25 August 2023

Cool.  Firefox browsers can import Chrome extensions now.

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Nailed it.  Portland's Predictable Doom Loop.
The people elected and selected to run Portland, Oregon, are like kids who get their first car and never think to change the oil. The city is led by a cadre of ardent leftists who thought they could just rev the engine, ignore maintenance, and see the city magically run itself.

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Paper and bamboo straws might be good for the environment, but they are not good for you.  Unless you like PFAS in your system.

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Canada is turning into Terry Gilliam's Brazil.  What a dystopian nightmare it's becoming.  What a mistake it was to vote for Trudeau.  But like voting for Biden, I doubt they will be given a chance to vote for the alternative ever again.

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“Despite our best efforts, we have been faced with some unique complexities on the Kleenex business,” Fisher said.

“This decision is one that will allow us to shift our resources to better focus on other brands in Canada and meet the needs of our consumers with continued innovation and value,” he added.

What a fine specimen of corporate B.S.

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The College Board Tells TikTok and Facebook Your SAT Scores.  That's because the U.S. has no modern privacy law.  Things like this are still legal.  And your data is available for sale.

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Semaglutide not only promotes weight loss, but can reverse heart failure in those with HFpEF.  (That's jargon for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.)  Wish it didn't have that troublesome gastroparesis side-effect, which can be lingering and distressing.  Tirzepatide might be a better option.

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Speaking of drugs, people are noticing that the FDA is getting to be more relaxed about the drug approval process.  Fewer clinical trials are being conducted prior to approval - 65% are approved one the basis of just one study.  Less information is provided to the public - the FDA can access the study results, but the public cannot.  Only 72% post results within 9 months from approval.  Even your doctor may not have access to the study data for scrutiny.

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23 August 2023

Maui is getting front row seats at how incompetent their Democrat governance is.  Maui community expresses collective rage.  They need tourism to survive, but people are cancelling.  Lahaina is off-limits, of course, and you have to pass through Lahaina to get to Ka'anapali Resort.  Biden's visit was a political disaster.  How tone-deaf and stupid. Worse than Bush and Katrina.  Where are Hawaii's senators and congressmen?  Why aren't they trying to get help?  Now they admit that the death count could be over 1000.  And it's revealed that those who went around the police blockades are the ones who survived.  Why were there police blockades anyway? 

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Grants Pass petitions SCOTUS to hear their case regarding illegal homeless camping.  Hope this will overturn Martin vs Boise.  The Brown vs City of Phoenix case seems to be in their favor. 

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Portland college students - more liberal, less religious, smoke more weed.  Tomorrow's leaders, huh?  Most will go into academics or politics, I predict.

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Tina Kotek wants Portlanders to help revive the city.  The problem is that the only ones who care to venture into the city seem to be the ones doing the destroying.  And fentanyl continues to score up wins against Oregon's efforts.

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The greenies really don't want nuclear.  This article says nuclear is too expensive and dangerous, but relies a lot on data from France's nuclear experience, which is old technology, instead of discussing some of the new developments with small reactors.  Wind energy yields are too low and not reliable.  Solar output is also relegated to certain parts of the world where sunlight is steady and strong enough.  But the energy density is low compared with nuclear (and petroleum).  One hailstorm can take out a lot of solar panels, and hydroelectric power is expensive and can impact local economies.  These are not discussed in the paper.

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Seattle police will no longer respond to mental health crisis calls.  Only social workers.  Hope no one gets shot.

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22 August 2023

There's a school for tyrants.  In Tanzania, Beijing is running a training school for authoritarianism.  Just what the world needs, eh?

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Andy Ngo wins $300,000 damages from Antifa.  Justice, finally.

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Sick.  Using Generative AI to Resurrect the Dead Will Create a Burden for the Living.  Some people will do anything to get other people's money.

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Multnomah County warns it may not have enough jail beds if Oregon doesn’t increase funding.  I think Multnomah County just needs to die, already.  They haven't learned their lesson and never will. 

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The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in America for $15.  TransUnion needs to clean up their act.  And if you're not using a service like DeleteMe, you should.

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Why are conservatives happier than liberals?  Daily Signal thinks that conservatives tend to be married.  Also that conservatives “expressed greater personal agency, more positive outlook, more transcendent moral beliefs, and a generalized belief in fairness” compared with liberals.  I don't think that this is the answer.  Some even doubt the premise, claiming that "liberals tend to display more signs of happiness, as evidenced by uploading more smiling photographs on Linkedin and posting more positive tweets on Twitter".  That also sounds specious.  I think it's because conservatives express gratitude way more than liberals.  This often comes from a grounding in religious belief, as liberals tend to be atheists or agnostics, and the concept of gratitude comes only when they get unexpected free stuff, usually sent by some anonymous stranger on the Internet.  Other than that, it's back to complaining about things.  But feeling gratitude is one of the benefits of meditation and it makes you less of an angry person.

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More on the Lahaina fire, from Axios.  850 deaths suspected now. 

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IBM thinks that 40% of workers will need to re-tool their skills.  And it looks like STEM will not be needed as much because the interface will be human language.  They project less need for programmers now. 

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20 August 2023

Maui death toll is a lot higher than official numbers, residents believe. If you watch the videos where the local government talks to reports, it's so clear that the mayor is an thug, and seems to be making excuses for all the blunders. 

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Electricity map.  Very nice infographic about where the world gets its electricity.

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Shit-life syndrome.  There's a name for this:
"The phrase seemed to denote a level of long-standing poverty, family breakdown, lack of stability, unemployment and potential risk factors common to many of the predominately young, working class patients referred to the [psychotherapeutic] service" for shit is "something that we continually reject, get rid of or hide. At the same time it is something we cannot completely repudiate, it is part of us, something we need" and that the individuals with SLS have problems so "terrible, so untouchable" that they "quite literally cannot be thought about, cannot be handled by the service", yet a therapeutic organisation is "obliged to do so"
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Kelowna, B.C. is in flames.  Even worse than Lahaina, it looks like the Eagle Creek fire of 2017. There are so many fires, Wikipedia already has a page about this.

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ChatGPT is left-wing.  No surprise, since Silicon Valley is mostly left-wing.

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X/Twitter has deleted all images and link posted between 2011 and 2014.  It's still not clear if this was intentional.  (Hmm, what was Hunter Biden doing during this time?)

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There's a clinic in France serving 5000 patients, with only nurses and no doctors.  An interesting real-life experiment.  In the Pacific NW, all we hear about are nursing shortages, not doctor shortages, and clearly there are both.  But a doctor shortage just means you can't grow local healthcare, as long as you maintain your current pool of doctors.  You can't function at all without enough nurses.  Having a bunch of nurse without a doctor is like a headless ant colony.  It can sort of function, but there is no direction, and everything is just on automatic.  There is no longitudinal care, unless a dedicated nurses decides to take your case on.  But nursing work is shift work.  As the physician becomes more of a commodity in today's medicine, either the doctor will need to re-invent the discipline, or be resigned to be content with just being a cog in the healthcare wheel.
Edit:  Lines are indeed blurring between nurse and doctor.  As nurses are developing skills to do patient care on their own, it's going to take more for physicians to distinguish themselves as being worth their extra pay. 

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19 August 2023

Passwords need to be at least 11 characters minimum now.  Computer power has increased.  And using upper and lower case numbers and special characters is a must. 

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Why do have to read this from foreign news sources?  The Maui situation is worse than you're being told.  These links are worth visiting.  So much incompetence you'd think it was deliberate.  Maybe it was, who knows?

And Portland commercial real estate is going through a slow-motion fire of its own.  Maybe much of the city may soon be owned by entities like BlackRock. 

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18 August 2023

Won't eat his own dog food.  Head of Portland's community safety program (Mike Myers) works from a gated community in Henderson, NV.  Nuthin' wrong with that, right?

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You mean it's not climate change?  People are starting a lot of fires in the Pacific NW. 

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I didn't know that the science journal Nature also published science fiction stories.

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But do we really want to know?  A.I. could help us talk to animals.  Reminds me a but of the Black Mirror episode, Crocodile.

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17 August 2023

OHSU and Legacy are in talks to merge.  Vaccine mandates resulted in loss of doctors and nurses.  Mandatory use of ineffective masks.  No guns for security guards.  Continued support of Democrat politicians.  Now Legacy is in dire straits and looks to merge with OHSU. 

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Well that's a new perspective to vacations.  "If you tell them nothing, then you will receive no call, and someone else who is also paid to work will figure it out. You can’t have that happen. The real purpose of this vacation is to prove that you are as important as the sun."

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The BMW for James Bond types.  i7 protection makes it bulletproof.

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Speaking of failing woke policies, Portland AMR ambulance company now can't staff paramedics on all their ambulances.  Some will just know BLS.  So they'll just do basic CPR until real help arrives.  Just like what you might have been doing already.  Except they'll have oxygen and an AED.  Jessica Vega-Pederson still plans to fine them for subpar performance. 

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16 August 2023

Calculator heaven.  Wow, such memories!  I did not know that in the heart of Portland there is a museum dedicated to old calculators.  As with slide rules, there is something about their visual and tactile appeal.  I would visit this place, but it's in a part of Portland that I would avoid.

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Washington state Dems appeal to Buttigieg for $200 million to build a bullet train?  WTF, for?  It'll just get trashed.  What is it about Dems always wanting to build expensive mass transit systems, anyway?  What do they think we are?  Japan?  South Korea? Singapore?  C'mon, Dems.  Don't you know we can't have nice stuff here?

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Let's talk about Maui now.  Here's Biden, offering Maui fire survivors $700 for their troubles.  Hey, Hawaii - you're only 4 electoral votes, and he's already knows you'll vote for him, so don't expect much.  At least he might visit you, unlike the town of East Palestine.

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Oh lovely.  Washington County doesn't have enough public attorneys so 36 people held in jail without court-appointed attorneys must be released.  Nobody wants to liver and work around here, and there are consequences.

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Nice review of the ivermectin media bias.  This is why I tell people - the clues were all around you.  You just had to recognize them.  The only treatments recommended against SARS-CoV2 was the unproven, untested vaccine.  You had to take it, or you would lose your job, your freedom, and not be able to participate in essential life transactions.  And there was no interest in investigating alternate therapies.  Even when there was data to show benefit from things like vitamin D supplementation, it was roundly ignored.  I asked myself "Are we interested in fighting this virus and finding effective treatment, or just pushing a product?"  Clearly it was the latter.

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