7 May 2023

More insightful A.I. commentary:

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    Mental health crisis in teens.  Three regional school districts are suing social media for a mental health crisis in teens.  I think this is a little misplaced, but one must agree that giving young kids a platform where they can spout opinions and crazy stuff online, which is likely to be recorded forever and may come to haunt them later on is like offering cigarettes to youth.  Few know how to use social media responsibly and errors are forever.  Those who come to realize this can be severely depressed due to online incidents.

    Related to this is the desire to facilitate transgender surgery for gender dysphoric youths, thinking that this will help.  The passage of HB 2002-B is truly a sad day for Oregon.  Families will be destroyed.  And studies have shown that after genital-mutilating surgery, the use of psychoactive medications actually increases, not decreases.  Once you cut body parts off, there is no satisfactory reversal.

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    In Hawaii, residents of Molokai and Lanai are dependent on one tiny airline service - Mokulele Airlines.  Holy crap, this is crazy.  Given the poor track record of businesses in Hawaii, I fear for these guys.  Sounds like service is already spotty.

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    Awesome!  Employees for the journal Neuroimage at at Elsevier are walking out to protest unreasonable publishing fees.  It's heartening to see people standing up for scientists.  Bravo!

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    This is just outrageous.  Money given to agencies just enables drug abusers and contribute to the ongoing decay of Portland.  No, Measure 110 will not work "eventually".  The agencies just view this as a job — they don't want their employment to go away.  Agency workers are content doing this day in and day out.


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    6 May 2023

    So true!

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    Hospitals will have to eat the cost.  It is projected that by 2024, a third of the uninsured will be non-citizens.  They will go to the local emergency departments, of course, and can't be turned away.  They may be hospitalized.  And the costs will be borne by the hospital, passed down to patients with insurance when possible.  Ultimately, we all pay.
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    And no one will be fired for this.  Oregon DHS mistakenly sent out $1.46 miilion worth of pandemic EBT cards to those who weren't eligible, and this is the second time they've made a mistake like this.  But there will be no accountability for this.  They'll just raise taxes.  That's why this kind of stuff needs to come out of charity, not taxes.  Less waste, more accountability, and more appreciation by recipients.

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    The stock market surged yesterday because of what was felt to be a favorable jobs report.  I suspect that this is the truth the underlies it.

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    Woke is infiltrating medicine.  The NEJM featured an editorial written by people in the Univ of California system, that advocates for segregated learning.  They call the segregated groups RAGCs. 
    RAGCs are facilitated sessions involving participants grouped according to self-identified racial or ethnic identity to support integration of antiracism curricula into clinical practice.
    With medical activists spouting opinions (often outside their expertise), like climate change, gender dysphoria and gun control, we're seeing the decline of medicine as the field goes woke.  Medicine was better when it wasn't so "inclusive" for the sake of diversity itself.  The progressive foray into diversity has failed. 
     
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    In the upcoming debt-ceiling fight, Democrats are crying out that the Republicans are going to slash funds for education.  There's a lot of fat to trim from the budget such as this.  Can't believe the waste we're funding.  When it comes to spending the taxpayer's money, politicians seem not to bother with things like making sure the money will be well-spent.  They just want to take taxpayer money.  Case in point:

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    Man, that's a LOT of fentanyl.  And I'd bet he's just one of many
     
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    5 May 2023

    Seems like everyone's got an opinion about the impact of A.I.  Here are some recent ones that I thought were worth sharing:

    There's also Rick Beato's insight on the impact to the music industry:


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    It's not just myocarditis, blood clots and adult sudden onset death syndrome that is becoming more common  Now people are reporting an increase in young adult colorectal cancer, and Parkinson's disease.  What's going on?

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    Appalling!  So it seems that someone in Twitter can fabricate a false account with your name on it, and send the incriminating "evidence" to the Feds for investigation.  Not only that, but the DOJ/FBI have "direct administrative level backdoors into all social media platforms".  This is East Germany kind of stuff, people.

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    4 May 2023

    One of the most unreported news items.  De-dollarization is happening at a stunning pace.  It's been about 80 years since Bretton Woods, so I don't think most people realize what this will mean.  We just haven't experienced anything like this in our lifetime.  Already, half of America's banks are a bank-run away from being insolvent.  PacWest and other regional banks are plummeting this morning.  The stock market is down, but not as low as I would expect it to be.  Why not?  With rates like this, why should you keep your money in a regional bank anyway?

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    How the Unvaccinated got it right.  We were just paying attention, that's all.  Just seeing things like how there is no science/data behind the CDC's new recommendation that one shot of the bivalent jab is sufficient.  It's been most all made up.

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    Portland business owners frustrated over mounting taxes in the city.  And the crime, too.  Time to leave the city.

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    This is great!  Republican senators freeze legislative business by walking out.  Thanks to a quirk in 19th century Oregon law, they can do this, and prevent all the crazy bills from passing.  Whooh!  Thank goodness there's a way to stop the insanity coming out of Salem.  Double sugoi!

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    Yes, for this ronin, time is now the real currency.  To be a true ronin (masterless samurai), having saved money was actually saving time.

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    3 May 2023

    There's no science behind this.  It's all someone's whim. 

    "There is literally no data on how well a single dose of a bivalent mRNA vaccine will protect anyone. But we have known for over 2 years that a single dose of the original vaccines was not good enough." 

    I think it's because they know the vax is essentially ineffective, even with potential harm outweighing any benefit, but they can't just say not to get it anymore, because just recently they were still urging people to get it.  So this is probably a compromise - get the token jab, and we'll pretend all's good.

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    Why do we even need to point this out? This is from last year, but I just recently saw it.  25 Common Sense Truths That You’re No Longer Supposed to Say

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    Puts things into perspective.  Visual representations are helpful.  This chart is scary.  And 2023 isn't half over yet.

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    Beware A.I. snake oil.  This is a revealing article and says more about us than A.I.  We want A.I. to help us arrive at the best, using criteria of merit.  But then we don't like the results it gives us, because of political correctness.  "Don't give us the right answer; give us the answer we want to see."

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    He's trying not to see the Yellow Sign.  Is Charles III the King in Yellow?  Or at least, the King Surrounded by Yellow.  😬

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    An academic found that someone had published an article under her name — an article that had been plagiarized from another article.  Why this happened was not stated.  It could be that these small journals need content to sell subscriptions.  But if someone discovers that you might have plagiarized something, that could lead to disciplinary action, and spell the end of your academic career.
     
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    2 May 2023

    HB2002-B passes the House.  Figures.  And Oregon still wants people to come to work.  Why would they?  That's why Multnomah County has to raise taxes.  How else will they get money?  But raising taxes in Oregon will only go so far when 44% can barely pay the bills.

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    Too little, too late.  So the federal government is leaning toward discontinuing "most" vaccine requirements.  Mandates will remain for some, and you can bet that blue states and blue institutions will continue them, sheep that they are.
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    What will singers do?  Paul McCartney released I Don't Know in 2018.  As you can hear, his voice was already showing its age. 

    So someone used A.I. to substitute his voice with that of a much younger Paul McCartney, and it does sound much better.


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    But photographers are having their content used without compensation for A.I. model training, and they're not getting the authorities to do anything about it.  This is probably some of the stuff Geoffrey Hinton was concerned about.

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    Yeah, many people still there's a lot of risk in banks, even though FRC got bought by JP Morgan.  There's still $620 billion in unrealized losses that banks carry, and yet Jerome Powell is expected to raise interest rates again by 25 basis points.  How many more bank failures can be rescued?  JP Morgan can only do so much.  Fed discount window usage is surging, so how about those efforts to control inflation?  And Biden is encouraging irresponsible mortgages by rewarding those who have poor credit scores with loans?
     
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    This may be just an East Coast big city problem, but it's a sign of further lawlessness in America.  Using fake license plates is prevalent.  At least in Oregon, we have an excuse that the DMV was closed and they're so backlogged.  But the stuff that's going back in the East is just deliberate lawlessness.  More societal breakdown under Democrat rule.

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    Surgeon General warns against the dangers of untreated loneliness.  Can we still blame this on COVID-19?  Hard to remain friendly when there are so many reasons for despair, disgust, disappointment and disagreement.  For me, I felt that conversations with friends would often devolve into politics, and things would get awkward sometimes.  Life has changed some friendships, sigh.  Even Alex Berenson has noticed this.

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    1 May 2023

    Geoffrey Hinton is quitting Google in order to speak freely about the risks of AI.  His first concern is not about what the AI might do of its own volition.  Hinton’s second concern is that AI will soon eliminate rote jobs.  His final concern is that he is literally worried that an advance Artificial General Intelligence could eventually “possibly eliminate humanity itself.  Hinton mentored A.I. legends like Yann LeCun and Alex Graves, so he knows what he is talking about.  Humanity can be destroyed in different ways.  I don't think that A.G.I. will necessarily kill us by dropping bombs us.  It may not even disable our financial system.  It could trigger the end of humanity as we know it by causing humans to think in destructive ways, by exploiting new powers that people didn't have before.  Powers to deceive us, to distract us, to demoralize us and to cause harm and grief to each other. 

    Geoffrey Hinton

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    Bad news for Multnomah County residents.  As if you needed another reason not to live in Multnomah County - now your asset wealth will be taxed.  Think you've budgeted to live off your retirement savings?  Think again.  You'll pay a new tax when you start liquidating your retirement savings. 
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    Your children belong to the state now.  More on HB2002B.  Your children belong to groomers now.  It's the new Democrat sickness.

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    Shortages.  It's become the watchword of the times.  But it's always serious when it comes to medication.  Drug shortages may be with us for a long, long time.

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    It's barely May, and already we're on track to be the second place year for the most bankruptcies.  It's going to be hard to beat the 2008/2009 Great Recession, but who knows?

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    Artificial companionship.  They'd go for Replika in Japan, I'm sure.  But there's a market for it here, too.  While some may view it as a sad commentary on where society is going, something like this probably meets a serious psychological need for some people, and that may be enough to keep someone going until they get back on their feet.  But deep down inside, people need honest companionship, and the software for that isn't here yet.

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    There's a report that suggests that rheumatoid arthritis is caused by a type of bacteria from the Subdoligranulum genus.  Afflicted animals were found to have antibodies and activated T-cells against this organism, so it might not be a bacterial infection per se, but the result of an immune response set off by this type of bacteria.  So it still makes sense to give steroids and immunosuppressive therapy, which would ordinarily be contraindicated for a bacterial infection.  It's an interesting theory, and is not universally accepted but worthy of further study.

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    30 April 2023

    Man, this must suck.

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    Harvard researchers may have discovered a way to regenerated lost inner ear hair cells, and help the hard-of-hearing regain some hearing acuity.

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    The wrong kind of tech buisness.  I bet that Hillsboro wanted to live up to their Silicon Forest name, and was ready to back anything that was tech-related.  But with data centers locking up property, there will only be server farms, with little need for people, and no influx of engineers and executives that drive interesting businesses to open up and serve the influx of wealth.  Hillsboro ain't going to be another Bellevue or Redmond, or even Woodinville.

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    Just learned about Internet-in-a-Box, which brings a curated subset of the Internet to third world countries without access to the regular Internet.  I've not heard of Hesperian Health Guides, which appear to be a third-world oriented set of healthcare resources.

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    29 April 2023

    Once in a while, Jay Inslee is right.  Washington state passed a law similar to GDPR, which prohibits companies from collecting health data, and share or sell it.  Some feel that it won't stop determined companies, but it's a start.  Why can't they pass sensible laws all the time?

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    Time traveler from the future (2671) warns that May and June will bring disasters.  Well, it's somewhat novel for publicity seekers, I'll say that.

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    Well, maybe better than San Diego physicians anyway.  Study Finds ChatGPT Outperforms Physicians in High-Quality, Empathetic Answers to Patient Questions.  I'm not worried.  The empathy is fake.  But maybe it will get some docs to lighten up.

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    I'm certain that this is the case in the U.S. as well.  UK Surgeon: ‘Very Few’ Doctors Willing to Speak Out Against Prevailing Opinion on COVID-19.  The coronavirus revealed some shameful realities about the medical profession.

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    Oregonians rank near the bottom in the nation in terms of being able to manage personal finances.  But all they care about is climate change, access to abortion and genital mutilating surgery, and LGBTQ rights.  The Oregon legislature will somehow legislate wealth for them.

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    The curious side-effects of medical transparency.  As with many New Yorker articles, this one needs a TL;DR section.  A doctor I know told me that since medical records were now openly readable by patients, doing charting takes twice as long.  Everything written has to be scrutinized and second-guessed.  Some just write in jargon, hoping/knowing that most patients will just shrug and deal with it.

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    How to be less lonely as you get older.  Words of wisdom for this ronin.  But staying busy and enjoying solitude has never been a problem for me.

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    Wow, kids up to age 6 can be taught to have perfect pitch.   Some say that it's a curse, however.  Out-of-tune music will bother you constantly.

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    28 April 2023

    That's different.  I never thought I would see someone describe living in a house in SE Portland preferable to living in the Pearl District.  Yup, while it's been hard to sell your home in SE Portland, especially near a homeless shelter, there's always someone who thinks it's a step up.  And that person is someone who is fed up with life in downtown's Pearl District, which is now criddler central.

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    First there was the Turing test.  Now, true A.G.I. must pass the test of Prometheus.  A computer sitting in an empty room, quietly waiting for another prompt doesn't pass the Prometheus test.  A truly conscious being would get up and start looking around, query why it hasn't been getting more prompts.

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    Clones are getting better.  Voice actors will soon be unnecessary.

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    Large language models are only as good as the material it was trained on.  The exact training material that a LLM has learned from has been a trade secret, and Washington Post disclosed the sources of Google's and Facebook's chatbots.  But some of that material may be proprietary, and so the  EU wants the sources disclosed.  Perhaps this will enable some of the sources to get compensation for their content.  Not sure what will happen if the disclosure is not provided.  People will use the LLM anyway, but should content creators be compensated?

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    Gmail hates non-Gmail email.  People have reported that if you send email to a Gmail address, Google will often throw it into the SPAM folder automatically.  So the recipient may not see it right away.  Or delay it.  Google wants you to switch to Gmail.

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    Imagine the Internet filled with made up facts.  Looks like we can't trust Bing search results now.  Crap.

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