Sugoi & Yokunai

A million dollar net worth isn't what it used to be. Those with $1 million net worth don't think of themselves as rich, just upper middle class.  In today's world, you can't retire with only $1 million invested. Unless you want to really live like a monk.  To have a  "rich" lifestyle, you need to have at least a $10 million net worth, I think.

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Neuroscientists engineer a protein that enhances memory. It's a modified LIMK1 protein, involved in the formation of dendritic spines in neurons.  I don't understand why they chose rapamycin as a switch to turn it on.

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Big Business doesn't want to come to Seattle now.  There's no demand for Seattle office space.  No surprises, eh?

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Nice summary of what's going with the firing of Sam Altman at OpenAI. Now I hear, investors are demanding that he be re-instated and they are in negotiations to bring him back.  I think Ilya Sutskever is too young to have heard of what happened to Fairchild Semiconductor, when Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce left to from their own company – Intel.

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American men are dying more quickly than American women. Why is that?

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California students will now be programmed to recognize and reject any news that goes against whatever the accepted narrative is.

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UK is the first to approve using CRISPR technology for the treatment of sickle cell anemia and thalassemia.

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Lessons learned along the way in trying to create an A.I. girlfriend. Remember, every good idea turns to crap when you release it to the world. Same here.  You knew people would turn it into a porn factory. Or the developer is crazy.

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Payroll taxes are increasing, because of all those disabled and unemployed people. Great way to hurt struggling businesses. And at the same time, they're actually bragging that they can lower taxes that unemployed people pay when getting their unemployed benefits. 

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Another one (ones?) bite the dust.  Remember Burgermaster in the U-District in Seattle? Soon to be gone.  And Bartell's on Capitol Hill is closing, too. 

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Immigrant to Seattle gets red-pilled. Welcome to the Blue City, pal.

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This could be big. Social media platforms can't hide behind Section 230 and allow kids to access social media sites and be vulnerable to "design defects—including lack of parental controls, insufficient age verification, complicated account deletion processes, appearance-altering filters, and requirements forcing users to log in to report child sexual abuse materials (CSAM)—and failed to warn young users and their parents about those defects".  As I've said before, the Internet is not for children.

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United Health Care uses an A.I. algo with a 90% error rate to deny care.  Seems like this is mainly in the realm of the elderly and length of stay in rehab facilities and nursing homes.

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Videoconferencing fatigue is real. Did we really need a research paper to confirm this?

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Is ChatGPT automated bullshit? Well it can be, and you'd better know your stuff to be able to tell the difference. Right now, without appropriate prompting to promote accuracy, ChatGPT generates output that just looks like it's the correct answer. I've caught it several times at just making stuff up. It's not the authority many people think it is.

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Does California want clean energy or not? Newsom makes rooftop solar less attractive.  How any business can function in the golden state is a big mystery to me.

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Could explain a lot.  When we see what others do, our brain sees not what we see, but what we expect.

...if we observe actions in such meaningful sequences, our brains increasingly ignore what comes into our eyes, and depend more on predictions of what should happen next, derived from our own motor system. "What we would do next, becomes what our brain sees,..."

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IBM is trying to bring back the defined benefit plan and take away the 401(k). This is getting mixed reactions. We all know that most Americans aren't doing what they should to save for retirement. So you could see IBM doing them a favor by saving up for them. But those who are more money savvy would rather have the money. Because this is taking away the employer match, and the money actually stays with IBM. So if you leave, you don't get the money. But if you stay, it would be nice to get a pension.

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Nikki Haley is wrong.  Without the ability to speak anonymously, critical ideas may never be expressed, as the dominant power will go after whoever steps out of line. What is she afraid of? Russian bots? Chinese bots? All those scary boogeymen?

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Akio Toyoda is really big on hybrids as the way to go. Not on pure EVs. So from 2025, Toyota Camry will only be available as a hybrid. Right on!

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Some A.I. predictions for 2024.  I could see some of them happening and being good. Others, meh. Smart mirrors? In your dreams.

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Vertigo attack. Blow this up full screen. Enjoy the ride.

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It's for the children. Congress wants to impose parental controls for the Internet.  The Internet was never for kids. It's for adults. Congress should BTFO.

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The head of Portland's Central City Concern reveals that the state of social services in the city is worse than you think.  Those last two paragraphs tell it all. This would have been a tractable problem had it been addressed early on when the problem was small. It's now far too late.

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Ten Lessons, by Gian-Carlo Rota, retired MIT professor.  Good to know for aspiring academics.

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Great site for Firefox users.  Finally, I tweaked my browser so that videos don't stutter anymore.  And I thought it was my Internet connection being too slow. 

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Strike Nation! Starbucks employees to walk out on Red Cup day.  Fire them. Replace them with people with integrity.

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It's their fault! Portland city officials criticize Multnomah County officials for the sorry state of the homelessness crisis.

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Portland's ambulance service is already struggling with staffing shortages. So what does Multnomah County do? It fines them.

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Gasoline for your car will cost less this winter. But your electricity bill will increase by 17%. The left hand gives, but the right hand takes away.

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It's looking to be that way.  Was St. Malachy right?  That's the Prophecy of the Popes guy.

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Seattle may see some school closures, as there aren't enough kids to justify some of the school staying open. 

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Legacy's got more problems. Now ten Women's Health Clinics want to unionize. Everyone wants more pay. You're looking less attractive as an acquisition item every day.

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Could this be Bigfoot? Man claims to have seen a giant on a hillside that disappeared into a rock formation. Well, this is Oregon, you know.

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Portland teachers strike continues Monday, gives new meaning to ‘No School November’. We now enter into the third week of the strike. Just unbelievable. Portland students already have low school attendance due to COVID-19 and getting time off to attend all kinds of protests. They get days off for teacher preparation days. And every single holiday. Now this. Students don't seem to care that their academic lives are being frittered away. Even the lefty Oregonian is saying "enough already". This is why we were concerned about Tina Kotek's support by the unions. And the teachers demand racial equity training during the strike. How about math, reading, writing?

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Can't believe the Oregonian let Steve Duin run this column. But he's right.

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Joining the combined powers of CRISPR-Cas9 technology and CAR-T cells. Researchers have found that disrupting SUV39H1-mediatied H3K9 methylation status facilitates early expansion, long-term persistence, and overall anti-tumor efficacy of human CAR T cells in leukemia and prostate cancer models. Amazing!

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Drink coffee. The trigonelline in coffee improved memory. At least in aged mice. Could work in humans, too. 

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In the A.I. developer world, people are so accustomed to importing libraries and trying out someone's new A.I. model, or GPT wrapper app.  Now some evil hacker in the Philippines has abused this trust to hide malware. Everything goes to sh!t eventually, when you open it up to the world.

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Unintended consequences. Ensuring adequate staffing in hospitals can be challenging. Finding doctors to work can be expensive. Congress' "No Medical Surprises Act" sounded good on paper. Who likes a surprise expensive bill? But now companies that provide the staffing to hospitals, such as TeamHealth, Envision Healthcare, American Physician Partners, Air Methods Corp, Global Medical Response, Radiology Partners have either gone bankrupt or are in serious financial difficulty.  So it may end up that your local hospital will not have enough doctors to treat you. So no surprise bill, but maybe "we'll just have to do the best we can" medical care instead.

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Oregon in the News.  Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs. It Isn’t Working. Everyone can see it, except our state legislators.

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American Medical Response now has the Washington County contract for ambulance services, and is providing the same substandard care as Multnomah County. Not entirely their fault, though. Few to move to Oregon to work.

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We can't have nice things. The Holiday Ale Fest Is Canceled for 2023.

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Pope Francis fires popular Bishop Strickland.

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A study in contrasts. Here's "the happiest man in the world" who doesn't care what you think about him. And here's Elon Musk, who almost had to have a "wellness check" done because he was depressed after being booed at during a Dave Chapelle show.  He actually was stunned at what people thought about him.

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That's the message. Don't use your car to make calls or send text messages.

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At the interface of the healthcare system.  People get caught because they don't know how to navigate the system.  I still can't believe that insurers don't feel that they have to disclose why they denied coverage for your illness. What are they afraid of? Thank goodness for ProPublica's insurance claim app.

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Apple is pays a relatively small penalty for hiring practices favoring H1-B visa holders over hiring American workers. Cringely had been calling out this practice years ago. From what I see, Apple is flooded with foreigners, and it shows in their website and advertising. Could this be why it's products are so lame these days? Like the M3 chip? And why we're seeing other companies come up with the cool stuff now? Lilke hu.ma.ne, from ex-Apple employees?

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Here's Instagram, making their app more addictive to vulnerable, lonely youth. The Internet can be sweet poison, sometimes.

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Okinawans aren't living as long as before.  Diet's changing. Lifestyle is become more stressful. I guess it was too good to last.

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A.I. is taking the easier white-collar jobs. All those sinecure positions are going away. Now, you really have to provide value, else you aren't worth the trouble.

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Why is this only on a German site?  The new Outlook allows your emails to be sent to Microsoft servers. Also your calendar and contact information will be sent there, too. You can opt out, but only if you are aware of this, and you know how to do it.

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You mean you're still willing to endure it? "Patience wearing thin."  Shoreline, WA business owners getting tired of increasing crime.  Well, you are in Seattle, you know. What do you expect? Did you guys vote Democrat? Did you vote to defund the police? Consequences of your own actions, I'd say. 

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Buyer's remorse. Oregon lawmakers now want Kotek to reverse Measure 110.

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But we need to revive Cuckoo's Nest mental hospitals. Oregon State Hospital struggles for resources now and is imploding with lawsuits. What a mess. Who would want to work there?

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Total search privacy?  Seems straightforward to me.  Let's say you want the librarian to retrieve a book for you, but you don't want the librarian to know what book you want.  The answer is to encrypt the library (preprocessing) and have the librarian bring you encrypted chunks at a time, such that the librarian doesn't know what is being retrived. But you can decrypt the chunk and read what you need and if this can be done without leaving a trace, then your secret is safe. 

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Americans don't want to fight for their country anymore. The author thinks its because of apathy. There might be some of that, but I think a major reason is that no one wants to die because of Biden's blunders. No one wants to die because of our incompetent leadership. There was a time when the cause was just and we felt it was right, but having seen that there is a world where we can live without major wars, dying in a pointless war seems even more...pointless.

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I never really liked leaf blowers, so I'm not unhappy that they may go away. The noise, the stink, the airborne particulates. But the mess will be harder to clear, so we'll have to see.

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My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.

And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours.

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit.

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Portland can't win for losing.  Judge throws monkey wrench in plans to get rid of the homeless. Down the toilet we'll continue to go. Southwest Washington is more serious about cleaning things up, although the effort is rather mild.

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Question asked and answered.  Dog care workers question why Seattle PD never showed up after 911 calls about intruder who wouldn't leave.

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The consequences of being poor. Portland has a shortage in the Bureau of Development Services, so no new construction in the city.

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Two kinds of GenZ attitudes out there.  There's this one:

Download Lazy.mp4

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There should be name for this phenomenon. Where a system works great when it's just starting out, and everyone behaves and uses the system properly, but when you introduce it into the world at large, there are the inevitable assholes that spoil it and make people want to go back to how it was before.  So many examples of this. It's happening to Uber in Seattle.

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Why do young people think that everyone wants to "track" everything they do?  Yeah, there's the tech for it, but come up with something really useful.

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