Sugoi & Yokunai

A seventh patient has been cured of HIV.  This was achieved with a stem cell transplant using a donor with the homozygous delta-32 CCR5 mutation. This is such a convergence of technological achievements made.

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Never commit your company to Google technology.  Now the Goo.gl URL shortener is slated for termination, joining a long list of those on the Google graveyard.

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A lot of Windows computers suffered an outage this morning.  Interesting is Microsoft's stopgap solution - reboot each computer 15 times. Well? What are you waiting for? Those computers aren't going to reboot themselves, you know.  (This ronin is happy he has a Mac.)

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It gets worse. CNN has never live-broadcasted a Trump rally – until the July 13 rally. What were they expecting to happen this time? And the shooter had three encrypted overseas accounts.  And the shooter flew a drone over the site beforehand to get an overview – someone must have known about this. And audio-video forensics suggest that the location of at least one shooter was not on the rooftop but inside the building.

We're world famous!  Portland is so lawless drivers are now ignoring roads and speeding their cars through parks, after dystopian city defunded its police department. So reports the DailyMail.

And here you are, Portlanders. You already can't enjoy much of the city you pay taxes for. But you thought that if you just stayed in your own neighborhood, you'd be OK.  Guess what?  Soon you'll have a "deflection center" not far from the neighborhood preschool and elementary school.  These are the criddlers who want to take an easy opt-out so they won't have to go to jail.

It's no wonder that wealth managed in Portland dropped by $14 billion in 2023. I can understand Camas, since Fisher Investments left. What a hit that little municipality took. As Reagan said, "if you want less of something, tax it".

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No regrets. People are apparently upset that conservatives are going after the ghouls that were disappointed that Trump didn't get killed. Like Cass McLeod-Skinner.  This is a good read for conservatives who are hesitant to afuera! the hate-crazed radical Left.

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A Eugene plasma center is being sued because of its HIV safety policy. So maybe it will have to go out of business if it loses, because you never know in Oregon. Then how is that going to help people?

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Some may have reasons to object to building affordable housing for low-income people, but this has got to be one of the dumbest arguments. 

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Disgusting. USPS shared customer postal addresses with Meta, LinkedIn and Snap with tracking pixels.  I discontinued that Informed Delivery "feature" a while back. Felt creepy. That feeling was justified.

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Kotek was a half-billion increase in public school budget.  What for?  They underperform, have less students to worry about, and thanks to Kate Brown, don't even have objectives to meet.  That money might be better spent.

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Rumors about the future iPhone 17. Wishful thinking. We'll probably just get a thinner phone with more emoji options.  And AI being insinuated into something you don't really need.  And something having to do with Vision Pro, which people don't seem to be interested in anymore.

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Yes!  Another graffiti defacer arrested. Can't stop the cleanup effort yet, though.

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Which phones can Cellbrite software unlock? Here's a handy table.  Older models are crackable but with the latest models, they're "in research". 

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A guide to the critters in Miyazaki's movies. Critters like the susuwatari and the kodama.

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More on that mysterious Austin Private Wealth put option deal on DJT. Now they say it was a filing error. Nothing to see. Move along.

More on the attempted assassination, which is looking even more bizarre every day.

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No one is above the law, unless you're a Dem. Guess what, Oregon prosecutors won’t charge state Democratic Party leaders.  The reason? They just "did not find sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Singh made the contribution in a name other than his own and that he did so knowingly." Yeah, right. Only AG Rosenblum recused herself.  So much conflict of interest.

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Arizona gets election integrity with voter ID requirements.  Significant victory in this swing state.

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It's now 4 days since the attempted ass*ssin*tion of former president Trump. To this day, I haven't heard that the Secret Service is conducting an internal investigation of their goof-up. Only that Wray, Mayorkas and Cheatle are having a closed door discussion today. I haven't heard that were any apologies to the familes of the people who were killed or injured. The New York Times has not published any of their signature spiffy graphics about the bullet trajectory. Spiffy graphics have only come from amateurs who post on X/Twitter. I've only heard that SS Director Kim Cheatle was interviewed on ABC, and dug in her heels as to her performance, planning to stay on as director, despite calls to resign. Now there is evidence that there were agents inside the building with the roof whose slope was too steep for agents to handle. And this information comes from small local outlets. The story is getting stranger and doesn't make sense. Consider: the ladder and the large sniper rifle escaping detection. The inexperienced kid. People who saw the shooter minutes before and sounded a warning, and nothing was done.  The lack of curiosity in the mainstream media about what happened is really bizarre. Theories like this one seem plausible. In the turmoil that would have followed, it would have been easier to sweep things under the rug. But now they stand out.

People are asking questions. And did some people already know something was up?

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Sheesh. In Portland, when a person of color makes art, you are required to like it forever. 

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This is a big deal. Providence recently sold it's lab services to Labcorp (which Legacy uses, too). Tests which used to take 90 minutes to perform, now takes 7 hours. And the medical staff aren't happy.

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Blocking interleukin-11 made mice live up to 25% longer.

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Reason writer fails to understand the difference between cancel culture and having an employee that isn't a decent human being. Cancel culture is when you say that anyone who thinks a man can't be a real woman or a woman can't be a real man deserves to be punished. Or anyone who says that for mission critical positions, merit should have higher priority than diversity issues in hiring for positions of authority. Quite a bit different from letting someone go because they wished someone harm or death. Cancel culture is saying that just purely just because you don't like something, it should be made illegal or unavailable to everyone else. Home Depot (and others) just fired people who thought that they were still safe in expressing the hateful narrative of the Left.  Times are changing. Learn the difference between true hate and just being tired of putting up with someone's bullcrap.

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Astronomers give advice on how to spot deepfakes. Look at the stars in their eyes.

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Academic journals are a lucrative scam. it's true. That's why there are so many of them. Academics need to be published in order to survive. And there are people only too glad to make that happen. You'd think that the Internet would fix that, but no. You still need a system that handles peer-review.

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The racket that is the Pharmacy Benefit Managers. And well-summarized by Portland ophthalmologist, Dr. Glaucomflecken. I'm old enough to remember when doctors ran healthcare. Those were the days.

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Europe is rushing to set the rules for AI. Pardon me, but I don't trust the elites in Europe to do the right thing. I still think the most objective and knowledgeable policy setters for AI are the AI grad students. They know AI really well, and most of them haven't established anything that would generate conflicts of interest.

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Google and Microsoft generate as much power as small countries. But you can't have natural gas stoves, and must buy inferior EV glorified golf carts to drive.

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Graffiti's back, Portland. Hasn't been 24 hours.

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Microsoft laid off its entire DEI department. Companies don't have money to waste on stuff like this. Only governments like California do.

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California's "Keep parents in the dark" about about transgender grooming finally tipped Elon Musk over the edge. This is because he saw how devastating transgender ideology ruined his relation with a daughter. So SpaceX and X/Twitter are going to Texas. More tax base loss for California and probably unemployment as well.

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The last thing Japan needs right now. Some guy in Japan created an AI app that meets the need for affection and companionship amongst Japanese men, so they don't need to date.  So Japan's birthrate will decline even faster. It's a sad state of affairs. What a man really wants is to have someone who just authentically enjoys having him around. Someone who is really happier when he's there. This app can simulate that, and if it succeeds, will likely spread to other cultures.

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Israeli scientists find to locale of consciousness in the brain. It's located very deeply – in the aptly-named claustrum.  It's just under the insular cortex, external to the putamen.  It's not in the reticular formation of the brainstem, as you might think. Is this where the soul is located? The essence of who we are?

Other scientists have found that creatives respond differently to oddball stimuli. I think I knew that.

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Remember those mysterious Roman dodecahedrons? Well, someone may have figured out what their function was.

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Now he says this. Former CDC Director Robert Redfield now reveals that the FDA hid adverse effects of the mRNA vax to prevent hesitancy. This is so fcked-up, I don't know what to say. And I bet no one (Walensky) will be punished for this.

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Oregon's software industry in shrinking. Layoffs. Decreased funding. Shutdowns. "It could be that new generations of software developer and tech entrepreneur will find other places more appealing."  Gee, ya think?

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Schools get billions more. Kids drop out anyway. Money goes to teachers, who are busy protesting something, or striking, or going on leave, rather than teaching kids. Any wonder why kids don't want to go to school and get indoctrinated? Or get beaten up by transgenders M→F kids? I mean, you don't need to read or write or do math to graduate.

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Here's the 2024 Republican party platform, in case you were curious. Seems reasonable to me.

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Apparently many employers post fake job openings.  Apparently to boost morale (huh?) and simulate that they're a growing company. What a waste of people's time.

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Caveat emptor.  Judge rules: You can't reasonably expect privacy if you use Google products.

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MRI scans reveal what parts of the brain get activated when one feels curiosity. It's the occipitotemporal cortex.

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Oregon should learn from this guy. The Nevada PERS system is all computer-driven, and it is beating the market.  I wonder if it just copies market investments of Congress.

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The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that Apple did not infringe on the patent of AliveCor, and so they can start selling the Apple Watch with the ECG feature built in again.

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How do you musically notate synthesizer settings? There is no standard way, yet.

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The Greenies will lose. Because of the need for energy to support AI and electric vehicles, energy will have to come from nuclear and petroleum-based fuels. Not to mention the continued cryptocurrency mining.

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Yesssss!  WA Supreme Court rules cities can force RVs to move. Finally, some common sense.

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Why bother following the law?  Nearly half of vehicle licenses in Portland are expired.  The continued downfall of a once-great city.

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American Dream Pizza is closing "unexpectedly". I used to go there. Another one bites the dust.

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SE Portland Wells Fargo bank has to close due to safety concerns from a nearby homeless camp. How much are Portlanders going to tolerate?  And Metro is going to tax us more to fund the homelessness grift. It's a business model for a lot of people now, and you're going to fund their salaries.

And the planned sobering/deflection center won't ready until 2025. Probably because it has to be $2 million in capital improvements. Nothing but the best for our homeless. That's why we have so many – second highest in the nation. Multnomah County doesn't seem to want to actually address the problem. They will open up a drop-off center in about 50 days but will only require a referral there. Honestly, who is actually going to show up there? Portland-area officials think it's not going to last.

Update (13 Jul 2024): They moved it to 2026! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

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As the demand for power grows, the U.S. and Canada reach an agreement on hydropower, to make sure we have enough water.

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AT&T text message system has been hacked. Although only metadata was stolen, who knows what's in it? And many banks and financial institutions still send authentication codes by text message. This should stop.

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Saks OFF 5th is closing in Westlake Mall in downtown Seattle.  That means layoffs. Less foot traffic. Adjacent stores will suffer because there's even less reason to travel downtown and shop. And more unemployment and decreased taxbase for Seattle (and Washington). But what is Seattle leadership doing about it? Supplying the criddlers with drug paraphernalia, that's what.

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CHARMed molecular tools may help fight prion diseases. This is great news, as there is no treatment for these debilitating diseases.

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PDF trick. You can create deeplinks to specific pages on PDF files. 

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The concentration of helium in that large Minnesota gas pocket is higher than last estimated – 14% now. Great news!

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The final word on color wheels? What are the real primary colors? What's all that about magenta not being a real color?

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Faster-than-light is compatible with the special theory of relativity.  Since they travel faster than light, will we ever be able to detect them?

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Killing cancer cells with programmed cancer cells, Sounds great. I'd love to read the paper but it's behind a paywall.

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Cool. Findings from the Hubble and JWST suggest how and when light first appeared in the universe.

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Oregon students will have to pass a financial literacy class to graduate. Are Democrats sure they want to do this? It might convert some of them to conservativism.

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When push comes to shove. Nike slashed its sustainability workforce after a pledge to reduce its carbon footprint. No money for that nonsense.

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Medicare wants to cut doctors' pay again. And doctors complain about it. Rinse, repeat. But hey, doctor burnout is decreasing. Wait till they find out their pay is getting cut.

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Well that's good.  At least one drug no longer has a shortage problem – cisplatin. Now for the others.

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Problems beget problems.  So now the homeless are getting revenge at being swept away. They're committing arson on property to vent their spleen.  So now what, Ted Wheeler?

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Kids who get smartphones earlier are more likely to develop mental health problems. Yeah, they are given the means to leave permanent marks on their screw-ups for all to see. Even adults make mistakes.

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Arrow's Impossibiity Theorem.  This explains why messing with simple elections with multiple rounds of voting just leads to more complications.

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Python has too many package managers. Boy, I'll say. Too many times have I had to rip out my Python installations and start from scratch. Too many libraries have dependencies that clash with others when they get updated. I am so afraid to update things. Something else might stop working when something gets deprecated. Package managers and even virtual environments won't stop that from happening.

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Oncologists are struggling to deal with millennials dying of cancer. But the article doesn't address the elephant in the room.

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They're making fun of us. Oregonian's willing to trade the ability to control their own thermostats for a measly $25.  Yeah, how's that working out? Really smart people are asking why they don't tell people not to charge their EVs as much instead.  Because that would make too much sense.  Because EV cars never made much sense to me.

Meanwhile, datacenters are sprouting in the Pacific NW, and that threatens the power grid, too.  Here's a tip: you don't want to live too close to a datacenter.
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Joke's not funny anymore. A California man got NULL for a license plate. His wife got VOID, so they'd be NULL and VOID, get it? Well, the joke got old fast.

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Girls in Tech is shutting down. Oh well. Maybe the founder will do Asians in Basketball. 

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This investor thinks a lot AI is just hype. I agree – a lot of it is opportunistic hype. But not all. Meanwhile, the AI candidate that was aimed to be mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming, has had its OpenAI connection severed. Oh well, there's always local models and RAG.

Oregonians are wary of AI, but aren't really sure what the dangers are. And many feel that politicians should regulate it. Yeah, sure. I think that the best people to regulate AI are those in AI masters programs. They know enough about the technology to be able to judge what it can and cannot do, and they don't have investments or conflicts of interest that would prevent them from doing the right thing. Everyone else might be compromised because they have their fingers in some pie. But politicians? No. Andrew Ng agrees.

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WWeek has an article on the Grants Pass vs Johnson ruling, and that the ball is back in Oregon's court. And that Tina Kotek was the sponsor of HB3115 which is keeping Oregon cities from getting rid of those tents and RVs on the streets. What is Tina doing? Besides still trying to her spouse on the payroll?  Meanwhile another downtown homeless fire. Seattle, too.

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Idiots in charge. Being on time is a white supremacy value. So says the dean of Duke Medical School.

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This report is making the round on social media. Kids that got the COVID-19 vax product are more likely to die. Not just a little. A lot.

Also good.  GLP-1 receptor agonists may also be effective in suppressing addictive behavior.

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What's really going on inside those LLMs? We still don't know, but here's a discussion about diving into the problem and finding out.

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A lot of thought goes into designing climbing ropes. Don't use the one designed for glaciers when rock climbing. See, I learned something.

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Another blood substitute. Erythromer. Hope this one works.

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