27 May 2023

"Scar Tissues Make Relationships Wear Out"  Interesting perspective on why it's so hard to maintain long-lasting relationships.  The basic message is: when injuries occur, make sure it heals, and doesn't just scar.

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Killing hundreds of bills.  Derailing Kotek's agenda.  The Republican boycott continues.  I hope that it prevents more ideas like this.  Or ideas like rank-choice voting to be put on the ballot.  I don't think that most people can explain how this system works, much less understand it themselves.  It's definitely works in favor of candidates with more ludicrous ideas, and works against Republicans, who always tend to split the vote in elections.

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Could the zoster virus be responsible for dementia?  The indirect evidence from vaccination looks very suggestive of this.  Best get the shingles vaccine.

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Past the point of no return?  Bad news for downtown Portland commercial real estate.  "..somewhere between 30 to 40 buildings, office buildings, downtown that are distressed, in the process of going back to lenders right now, and there's not much of a market for investment downtown."

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26 May 2023

Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink announces FDA approval of in-human clinical study.  It's amazing how one guys is in charge of so many large companies and still manages to have a life.  Then there are those who can't even manage one company.

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Andreesen Horowitz just released this great list of A.I. links for the cognoscienti to read to catch up the latest.  Very nice if you want to go to cocktail parties (or tech conferences) and at least sound like you know what you're talking about.

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25 May 2023

Fantastic!  A paralyzed man walks again.  This reminds me of that 2000 Superbowl ad.


It would have been great if this came true for Christopher. Alas.

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Oregon's specialty is being the first state to legalize powerful psychoactive agents.  As if we didn't have enough messed-up brains already.  Well now the psilocybin program isn't financially feasible, and once again, the taxpayer will be required to fix the mess. 
Update (27 May 2023): Problems with legalizing mushrooms.

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Figures.  Central Oregon homelessness director resigns.  Claims she was "inhibited from creating solutions by a lack of consensus among elected leaders."  And the beat goes on.

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Hold fast, Republicans.  Don't give in.  Your actions are all that's saving us from utter insanity.

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You know, this won't matter.  Oregon House passed a bill increasing penalties for retail theft.  It doesn't matter.  The thieves won't get arrested, and even if they are, they'll get released, and won't get prosecuted.  It's like gun laws - you can add more laws to the books, but it really doesn't matter to the criminals, does it?

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24 May 2023

Interesting take on the debt ceiling impasse.  I don't completely agree with this guy's tenets.  The Republican's aren't after austerity, they just want fiscal responsibility.  Why cut pay to military personnel, SS recipients, federal workers, while still spending money on illegal immigrants and giving billions to Zelensky?  Also a "default" will be disastrous for everyone, not just Wall Street.  There are many moving parts to a default.  Especially since the St Petersburg Economic Summit will take place in a few weeks, where they will no doubt be discussing cementing the removal of the dollar as reserve currency. 

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Under-reported.  There's been surprisingly little reported on the loss of 60,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate in California.  Whereabouts still unknown.  And folks have this scenario in the back of their minds:

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The Oregon House tries to pass a "flurry of bills" but Senate Republicans remain steadfast.  Hopefully, these crazy bills will just die there.

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This experimental VTOL is awesome.  Could be a game-changer if it goes into mass production.  Wow!


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Which planet is Earth's closest neighbor?  This came up in my newsfeed.  It's an oldie but goodie and a great bar bet.  The answer will surprise you.  It's not Venus.  And the answer is also the same as what is Neptune's closest planet.

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That Cape Kiwanda sinkhole continues to grow.  I walked over that spot once.

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Portland came in 6th place in the list of cities that lost the most people since from 7/2021 to 7/2022.  That's 1.3% of the population, on top of the 1.7% in the year before.  So that's about a 3% drop over two years, and I suspect that it's the working middle class that are leaving, since they're not as tied down to their homes, and see that the downsides outweigh the upsides.  But I'm seeing more sale listings in upscale neighborhoods, too.  And Portland is not attractive to mobile professionals looking at places to move where they can raise a family. 

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"I know it can seem controversial, but..."   This is why the homelessness problem is not being solved.  It's great that this is being exposed.  Putting these activists in charge will ensure that drug addicts will continue to roam the streets of Seattle.  When will someone say "OK, we've tried it your way, and it's not working.  Time for someone else to handle this."

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23 May 2023

Oregon lawmakers want to add another tax - this time a cell-phone tax.  There's never enough money, is there?

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Looking for the government to step in?  Some are concerned about the workers who will lose their jobs due to being replaced by A.I.  I just don't trust the government to come up with a solution, if experience is any guide.  There will always be a need for people to provide data classification for supervised learning sets.

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Yes! Stalled Senate could sink 2023 session of Legislature.  Music to my ears.  No more stupid law to be passed in Oregon.  Amazing, and many thanks to the GOP senators who put principle over career.  Nicely done!

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I'm sure it's nothing to worry about.  Someone's been storing all your Reddit comments, and they're available for download and data mining.

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21 May 2023

Thanks, Neil, but it's 2023.  Neil Gorsuch decries the erosion of civil liberties during COVID-19. 

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A lot of people aren't sophisticated enough to manage their retirement plans.  Why is it expected that they can manage their healthcare plans?  Most folks select it through their employer anyway, and then afterwards, Medicare takes care of most of the choice-making.
People can't even manage their student loan debt payments.  So now they hope that somehow Biden will be able to magically change the rules in their favor.  There will be problems coming in the near future, for sure.

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Two GLP-1 receptor antagonists improve overall body composition and end addictive behavior (smoking, drinking, nail-biting).

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It's both amusing and sobering to look back at coronavirus vaccine attitudes.


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20 May 2023

Why aren't we hearing more about this?  Third world countries are going to find out how bad things are going to get, as China calls in their loans.  Dictators are fleeing with suitcases full of cash, as the country deals with chaos. Anger and disbelief to follow.

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Crowd-funded, eh?.  On the one hand, people follow vegan diets and watch their sugar, etc.  Then they're ready to eat edible coffee cups.  Does this smack you of a wrong solution looking for a problem that is low on list of problems we need to solve?

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Rounding error.  Google has to pay Washington state for being dishonest about location tracking practices.  But when people use Google and their products, do they even care?

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To stop suffering.  Psychologist Enrique Echeburúa: ‘People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living’.  We should pay attention to this.  The existence and misuse of social media and the nascent development of A.I. is going to give people (especially the young) novel ways to experience public suffering.

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19 May 2023

Portland is shrinking.  The latest U.S. census figures came out recently.  Almost every major city in Oregon lost people.

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Multnomah County DA office is understaffed.  So if people don't have a public attorney assigned, DA Mike Schmidt dismisses charges and people walk free.  So crime basically goes unpunished and so more crime is committed and people leave.  So the tax base shrinks and there is no money to hire public attorneys.  Rinse, repeat.

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18 May 2023

Getting real tired of the legal system only around to target non-Democrats.  Laws broken, but when you're a Democrat, the rules bend.  Fines get reduced and criminal investigations get dropped.  Russian collusion hoax cost America so much in wasted money and time, and no one will be prosecuted for it.  Heck, even New Jersey's Gov Phil Murphy says that he'll ignore the Supreme Court if he wants to.  What does Law and Order mean to Democrats anymore? 

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Has US News and World Report visited Portland lately?  If so, I'd doubt Portland make the list.  What does it really have to offer?  The naked bike ride?  Voodoo Doughnuts and some soccer teams?  But having to deal with trash, drugs, shooting, hideous graffiti and homeless tents everywhere? Also high taxes, from a city governance that is giving away so much money to the homeless problem that it has little to show for it? 

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A.I. is being used to generate a lot of fake medical publications.  Kind of like what happened to this author.  Be careful. 

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No, healthcare is not a right.  It's a system we'd like everyone to be able to partake of.  But a wish doesn't make it a true right.  A liberal physician comes to realize this. 

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Yes, it's difficult to identify "fake news".  What is fake today, may eventually become truth tomorrow, as it has with the vaccines and the coronavirus. 

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Cancer patients lose weight (cachexia), even more than can be explained by the calories they consumed.  For years, it has been thought to be due to a substance initially called cachexin, and later found to be tumor necrosis factor-α.  But inhibiting TNF-α didn't fix the problem.  Now, the culprit has been identified as abnormal EDA2R–NIK signaling.  An alternatively spliced mRNA of ectodysplasin A (EDA), called EDA-2R, interacts abnormally with its receptor, NFĸB-inducing kinase (NIK).  This causes muscle wasting.  Now we know the target, and can start working on treatment. 

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Young Americans aren't doing too well these day.  WSJ reports that they are dying at higher rates.  They're also dying of cancer more frequently as well.  I suspect that this is from the obesity epidemic, but definite proof is elusive.  Whatever it is, the population in the U.S. will decline, and this is not a sign of health, is it?

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From Reddit:

Look at those titles - Policy Coordinator, Impact Officer, Director of Special Projects, Advisor to the CPO.  All important positions, right?  Six figure salaries for all!  This is why there is no interest in solving the homeless problem.  If the homeless disappeared, so would these sinecure positions!

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