Sugoi & Yokunai

How the ultra-wealthy live, as seen through their staffing agencies. I can't even imagine...

––– 凄い –––
Top A.I. models fail I.Q. tests, but they still understand things. Huh?

––– 凄い –––
Confirmation. Sleep helps neurons flush out waste. That's what sleep is for.

––– 凄い –––
Jellyfish protein extract can detect fingerprints.

––– 凄い –––
That controversial sound only 2% can hear. What is it? Is it the Schumann resonance? Some say it's ocean waves, but that doesn't explain some of the sounds far inland, right?

––– 凄い –––
The criddlers and gronks have made it so that people can't use the library anymore. Yup, there's not enough staffing for people to be ersatz security guards, and put up with drug abuse, minor crime, disturbances, and possible violence. So you, taxpayer, can't access the library. Most of you voted for this, so too bad. Even CNN finds out about Portland, and doesn't have nice things to say.

––– 良くない –––
Remember when Obama said you can keep your doctor with Obamacare? Not true.

––– 良くない –––
California hasn't given up on pursuing a wealth tax, that will follow you even if you leave the state. Leave now, before this takes effect.

––– 良くない –––
Bill Maher got reamed. He's completely blind to what America is seeing. He keeps trying to diss Trump, when it's his boy Biden who is fcking things up.  Congrats to Trump, BTW, for getting unanimous support from SCOTUS. I mean we all knew it was coming, but it's nice when it does.

––– 凄い –––
Injured in a hit and run? Don't expect Portland Police to help you. They only solve 2% of cases.

––– 良くない –––

––– 凄い –––
Oregon wants to give 1 year of free rent to illegals. This is YOUR tax money they're wasting.

––– 良くない –––
USPS admits it. Don't use the 4-legged blue boxes. They're not safe.

––– 良くない –––

––– 良くない –––
Gavin Newsom is running California into the ground. Eric Adams is running NYC into the ground. Just like CNN's woke newscasters have been running the company into the ground. CNN might undergo needed renovation, but we'll need to see who replaces these guys. Mark Thompson used to be at the NYT, so he's probably not exactly centrist.

––– 凄い –––
So who voted against re-criminalizing fentanyl abuse. These guys.  Including, Khanh Pham, not surprisingly.  And now we know who the RINOs are. This should have been a no-brainer vote.

––– 良くない –––
I didn't know eating ramen was a guy thing. 

––– 凄い –––

Download Moscow_Uni.mp4

Heck, look at Moscow in general. Beautiful.

Download Moscow_Winter.mp4

They can have nice things. Why do you think? Look at this video and what do you see? Their downtown is alive and thriving, and it is safe, unlike Portland or Seattle and many American cities. Even the females can wear what they want.

Download Moscow.mp4

––– 凄い –––
Seattleites upset that they can't have nice things.

––– 凄い –––

Awesome. OHSU's rally to support David Jacoby gets a decent turnout, despite the weather.

––– 凄い –––
Seattle City Council president has had it with protestors. There's no civility anymore in Seattle. Millennials thinks that their opinions are important enough to get in your face. Arrest them all.
And thirty years ago, this guy would have been laughed out of town. But in today's world...

––– 良くない –––
The crazy is strong in California. Illegal aliens will get interest-free home loans. Man, if you didn't have enough reasons to leave the state, here's another.

––– 良くない –––
Alcohol deaths rising, hitting women the hardest. And antidepressant use is increasing, also hitting women the hardest. That's probably why Democrats seem so dominant in politics these days. The crazy is strong. That's why someone said this on X:

Also this is worth an encore:

––– 良くない –––
Ugh. Parent's trauma can leave epigenetic traces in children. Well that's not good.

––– 良くない –––
Some are saying that the nursing profession isn't fun anymore. Suicide rate is increasing. It starting with COVID-19, but you can't really blame that anymore. It's policy, and the deterioration of American society as a whole. No safety. Lousy economy. Lots of unpleasantness to deal with.

––– 良くない –––
Largest helium deposit discovered in Minnesota. Great! We can have MRI scans now. And party balloons.

––– 凄い –––

And Google admits that it can't guarantee that Gemini A.I. won't be unbiased. Why use it then? I guess it's facing a "right-wing backlash". How about just calling it a reality backlash? Why does having common sense get labeled "right-wing".

––– 良くない –––
Bike vigilantes exist!  They'll use their expertise to help you get back your stolen bike. There's one in Portland, too, called BikeIndex. Also Project 529 and BikePortland.

––– 凄い –––
CDC recently recommended that people get their ninth jab. This is despite warnings that have been put on the mRNA product.

––– 良くない –––
Should you ditch you mobile phone like Justin Bieber? Most of us can't, because we don't have personal assistants. Oh well.

––– 良くない –––
There have been tech layoffs, but the headcount at major tech companies is about the same. This is because they are changing their focus, and weeding out the oldies, to make room for the new. But also, they want more scut workers, like at Amazon, to do manual labor jobs. But white-collar jobs are being pared, and some engineers are being let go. Probably managers, too.

––– 凄い –––
C|Net is no longer a trustworthy source of tech news. Reputation, once lost, is hard to regain. If C|Net can be fooled by A.I., it's clearly not a tech authority.

––– 良くない –––
Multnomah County's ambulance service is a sinking ship. Workers are leaving, and the County wants to punish the ambulance service. Soon, we won't have ambulance service. What inept leadership. I suspect the rich will somehow take care of themselves.

––– 良くない –––

––– 良くない –––
There goes recycling.  Downtown Portland will close two bottle drop centers because they're just fentanyl abuse hangouts. Everything nice is falling apart in this clown world of a city.

––– 良くない –––
PGE wants more money. Can't they take it from their CEO's enormous compensation?

––– 良くない –––
Love to see Seattle Democrats get a taste of Democrat policy. They're just seeking a better life, right?

––– 凄い –––

This has gotten strangely little media mention. On Tuesday, a federal court ruled that Congress lacked the constitutionally required quorum to pass the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, and therefore the Biden administration cannot enforce the new mandates imposed on Texas by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which was part of the omnibus spending bill. Well what about the other stuff in the bill? Like the $1.7 trillion in appropriations? Well?

––– 凄い –––
Regarding the strike by South Korean doctors, if they don't go back to work, they'll be arrested. They clearly have a different culture and legal system there. Imagine – strikers being arrested if they don't go back to work. Imagine if they did that to, say, Portland public school teachers. Wow.

––– 凄い –––
Hackers upset with Biden may royally screw up the Georgia case against Trump. Fulton County prosecutors are skeptical that the hackers have anything. We'll see today.
––– 凄い –––
There goes the tax base. Weiden+Kennedy laying off 90.

––– 良くない –––
Oregon will only ditch DST if Washington and California do it, too. Oregon is only bold and fearless when it comes to legalizing vice. Not when it comes to practical matters. In those cases, Oregon becomes a follower, not a leader.

––– 良くない –––
NYT discusses Sam Altman. Seems like OpenAI is just Sam Altman's company. He does what he wants to do, but at least he seems to be active and laying the groundwork for ambitious projects. He operates like someone with a vision. Can't say the same for anyone else in the field.

––– 凄い –––
I like this guy. Brian Heywood of Redmond, WA is putting six initiatives on the ballot that I really like.

Yipee!  Sun Sui Wah is coming to Bellevue this April. This is some of the best Chinese food around. Won't have to go to Richmond for this.

––– 凄い –––

––– 良くない –––
I've noticed that even though it might be cloudy, as a solar eclipse reaches totality, the clouds seem to part. I thought I was just lucky, but it turns out that this often happens. There's science behind that phenomenon.

––– 凄い –––
Senior OHSU physician is trying to organize a protest over David Jacoby's ouster as Dean.

––– 凄い –––
This makes no sense. Harvard is planning a sale of $1.65 billion in taxable bonds to raise revenue.

––– 良くない –––

––– 良くない –––
Leave it to Oregon. While the nation's average gas prices decrease, Oregon's average gas price increases.

––– 良くない –––

––– 凄い –––
40 Hz sound and pulsating lights, for an hour a day, alleviates Alzheimer's disease? Call me skeptical.

––– 凄い –––
New search engine (PimEyes) checks to see where your picture is online. And supposedly it lets you delete that image, although how it can do that without write permission on someone else's server is unclear.  But you can set an alert when your picture appears somewhere. Seems a little sketchy.

––– 凄い –––
Want to learn something new in a technical field? Plunge into a new field? Try GlobeExplorer.

––– 凄い –––
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, is buying up much of Waimea, Hawaii, and locals there are concerned. I feel like Hawaii is just a dish of expensive desserts, which used to be enjoyed by everyone, and now the ultrarich are coming and reserving parts of the dessert for themselves. I think the locals have a point.

––– 良くない –––
So many startups are failiing, that taking care of the failing procedure is now a viable business. Wow, life during the Biden administration sure is full of new business opportunities.

––– 良くない –––

––– 良くない –––
That homeless tweaker that was building a cabin in the middle of José Rizal Park in Seattle is finally arrested, and his shack taken down. No one expects that he'll stay jailed for long.

––– 良くない –––
Yowza.

––– 凄い –––

––– 良くない –––
First Japan's lunar lander lands upside-down. Now Intuitive Machine's Odysseus lands sideways and becomes inoperative. Now their stock is crashing, too.

––– 良くない –––
Oregon's efforts to switch to permanent standard time may not be quite dead. Pfft. We'll still be switching our clocks for a long while more.

––– 良くない –––

Scientists have achieved building a time crystal that lasted 40 minutes. Way longer than just milliseconds. Maybe we'll get workable quantum computers someday.

––– 凄い –––
Those great entrepreneurs may have a hidden secret – toxoplasmosis. So it may give us crazy cat ladies, but it may also give us business leaders.

––– 凄い –––
Does math get in the way of physics being able to explain things?  This guy think so. Nah, don't blame math. It's just a matter of figuring out how to define the right context to apply the math.

––– 凄い –––
Jensen Huang thinks that kids should not learn to code. Let A.I. do it. I strongly disagree, but that's just me. But I do think that the kind of code that kids should be working on needs to accelerate. The world is different now, and A.I. can help kids learn faster. At least in theory.

––– 凄い –––
Top public school employees made a bundle last year. Why? They should be fired for this kind of embarrassement. Why reward them with generous salaries when they get an F-grade?

––– 良くない –––
Microsoft is also partnering with the French A.I. company Mistral. That experience with OpenAI probably gave Sadella PTSD.

––– 凄い –––
Remember Kozmo.com? The Bay Area delivery service started during the dotcom era? It tried to get bigger, but the business wouldn't scale. Well, this guy Tony Illes is doing the same thing. As long as he doesn't try to over-expand, he might do OK. Better than just sitting around and letting Seattle City Council's liberal ladies ruin your dreams.

––– 凄い –––
Let Seattle crap stay in Seattle. Mercer Island passes ordinance forbidding camping in public parks. Good on them. Just because Seattle can't get it together doesn't mean everyone has to suffer.

––– 凄い –––
Lesson: When you grift an insurance company with a disability claim, don't enter a Christmas tree throwing contest.

––– 良くない –––
Are Portland thieves noticing Biden's inflation.

––– 凄い –––
Good example of how the legacy media has degraded.

––– 良くない –––
Idiots. The town of Madras, OR is going to fine supermarkets when their carts are found littering the area (by the homeless, who use them as carts). Seems unfair to the supermarkets, when the problem is those who steal them. Ideally, the solution should be to arrest the thieves for removal of property. But you can't count on Oregon Dems to do the right thing. Nope. Punish the store instead.

––– 良くない –––
Davis, CA woman reveals what a joke "gender-affirming care" is at Kaiser. She pretends to be non-binary, and Kaiser docs are ready to push her forward into having surgery and taking hormone therapy. This is another reason why the medical profession has lost its credibility lately.

––– 良くない –––

I saw this article about the Albedo satellite that will launch in 2025, that can spy on individuals, and there was concern worked up over privacy and face recognition. But that's the Daily Mail. I wanted to see more detail, and if the pictures shown in the NYT are any indication, then it will be more like what you see from the top of the Burj Khalifa. Making out individual faces will still be difficult though, but who knows what the tech will be like in a few years. But yeah, when you see contrails overhead, be wary.

––– 良くない –––
Don't rely on Generative AI for medical advice. Up to 30% of what LLMs say is unsupported. There's no substitute for a human physician. (Although during COVID-19, what some human doctors said about things like the vax product was also unsupported as well.)

––– 良くない –––
Great! A referendum to repeal rank-choice voting will be on the next ballot.

––– 凄い –––
Man is cured of acute myelogenous leukemia and HIV at the same time. He needed an allogeneic bone marrow transplantation for his leukemia, but luckily, his bone marrow donor carried a CCR5 delta-3 mutation, which made his T-lymphocytes, monocytes and dendritic cells resistant to HIV entry. So when his bone marrow was replaced, he became resistant to HIV, too. Lucky guy.

––– 凄い –––

Strike! American resident physicians may have qualms about striking. Not so the South Korean resident physicians. The majority of them are striking and they don't care about patient health. The government's response to stressful conditions due to overwork is to just increased enrollment in medical schools, but that's not going to help the resident physicians today. It will be years before they experience any relief. I wish there were a way to solve this problem without hurting patients, but sometimes there is no other way.

––– 良くない –––
A report from the Universty of Cambridge says that having a regular doctor is better than having a rotating doctor, as in the Kaiser model.

––– 凄い –––
Scientists have discovered a factor in LongCOVID - a leaky blood-brain barrier. Here's the lay version. Not sure what it signifies, but it's a piece of the puzzle.

––– 凄い –––

And the homeless in Seattle can do pretty much whatever they want.
Yes, the leadership in Seattle is amazingly stupid.  And here's the head of the Seattle City Council, dumbfounded that their effort to raise the minimum wage for food delivery workers backfired.

––– 良くない –––
About time. The Chinook Indian Nation used to dominate the Pacific Northwest. They pretty much owned the land of Washington state. The Chinook Wawa is still alive. But over the years, the tribe's dominance has greatly waned. Now, they may get tribal recognition back.

––– 凄い –––
Hospital workers will now be a protected class. Assaulting them will now be a felony. I can't believe that there are people who oppose this. Of course, it's the defenders of those with "disabilities". Sorry, but allowing this loophole weakens the law, because so many people can claim to have "disabilities". Heck, living in Portland is probably a disability.

––– 凄い –––
Yes! Oregon lawmakers want the Feds to halt efforts to build offshore windmill farms. Dems vs Dems.

––– 凄い –––
Crook County citizens will get to vote on whether they want to be part of Greater Idaho.

––– 凄い –––
NVIDIA is on a tear. Can Jensen Huang manage this and continue the company's dominance? Obvious other players want a piece of the action. But CUDA is dominant, and it will be hard to get around it. However, in the tech world, we've seen leaders get toppled by more capable competitors. But they're GPUs are incredibly expensive, and a lower cost but still capable competitor could take away business. We shall see.

––– 凄い –––
Oregon ranks last in math scores in 30 states in 2022 and 2023. So why are we paying teachers more? Are we getting our money's worth? Probably not.

––– 良くない –––
Google AI refuses to answer question about the Second Amendment. Who thought this A.I. model was ready to be released?

––– 良くない –––
So chronic stress promotes cancer metastasis. One of the things I've noticed is that those who constantly worried about their cancer and stressed out about it, were the ones who did worse. Those were more relaxed and accepting often did better. This may be why. The mechanism is that neutrophils in stressed individuals tended to spill their DNA, inducing the formation of fibronectin and causing a "sticky" web to form. Introducing an enzyme to destroy DNA (DNase 1) reversed this. So it's important to get those stress levels down, as this will lower inappropriate glucocorticoid release. But I worry about drugs like pegfilgrastim which increases neutrophil levels. Could those be causing harm?

––– 良くない –––
Vending machines have face recognition systems. Just do you know. They're everywhere, it seems.

––– 良くない –––
Uranus and Neptune add a few more to their moon count.

––– 凄い –––
Workplace injuries rise after states legalize recreational marijuana. Yeah, and car accidents, too.

––– 良くない –––