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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20 June 2023

I've been seeing a lot of MVA crashes lately.  I suspected that increased marijuana use would be one of the reasons. It's been reported before.

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What makes a song a hit?  Can machine learning predict?

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A.I. is only as good as its training.  And who will do the labeling of datasets for accurate training?  The new underclass, that's who.  And if you take shortcuts, you get crappy A.I.

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19 June 2023

Slowly, Portland disintegrates.  You can no longer depend on ambulance service in the city.  Why should people pay taxes to the city anymore.  The money needs to go to a private organization that can get things done.  Also, a separate police force that actually gets crime off the streets.  And private jails to put criminals in. We can no longer depend on the city to do this.  A parallel government, since the first one is almost useless, too busy being diverse and full of equity and other bullsh#t.

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Climate change is just a 71 year old guy named Ed.  Who knew, huh?

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For those keeping track, another study showing that bivalent boosters don't last very long.  Only 30% efficacy at 4 weeks, then downhill from there.  Why bother. 


And a German study supports the contention that natural immunity is best. 

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18 June 2023

This is just dumb. Facebook/Meta is going to offer free A.I. as part of their platform.  As if most people really know what to do with A.I. right now.  People who know a thing or two are already noticing that the quality of GPT is going downhill.  ChatGPT and similar models are like dating apps.  They seemed great at the beginning, when the content was good and just a minority of people were using it.  But as more people started using it, the quality eventually degraded it to where it's barely usable.  The low-hanging fruit stage has come and gone.  And A.I. is using A.I. to train itself, so soon the digitial world will be filled with A.I. content, good or bad. Meanwhile, Meta's Yann Le Cun is working on other aspects of A.I.  Just wish he wasn't working for Facebook.

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What's the difference between Google and Microsoft?  Here's an insight.

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Remote working and the coronavirus epidemic messed up a lot of people.  Nobody wants to go back to the office anymore, but bosses want this.  Both sides have their arguments.  Eventually, the labor force will re-adjust.

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This is crap.  Hospital forced to shut down because of ransomware.  Lives disrupted in so many ways.  Horrible.

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Well, the BRICS countries had their meeting.  We're one step closer to the dollar not being reserve currency.  Haven't we had enough to worry about for 2023 so far? 

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Doorknobbing.  Another reason to avoid downtown Portland.

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17 June 2023

Toyota has developed a solid-state lithium battery design that will charge in 10 minutes and last 932 miles.  But cars using it won't be available until 2027.  Hope they build up the electrical grid by then.

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People Can Be Convinced They Committed a Crime That Never Happened.  Fascinating.

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AI is filling itself with garbage.  Model collapse, huh?  ChatGPT is kinda like how dating apps were.  Sounded pretty good when they first started, but as more people started using them...well, we know what happened, right?

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Testosterone therapy has had a bad rap, probably people didn't know how to prescribe them, or use them safely.  It's not as dangerous, but you still have to be careful.

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Everything must be paid for twice.  Great article.  Never thought of it that way, but it's true.

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16 June 2023

What's wrong with Google and the Reverse Imposter Syndrome.

Within Google, there is a collective delusion that the company is exceptional. And as is the case in all such delusions, the deluded ones are just mortals standing on the shoulders of the truly exceptional people who went before them and created an environment of wild success.  
“I’m here and it’s great; therefore I must be great.

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Your brain works differently when you are speaking German and Arabic.  What the implications of this?

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How DO you find the right people?  To find the best doctor, don't ask your neighbor.  Call the hospital and ask to speak with the charge nurse on the medical or surgical unit, depending on what you want.  That nurse will know someone to recommend.

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15 Jun 2023

Are we surprised?  U.S. Intelligence admits that they have acquired sensitive data on just about every American.  And of course, they need to have permission to spy renewed because "security".  Of course, I would bet that everyone surf without a VPN, and searches Google directly, has a Facebook account and uses Instagram. 

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Is it still science when no one can reproduce the experiment?  There used to be a journal for such science. Of course, it's no longer funny if you've invested money in a company that can't reproduce the science that induced you to shell out the big bucks.

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Crawling a quarter of a billion web pages in 40 hours.  If everyone started doing this, the web would be kneecapped.

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Can a laxative make you smarter? Jokes aside, it appears that the laxative, prucalopride activates serotonin receptors in the brain, boosting resting activity, especially in the frontal lobe, improving cognition and memory.  And it reduces abdominal bloat, too!

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14 Jun 2023

Noice.  Oregon joins the entire West Coast in exhibiting early signs of recession.

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ER doc uses ChatGPT - to explain things to patient's family members because he is too busy.  No, I don't think so.  This guy will stop doing this once someone gets upset at him for relying on ChatGPT for family communication and says something inappropriate, or worse, something false.  I would be upset if a doc just shoved a display and just told me to read what it said.  Nah, big nah.

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13 Jun 2023

Not suprising.  If you use the Microsoft Edge browser, images that you view get sent to Microsoft, unless you change a browser setting.

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Google's AI search engine basically plagiarizes the Internet.  They've tried something like this once before, so no surprise.  This is going to break once websites start siloing their data. 

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This article resonated with this old ronin.  Yes, how do some people walk around carrying around a lifetime of pain?

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How to convey "executiveness" to people.  Yeah, hard truth is appearance matters, and people judge you for that, sorry. 

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