Sugoi & Yokunai

Statue honoring Sacagawea's son, Charbonneau, is unveiled in Charbonneau, OR.  Appropriate, of course, but too bad the Oregonian misspelled Sacagawea's name.  But using a "j" instead of a "g", they perpetuate the wrong pronounciation.  It should be <Sack-a-gah- weh-a>, with a hard-g.  There is no j-sound in the Hidatsa language, where her name translates to "Bird-Woman", and not the Shoshoni word for "boat launcher".

Oops.  Microsoft AI Researchers Accidentally Exposed 38TB of Sensitive Data.  Sometime ago, I was in a discussion about healthcare records.  All the docs were eager to be able to get access to all of a patient's medical records to improve care.  Some suggested that everyone's medical records be housed in some central repository.  But who would host it?  The government? Hell no.  Some private company?  Like Microsoft? 

• Infection with Omicron is associated with a lower post-COVID-19 condition risk.
• Post-COVID-19 condition risk is lower among those who had previous infections.
• Post-COVID-19 condition risk did not differ by vaccination status.
• Symptom patterns were similar across variants.

So simple, yet this is the key to tranquility.  Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all.  This is essentially what sages teach, but mastering this is difficult.

Chan Zuckerberg org to spin up 1,000+ H100 GPU cluster for AI medical research.  I kinda wish it was someone else doing this because I'm not sure if this will come with some kind of privacy backdoor that will benefit Meta, but at least they know what kind of requirements will be necessary.  I'm sure someone will take them up on the offer.

Related:  Steve Jobs revived Apple with internet-connected Macs - the iMac.  Now Intel will sell A.I.-computers, devices with A.I. capabilities built-in.

A recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that where you are born in the UK, and the income and wealth of your family, now matter more than ever in defining life outcomes, with social mobility at its worst in more than 50 years.

In the case of scientific knowledge, overconfidence might be particularly significant, as the lack of awareness of one's own ignorance can impact behaviors, pose risks to public policies, and even jeopardize health.

Over 10% of Japan's population is over 80 years, for the first time.  Not good. 

Jens Haaning, a conceptual artist whose work focuses on power and inequality, was commissioned in 2021 by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, northern Denmark, to recreate two earlier works that used scores of banknotes to represent average incomes.

Haaning’s 2007 work, An Average Danish Annual Income, displayed krone notes fixed to canvas in a frame, and a second 2011 work about Austrian incomes used euro bills.

The museum provided about 532,000 krone (£61,500) from its reserves to recreate artworks as well as an artist’s fee of about 40,000 krone. But when staff unpacked the newly delivered works, they found two empty frames with the title Take the Money and Run.

Sorry, this is a BuzzFeed link, but what the hell.  People over 60 share some of the good things about being older.  It's all good if you are still healthy and have taken steps earlier to avoid the avoidable troubles. 

'Dr. Google' meets its match in Dr. ChatGPT'.  Not quite, but a doctor who can use a chat model will be a better diagnostician than one what doesn't.

It’s based solely on what we want in an ideal world and doesn’t appear to address what are the resources we have to accomplish that. I’m very concerned about how Oregon hospitals are going to do this.

It’s not easy. An RN is a highly educated person. It’s not something you can snap your fingers and say, “You’re an RN today.”

Take a regular med-surge floor. Under the bill, there’s a 1:5 ratio. That’s one nurse for every five patients. If you’ve got a med-surge unit of 30 beds, it requires you to have six nurses. If you’ve been doing this long enough, you know that sooner or later one will get sick. Does that mean your 30-bed unit is only a 25-bed unit and what do you tell those patients? The statute is specific in that no nurse can be assigned patients in excess of the ratio, with the exception for critical patients in an ED. That’s not good care management at all. If the patient isn’t critical but you’re one of those five, you’ve got to what, wait in the lobby? Get transferred to a different hospital? You’ve got that kind of real-world issue that isn’t adequately addressed.

Two more bite the dust.  JaCiva bakery and The Pied Cow.  They blame the coronavirus epidemic.  No it wasn't the virus, but government policies that caused the decreased foot traffic.  JaCiva used to make the best pumpkin pie in the city.  No more.

This should be required reading for all young poliical aspirants:

The mere imagining of a better tomorrow, in its view, is sufficient to reform the longest-standing democracy on Earth. In effect, it is a party that seeks to attract support by standing for nothing other than disruption — call it the Seinfeld Party.

This is an extraordinarily dangerous approach in a democracy, where stability and slow, methodical and deliberative decision-making is a virtue. Altering democracy should not be approached like building an app where the primary focus is getting clicks and eyeballs and then figuring out how to monetize it later. This is not Uber upending the cab industry, or Airbnb trying to engineer the way we live and travel. This is our republic.

Trump made it look easy.  It's not.

"CUD was associated with an increased risk of psychotic and nonpsychotic bipolar disorder and unipolar depression."

“The health and safety of our patients, caregivers, and community are our highest priority. As such, we ask that all employees receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine or booster,” said Michael Connors, Providence Public Relations.

However, Providence was quick to point out that this is not a mandate. According to Connors, Providence’s policy diverges from the strict vaccine mandates enforced by state law and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) during the peak of the pandemic.

“This is not the same as the vaccine mandates that we were required to implement by state law and CMS during the pandemic. Caregivers can choose to decline the vaccine. Those who do not wish to receive it simply need to submit a declination form by Nov. 30. They no longer need to request approval for a medical or religious exemption as many of our states and CMS required at the height of COVID,” said Connors.

“All declinations will be automatically accepted. They do not need to be approved. This process is not the same as the medical or religious exemptions that many states and federal regulators required us to review and approve during the pandemic,” he added.