problem? The reporter should have asked himself that obvious question.

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Why does sleep become more elusive as we age?  Is it really true that older folks need less sleep? I agree with the article that getting quality sleep is more problematic as one ages. For this ronin, I find that getting older, I have more things of concern that percolate through my dreams and cause me to wake up earlier than planned. You accumulate these memories as you get older, and you have to learn how to deal with them. Sleep is essential at clearing accumulated toxins. We have a nightly rinse cycle. Not sleeping well might promote dementia. Can't have that. 

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Meanwhile, China "created a genome-editing system" that reduced the effect of a mutated MEF2C gene in mice, reducing their autistic behavior.  The thought is that it might lead to a treatment for ASD in humans. Maybe. Lots of steps in between, however.

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No global warming? EPA reports that only 19% of weather stations in the U.S. have shown an increase in temperature since 1948. I keep seeing reports of some day being the hottest day ever. But then we have scenes like we have in Bavaria, and somehow that's also due to climate change, and it's going to be worse because there's a gas shortage. Brought on because of climate change activism. Can't win, right?

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Red wave washing into Idaho. People just want sanity and safety. To live in a society where the law applies to everyone, not just non-Democrats. Where there is stability so that you can operate a business and take on some risk. Who can run a business in Portland or Seattle these days? Like the insanity where Portland raises taxes, then offers tax-incentives to prevent businesses from fleeing the city. 

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Alaskan Airlines is buying out Hawaiian Airlines. Hope they won't change the unique ambience of the airline in the name of cost-savings.

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Ron Wyden wants to tax Netflix, and other streaming services. A "digital service tax" "modeled after Europe".

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