Sugoi & Yokunai

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New SARS-CoV2 variant.  Do we care?

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So all that talk about Sam Altman being fired because there was some problem with AI safety and dangerous technology being released – was all smoke.

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Not good. More Americans (2.3%) are taking out 401(k) money to cover expenses. Not good, because things aren't going to get better. This is kicking the can down the road, but the road is going to get steeper, and kicking the can is going to get harder to do.

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Mental health problems.  Nurses describe Seattle Children’s Hospital as a ‘combat zone’ after dozens of alleged attacks.  Pretty soon, there'll be a shortage of pediatric nurses, too. Children's hospitals weren't combat zones before. Why are things so bad now?

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So the Oregon Governor Establishes AI Advisory Council. I wondered if this might be a way to increase A.I. programs in Oregon, to train data scientists and develop deep learning programs and research. But it's going to be staffed by someone from the Department of Administrative Services Cultural Change Officer and someone from the Governor’s Racial Justice Council.

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Easy to see why.  Higher Education Linked to Increased Risk of Depression and Anxiety. 

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This is why taxes have to increase.  City’s Transportation Bureau Paid Contractor $299,000 to Develop App It Won’t Use. Waste, waste, waste.

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Why does the Oregon Food Bank bank need more money? They should be loaded.

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You get what you pay for.  All you need is a swipe of your phone, a few taps, and voila, you're diagnosing your ailments with AI.  All of this magic happens under the watchful eyes of a remote doctor (yes, they're still there in the mix), who writes up your prescription post-instant diagnosis. The best part? All you pay is a $99 monthly subscription fee.  Might be a way for a hungry doc to make side money.

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AI faces look more real than actual human face. For white faces, especially. And it's not just the face. The whole body, too, and advances in video simulation make it more realistic. These AI influencers are apparently making good money.

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More Bay Area craziness. Ghost kitchens are a thing.  Uber creator Travis Kalanick has created sites where you can pick up the Uber eats food you ordered.  But it's causing traffic jams and hazards, as the locales are not suitable for high traffic.  Neighbors are rankled, as suddenly the area becomes congested with cars. How did this get past the regulators?

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Is wisdom tooth extraction a racket? This paper says that only 12% of the time are wisdom teeth problematic.

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Fingerprint readers are not secure on Windows. The problem is that some computers don't utilize Microsoft's Secure Device Connection Protocol, so it's possible to bypass security and enroll a new fingerprint. 

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As I've said before, the Internet is not for kids.  How Your Child’s Online Mistake Can Ruin Your Digital Life. Oh yeah. This isn't 1999, Dorothy.

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The planned iPhone 16 is so boring. New metal battery casings. 60Hz displays.  Still a 48 megapixel camera. New kinds of buttons.  Yawn.

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Portland is no longer the cool city.  Yeah, we knew. It doesn't help that that progressives are taking over and ruining Christmas for everyone else.

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Vaccinated People More Likely to Suffer Blood Disorders, Ear Disease.  I have never regretted not getting the mRNA product.  Never. And now Dr. Robert Kedlac is spilling the beans about the origins of SARS-CoV2. 

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But now commercial air travel has been opened up to everyone, and now we have this.  Say what you will, but I'll take life back in the old days, when we could have nice things.

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As if people didn't already need more financial stress. Thousands are told that they owe thousands to Oregon due to overpayment of COVID unemployment money.

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Yikes! Portland’s Burnside Bridge to close for 5 years during seismic rebuild, starting in 2027. Disruptions galore.

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Multnomah County is NOT the place to be.

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What?!?  County’s Downtown Homeless Resource Center Faces $3.3 Million Funding Gap Next Year.  That makes no sense.  They spent less than half their budgeted money. They also got a $25 million tax windfall. How can they be out of money? 

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Yes, it's time to switch to Firefox.  This ronin swears by it.

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Elon Musk is convinced that something was discovered, significant enough to alarm Ilya Sutskever.

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This keeps coming up.  Dunning-Kruger is just autocorrelation. I don't think so, as I see this over and over in daily life. Someone tried to debunk this claim with more statistical arguments.  But what Dunning and Kruger observed was not just a statistical construct. Just because of the way they portrayed their ideas in a graph doesn't mean that it's all statistical hand-waving. Dumb people really do overestimate their abilities and smart people really do second-guess themselves to their detriment.

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Well now Darth Vader is really more machine than human. James Earl Jones agreed to have his voice used by A.I. to be the voice of Darth Vader forever. Fitting, I guess.

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Will there be a crisis next March?  Banks have taken loans from the BTFP to stay afloat. This is why we haven't seen another Silicon Valley Bank catastrophe.  But the loans come due in March 2024. What will happen if they can't pay? Jerome Powell admits that he hasn't thought that far ahead. Yikes! Well, I'm sure he'll extend the due date, or something like that. Construction on the house of cards continues.

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North Koreans are going bald. Kim Jong Un's latest problem. What could be the cause? Can't be nutrition – that's been present for years. Could it be ambient radioactivity?

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No surprise. Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says. Yeah, but they say that they just purchase carbon credits, so all's good. Of course, who knows if they do or not. And they get to set the price on those credits. Are you awake, yet?

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Another reason to think twice about buyinv a Tesla. Unless your commute is limited and you live in an area set up for EVs, I can't see that buying an expensive EV makes any sense.

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Everyone needs to read this. Reddit has a post on surprise financial hits that can ruin you.  Gotta be prepared, but hardly anyone is.

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Rite Aid isn't done with the store closings. It's bad to lose your job at any time, but especially around the holidays.

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Electric vehicles are quiet.  Sometimes too quiet. So companies like Tesla have to incorporate speakers to output sounds to make you feel like you're still driving a car.  Here are the sounds.

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52% of Americans are gun owners now. Greater than any Army.  This is what the Founding Fathers intended.

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Eat more meat.  Trans-veccenic acid, found in meat from cows and sheep and their associated dairy products, helps boost CD8+ T-cell mediated immunity.  This helps the T-cells penetrate into tumors. Will it actually make a difference? Why risk it, I say.

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Like back in the Dickens era. Oregon is placing foster children in unlicensed short-term rental homes and paying millions to do so. So much money is being doled to the homeless, and so there isn't enough money to help foster children?  And yeah, about that spending $1.3 billion on the homeless.  What did it give us?  More homeless, that's what.

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More bite the dust. Can't believe LaRog Jewelers is closing.  And a couple of Beaverton outlets are closing as well. People who bet on a robust recovery after we recovered from the coronavirus epidemic are losing out.  There's no recovery in Portland, where rampant drug abuse, crime and the homelessness blight have increased. Rioting and arson remain a threat – that didn't go away when Trump left office.

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What's happened to the medical profession? Why are so many medical institutions so political now? And always far-left? Why do doctors still advocate so strongly for vax product that has demonstrable harm against a disease that we now know is no worse than other illness that we've faced in the past?  We do we have to support Palestine and get involved in that mess?  Why can't you just treat disease and make people well?

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SLIT2 and CXCL2 – are these the keys to delaying senescence?  Sounds promising.

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Giving up on Portland. J.K.Gill building is up for sale – no one wants it.  And the Pine Street Market owner gives up – puts property up for sale. Hope he can find a buyer and recoup some of his investment. Truly, a city in decline, while the media continue to pretend everything is rosy.

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Mercer Island synagogue targeted with graffiti. Getting real tired of this.  The lack of law enforcement just encourages more of this crap.

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Remember this? Well, thank goodness for a sane judge who realized that this was all an unconstitutional knee-jerk on the latest mentally ill shooter episode. Banning guns of any kind violates the Second Amendment. It won't make America safer.

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Jeff Bezos sell more Amazon stock and people have a problem with that, since he fled Washington, depriving them of tax money. Even when he donated to help the homeless, the lefties aren't happy. Good on Jeff to leave that hellhole. And why stay in Seattle? Their core taxes increased 4X more than the economy since 2013.  And Washingon is the state most heavily impacted by retail theft.  I mean, if you can leave, why stay in a place where you can't have nice things?

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Attractive men are more likely to achieve socioeconomic success. Is it true? I'm thinking of Rupert Murdoch, George Soros, many politicians, many of the current billionaires. Some of the techies were above average when they were younger, but this "rule" is not hard and fast. Good thing this ronin can focus on living a peaceful life and not having to compete in the rat race.

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"Hey y'all! Wazzup?" is not how to start a cover letter.  Do we really need a course for that?

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Sign of the times. There are Anti-Loneliness Clubs. But only if you're good enough to join the club, however. Sorry, incels.

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Too much of a good thing. The success of Wegovy is destabilizing Denmark's economy.  Too much money, too fast. Enjoy it while it lasts, I say.

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Five big governance mistakes in OpenAI. The existing board has got to go.  No question. They're irresponsible, and don't know how to do things. Especially Sutskever – what a novice.

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Me want. Wow, who would have guessed that little ol' Prineville was a center of aeronautic innovation. The Switchblade looks yummy.

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Seattle has the 9th highest cost of living. No surprise there. And millennials say they need an income of $525,000 to be happy. Guess we're going to have to put up with a lot of unhappy millennials. But what's the best city for techies? Seattle!

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I never thought of this. What if you inventoried the contents of your refrigerator and asked an LLM to suggest a recipe that uses those ingredients? Well, don't bother. It makes lousy suggestions.

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So this is why people want to work from home.  Guess you can't schedule time to do that at the office, can you?

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Take care of your red blood cells.  If they are damaged or grow old, blood vessels in the brain will clog up with them, resulting in your blood vessel lining cells to pass them through to where macrophages can get rid of them, but causing a microbleed in the process.

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