10 May 2024

Peter Jackson is planning a new Lord of the Rings-based series. I was hoping it was going to be based on the Silmarillion or some other Tolkien-authored story, but it looks like it will be something written by a modern author, like the Amazon series, with woke characters, etc. The working title is The Hunt for Gollum. Looks like a pass. Why can't they stick to canon, or invent their own mythos instead of appropriating someone else's fantasy world?

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Just in time for summer. Sony has release the latest version of their personal body cooler/warmer, the REON POCKET 5. Kinda pricey, and I'd like to know that it really works, first.

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Twality Middle School has a teacher that has assigned kids to liken Trump to Hitler.  TDS is strong in this school in the Tualatin-Tigard district. Crazy.

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And what's going on with the mental health of females?  Clearly something is driving many of them absolutely bat-shit crazy.  Many of these women are in positions of leadership.

9 May 2024

Fusion breakthrough. They're up to 6 minutes of plasma now.

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In the new USNWR rankings, Oregon has fallen from 23rd to 31st place.  Now, Oregon is worst than half of the states. Sure feels like it. And the reasons are mainly poor scores on crime, education, economy and opportunity. So, it's not your imagination. Things have really gotten worse.

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Unions. Now Legacy Health primary care providers want to unionize. A couple of Guidepost Montessori's wanted to unionize, and now the schools are shut down.

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Newport is rebelling against DEI policies.  Naturally some folks are unhappy.

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Of course. Worst cities in the nation to drive in. Portland is #10.

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Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business. This is like watching an interactive movie. Still kinda creepy, but I understand the attraction.

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I wasn't aware that pediatric constipation was a problem, nor did I know that MiraLax could promote behavioral problems. There's that bowel-brain interaction again.

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As hospitals are facing more economic hardship, they are turning to harsher measures to get their money. On one hand, you can't blame them, but the government needs to fix the underlying problem that is causing this issue. Everything else is band-aid stopgaps that often just make the problem worse.

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8 May 2024

Sweden is smart. Even as the EU has abandoned its NetZero goals, Sweden already sees the need for nuclear, and will pursue it. Even some natural gas.

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Lars Larson think the PSU president should be fired. Ann Cudd may have been good during fair weather periods, such as for fund raising, but during tough times, you really need something else. Probably some testosterone.

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Just a whiff of fentanyl causes brain injury (leukoencephalopathy). This is a report from OHSU.  FLAIR hyperintensity usually means increased blood (such as inflammation).  This patient didn't just get better after naloxone.  It took at least a month before he was even close to recovered.

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And why do people hate Trump? This guy came up with three reasons. I love how he includes the "Trump Disclaimer" (Hey, I'm not a Trump supporter, so don't get me wrong.)  Coward.  I'm not sure I agree with his three reasons. It seems that the main reason is that people are just ill-informed about issues, and haven't thought through their stances deeply enough to know how to think.

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Sad. Boy Scouts of America is now just known as Scouts BSA. Just as well. The original Boy Scout agenda was for a different age. In these modern times, more than ever, we need something to help boys become men. Teach them what it takes to be a man in this new culture. Team them how to survive and instill a moral compass. Where to turn when things go sour, and how to deal with adversity in a constructive manner. There should just be something for boys. Taught by manly men.

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The Saudi's wanted to build one of those 17 minute cities, built in a straight line. I love the comment: "This is one of those projects that could only happen in a country where everyone's afraid to tell the emperor that he has no clothes."  It's going to make for some interesting Ozymandias-type ruins in the future, where people visit and shake their heads at how precious resources were spent and wasted.

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It's easier to synthesize diamonds, now.  At least diamond coatings. 

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Is this why Apple products haven't changed their look in ages? Apple is losing the last designer of the Jony Ive team.  Too bad.  I notice that the new iPad Pro is just another extension of the "let's make it thinner and add more pixels" approach.

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Interesting article of a woman who has two genomes. She was the fusion of two zygotes that merged.  She is her own sister, and seems to be someone with just one personality and sense of identity, and not two. This implies that our sense of identity is not just a consequence of having a certain set of DNA. So how does a sense of identity arise? What if the other zygoes was of the opposite sex. What would the combo turn out to be?

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So FTX found the money.  Intresting that this article was written by Matt Levine.

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Develop a circle of friends and advocates. This is your F-you Network.

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Google is leaving One Market Plaza in SF. Hasn't the city gotten the message yet?

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More Americans are using the Buy Now - Pay Later debt system.  This hides true debt, so things are probably worse than we think.

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7 May 2024

OpenAI is partnering with StackOverflow.

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New York Times publishes a piece on the vaccine injured, and how no one is listening to them.  Remember when the NYT was promoting the vax? They sounded like Dr. Roach, the online advice doctor.

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Jack Dorsey has left BlueSky. He's apparently off the board, too.
Update (11 May 2024):
Not only has he left, but he's recommending users go back to or stay on X/Twitter. Wow, what happened?

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Here is a table of IQ scores of various AI fundamental models. If the test is entirely offline, the scores are a bit lower. But I'm surprised that the IQ score are still around 100. I'm not sure we're testing the right things.

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University of Washington Yacht Club is set to be terminated after 76 years, in the name of equity. No one is allowed to have nice things in the modern Democrat world. Everything must be brought down to the lowest common denominator.

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A slew of Tina Kotek articles recently:
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Why EVs are not catching on. People are waking up now, but why did they allow themselves to get fooled in the first place?

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Best and Worst States to save money. Oregon is in the top 5 for the worst states. Taxes are why.

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Is this the real Civil War that America faces?  Could be.

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6 May 2024

Supertone Shift lets you alter your voice in realtime.  They have an open beta program that ends soon.

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This is a problem. Multidrug resistant bacteria are mutating into functionally distinct strains, different from the bacteria of earth. What does this mean for an astronaut who gets sick?

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Nearly a third of Oregonians are living alone. And it's increasing. Not good for mental health.

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Mission creep. Oregon Medicaid has started providing air conditioners, air purifiers and power banks. This is another Oregon "first in the nation" experiment. That's the problem with government-provided social services. Everyone wants to empty the treasury for their own cause. Everyone.

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Biden wants the wealthy to pay their fair share. What's fair?

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Which states have the highest minimum wage? The Democrat states do. Oregon is #11.

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This great news for doctors. The FTC has abolished non-compete clauses nationwide.  Probably too late for Eugene, however.

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Unscientific American. It seems that to get published, scientific writers need to stick to the liberal narrative, or risk getting excluded. You can't say that racism is improving. You have to push climate change. You have to report favorably on gender surgery. The public must hear only one side of the issue.

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Many PhDs are going hungry.  This is sad, and not the way to advance science. We have money to help, but sadly, it's going elsewhere.

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Google's Med-Gemini has achieved remarkable accuracy in medical diagnosis comparable to that of experienced doctors. There's still the risk of hallucination, however, and a human doctor is still required.

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5 May 2024

Nice article on Sangaku. Yep, those Japanese rural folk were pretty nerdy. Some of those problems were quite challenging.

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The surprising reason why few Americans are getting those chip manufacturing jobs.  Short answer: they need a LOT of training. I see a little danger in this, though. The training is very specific, and if you lose your position, the skills you learn aren't really applicable in too many other areas. You're committing yourself to this line of work, and if you get let go, you're going to have to go through another laborious training process for something else. Still, it's a job.

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If you like Sriracha sauce, you'd better stock up now. It looks to be a dry summer.

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Would you take rapamycin to live longer?  Some folks are doing it, but that drug has side-effects, and I am not convinced that it's worth it. If I were a roundworm, however, then sure.

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Children who remember past lives. Years ago, I remember reading stories like this, where kids would remember past lives. These are different stories, so the phenomenon is still around, I guess. Some of these stories are hard to explain away. Maybe these are clues to a different reality that bear investigating.

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Financial Times is linking with Open AI to provide real-time financial news. Boy, I wish they did this for medicine.

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Feeling hungry all the time, and what to do about it. The tips posted here are not new, but it's nice to get a refresher.  All the tips seems medically sound to me. It's all diet modification, but in the proper way.

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Kotek and Wheeler have checked out.  What I've noticed is that many are quick to point out stuff like this, but then keep voting similar candidates back in.

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I've discussed the dangers of depending on brain implant tech in my 3 June 2023 posting. Here's another post describing the same issue.  It's not like upgrading your phone or computer.

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Japan is doomed. Their population is already at a critical decline, and they certainly don't need to be experimenting with this.

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4 May 2024

The Physics of Karate.

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OHSU researchers just filed for union representation. 
"We organized our union in order to raise standards in our industry so that our jobs can be seen as stable careers and not just stepping stones."
Being a research assistant was always a temp position. Assistants are funded by grants, because academic research isn't a business. It doesn't make money. It burns money. Grant money doesn't just automatically increase, just because someone demands it. Now researchers may have to think twice before letting someone go.

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EVs are the most expensive vehicles to operate over 1,000 miles.  What? More expensive? Why is that. Because people are so afraid of driving it somewhere and running out of power. Therefore these cars don't get driven as much. So you spend all that money for relatively little usage. That's why cost per 1000 miles is so high. Ironic.

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“Absolutely nothing has changed,” said Jessie Burke.
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Umatilla finds out that companies can build windmills within two miles from homes now. Yup, local laws can get overridden by state law. That's tough.

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The Europeans have finally ditched NetZero climate goals. Good for them. But not the U.S.

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3 May 2024

Incredible. Remember those activists who disrupted Seattle's I-5 for four hours? This judge dropped all charges.

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The report is another piece of grim news for a town that’s struggling to get its mojo back after the pandemic, 2020′s riots, ire over new local taxes, and a surge in open-air fentanyl use. Reports from commercial brokers regularly show downtown Portland as among the most vacant places nationwide.
Another reason employment isn’t growing....lackluster in-migration. Newcomers juiced the Portland economy for years before 2020. Lately, the Oregon Trail isn’t quite as busy.
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Canadian doctors are already using AI scribes in their practice. I don't think we're ready yet. There's still a risk of hallucinations and privacy and confidentiality breaches. I'd never use a third party service for this.

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Wow. 27 volumes of new Brothers Grimm material discovered in a Polish library. These were thought to be lost in WW II.

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A small molecule inhibitor, ESI1, may be effective in repairing myelin sheaths in diseased nerves. Currently, there are no drugs that can repair the myelin sheath. For diseases like multiple sclerosis, people often get steroids, which is aimed at inhibiting inflammation that might be involved in the myelin damage. But nothing to actually trigger repair. Hopefully this becomes the first.

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2 May 2024

OHSU study shows that private equity is indeed pervasive in healthcare.  Dr. Zhu has written on this topic before. She touches on metrics like changes in number of visits, billing level, length of visits, charges per visit. But not much on quality of care delivered, which is what I would like to know.

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Well, OK. 20% of national raw milk samples contain bird flu DNA. But pasteurization eliminates it.

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Boost your vocabulary. Words I want to use someday.

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David Sinclair thinks he can reverse aging. And there are skeptics. Looks like he's still hyping resveratrol, which a declining number of people think is effective. And now he's selling dog supplements as a life prolonger. With celebrity endorsement, which is not a good sign.

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This seems like a joke. This AI app creates more mnemonics to help medical students learn medical facts. Medical students already have a whole slough of mnemonics, and the problem changes to what's the mnemonic I need to recall to help me recall the facts I need to know. 

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Asian Food Dictionary. I typed in "gobo" and "burdock" and these terms were not recognized. Fail! So, who's this dictionary intended to help, then?

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I already reported that AI can geolocate off your photos, so you'd better be careful. But here's an app that supposedly allows you to intentionally do the same.

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mRNA-based liposomal vaccines are showing impressive results against glioblastoma. These are similar to the COVID-19 vaccines, but the product doesn't contain cDNA (like the Pfizer products are suspected to contain). The mRNA is targeted against EGFRvIII, IL13Rα, Wilms’ Tumor 1, HER-2, gp100, or MAGE-1 and the special “onion-like” multi-lamellar RNA lipid particle aggregates (LPAs) increase the immunogenicity of the vaccine. The vaccine doesn't depend on HLA type and induces a massive cytokine/chemokine response and dendritic cell/lymphocyte trafficking. 
It's interesting that the authors say that regular mRNA vaccines depend on payload packaging into nanoparticle cores for Toll-like receptor engagement in immune cells. This is precisely what some are saying is responsible for the off-target immune dysregulation in the COVID-19 vaccines.

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Neotame is a second-generation sweeter analog of aspartame (Nutra-Sweet). This agent may cause previously healthy gut bacteria to become diseased and invade the gut wall—potentially leading to health issues including irritable bowel syndrome and sepsis.

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Why new weight loss drugs are out of reach for millions of older Americans. The reason is cost. It's too bad that older Americans are locked into the Medicare system, and it's Medicare that is unwilling to cover the expensive new weight loss drugs, because if they did, Medicare would rapidly lose money.  Because the older folks are commonly obese and are suffering from diabetic complications. They could benefits from these drugs. But such is the socialistic model of universal medical coverage.

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Is there a cosmic glitch at the end of the universe? Where Einstein's theory doesn't hold? Well, the glitch is "not yet conclusive".

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1 May 2024

Today is Beltane, and the first traditional day of summer.

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I wondered when this was going to happen.  60 year man dies because of shortage of chemotherapy (cisplatin). Really sad, but a fact of like in the Biden era. Build Back Better, right?  The guy can't even fund his Cancer Moonshot anymore.

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Ugly. Feds ready to launch auction for offshore wind farms leases off the Oregon Coast. So ugly and a blight to the coastlines.

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There's a new mental illness now. It seems a few people can get to experience permanent hallucinations that last way too long after taking mind-altering drugs. It's called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, or HPPD, and can occur after using MDMA or even just cannabis. Great, just what society needs – more people high as kites. When are we going to get drugs that make people think more clearly, or make them smarter? Is that too much to ask?

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We may soon have enzymes that digest away blood group determinants, so that everyone can accept more blood donors, maybe even have universal donors. Progress!

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"Moral injury". This is what some healthcare professionals are calling it, when they are forced to practice against their personal morals due to external pressures. Wow, we didn't have this when physicians were able to practice independently, instead of being employees to hospitals and private equity groups like today. Hospitals loved Obamacare. Doctors? Not so much.

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Sora vs Runway vs Pika. Who's the best?  I don't think it's even close.

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So the Rabbit R1 is just an Android app.  Meaning that it can run on a phone, and you don't need to run it on that ugly plastic toy. They apparently don't want you to know that.

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Some octogenarians have the memory of 30 year olds. These super-agers don't seem to have any particular lifestyle secrets. Their advantage is probably genetic, as most things are. (Are we allowed to say this?)

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Companies are now retaining their current employees and are investing in upgrading them, instead of firing them and replacing them with younger folks. Good for older employees. Not so for younger job-seekers.

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Scary.  Deepest Blue Hole discovered and the bottom hasn't been reached.

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People are still impressed with thorium reactors, but I'm still not seeing that they are being built commercially. Now I read that data centers are wanting their own nuclear reactors, because of the steep energy requirements. Wouldn't that be the call for thorium?

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AI Alan Turing is an interesting concept. He looks like he could be the next Superman, which the real life Alan Turing did not. Of course, there will be complainers. There always are.

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Want to see atoms turn into wave packets? Sure you would.

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Scientists have discovered how to get cartilage to heal in mice. This could translate into human cartilage healing, which would be great.

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More Americans are open to driving cheap Chinese cars.  73% of Americans were open to this.  Not so good for American car makers.

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