23 April 2023

It's called decussation.  Why do brain control centers on one side of the brain control the opposite side of the body?  What's the purpose of having the optic chiasm?  There hasn't been a good explanation, although this person thinks he has an answer.

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East Germany could only dream of this capability.  Congress is contemplating the EARN IT Bill, which will permit spying on email, messages and photos.  All for our security, of couse.  To look for child porn, of course.  So they'll need to see everything. 

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More craziness.  GISAID is an important repository of viral genomic sequences, so important during the coronavirus.  What's going on with its director?

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"I’ll give you a short explanation of why different green teas use a different temperature."  Good information to know when preparing fine teas. 

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When you've lost The Economist. 
“This newspaper has long championed more liberal laws, but before rushing ahead, reform-minded states—in America and beyond—would do well to consider the experience of Oregon, the only American state so far to enact decriminalisation,” The Economist wrote April 13. “It has had a rocky start.”
Ya think?  And Portland's restauranteurs have a problem with the city's response to crime.  One abandoned restaurant was recently taken over and was set on fire.  Which is probably the fastest way to get rid of the squatters. 

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Homeless Industrial Complex.  This is why nothing gets done.  People in the homeless "agencies" must think that their role is to make like comfortable for the criddlers.  And the uglification of Portland continues apace.  Rather than address the problem head on, city officials try band-aid solutions.  These rocks will soon be strewn with garbage and needle, becoming eyesores for all that drive by. 

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Absolutely nutso.  NIH study recruiting 18-year-olds to learn 'unknown' side effects of testicle removal for gender dysphoria.  Wait a minute — there's political pressure to provide this surgery, and we don't know what the side-effects are?  This is modern medicine under Democrats.  Who wants to volunteer for this study?

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22 April 2023

End of an era.  At last, Oregon is finally ending COVID-19 emergency status.  But Sidelinger is careful to maintain the fear factor:

the risk of future significant outbreaks "remains low."

"But risk is not non-existent," Sidelinger said. "We anticipate that COVID-19 will be with us for the foreseeable future, perhaps forever."

Only 22% of Oregonians got the bivalent booster, and the data suggest that getting the earlier vax products developed before the bivalent vaccine is ineffective against the latest variants, which pretty much make up everything we see now.  Even the bivalent booster is fairly ineffective against the latest variants.  As expected, only the mRNA vaccines are promoted as the way to mitigate against the virus.  No consideration of natural immunity status, which is very protective. 
"Anyone who is eligible should get it," Sidelinger said.
Sure.  And I say "mitigate" because the it certainly doesn't prevent you from getting sick with the virus, which is has "had less impact that [sic] expected in Oregon". 


Interesting that news about the TOGETHER trial hasn't gotten much traction in the news.  Fluvoxamine really is effective against mild COVID-19.  Astral Codex's instincts were dead on.  I find it notable that the fluvoxamine study had to be conducted in Brazil.  Shameful that the U.S. authorities only supported vax efforts.

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Related, the financial difficulties of Oregon hospitals are against mentioned in the news.  The nurses' union has reached some sort of an agreement which they hope will mitigate the stress.  But setting standards for staffing and raising their compensation is not the only issue.  Another major issue that staffing agencies have encountered is that few people want to move to Oregon, especially Portland.  It's just not worth it.  I wonder if the nursing shortage is just a problem in the larger cities.  It's interesting that it's projected that in 2030, Oregon will have an excess of nurses.

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Sad.  Real efforts to make life better in Oregon - reduction of impactful taxes - has failed in the legislature.  I can understand this.  When the tax base leaves the state and you still need to give away money to homeless people and illegal immigrants, among other things, what else are you going to do, right?

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OHSU extended President Danny Jacob's contract by two years (physicians usually have a one-year contract), but not without dissent.  "...we have received wide-ranging views of Dr. Jacobs’ performance from multiple sources". 

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What's the moral of this story?  Don't base your business model on offering favorable financial products and services to reward those with good credit scores and are fiscally responsible.  Because the Biden administration is going to undercut you, and you'll just look bad trying to defend yourself.  Remember, those other people are "victims", and how dare you.

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So can we keep our gas stoves?  Recent research suggests that methane is not as bad a contributor to climate change as the greenies believe.  While still considered a greenhouse gas, effects of shortwave absorbance reduces its contribution to global warming (since pre-industrial times) from 0.2 °C to 0.16 °C.  I'm sure I'll feel this. 

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21 April 2023

Taxes are too damn high!  Portland Kettle Works is eyeing moving across the river to Washington because of high taxes.  The city can't keep raising taxes due to the shrinking tax base, or more companies will leave. 

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Oregon COVID-19 hospitalizations drop below 200.  Love the way Dean Sidelinger keep the fear alive for the "Arcturus" variant.  COVID-19 is still a "leading cause of death"?  Well so are deaths from homicide and drug overdoses, but I don't see Oregon doing anything effective to stop that. 
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Washington (and soon Oregon) thinks it's fine to take children away from parents who object to genital mutilation surgery.  But when Florida passed a law allowing children to be taken away from parents who want their children to undergo genital mutilation surgery, suddenly it's "fascist". 

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Elon Musk was dead on!  The battery manufacturer CATL announces a breakthrough which promises to deliver lithium ion batteries with double the energy density of current batteries, and manufacturing of automotive-grade batteries will start this year.  CATL also thinks it can build electric airplanes.  

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If you asked me where college students turn to write their essays, I would not have guessed Kenya.  Some people say that A.I. will steal those jobs away from Kenyans, but perhaps not....

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20 April 2023

Could be a good thing, actually.  Two-thirds of Legislature's bills for 2023 have died.  Including the universal basic income proposal.  

The Legislature will focus more time on the state budget in the second half of the session. It's a fraught process since, unlike Congress, the Legislature has to craft a balanced budget - money spent has to be balanced by money coming in.

And with the tax base declining, they can't go hog-wild, thankfully.

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The cold and wet weather we've been having has actually increased the risk of summer wildfires.

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India just overtook China as being the world's most populous nation.  Hmmmm.....

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19 April 2023

Reasons why you might not want to live near your friends.  Everything about being an adult seems to be complicated.

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Portland businesses don't get any slack.  Shake Shack downtown hasn't even opened yet, but already it's had a window smashed.

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Smoke gets in your wine.  Oregon wines have been tasting a little smoky lately, due to recent wildfires.  Maybe some will like it.

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Bet they miss the old Obamacare days.  Oregon hospitals deeply in the red.  Bad time to get sick. 

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This is what the + stands for.  They don't even bother to try to hide it anymore. 

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Pancreatic cancer might respond to intra-tumoral immunotherapy.  Very promising. 

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Trade secrets.  Chatbots sound really smart, but they're only as good as their training sets.  So what's in the training set, to give them great general knowledge?  This has been a closely-guarded secret, but the Washington Post found out. 

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18 April 2023

Is the Fed bankrupt?  Hard to imagine that they are, but they've made a lot of promises, and the money printing machines have overheating.  So maybe not exactly bankrupt, but not quite in the Old Helicopter Ben days.

A fine mess....

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Expired tags? Parking violations?  Portland is so short-staffed that in effect, these laws aren't enforced anymore. 

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Will Chat replace human physicians?  Some think so.  I'm still of the opinion that doctors powered by A.I. will replace those who aren't, but we're not ready to discard human physicians just yet. 

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San Francisco public school district learns that you can't just "equity" your way into mathematics excellence.  What happens when you dumb down math so that the, um, slower kids can get some of that equal outcome.  Nothing happens. 

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You're not uncool.  Making friends is just hard.  Good to know.  I wondered if it was just me.

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Portland's controlled demolition.  Beyond the point of recovery?

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17 April 2023

In my 15 April 2023 post,  I highlighted a post the described how one could use prompt injection to poison the results that LLM-using search engines like Bing would retrieve.  Therefore one wonders if we've already reached Peak LLM, that is, whether the easy ability to poison search results and befuddle the search quality of future users already indicates that incorporating Chat/LLM into production applications already has hit a wall.  The success of Chat so far depends on the vast number of documents out on the Web being pristine, and free of hidden "white text" that mischievous writers leave.  But what if a sizeable number of documents had hidden surprises for ChatGPT/GPTx to discover.  Very soon, we will see pranks and jokes, or worse, malevolent instructions that the Chat agent would blindly follow.  What bad outcome might result?  Perhaps a brilliant prompt engineer will come up with a way to defeat these pranks, but then this becomes an onging war of hacker against hacker.  The unwary consumer, just wanting to use the search engine, may be an unwitting casualty.  Perhaps we do need to pause things, despite what some think.

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I was hoping this would be No.  Do looks matter when it comes to advancing a career in economics?  The answer, sadly, is yes. 
Attractive individuals are more likely to study at higher ranked PhD institutions and are more likely to be placed at higher-ranking academic institutions not only for their first job, but also for jobs as many as 15 years after their graduation, even when we control for the ranking of PhD institution and first job. Appearance also predicts the success of research output: while it does not predict the number of papers an individual writes, it predicts the number of citations for a given number of papers, again even when we control for the ranking of the PhD institution and first job. All these effects are robust, statistically significant, and substantial in magnitude.
I suspect that this is not just economics, but in academics as a whole.  We ugly people have to struggle harder.  But someone else found the real secret to profession success - having wealthy parents.  That's right, coming from a rich family is a major factor in whether or not you will succeed professionally.  And if you are rich and good-looking, well, there is no excuse for failure, is there?

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Why do flying insects seek bright lights and fly around and around them?  The answer is that they think it's the sun, and they are adapting their flight to it.

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Another crazy California idea.  A bill is being considered that will charge Califorians for energy use depending on how wealthy they are.  The richer you are, the more you pay.  Who said "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." 
I don't think it was Milton Friedman.

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Nature is amazing.  Why don't bears get blood clots when they hibernate?  Downregulation of HSP47 is why.  Fascinating.

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REI is leaving the Pearl District.  Another casualty of Portland crime.  Having so much glass in the ground floor windows is clearly a temptation for thugs to break.  The store was designed for times that no longer exist - when law and order was observed and people respected property.  So sad to see the further decline of what was once a fun city.

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16 April 2023

Fighting back!  Concerned about your personal photo being sucked up by A.I. to be used against you later?  The Fawkes team has you covered.  Fawkes makes alterations to images that are nearly invisible to the eye, but make it much more difficult for deep learning models to "learn" your image, but making pixel-level alterations that "poison" the image.

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Psilocybin - is it the magic, wonder drug that some people say it is?  Roland Griffiths thinks so, and wants to convince you - before he dies.

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Feminism has changed over the years, since I was young.  Now it's "darker" and "seething with resentment".

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This is funny.  Although search using the LLM interface might work in some situations, algorithms based on "what should the next desired word be, based on the model" can fall flat if the underlying development set data is less than optimal.

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I've been seeing wind mills everywhere, and my first instinct to seeing these has always been negative.  But the technology has improved a lot since the 1980s and it is one of the cheapest sources of energy.

Which is why China and Europe have been pursuing it greatly, far faster than the U.S. 
There's a great three part series worth a read.  And there's an interesting design from a company called T-Omega.

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In my 7 April 2023 post, I pointed out that the Business Journals Downtown Vitality Index put Portland at the very bottom.  Now a report from the University of Toronto, looking at cellphone activity, created a ranking of downtown recovery rates for various U.S. cities.  Portland ranked second to last.  Even Chicago beat us.

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Apparently a lot of people want access to Lake Oswego, and can't understand why they not.  They blame "the rich" for keeping the lake to themselves.  Well, these rich people paid to have the lake created and developed, and want to keep it clean, tidy, and for users to respect the resource.  Being able to attain and retain wealth, you are more likely to observe propriety, follow social guidelines and not do anything stupid.  Given what we've seen in Portland, I can't blame them for wanting to keep it restricted.  L.O. understands that granting open access is not reversible.  Once you do so, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. 

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15 April 2023

The Cascadia fault is alive.  Gases and hot water are pouring out of cracks and holes on the ocean floor.


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I wish I was in Eugene today when a man threw out $200,000 from a car "to bless others".  It seems I'm never in the right place at the right time.

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New coronavirus variant is out - XBB.1.16.  More contagious but apart from coughs and sniffless, one can get conjunctivitis.  So far no increase in deaths or hospitalizations.  Good.  But in the infectious disease department, comes a report that Oregon's syphilis rate is the 9th highest in the nation.  Officials are somehow blaming the coronavirus pandemic for this.  Yeah, that makes sense. 🙄

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Minimum wage is increasing, starting July 1.  So, prices will increase accordingly, since employees cost more to the employer, and since people have more money now, why not?  Is everyone getting a pay raise?  No?

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Nature can be stranger than science fiction.  Worse than Oedipus?

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Why we can't have nice things.  So while most people just use Bing's new search engine, powered by A.I., other people find ways to exploit it.  Like leaving secret commands for Bing to follow, that can change someone else's profile.  Or tailoring chat prompts to make Bing talk like a pirate, or poison the search index, or to get Bing to extract data by injecting hidden commands.  These are early and crude attempts, but were successful.  What will others do?

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14 April 2023

A very bad law.  The Washington state legislature just passed SB5599 (D-6, R-0), which allows the state to take from parents, the children who want to have "gender-affirming care", the euphemism for genital mutilation or puberty-blocking hormones, because of their mental illness.  Parents have no say in this matter, and I can't say enough how awful that this got passed.  Matt Margolis calls this "state-sponsored kidnapping," which it is.  Time to leave the state.  But not to Oregon.  Nope, because the idiots in Oregon are working on the same kind of law.  Groomers in the schools must be beside themselves with glee.

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Portland city council is confused about their ranked-choice voting procedure rough draft.  Commissioners Mingus Mapps, Rene Gonzalez and Dab Ryan raised some concerns about how byzantine the process is, but Charter Implementation Transition Manager Shoshanah Oppenheim said to just trust the outside experts that the City consulted.  They know best.  Ranked-choice voting is flawed.  It's a way to keep the voters of losing loony candidates to stay in the game, and redistribute their votes to their second-choice less-loony candidates that remain.  Voters who voted for more sensible candidates can only watch in horror, as the 3rd, 4th and 5th place candidates end up getting more votes with each round, and overtake the candidate that won originally, but just not above the 50% cutoff.

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AI as administrative assistant.  Terry Tao is happy with using GPT4 as his admin assistant.  It's still not a user-friendly process, but will be soon.  People who are employed doing menial services should be very concerned.  The world will no longer need this to be done by a human.

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Don't have friends?  No problem. Just replace them with your custom chatbot. As you can see, setting this up is much like running Linux on your computer back in the 1990s.  But things will get easier eventually.  I had not heard of Modal before - offering up serverless GPU cloud space.  Great business model, which will grow, I'll bet.  But machine learning models degrade over time, and require retraining and "constant access to ground truth data" so you may still need to keep your real friends around.

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