21 July 2025

Supposedly just listening to this Mozart piece (K.448) enhances your working memory.  I would get distracted by the music and forget what I was supposed to be doing.

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Here's all the Epstein stuff that has ever been released. In case you were interested.

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Ancient DNA origins explain why the Finnish and Hungarian languages are so different. I always wondered about that, especially the Finnish language being so unlike that of their German neighbors.

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PERS is in trouble.  Too much money in illiquid private equity. All locked up in real estate, hedge funds, commodities. Who's in charge anyway? 
To make ends meet, they’ve also sold a swath of private equity investments – $4.5 billion worth in recent years – at a discount to their reported value. Officials won’t say exactly what those discounts were. Most of their dealings with the funds are exempt from disclosure under the state’s public records law. 
Ouch. This is not good fiduciary duty. Update (22 July 2025): more here.


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Look at how Oregon employment compares with other states. Not favorably. What do you notice about the leadership in the highly employed states?

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This is Oregon collegiate education. What a joke. Can't pay off your student loan? Gee, I wonder why, college grad.

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Telomir-1 fully reversed epigenetic silencing of the STAT1 tumor suppressor gene in aggressive prostate cancer cells, outperforming Paclitaxel and Rapamycin. For prostate cancer, they usually use docetaxel and rapamycin isn't standard therapy. But still, targeted therapy being better than a taxane is remarkable. Maybe I should get me some TELO stock. It sure shot up last Friday.

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Chinese scientists figure out how to do photosynthesis without plants. Turn methanol into sucrose. The title suggests it's CO2 to sugar, but you gotta turn the CO2 into methanol first. Boy, the Chinese are sure solving a lot of life's problems lately. Is it for real, though?

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What do you think?  90% of all the scientists that ever lived are alive today.  Were things better when it was harder to be a scientist?  Maybe it's like being an artist today – we have so many, and the standards are much lower. That's why we see so much crappy art.

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20 July 2025

Prexist is supposed to check to see if your startup ideas has already been though of before.  What a great way to get people to divulge what they are planning to do. It's just like when people who submit possible URL names to register. If you found a great name and don't purchase it, it might be gone later if you change your mind and decide to go back and register it.

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Apple may introduce their foldable iPhone next year. Sigh. Apple used to be able to keep all kinds of secrets when Steve Jobs was alive. Now, it's like Tim Cook doesn't care. Insiders find out and leak all the time.

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Starting next year, you'll have to pay for a permit for anything you bring to the water to float on. So desperate they are for tax money.
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19 July 2025

Mitochondrial function may be the key to why we sleep. 

Here we report that transcripts upregulated after sleep deprivation, in sleep-control neurons projecting to the dorsal fan-shaped body (dFBNs) but not ubiquitously in the brain, encode almost exclusively proteins with roles in mitochondrial respiration and ATP synthesis. These gene expression changes are accompanied by mitochondrial fragmentation, enhanced mitophagy and an increase in the number of contacts between mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum, creating conduits for the replenishment of peroxidized lipids. The morphological changes are reversible after recovery sleep and blunted by the installation of an electron overflow in the respiratory chain. 

Sleep, like ageing, may be an inescapable consequence of aerobic metabolism.
So it's all in the mitochondria, then. The paper still doesn't explain the why. Why does this need to happen? Why can't we replenish peroxidized lipids all the time, instead of just while we sleep?

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Meta has poached two key AI experts from Apple. Why does it have to be Meta? Why couldn't it be some less invasive company? I just don't trust Zuck to own the next generation of AI developments. 

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Tirzepatide seems to slow breast cancer growth. Well, since breast cancer growth is associated with obesity, it's not surprising that this happens. Elimination of obesity will likely improve lots of things. Maybe your career, your love life, etc.

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Diamonds are not worth the expense anymore. Even De Beers has thrown in the towel. It was a good run while it lasted. Progress is a good thing, right?

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Dead EV batteries can be recycled now. That's some good news.

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Scientists are developing a universal cancer vaccine that can kills "any tumor". This seems to be the wrong approach to me. I would rather we figure out how to put multiple copies of the TP53 gene into the genome. Seems to make better sense to me than subverting the immune system to attack some onco-antigen.

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Eating eggs is good for your cholesterol now. It doesn't cause harm like conventional wisdom has said. Nutritional wisdom always seems to change radically every ten years or so. Things that were considered good are now bad, and vice versa.

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Erythritol is now linked to brain injury and strokes.  Shouldn't we take this off the market? Are you seeing this, RFK, Jr?

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Space travel can permanently damage your eyesight. There is a condition called Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome, and it causes edema of the optic nerve, due to microgravity. Once it causes damage, it is irreversible.

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Lost cause. Voice actors demand that AI regulate voice generative AI.  Yeah, that's not going to happen. You're not that special, and this is going to go the way of the buggy whip. Sorry, but it was fun while it lasted.

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Most old folks, like this ronin, have a scar on their arm, and we were told it was a smallpox vaccine scar. But wait.
Many foreign-born persons have received the bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine for TB disease. This vaccine is administered at birth in many countries outside of the U.S. to prevent childhood tuberculous meningitis and miliary disease. BCG leaves a scar like the smallpox vaccine. But it doesn’t protect against smallpox.
So if you have a positive TB test, it might be from the BCG you got, not from actual tuberculosis.

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OpenAI has scored well enough on the International Math Olympiad to have won the gold medal. Who needs MIT students anymore, right?

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Yeah, crime rates do go up around overnight homeless shelters. Thought so.

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Why is Oregon still blaming the pandemic for poor school performance? The rest of the country has moved on. Man, the coronavirus epidemic was five years ago. Enough, already. Look in the mirror to see who deserves the blame.

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Portland city government force the Gateway Fred Meyer to close.
Also since last year, Portland went on a property tax increase binge as well as enacted a 10-cent gas tax hike.  Just months ago, Portland pushed through a billion dollar property tax hike for schools.   Just weeks ago, Portland City Hall jacked up parking fees and doubled the Uber tax.

A full year of non-stop financial blows both from within by workers and from the outside by politicians hurt the Gateway Fred Meyers too much.

Now those union workers don’t have a job.
Good going, folks. The Doom Loop continues.

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18 July 2025

Amazon is struggling as the cost of AI intensifies. Everyone acts like providing AI for free is so easy. The public is now conditioned to think that it's going to be like online search. But supporting those AI datacenters is not cheap. Something's gotta give. I would have thought that profits from Amazon retail would help support this, but I guess not.
Heck, even OpenAI is going to Google for support to keep their systems going. I guess Microsoft hasn't been able to deliver. What's going on?

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I have not heard of New Weird fiction before. But I like it. I like Old Weird, too, but they never classified those books as such. There should just be Weird Fiction or Disturbing Fiction. I don't think Powell's Books is using this category, though.

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Nice review article on reserveratrol. It's probably not the lifespan extender everyone was hoping it would be, but that anticancer, anti-inflammatory and neuro- and cardioprotective effects are still beneficial. I didn't know resveratrol had activity against Staph aureus and rotavirus diarrhea.

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Here's an interesting fact about global life expectancy over the centuries:

So progress has been made.
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A lot of people are upset about the loss of NPR, but it's important to remember what kind of a station it had become. I got tired of hearing the left-wing propaganda, too, and hated that it was supported by tax money. I remember the Jay Leno joke about listening to the radio to get caught up with what was going on regarding the war in Iran. In the morning he'd listen to Fox News and heard how we were winning, and then going home he'd listen to NPR and heard how we were losing. We don't need paid propaganda. NPR used to be fun, with Car Talk, Thistle and Shamrock, and Prairie Home Companion. Then it slowly became politicized and all the fun shows were just ways to poke jabs at conservative thought, while ignoring liberal idiocy. Not sad to see this go down finally.

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Oregon unemployment continues to increase. No surprise.

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Could it be this simple? 
The new results show that some gut bacteria, in certain states, produce imidazole propionate, a simple molecule with six carbon atoms, eight hydrogen atoms, two nitrogen atoms, and two oxygen atoms (C₆H₈N₂O₂). This compound enters the blood, interacts with immature white blood cells, and triggers an inflammatory reaction in the arteries, which promotes the buildup of fatty plaques.
Well now at least we have a target. But fighting atherosclerosis may look quite different. Perhaps we can have rich food again.

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Another marker of Portland decay.  Well, the Broadway Tower is going back to the lender.  The ground floor restaurant has closed. What will become of the empty building?

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What's behind the GenZ Stare? I've seen this look, and thought maybe it was just me. It's basically a look that says "I don't give a s**t about what happens."

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More than half of teens use chat AI for emotional support. Not only is it sad that this is happening, but think of the privacy concerns. Those companies have a treasure trove of information on these kids. Maybe it'll come back to haunt them later.

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17 July 2025

Why is ChatGPT driving some people insane? So ChatGPT Psychosis is a thing now?

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Another report on California's SB 549. People are waking up. People voted overwhelmingly for Senators Ben Allen and Sasha Perez. I guess they really do deserve what they voted for.

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Portland is becoming a socialist city. This is why nothing improves and the city spirals downward.

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Oregon hospitals are going to get hit harder than most states. The old Tuality Hospital acquisition is now coming back to bite them. What an albatross it is. And Providence has their Seaside hospital, which will be a drag. All the hospitals will likely see a downturn now, just some worse than others.
Oh, and more Legacy nurses are joining the union. Just the thing to add more headaches to Legacy administration.

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"...A Portland Business Journal report notes that employment in Oregon’s burgeoning nonprofit sector now threatens to surpass the state’s total manufacturing employment base."
"The state’s nonprofit workers earn more ($70,596) than the average private business employee ($69,905)."
So Oregon's main economy will soon be NGOs. But as "the non-profit sector is heavily reliant on grants", this is likely to end soon. This is where Oregon's budget goes, and why people often say "What happened to the money?" when nothing changes.

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Oregon news media is drying up. Modern journalism doesn't pay anymore. You can tell by the quality of articles you see these days.

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Mayor Keith Wilson is sticking to DEI, even though it will cost the city around $387 million, because he refuses to eliminate racist and woke policies and sanctuary status. OK, then, you made your decision. Watch the city go down.

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Oregon state employees are going to get AI training. It doesn't say what they will learn, but I bet it will be just how to use ChatGPT.

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16 July 2025

What Caused the 'Baby Boom’? What Would It Take to Have Another?  It's not too difficult. People need to be financially comfortable. It's hard to feel like taking on marriage when you're financially struggling and have low self-esteem. Plus, the dating pool is crazy these days. Saw this on X today:

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What's contributed the most to the obesity epidemic? It's the food that people eat. Avoid ultra-processed food. But improving muscle bulk wouldn't hurt either. 

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Half of homeless people have experienced traumatic brain injury. I'm not surprised. And we're supposed to let these people make decisions for themselves? For a lot of them, this is how they got to be where they are. The sooner it is realized that we need to make the decisions for them, the better we'll solve the homeless problem.

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AI will cause harm, but it's worth it. That's what Jensen Huang says. And society will have to get used to robots everywhere. Gotta get American manufacturing going, too. Agree fully. It's not going to be easy but it will be necessary. But we also have to solve the energy problem.

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This study was promoted as showing the caffeine prolonged survival. Indeed, the authors conclude that caffeine is beneficial for chronological lifespan through AMP kinase, but it also synergizes with other genotoxic agents to increased DNA damage sensitivity (huh?). I'm OK with the former, but do I want the latter. Caffeine inhibits TORC1, just like rapamycin, and so that may be how it prolongs survival. It's not clear to me what the impact it's effects on DNA damage are. I'll still drink coffee until their figure it out, though.

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Japan recently set the record for the fastest Internet speed – 4 million times faster than U.S. broadband. I still chuckle remembering that some wag publicly states that 9600 bps was the theoretical limit to how fast the Internet could be. Yeah, sometimes it pays to ignore experts.

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The aluminum adjuvant in childhood vaccines was shown to be harmless. Well that's good, because I got it.

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If you ask Grok to show you a picture of a group of average Americans, it consistently shows you what looks more like average Baltimore. Or Detroit. That's the way it's been trained, I guess.

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What age is old? It seems to be getting later. That's great news for this ronin, who is probably considered old by anyone's definition.  Shikata ga nai.

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Asians are avoiding traveling to the U.S. now. So ironic – they have little to worry about. Meanwhile the U.S. will get unbridled in-migration from the Middle East and Central America. They're not scared.

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I agree. If you want facts, Perplexity is probably the best chatbot to use.

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People can't stop talking about the Intel layoffs, which will hurt Oregon. Someone pointed out that Multnomah County has the hospitals and Washington County has Intel, Nike and the datacenters. Everyone is hurting, though, but it may be that they will hurt differently, and at different rates. Each will pursue different strategies. I think the hospitals will be the most vulnerable, however.

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A great joke has been played on those whose homes burned down in the Palisades fire. Their tax money will be used to build low income housing in their neighborhood. How's that for adding insult to injury?

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The Fred Meyer in the Gateway district is going to close. They aren't saying why, but we know. More unemployed that the state has to support. Decreased tax collection for Multnomah County. Another empty building that will be a blight and a target for graffiti and vandalism. 

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15 July 2025

Apple Maps is going to let you store your locations and let you track yourself. Kinda like what Google does, but this is not done surreptitiously and is under your control.  I'm not sure how useful this would be for me, but apparently some people like this feature.

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Don't let a Soham Parekh fool you with a VPN. Anyway, that's the message. So VPN providers will need to make their services even more undetectable. ProtonVPN was supposed to have done that with their Stealth protocol, but it kept getting detected, and even they recommended their Smart protocol.

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Can your brain run out of memory?  Of course it can – it's not an infinite resource. Sherlock Holmes had an interesting theory of memory:
Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. 
The brain is much like a datacenter, storing weights in GPU memory, instead documents or files in cloud storage like we do with other applications. The goal is to have as much capacity as possible, and be able to retrieve this knowledge easily. It is one thing to have a memory stored, and another to retrieve it. When you can't remember something and are given the answer, sometimes you recognize the answer as indeed correct, but at other times you might say to yourself that you completely forgot that fact. Retrieval is also key, and it's a mystery as to how the process is initiated and takes place.

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This guy writes about how he keeps up with AI developments, and lists a long list of blogs. It would be so time consuming to have to read everything. One must just try to read as much and as frequenty as possible, and check out HackerNews and Lobste.rs. Maybe Reddit, but that source has too much chaff and not enough wheat. Nothing worthwhile is easy.

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O'Keefe Media Group catches Johnson & Johnson lead scientist admitting to scientific recklessness when it came to the COVID-19 vax. Science went out the window after 2020 and the public continues to suffer from this.

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Hmmm.Francesca Gino is suing to maintain her innocence in the data fraud case.

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The Pearl District neighborhood is upset that a homeless shelter is being built there. I'm willing to bet that at least 90% of them are Democrats. And that they mostly support the stance that "if only the homeless had homes, the problem would be solved". Keith Wilson is now just fixated on a number – 1500, and he doesn't care if he destroys Portland in the process. Imagine evenly distributing toxic centers of crime, garbage, graffiti, and fentanyl folders scattered in every neighborhood of the city. Way to go, Keith. Burn it to the ground, won't you? The City of Beaverton is already seeing degradation because, thanks to TriMet, the criddlers won't stay in Portland. And Beaverton's mayor seems to be building more shelters to welcome them. 

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14 July 2025

Intel's layoffs are sparking concern amongst Washington County leaders. Democrats are so used to viewing business as their piggy banks to fund their latest wasteful programs, and now it looks like they'll have less revenue. Plus they have to support all those newly unemployed with the reduced tax base. And all the other businesses that depended on the patronage of Intel employees will suffer, too. KGW has a nice video on all the problems facing Portland and Oregon state. It doesn't look good, and it's probably now too late for the state to do anything. So they'll continue to spend money to make sure the criddlers are comfortable with their mobile services, including coffee services, blankets, tents, etc. Let the protestors make noise and riot near OHSU waterfront and the Mirabella retirement condos. Graffiti returns after every clean-up. There's gunshots and apartment fires and theft. What a mess Portland is.

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Even the homeless in Portland are amazed that the city has spent $97,000 per person on them.  He guessed it was around $50. 🤣

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What would happen if the Trailblazers left Portland? It would probably kill off chances that the MLB would want to start a franchise here, that's for sure.

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Kiro is Amazon's entry into the coding assistant arena. We'll see. Claude Code is what people still think is best, although Google bought Windsurf.

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The James Gunn Superman film bombed in China.  Now I really don't think I'll see it.

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Demand for Indian coders has collapsed. All those techies that invested time and money into coding now finding that their skills are not needed anymore. Unfortunately, the schools such as Indian Institute of Technology are not able to create new classes for the students, because exactly what will be in demand is still unclear. Really unfortunate waste of all that brain power.

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13 July 2025

I've posted before (20 Aug 2024) on the aging process before accelerating at certain ages, but this article provides additional details. It's from Michael Snyder's lab at Stanford again, and this time, instead of two ages of rapid aging, there are now three ages: 40, 60, 80 years. Paper here. They used a fruit fly model, studying the Smurf phenotype, and found that by modifying certain transcription factors, they could delay aging transitions in females, but not males. What underlies the human transitions is still not clear, and we don't know what causes these changes. Snyder's group suggests that it might be the result of accumulated insults were subject our body to, but also lifestyle changes at these ages, like a decrease in baseline exercise levels, etc. I'm going to exercise more – I've gotten more sedentary as of late. 

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Scott Alexander reviews melatonin. It's a unique "drug" for which there has been a lot of studies, but these studies haven't translated into solid usage recommendations. It's all over the place, and this makes me think that just looking at natural levels in body is not something that we can easily manipulate. Taking the drug at 5 pm or 7 pm seems counterintuitive, and in all my experimentation I haven't found that anything I do makes any difference at all. Do I dream more? I can't say. Whether I take melatonin or not, I can't say I notice any difference. Interesting that melatonin has been associated with hair follicle growth stimulation. Paper here and here. But you have to apply it topically, which is kind of messy.

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I've said from the beginning that the Internet should be off-limits to children. It's because of crazy laws like this. Age-verification is not only difficult to implement but also a breach of privacy and is a waste of time. I doubt that young kids are going to Michael Ellsberg's site to get their jollies, anyway. To keep kids away from harmful material, it's going to take something like Black Mirror's Shut Up and Dance episode. Chilling.

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230 new viral genomes have been identified. These are a part of 200 newly-discovered giant viruses in marine environments. I think I was better off not knowing about this.

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Cops use a version of ChatGPT to generate reports that does not audit or keep usage logs. Perfect for doing this for which you want to hide accountability and transparency. Who designed this?

Then there's Grok 4, which if it detects that you are requesting something illegal, will snitch on you and notify the FBI, FDA (huh?) and the media. It turns out that OpenAI and Anthropic LLMs also do this, but far less often. Use local models, baby. 

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The plastic surgeon who faked COVID-19 vax cards had his case dismissed today. I understand what the surgeon did, and the reason behind his actions. Never before did the government force a nation to take a medicine, especially one as novel and untested as the mRNA vax. But falsifying medical records is wrong. He should have had to pay a nominal fine only. The proper way of resolving this would have been for brave and powerful politicians to stand up for what was right and prevent this from having to happen. Alas, it did not, and Dr. Michael Moore created his own suboptimal solution. This shouldn't happen again. Lots of things associated with COVID-19 shouldn't happen again.

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Oregon is one of the worst states to do business in. In CNBC's study, for the cost of doing business, Oregon ranked 43. For business friendliness, Oregon ranked 47. You seeing this, Tina?

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And now, apartment arson is a thing in downtown Portland. Criminals are caught but are let go. Who wants to invest in this city? Are you seeing this, Keith Wilson?

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Domestic migration from those two counties was negative last year. Multnomah County had 4,700 more people move to other places in the U.S. than moved in. In Washington County, the net loss to domestic migration was nearly 3,100 people. 
This isn't something to brag about. I'm not reading about international migrants bringing in millions of dollars to invest locally.

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Corruption. An Oregon lawmaker pushed to fix his road with wildfire recovery money. Politicians doing what politicians do. This is why we need for more wildfire recovery money? Doesn't sound like it's helping to put out any fires.

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Stem cell treatment can help hearing loss. This treatment doesn't depend on the OTOF gene. The treatment is called Rincell-1, and is intended to regrow damaged nerves in the cochlea and allow them to start sending signals to the brain again.

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Some discussion about succession at Apple. Will Tim Cook step down? If so, I hope he's replaced by someone with more ambitious vision of the future. Someone who can bring us interesting technology like Steve Jobs did. Instead of just "thinner with more pixels" and new emojis. Tim sure loved him some emojis, didn't he? And someone who will ditch the pandering to the gay and BLM crowd.

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12 July 2025

Zink is a python library that supposedly wraps around your data and anonymizes it before submitting it to a public LLM. It's not that easy to use, and I don't see many people wanting to go to the trouble of using it. But the article highlights the temptation for people to just give an LLM like ChatGPT all their data, which lets it train on it, making it forever public. Who knows if the data will be sanitized first.

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What happened when some techies decided to help medical AI tools use more diverse data? There was no market for it. Either they didn't have the money to pay for it, or they didn't think it was important enough. Sad.

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This writer thinks that coffee shops should embrace remote workers. Extend the time these workers can be allowed to be there. Add quiet spaces, collaborative areas. Uh isn't that what offices are for?  Looks like this person doesn't mind working in an office, as long as it's not the office of the company that the writer works for.  Maybe offices just need to change into something different from cubicle farms. Rather than build office space for people who just want to work in a different office. But how do you plan for how big you need to make it? This is something that sounds great in the conception stage, but falls apart when you consider the details. You'd hate to own a large space that's barely occupied, and you have an espresso and snack bar ready to serve, but there's not enough traffic. Just work at your office, man. That's what it's there for.

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Holy fck! Intel is going to lay off 2400 workers, not 500.  That's going to make a big impact in Hillsboro and Orenco Station. Another piece from the Jenga stack that is Oregon's economy. 

“While our menu is still the same James Beard quality, downtown Portland has changed,” Higgins and Mallory wrote. “Recovery has been slow. Office vacancies are at historic highs — among the worst in the nation. Business travel is down. Arts and culture events are in their summer lull.
Yeah, that's on Portland. And if you manage to stay open, you will pay higher taxes for the privilege.  Doom Loop.

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