30 June 2023

Terry Tao uses GPT-4 (probably the paid version with the privacy features) and finds that it helps his daily tasks.

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Cognitive endurance as human capital  - interesting concept.

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So, many in Silicon Valley (especially the leaders) are into mind-altering drugs.  Maybe that's why software is so screwy these days, and their political stances are so skewed.

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SCOTUS strikes down pro-LGBT law - people can reject work requests due to religious beliefs and don't have to be forced to do things against their will just because they're open for business.

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SCOTUS strikes down student loan giveaway - people have to honor their contractual obligations.  And the irony is that Nancy Pelosi made it happen!

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Hear! Hear!  Politicians should stick to politics, and avoid making technology decisions for society.

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29 June 2023

Finally!  SCOTUS strikes down race-based admissions criteria for elite schools.  So will we see more Asians at top schools?  Maybe, but "the attorneys said admissions officers could use information about overcoming discrimination gleaned from admissions essays, as long as their decisions aren’t focused on race specifically."  This will be the way they get around the ruling.  If they are truly race-neutral, Asian enrollment will increase, if the CalTech experience is any guide.

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Ugh. Not even sucralose is safe.  You still gain weight, and it's genotoxic.  (Could this explain the rise in colon cancers?)
Even aspartame is getting a bad rep.  I guess it means going back to the sweeteners that taste funny or that give you diarrhea. 

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Mental illness on the rise, but mental health counseling is in short supply.  Is there anything not in short supply in this Administration?

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Canada gets cheap skilled labor.  The U.S. get cheap unskilled labor.  Sounds like a deal, eh?

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Is this a good thing?  We're going to be flooded with open-source LLMs.  This is early-stage.  Things are going to shake out.

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The Moral Crisis of America's Doctors.  Before Obamacare, when it was feasible to own your own medical practice, doctors had independence.  But since almost everyone had to sell and join a hospital or a private equity group, doctors are now employees, and we're seeing the effects of this.

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Who owns you code if you got it from ChatGPT?  The lawyers are working on this.

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A legal way out of the homelessness problem?  Portland says that it can't solve the homeless problem because of the Martin v Boise decision which said that there has to be enough housing before you can chase homeless people out of public lands.  But that was in 2018, before Biden got elected and the drug problem got really bad.  But no one talks about the Brown v City of Phoenix decision (2023), where the city was told it had the right to get rid of the homeless critters if there was evidence of crime, public drug use and a "biohazard" situation - all of which exist in Portland.  So get going, Portland!

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Great article on how American healthcare isn't that bad.  Folks like Bernie Sanders like to say that U.S. healthcare is so expensive and that healthcare is a right.  Well maybe it's expensive if you look at the initial figure, which this family was presented with.  But with the cost, comes life-saving services which places like Canada don't provide.  And this is why healthcare is not a right.  It's just a standard of life that we as a society choose to set, if we can afford it.  Which so far we can.

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Your tax dollars at work.  Portlanders, did you know you were paying for a Narcan subsidy?

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28 June 2023

Ironic.  LetMeSpy, an Android spying app, got hacked themselves.

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PLGA could be a game-changer in drug-delivery.  Will keep an eye on this company.

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WSJ takes notice of Portland's decline.  The caption under Ted Wheeler's photo is already out of date.  😂

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Mandating return to the office wasn't such a good idea after all.  Market forces unknown to CEOs were at work.  Things will have to change to get people to return.

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AirBnB is collapsing.  And VRBO as well.  Hopefully the financial damage to the economy will be contained.

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This is why statins cause muscle pains (myalgia).  Oh well, there's always bempedoic acid.  Nice that mevalonolactone works against limb-girdle muscular dystrophy.

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Linux is kind of a commodity now. You can even design it from scratch.  Fix those bugs yourself without waiting for someone else to do it. 

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Have old cell phones collecting dust in a drawer?  Don't throw them away.

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I always thought those meditation apps for the mobile phone platform wouldn't work. I was right.

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Proton has come out with an email/password manager - kind of an identity manager.  I already use one, but it's great to see more people getting into this service, especially in the world we live in. 

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27 June 2023

So this is why SVB was rescued.  Chinese accounts had to be made whole.  Surprised?

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Straight from a Three Stooges movie.  Janitor annoyed at freezer alarm, pulls plug on freezer.  There go 20 years of research.

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Finally.  King County Regional Homelessness Authority gets a bit more de-diversified.  It's a start, folks, but don't get your hopes up too much.  It is still Seattle, you know. 

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Congress tells their staff not to use the free ChatGPT.  If it's not good enough for them, what does it say for us?

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Enjoy it while it lasts. A.I. is killing the Web as we know it. 
Google is trying to kill the 10 blue links. Twitter is being abandoned to bots and blue ticks. There’s the junkification of Amazon and the enshittification of TikTok. Layoffs are gutting online media. A job posting looking for an “AI editor” expects “output of 200 to 250 articles per week.” ChatGPT is being used to generate whole spam sites. Etsy is flooded with “AI-generated junk.” Chatbots cite one another in a misinformation ouroboros. LinkedIn is using AI to stimulate tired users. Snapchat and Instagram hope bots will talk to you when your friends don’t. Redditors are staging blackouts. Stack Overflow mods are on strike. The Internet Archive is fighting off data scrapers, and “AI is tearing Wikipedia apart."
Some are saying it's the opposite, and that A.I. will add value to the Internet.  But A.I. even threatens Google's ad-serving business model.  Not too sad about that one.

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NYC wants to ban wood-fire ovens.  Will the Italians stand up against this?  Hell yes!

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26 June 2023

Legislating nurses workloads.  Gov. Kotek signed a bill that would mandate that nurses not be overworked.  So nice.

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Mr. Rogers knew what was what.


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So despite all the praise heaped on the Scandinavian Way, it looks like the wealthy Norwegians are moving away, due to being tired of the high taxes.  Soon, the money will have to come from the middle class.  Money to pay for all that "free" stuff that Bernie Sanders likes to point out. 

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Informational No-Man's Land.  COVID-19 transformed our media.  And not in a good way.

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Mayor Dan Holladay was right.  He was strongly against lockdowns and closing business.  He was against the BLM protests and supported the police.  He supported fireworks on the Fourth of July.  And they voted him out.  Here's to you, Dan - you were right all along.

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I've seen some people feel that the drive to have people return to the office is because companies have these buildings that need to be occupied.  They look at articles like these, and feel that by resisting going to the office, they are "sticking it to the man" and it makes them happy.  The truth is that lease contracts have been made, and whether they return or not doesn't impact these.  But if these office buildings end being abandoned, as they are in San Francisco, then cities will lose a large part of their tax base, and services and just about everything else will decline for those who choose to live there.  No raindrop thinks its responsible for the flood.  Same with these workers.  Cities will then become the dystopian hellholes you currently see only in movies.  We're seeing it already.

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Case in point as to why developers are leaving Portland.  What a loss.

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25 June 2023

When using encryption is criminal.  In France, 7 people are in legal trouble because they encrypted their communications.  Some governments feel so insecure that they have to know everything you say. 

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Rethinking climate change. Volcanic eruptions have been greater contributors to global warming than expected.  Yeah, they say it doesn't get man-made warming off the hook, but how well do they really know?

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Good rules to follow.  What not to post on social media.

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23 June 2023

This is what I tell myself to make me feel better. 😉 Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems. Yeah, that's gotta be the answer.

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So cancer rates are increasing.  What ever could be the cause? 
Archie Bleyer from OHSU:
"Bleyer says the increased use of diagnostic imaging such as CT scans and X rays, which expose patients to low levels of carcinogenic radiation, could be contributing,"
"When it comes to the uptick in testicular cancer, meanwhile, he says rising cannabis use is likely the leading culprit. "  (Well not everyone agrees, Archie)
"People growing taller could also be a risk factor for several cancer types, he says."   (Now THAT'S a stretch!)
But then other physicians continue to be puzzled:
"Ugai tells me there’s speculation changes in our sleep patterns could be involved."
"Marios Giannakis, a medical oncologist and researcher at the Dana-Farber Gastrointestinal Cancer Center, says changes in the microbiome — the community of microorganisms that populate the body — have been “implicated”.
These changes can result from diet, lifestyle factors or even surgical procedures such as C-sections."

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Well, it's proven now, in the journal Nature - conservative women are more attractive than liberal women.  And they just analyzed faces.  Imagine if they included bodies in the analysis, too!

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Well it's a start.  Measure 110 notwithstanding, possession of at least 1 gm of fentanyl could land you in jail.  But 1 gram of fentanyl is still a lot.  Doctors typically give fractions of a milligram of fentanyl to patients. 

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22 June 2023

Firefighters are quitting in droves.  The article never mentions a major factor for this.  Just like with nurses.

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Washington's overdose deaths rising the fastest in the nation.  Hey, maybe eastern Washington can join Greater Idaho.  Just a thought.

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The COVID-19 vax mandates were based on a lie.  Yeah, those of use who paid attention knew this.  Nothing new.

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Cliff Mass sets us straight.  Whatever is happening with Mt. Rainier's glaciers is not due to climate change.  We need objective scientists like Cliff.

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Ranked-choice voting - where idiot voters get a second chance to vote again.  Anyone who understands RCV knows that losers lose for a reason, and that those that vote for them should get taken out of the voter pool.  But RCV essentially lets them vote again, usually to the advantage of looney lefties, and to the detriment of the top candidates. 

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So funny.  I just read this article on Oregon's peculiar problem with technology.  Then I read that there was an Internet outage at the Capitol.  Just hilarious.

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