17 March 2025

Apple might remove the USB-C port from future iPhones.  Why, Apple, why?  Is it just for to continue the thinness effort?  Does anyone really want a paper-thin phone? I guess Tim Cook couldn't cram any more pixel into the screen, so he's just going for thinness. And emojis – Tim loves emojis for some reason. There's always a few more with each release.

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Tao of Mac weighs in on the Apple Intelligence fiasco. It doesn't look like Siri will ever be the Jarvis we were hoping we'd have.

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Resentment. Nice commentary on all the "kill the billionaires" protests we've been seeing lately. But the solution that is offered to fix this isn't going to work. Because there will always be someone who has a grape. (Read the essay to understand what I mean.)

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Maybe you don't need a fancy foundational model to help you make a diagnosis. An open source model performs just as well, and it's the Llama 3.1 405B parameter model, which means that Llama 3.3 70B parameter model might be just as good.  But here's the catch:
Both open-source and closed-source AI algorithms are trained on immense datasets that include medical textbooks, peer-reviewed research, clinical-decision support tools, and anonymized patient data, such as case studies, test results, scans, and confirmed diagnoses. 
These models were fine-tuned. What busy physician has time for this?
The open-source model exhibited genuine depth: Llama made a correct diagnosis in 70 percent of cases, compared with 64 percent for GPT-4. It also ranked the correct choice as its first suggestion 41 percent of the time, compared with 37 percent for GPT-4. For the subset of 22 newer cases, the open-source model scored even higher, making the right call 73 percent of the time and identifying the final diagnosis as its top suggestion 45 percent of the time.
And even so, they weren't perfect. So you wouldn't want to trust them completely. The point of this article is that it's the data and the training, not necessarily the size of the architecture.

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Uh-oh. Chronic exposure to too much heat can age you.  I know that long-term sun exposure can make you look wrinkled and old. But it appears that heat accelerates the aging process genetically, too. But if you look at the data table, you see that the differences are really slim, and barely make statistical significance.

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Gotta clean that water bottle often.

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Another one bites the dust. Forever XXII is shutting down all stores.  This is going to leave a gaping hole at Washington Square.

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Oregon's SB 611 hopes to give free food to illegal aliens.

As for Oregon, SB 611 is being put forward as the state is confronting potential federal funding cuts, everybody and their brother seems to want higher spending on schools, affordable housing, transportation and healthcare, Trump tariffs could lead to a trade war that hurts export-heavy Oregon and fears of a national recession are growing.

But what stands out even more in the current debate over the bill? All of its enthusiastic supporters haven’t the faintest idea what it would cost the state.

Oregon lawmakers, ladies and gentlemen.

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Doom loop.  Plummeting property values in downtown Portland are costing the city millions of dollars in tax revenue that would otherwise go to vital city services, as the city looks at a $92.8-million budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year. This is not a good time to be a Blue city or Blue state.

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16 March 2025

This thread echoes this article, which talks about the decline of human "brain power". This is based on test scores, especially PISA scores, but relying just on this assessment is tricky.

The share of adults in high-income countries who are unable to use mathematical reasoning when evaluating simple statements, or who struggle to integrate multiple bits of information from a piece of text, has climbed to 25 per cent.

I see it especially in the caliber of politicians today, compared to what they were like when I was growing up. When I was growing up, we have TV shows where they would invite Milton Friedman to talk. We had Ted Koppel and McNeil-Lehrer news hour. Now we have The View and Joy Reid (well, not anymore).

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Tinnitus may result from the brain sending signals to the cochlea to increase gain. Until recently, it wasn't known that there was an afferent feedback loop between the brain and the cochlea.

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Another article on why Oregon is short on public defenders, and they still skirt around why there is a shortage of good attorneys. It's crap like this:

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Timeless.  Portland protestors want city leaders to tax the rich, and spend the proceeds on them. There already aren't enough rich to tax to satisfy them, so shut up already. And they call it "investing" locally. Throwing good money after bad is not investing.

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This is funny.  So in Fresno, there was a Kid's Day fundraiser, where they raised money for the local hospital. Yeah, how did that go?  Suckers.

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Lake Oswego lakefront residents are learning some valuable lessons about living in Oregon. Build something nice that wasn't there before, and maintain it with your own money and some judge will say everyone should have access, too.

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Another "cure" for baldness? UCLA scientists have found that a protein PP405 keeps hair follicle cells dormant. Inhibiting that protein may induce hair growth.

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All the major search engines make up references a lot. For mission-critical searchers, Perplexity is the go to site, but it still misses a lot. This is where improvements need to be made.

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There is likely a genetic basis for the reserved, risk-averse, pragmatic, no physical affection personality of Asians. And it seems to be a dominant trait. You can even see it in Asian babies vs White babies, the latter of whom are outgoing and friendly, while Asian babies hide behind their mothers. The author calls it Arcticism.

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Cool.  Barnard's Star has four planets revolving around it.

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Some Israeli startup wants to foist AI nurses on us. I don't think people want uncanny valley nurses. This is not how I envisioned AI to be involved in medicine. The technology is not ready yet. It just superficially looks that way.

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15 March 2025

Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28. I still can't understand why someone would want this surveillance device in their homes. But that's just me.

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The Siri development team must not be feeling good these days. I recall when Steve Jobs dismissed the MobileMe team in a very humiliating way. Bet it got the rest of the company motivated, though. It's informative that Apple can't make AI work they way people expect it to work. They've got Silicon Valley's best brains at their disposal, and yet they struggle. It's not easy to implement agentic frameworks well.

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This essay on Stoicism resonates with me. I wondered why Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations, when he could have just be a Roman emperor like all the rest. And he made statements that seem to counter common sense, such as not to be disturbed by bad events because it's all in your head. Easy to say when you're an emperor, but not so for the rest of us. I guess he meant to just say not to overreact to external events, but sometimes it's just human to do so.
Too strong a stoicism, like any individualist philosophy, scales poorly. A philosophy emphasizing only this inner work, though it may personally work well, gives no guidance as soon as you have enough responsibility to participate in society. 

...stoicism is not a sufficient philosophy for a good life, only a survivable one. We must remember what that responsibility, strength, and character are ultimately for.
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Scientists discover how to reactivate cancer's molecular 'kill switch'.  Cancer cells don't just have one "kill switch". This research finding will be just one of many. Congrats to the researchers, but there will be more work to do.

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I'd spend $20 to taste the Erewhon strawberry. Sounds like it is indeed more than your usual strawberry. I haven't seen it at the local stores yet, though.

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Alcohol consumption increases risk of sunburn.  Then you read the article and find out that intoxicate people are less likely to apply sunscreen adequately, and they also stay out in the sun longer, possibly because they're too inebriated to realize that they're burning.  What a useless study.

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You could be leaving DNA traces in the air around you. Probably not enough to be implicated in a crime scene, but just so you know, a bit of you blows off into the air wherever you go.

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KGW reports that the reason OHSU emergency department is jammed is because people are coming in with the flu. Only now are we seeing this?  I suspect that the COVID vax has ruined people's immune systems, and now everyone is constantly sick.

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Seattle firefighter has a message for those idiots who think they are sticking it to Elon by setting Teslas on fire. Think twice – you're letting toxic gases into the atmosphere and risking a prolonged hot fire. Not climate-friendly, to say the least, although those gronks aren't really that concerned about climate. It's just something they are told to believe, because Dems told them to.

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Happiest cities in the Northwest. Seattle? I don't think so. I think the happiest cities are the smaller ones that don't have criddlers and incompetent lefty city leaders who misspend the municipal money. Portland is way down there, which is believable. But c'mon.

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Sakana.AI has put out its first fully-generated scientific article. Well, if Sokal could get published, I'm sure AI can, too.

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The story behind Social Security Numbers. There's never been a convincing explanation for why Barack Obama's SSN begins with 042 instead of 575 or 576 like all other Hawaii-born citizens. And I think people think it's healthier not to investigate this matter.

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14 March 2025

Happy π day! In celebration, here's a beautiful finding of π in the Mandelbrot set.  How does π get in there? As usual, it's because calculus is involved.

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This is how we know that the climate change worry industry is really a grift.  They don't really care. Why should you?

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Wow, it looks like Obama wanted to do DOGE, too. But guess who he put in charge? The anti-Elon!

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Downtown Portland's open-air drug market has returned. This is why no one wants to move to Portland, and we can't get any quality people for top positions.

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Remembering Mark Klein, the whistleblower who in 2005 told us that the NSA was illegal spying on us.

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I remember when Apple was stockpiling so much cash, and everyone wondered what were Apple's plans for all that money. There was no plan.

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Dem solutions to Dem problems.  Oregon has so many sex offenders that Tina Kotek wants to hold off on getting them registered as sex offenders officially. She wants to remove the deadline for clearing the backlog past Dec 2026. Plus, she wants to make it so that only if you are younger than 35 years old and have 2 or more sex crimes, would you need to be registered. Supposedly some study backs this up.

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A Finnish study looking at twins showed that the link between exercise and increase longevity is not linear, but U-shaped. Those that exercised the least or the most aged more rapidly. The benefits of exercise and longevity were felt to be due to those that exercised not drinking or smoking as much.  Moderate activity (75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity weekly) was the best.

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13 March 2025

We're still learning things about water. Apparently under certain conditions, it can exist in two forms of liquid at once, one being denser than the other. 

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Saturn is once again the king in terms of number of moons, as scientists discover 128 new moons (274 total). When I was a kid, I remember that the books said that Saturn had 9 moons and Jupiter had 12. Rookie numbers. Ya, gotta pump them up. And so they did.

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Some new study says that drinking alcohol is good for lowering cholesterol levels. But lowering cholesterol levels isn't the goal here – it's lowering cardiovascular risk. And that hasn't been shown.  I'm not buying it.

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Hospitals are going to hurt some more. Oregon lawmakers are going to force them to lower "facility fees". This is going to be especially important as competition will almost non-existent if OHSU merges with Legacy.  OHSU is apparently packed to capacity, and doesn't have enough beds or staff to accommodate the patient load. If you read the article, the problem is lack of staffing. This is Oregon's perennial problem, and the leadership ignores this. Why can't Oregon hire quality people? And see below.

Speaking of which, the leaders of OHSU and Legacy wrote an opinion piece supporting the merger, the main argument being that they promise to be accountable and act in the public's best interest. They also state that the merger would improve healthcare, but don't present any compelling argument for this. I think it will decrease competition and choice, as we've seen with the failure of UnitedHealth negotiating terms with OHSU. I don't want the choice of healthcare system to be just OHSU, Providence and Kaiser.

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What to do when you have so many criminals and not enough public defenders. Because Portland is a magnet for ne'er-do-wells, and the state is so unattractive to the nation as a place to move to. The Doom Loop continues.
Update (2025-03-14): OPB covered this as well.

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Tektronix is now owned by a Raleigh, NC company. How the mighty have fallen.

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How many Portland-area jobs could be affected by AI? A lot!  And the higher-educated positions could be the most affected. Learn to code, baby.

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Some folks are going to cover graffiti-prone walls with synthetic ivy instead.  I like it.  Looks like a workable and reasonable alternative to just painting over the graffiti, leaving those unsightly blotchy rectangles.

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Two tech insiders are not happy with Apple's strategic direction. The first is long-time writer, Robert Scoble. The second is John Gruber (Daring Fireball). I agree with them both. It's long past time for Tim Cook to step down as CEO and hand the reins to someone else with vision.

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Downtown Seattle continues its decline. Cheesecake Factory is shutting down.  Such is life under Democrat rule.

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While Oregon can't hire quality people, they can hire this person to be on the mental health board. She identifies as a turtle! Oregon is such a national joke.

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12 March 2025

The new M3Ultra MacStudio is blazingly fast, and just the thing for data scientists and machine learning professionals. Not just for artists.

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How rich is Elon Musk? I know, everybody's picking on the guy, but I love infographics like this. A hundred billion is already a lot of money, and it's hard to grasp how much money this is.  Elon is able to do it because he's hired great people who can manage his company for him. He doesn't need to be around. He read the E-Myth. Wait until his fleet of autonomous taxis go into operation. The income will flow in, even as companies like Uber and Lyft find their businesses cut substantially.

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Why do elephants rarely get cancer? Because they have extra copies of the p53 gene, apparently. That would help.

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Regence Blue Cross is going to lose a LOT of customers in Seattle soon. Are those alternate hospitals ready to pick up all that slack?

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Climate group funded by Bill Gates is getting their funding slashed. It's likely that it wasn't Bill Gates' own money that was being spent, but NGO money, which is now effectively gone.  So much of things were NGO-funded from the federal government.

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F*ck.  Oregon lawmakers pass tuition funding for "asylum seekers". AKA illegal aliens. This is why Oregon doesn't have any money. And why Oregon taxes are so damned high.

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Portland is the only major metro area where the non-religious outnumber Christians. Because BLM is their religion.  Or the Ukraine cult.

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11 March 2025

Age and cognitive skills: Use it or lose it.  We knew about this, but it's nice to get confirmation about it, that it is possible to keep the gray squish working well.

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A breakthrough in the Internet of Things. It is possible to harness energy from the environment. No this isn't just solar power. It's power from other sources "including vibrations from equipment, machinery, and even entire buildings, or from temperature differences between pipes, radiators, valves, and their surrounding environments". Cool.

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Things are happening at the NIH. I can certainly see how people who are grant-dependent are anxious. But in the past, a lot of research funding was going to dubious causes, so I'm glad there's a bit of sanity now in the process. Everyone had to put some kind of DEI spin in their applications. Now, those things will come back to bite them.

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Some detective work in the French Alps links amyotropic lateral sclerosis to the consumption of the false morel mushroom (Gyromitra gigas). That's amazing. The books mainly focus on the nausea and vomiting, but not so much the neurotoxicity.  Certainly not ALS. Well, I don't eat those mushrooms anyway. Interesting that a mushroom with such neurotoxicity would look like a brain.

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How to sleep sitting up. Apparently that's how Tibetan monks sleep, and supposedly the quality of sleep improves. I am not yet convinced of that. I tried this, and I ended up more at a 45° angle. Does that count?

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Stupid.  Washington Democrats will give early release and free rent money for murderers and child rapists, provided they didn't kill more than two victims.  Because you know, more than two murder victims is really unacceptable. What are they smoking there?

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Doom Loop.  Oregon is the 12th unfriendliest state to start a business.  This is why the state will continue to go downhill. Just like the federal government, we are now seeing how much of the economy was just propped up by injected money. Taxing people will go only so far.  And everybody seems to weep for the fired government worker. Yet government policies led to private sector layoffs, and I don't recall any sympathy for those folks.

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Oregon lawmakers want the state to go back to having metrics to evaluate student performance. What for? So that they can be ignored?  We already have standardized tests. Why re-invent the wheel? 

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10 March 2025

Today is Mario Day, according to my son. Mar 10, get it?

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There's truth behind gender stereotypes. I knew it. Stereotypes don't usually form out of nothing. Humans observe and form opinions and develop preferences and bias, which are certainly understandable.

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Here's another ranking of the states, and if not for Oregon's scenic natural beauty, we'd rank at the bottom. Worst in crime, education and economy.

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The City of Portland can't find takes for a $250,000 /year job, because no one wants to move to the city.  The reputation is so bad. This is why we can't hire enough nurses or good doctors, either. Portland is a sh*t city. 

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And speaking of doctors, here's what some states want to compromise to get enough doctors – lower the requirements for foreign doctors to practice here.

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"While the agency concluded that dogs, elk and other animals may contribute to the pollution, the amount of bacteria of human origin was “higher than anticipated” and carries a higher risk of illness, the DEQ said."
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9 March 2025

Oregon is considering two options to prevent the switch to and from Daylight Saving Time. One is to stick with Standard Time. The other is to do whatever California and Washington wants to do. So lame. Do what's right. My prediction is that nothing will happen.

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I like the idea of billing datacenters for the increase use of energy and natural resources, like water. Instead of the consumer.

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No sign of any resolution of the impasse between OHSU and UnitedHealth. So if they can't come with an agreement, OHSU will lose 74,000 patients. This is a strong argument against OHSU and Legacy merging. This is precisely what people are worried about.

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8 March 2025

Congress is finally realizing that they can't continue to cut Medicare reimbursement for doctors, or there won't be enough doctors. But it took a Congressman who is a physician to finally bring it to everyone else's attention. Doctors long lost control over their profession, sadly.

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Medicaid scam. I covered this already, where the state government adds on a hospital providers tax, which they are glad to agree to, because they will get reimbursed from the state, who now qualifies to scam more Medicaid money from the government. It's a scam, and only works if the central government agrees to finance the socialism, and you know how to work the system. This kind of perverse incentive system needs to end, and I'm confident that Trump will finally put an end to this. And why are we listening to Al Green?

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Retirees become college kids again. I love this – it's a win-win. Keeps the mind stimulated and is certainly better than watching TV all day.

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Signals' Meredith Whittaker raises concerns about letting agent AI do all your tasks for you. Yeah, it's different for Tony Stark, because he designed his own system. For the rest of us, we are using a commercial, off-the-shelf software, created by someone else, that probably has other priorities in mind.

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Los Angeles can't account for $2.5 billion given to them to fight homelessness. I would bet that something similar is going on in Oregon and Washington. Nobody cares about responsibility anymore. The reset button needs to be pressed on California.  Oust everyone and start over.

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It's official. The Ritz-Carlton is a failure. But look on the bright side – the City of Portland has places to put the homeless now!

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Portland Street Response now has permission to go just about everywhere – government buildings, libraries and restaurants, to deal with the mentally ill.  What the hell? Who would have thought we would need this crap ten years ago, when we had a normal city?  This is the new normal, and is why Portland is in a Doom Loop.

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