Sugoi & Yokunai

Great video on the Dobbs decision.

Download Dobbs.mp4

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Transparent mice.  Didn't know you could do this to mice. 

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The mysterious Cleo.  Who is this mysterious mathematical wizard?  Here's the original StackExchange post.

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Everything you post online will be scraped by Google to train its A.I. models.  The spirit of the Internet sure has evolved a lot since the days of its inception.  Remember how we thought the Internet was going to be for the benefit of all, and we'd all be smarter for it?  How quaint now, huh?
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GenZ and Millennials dumping rich friends because those friends are making them spend more.  They're missing out - there's a lot that can be learned hanging out with the wealthy.  Especially old money.  Not to mention the connections you can forge.  Oh well.

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90-year mortgages?  You might as well rent.  Guess banks haven't learned lessons from 2008.  People, too. 

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Oregon continues down the path of socialized healthcare.  Once you do this, there is no turning back.  Sad.

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Important news for this aging ronin: sleep and exercise keeps the aging brain sharp, but if you chronically don't get enough sleep, it's like you didn't exercise.

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Scientists achieve breakthrough in how our olfactory sense works.  Amazing that it took this long.  Also amazing is that its based on a flexible looping molecule that wraps around the molecule to be detected.  And it's similar to other G-protein coupled receptors. 

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Fecal transplants may improve melanoma immunotherapy?  This is only a phase I study, so you can't say this benefit is proven, but this would certainly be a paradigm shift. 

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One good thing at least.  Oregon's Consumer Data Privacy Law was passed.  The link to the actual law isn't working for me, so I couldn't examine it, but it's probably better to have than not to have.

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People would be foolish to sign up for Meta's Threads app.  Well, Zuckerberg famously called his customers "dumb f*cks".

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Is GPT chat just like a mentalist's illusion?  After seeing it in action for some time, I'm beginning to think so, too.  It seemed scarily like real intelligence for a while, I'll admit.

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Gruesome.  The CDC has no problem with hormone-using men taking estrogens to induce breast development to have the breast-feeding experience, thereby exposing babies to sex hormones and drugs like domperidone so early in life.  If the CDC doesn't care about babies' health, do you think they care about yours?

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A message to enterprising 14 year olds.  This is like that hypothetical question of what if you could go back in time to your teen years and re-live your life with all the knowledge you have now.  Almost no teenager today would heed this guys advice, probably.  But this is like Scouting for real-life, not survival in the outdoors.  This stuff should be taught in school, alongside the standard curriculum.

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Bummer.  The 9th Circuit isn't going to hear appeals against homeless camping in the streets.  We need judges like they have at Maricopa County.

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Providence physicians seek unionization.  There was a time when each physician or group was independent and hung out his/her shingle - a proud moment.  Then came Obamacare, and hospitals were given large sums of money and superior reimbursement, and the private physician saw employees leave to work at the hospital, where they were paid better.  Now, they are captive, and hospitals are treating them like the commodities.  So now, physicians are doing what other employees have done - unionize.  I don't think this is necessarily good for patient care, especially when there's a strike, but I certainly understand the reason for this.  Especially with burnout and low pay. 

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Now they tell us.  Cannabis was once thought to be safe.  At least safer than alcohol.  That's what led to its legalization.  Now it's associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.  Could this explain the degree of pervasive insanity that we're seeing?

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Wow, I found out where the old geeks hang out.  It's the Super Dimension Fortress!  Dialup support!  Usenet!  Gopher!  Finally - an escape from The Eternal September.

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Portlanders can't sell their home - no one will buy them!  🤣

"People come to look at the house and the potential buyers won’t leave their car for fear of the homeless camp in the street."

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At the Portland Home Depot:

Download PortlandHomeDepot.mp4

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Electrical system on the doomed Titan sub was designed by college interns.

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Color me surprised.  CDC Altered Minnesota Death Certificates that List a Covid Vaccine as a Cause of Death.  I don't want to hear from anyone at the CDC or FDA about misinformation or disinformation. 

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Mish thinks that SCOTUS will defeat efforts to tax unrealized gains.  His title made it sound like it was a done deal, since he didn't use qualifiers.  It probably will be defeated, but I'm not celebrating yet.  Taxation of unrealized gains will likely lead to billionaires fleeing the country, as is being done in Norway for the same reason.  They will probably flee quickly, before Congress passes a high exit tax, like Norway did, to stem the bleeding.

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Finally!  Flying cars get FAA certification.

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Klotho!. The protein known as klotho, not only extends lifespan but preserves memory, cognitive function and synaptic plasticity.  Well, at least in monkeys.  Amazing that it was given just once as a subcutaneous injection and lasted at least 2 weeks. 

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Some Swedish researchers have come up with an interesting approach to noise cancellation.  Instead of a microphone detecting waveforms and then creating the inverse of these waveforms and adding them together, they used plasma to ionize air and prevent sound transmission completely.  Apparently it works quite well.

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Congratulations to Washington state - you have the highest gasoline prices in the nation.  All those taxes put you over the top.  I'm sure Washingtonians are feeling that sense of pride.  Not.

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One-third of PhD students meet the definition of having depression.  The study was done in Germany, and I wonder if this would be the same in the U.S.  Even if not, it's still a sorry assessment of modern academics.  Here's a way to get an idea of what it's like to be a PhD student - the PhD simulator!

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Ambient temperature and pressure superconductor?  A researcher claims to have done this, but his research is being suppressed.  Why?

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Why?  San Francisco could see a swarm of driverless cabs.  Granted it's risky to be a cab driver in SF, but driving in a sea of driverless cars is really risky.  This is a bad solution to a real problem.  Maybe this is why some people are crazy about this idea.  A vast surveillance network!

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The Oregon Legislature thought they had scored a victory banning "ghost guns", but on a national level, the federal law banning them was struck down, and that trumps state law.  Here's a novel approach, Democrats - get crooks off the streets!  Prosecute them!

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This is probably why the Japanese population is declining. You have to declare that you're deeply in love with a girl, before she'll agree to date you.  Huh?  No wonder so many Japanese men don't bother. 

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Nikola Tesla was right!. It's possible to extract electricity from humid air.  It's not much yet, but it's a start.

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The 9th Circuit court ruled that banning the recording of individuals who don't want to be recorded is unconstitutional.  It can be abused, of course, but it allows James O'Keefe's style of journalism, which benefits us all.  Since Trump filled some of the bench the 9th Circuit is a sensible court, thank goodness.

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Bad news for Asians.  I've been wondering about this. Although UNC is forbidden to discriminate against Asians for admission, because it is a state university, Harvard is private, so it's not really bound by the SCOTUS decision.  Asians care more about getting into Harvard, so there's clearly more work to be done. 

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Today is the halfway point of 2023.  Enjoy.

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Batch-dependent safety of the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine.  In other words, some of the batches could have been placebo.  Nice.

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Benzodiazepines associated with brain injury, job loss and suicide.  Suspicion confirmed that these had the potential for long-term harm.

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Multnomah County is suing energy companies because of the heat dome deaths.  But actually deaths due to cold temperatures outnumber heat-related deaths by nearly 20 to 1.  So maybe we should have more warming instead of less?

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If you knew that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were gene therapy, would you still have gotten them?

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Thanks goodness for Mississippi.  Oregon had only the second highest attrition rate for public school attendance.  Gee, why wouldn't anyone want to go to an Oregon public school, where your kids can be indoctrinated with CRT, exposed to transgender grooming, pronoun requirements, and sicko teachers that might call CPS to take away your child? 

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Trump was right about France, too.

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Portland getting that SF vibe.  Freddy is now going to check receipts as you leave.  Soon things will be locked up in cabinets. 
Life on the Left Coast.

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That Gresham baker was vindicated.  It's interesting that the crowd that has no problems with real discrimination against Asians, thinks that compelled speech in favor of pedophiles and groomers is discrimination.  Must Christians and Muslims build websites for satan-worshipers, too?  

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Which is the best chat?  A year ago, we wouldn't be even having this conversation.  Amazing how much progress has been made since then.  For me, it needs to be able to keep current, not stuck at its training date.  I gotta be able to talk politics with it, you know?

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Psilocybin keeps surprising.  Now it decreases cellular senescence, too?

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Whuuuut?  Mike Pierce, executive director of Student Borrower Protection Center thinks there is a "right to debt relief". 
Those Lefties - everything they want is somehow a "right". 🤣

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How China's Great Firewall blocks VPN traffic. In short, they make lucky heuristic guesses based on known patterns, and if in doubt, blocks traffic.  VPN providers will need to get smarter.  Even Proton's Stealth protocol probable doesn't work, as my VPN traffic gets detected all the time.

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The Internet was always a wild frontier.  OpenAI stole "massive amounts of personal data".  Medical records.  Data on children.  All to train their chat.  Most people have no idea what they expose themselves to on the Internet. 

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WIRED has a story on the end of Reddit.  It's a shame.  There were a few pockets of goodness amongst the immaturity and stupidity.  It was entertaining, although enlightenment was too infrequent.

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