Sugoi & Yokunai

Strike! American resident physicians may have qualms about striking. Not so the South Korean resident physicians. The majority of them are striking and they don't care about patient health. The government's response to stressful conditions due to overwork is to just increased enrollment in medical schools, but that's not going to help the resident physicians today. It will be years before they experience any relief. I wish there were a way to solve this problem without hurting patients, but sometimes there is no other way.

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A report from the Universty of Cambridge says that having a regular doctor is better than having a rotating doctor, as in the Kaiser model.

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Scientists have discovered a factor in LongCOVID - a leaky blood-brain barrier. Here's the lay version. Not sure what it signifies, but it's a piece of the puzzle.

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And the homeless in Seattle can do pretty much whatever they want.
Yes, the leadership in Seattle is amazingly stupid.  And here's the head of the Seattle City Council, dumbfounded that their effort to raise the minimum wage for food delivery workers backfired.

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About time. The Chinook Indian Nation used to dominate the Pacific Northwest. They pretty much owned the land of Washington state. The Chinook Wawa is still alive. But over the years, the tribe's dominance has greatly waned. Now, they may get tribal recognition back.

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Hospital workers will now be a protected class. Assaulting them will now be a felony. I can't believe that there are people who oppose this. Of course, it's the defenders of those with "disabilities". Sorry, but allowing this loophole weakens the law, because so many people can claim to have "disabilities". Heck, living in Portland is probably a disability.

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Yes! Oregon lawmakers want the Feds to halt efforts to build offshore windmill farms. Dems vs Dems.

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Crook County citizens will get to vote on whether they want to be part of Greater Idaho.

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NVIDIA is on a tear. Can Jensen Huang manage this and continue the company's dominance? Obvious other players want a piece of the action. But CUDA is dominant, and it will be hard to get around it. However, in the tech world, we've seen leaders get toppled by more capable competitors. But they're GPUs are incredibly expensive, and a lower cost but still capable competitor could take away business. We shall see.

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Oregon ranks last in math scores in 30 states in 2022 and 2023. So why are we paying teachers more? Are we getting our money's worth? Probably not.

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Google AI refuses to answer question about the Second Amendment. Who thought this A.I. model was ready to be released?

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So chronic stress promotes cancer metastasis. One of the things I've noticed is that those who constantly worried about their cancer and stressed out about it, were the ones who did worse. Those were more relaxed and accepting often did better. This may be why. The mechanism is that neutrophils in stressed individuals tended to spill their DNA, inducing the formation of fibronectin and causing a "sticky" web to form. Introducing an enzyme to destroy DNA (DNase 1) reversed this. So it's important to get those stress levels down, as this will lower inappropriate glucocorticoid release. But I worry about drugs like pegfilgrastim which increases neutrophil levels. Could those be causing harm?

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Vending machines have face recognition systems. Just do you know. They're everywhere, it seems.

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Uranus and Neptune add a few more to their moon count.

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Workplace injuries rise after states legalize recreational marijuana. Yeah, and car accidents, too.

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Go woke, go broke. Vice.com is shutting down. And glad to see that Soros lost some investment money, too.

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California’s Budget Deficit Is Even Worse Than Originally Projected. As Rand Paul warned, Newsom should be kept as far from the White House as possible.

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Somehow I don't believe it. Clackamas Co. records 65% decline in homelessness from 2019 to 2023. Really? With the proximity of Johnson Creek and the Springwater Corridor? Maybe that proximity made is easier to shove things over onto Multnomah County. Let's keep Portland shit in Portland.

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Could be big. Oregon lawmakers could limit corporate ownership of medical practices. When Obamacare disincentivized independent medical practices, because you couldn't compete with hospitals for hospital pricing, many doctors dissolved their clinics and became hospital employees, or their practices were bought out by private equity. This law could force the latter to try to make it independent docs again, or become hospital employees. That would be unfortunate. No longer could your physician recommend what he/she thought was best, but rather had to conform to hospital policy. What they're after seems to be Amazon buying practices. But while I understand where they're coming from (where were they all these years?) it limits the options doctors will have. Since independent clinics are financially tricky, many docs will have no choice but to work for one of the hospitals. How does that help the public?

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Funny story about FedEx. It's like they're behaving just like scammers trying to phish you.

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Student loan holders might like the thought of "debt cancellation" but it's really insidiously evil and unfair for all these reasons. It's really debt transfer, and why should I have to pay off someone else's loans? Plus it adds to inflation and the national debt, and taxes will have to go up to support it. Biden needs to go.

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Stable Diffusion 3 is out. We'll see how it compares with Sora.

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So basically we have no southern border now.

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Oregon has more mental health problems than most states.  I can believe that.

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Digital anti-piracy messages have the opposite effect on men than women. It causes them to commit more piracy. Decreased by 50% in women and increased by 18% in men. Strange, no?

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Panoramai lets you spruce up your Google Street View with a fantasy scene of your choosing. Have at it, if you have time to kill.

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I can't believe so many people are seriously wigged-out about climate change. C'mon folks.

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Are frozen embryos children? The Alabama Supreme Court thinks so. I don't think those judges could tell clumps of cells apart if they were presented with them. In reality, there is a gradual change from clumps of cells to an actual human being. The transition is not easy to define, but that's nature. By 13 weeks, it's clear that there is a human being, but not at the frozen embryo stage. Would you charge a woman who had a miscarriage with murder? It's like calling a seed a tree. It's a potential and future tree. But it is not a tree, yet. And it shouldn't be treated as such.

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MultCo. commissioners left frustrated by lack of action on fentanyl emergency, 15 days later. What were they expecting? Just declaring an emergency isn't going to do squat, ladies. Meanwhile Oregon scores the top spot in the nation for fentanyl deaths. A 41% increase! Because it's legal here, what did you expect?

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Hawaii wants to charge you a $25 climate fee for traveling to the state. Not sure if that's even legal, but hey, Democrats will try anything for money – if stupid ideas. Hawaii is taxed so much that residents there have the smallest disposable income in the nation. Oregon is #3, though.

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Gender dysphoric kids who get psychiatric help don't have increased rates of suicide. They don't need mutilative surgery, as Rachel Levine insists. The majority of trans kids just end up being gay when they grow up.

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Yeah, Portland is just crazy.

What do you expect when you defund the police?

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Download Trump_economy_good.mp4

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The mRNA vax can cross into the placenta.

Our findings suggest that the vaccine mRNA is not localized to the injection site and can spread99
systemically to the placenta and umbilical cord blood.

In the world of A.I.  Khan Academy's A.I. math tutor chatbot fails at basic arithmetic. And in China, women are turning to A.I. boyfriends. Because they are supposedly better than real men. They're turning Japanese, I really think so.

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Interesting miscellanea I came across. Someone has a business building factories that build houses. And this woman, who was badly burned as a child, has a cosmetic tattoo business to help others who have skin discolorations that they might like to conceal. Very nice.

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Tax strategies in retirement. Could be helpful for this ronin.

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Some interesting science publications regarding LongCOVID that compel some to call LongVAX.

• Spike protein hangs around for at least 2 months
• Spike protein was detected in blood as long as 187 days after vax.
• Spike protein hung around in exosomes for at least 4 months.
• Spike protein hung around at least 28 days.
• The vax doesn't work against newer omicron strains. Only natural immunity.

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The Oregonian notices that Oregon education has not bounced back from COVID, like all the other states. Meanwhile the Oregonian is putting more articles behind their paywall. They are losing their function as the city's media.

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Are they really?  WSJ says that tech leaders are moving back to San Francisco. But why would they?

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Oregon exports plunge by 20%. Are we surprised?

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When he heard about the reopening, Robert Stacy, another laid-off worker, said he felt “shock, happiness, and then a little disappointed finding out that it was going to take so long.” He is grateful for the g plant’s revival but said he felt the economy was better under Trump.

Download video.mp4

What’s the fun in writing on the internet anymore? When A.I. and people can steal and paraphrase your good ideas. And obfuscate attribution to you so that your contribution doesn't register anymore. Well, this ronin writes for personal reasons. So there.

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Japan to launch world’s first wooden satellite to combat space pollution. Good on Japan to put their money where their mouth is. Act on your convictions. Don't just keep making metal satellites like everyone else.

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Reddit has signed a deal with the devil. They've erased all content priot to 1 January 2023, and will allow A.I. to train on its content. What a way to destroy something that took years to develop.

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Are these the world's top 2% of scientists? Well, in terms of publications, they're the most prolific, but that's not necessarily a sign of excellence.

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LongCOVID may be a type of brain injury, as assessed by markers of brain injury (tTau, GFAP, NfL, and UCH-L1), and there is correlation with acute dysregulation in innate and adaptive immune responses. The is consistent with other reports claiming that LongCOVID is associated with "widespread muscle damage, changes in muscle composition, and disrupted energy metabolism" and "inflammation, the damage, the scarring, the clots” found in the muscles of long COVID patients. Now to identify the underlying cause of all this, and the connection to spike protein, which is probably still present.

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Thanks to OpenAI, it’s never been clearer that Sundar Pichai is to Google as Steve Ballmer was to Microsoft. Google clearly had the lead in A.I. and it always puzzled me as to why this lead slipped. This posting from an insider provides details as why Google lost the lead. The exodus of brainpower was devastating. And it's surprising to see Microsoft's name being mentioned in tech developments again.

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Nothing beats the energy density and cost-effectiveness of petroleum products. Windmill farms will be an expensive mistake. Only the prospect of subsidies will make it possible to build. But then there is maintenance. And repair. And replacement when parts get old. All very expensive prospects. Oregon doesn't have money to waste.

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Portland's downtown vacancy rates are rising, but rents are rising, too.  Lots of reasons why. Also, taxes are increasing, and it costs more to operate in Portland.

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Careful about using TurboTax. FreeTaxUSA might be more accurate.

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Jeff Katzenberg thinks A.I. will eliminate 90% of jobs in the animation industry.

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Virioids with obelisk-RNA are in your mouth. There's always something new. RNA is amazing – it keeps surprising us with new forms.

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Senator David Brock Smith tells us about 23 good bills being presented in the legislature. These are good bills indeed. Already the Dems are screaming about freezing property tax for seniors. They want the tax to keep increasing without cap. Something about worsening "economic and racial inequality" and "disproportionately benefit white Oregonians over Oregonians of color.” These buzzwords are so overused. I think it's all B.S. and don't believe any of it anymore.

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Why Are Hundreds Of Lahaina Fire Survivors Turning Down FEMA Housing? Because it isn't in Lahaina. They don't want to leave they're home town.

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Screed against the imposition of modern tech in our lives. I certainly agree about the social media part and the tech surveillance. Some of it is just having the willingness to say No!

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Much discussion in the scientific publishing world about this major goof of a so-called "PEER-REVIEWED journal".  How in hell did they let this go through. It's a Chinese submission, which is not surprising. They used A.I. to generate their nonsense paper. It got retracted, as people noticed and called attention to it. Look at one of the figures - complete gibberish.

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Apple is at a crossroads. It doesn't want to let app developers sell outside their App Store closed wall. So when developers publish their apps as WebApps, Apple converts them to Safari bookmarks. This is because the EU DMA requires Apple to let developer sell outside the App Store. So Apple has decided to remove the "Save to Home Screen" option. Expect a backlash.

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NVIDIA is making it easier to set up a local chatbot on your computer, where you can RAG with your local documents, and you don't have to use cloud models, or download a pretrained model and set it up on your machine and import your vector database and Ollama, or something similar. The catch is you have to be running Windows, and you have to have their RTX series GPUs installed in your computer.

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Air Canada's A.I. chatbot made a mistake. Now the airline has to pay for that mistake. Be careful with your A.I. If you don't know what you're doing, mistakes will happen.

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I came across this essay where the author decries that you can't tell people anything. The message is that people don't listen, or they just don't understand. But lately, I've noticed that people can't explain things well. I've been watching some technical videos lately, and some people have no business making these teaching videos, because they just can't explain things well. So it goes both ways. Maybe it's because we learn better from people we like? This is one good reason to strive to be liked – people will pay more attention to you.

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Apple is halting production on foldable iPhones and iPads. Because they break too easily.

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FDA approves drug that MIGHT make food allergies less severe. It's an anti-IgE antibody, but even when given beforehand, it didn't prevent all cases of allergy to occur. It's a start, though, I guess.

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Blueberries aren't really blue. There's no blue pigment in nature. It's all refraction. Just like with birds.

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There's a new cell therapy for refractory metastatic melanoma. It's called Amtagvi (who names these things, anyway?).

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It's still true!  Exercise is an effective treatment for depression, with walking or jogging, yoga, and strength training more effective than other exercises, particularly when intense.

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Does Japan have a culture of relationship cheating? I thought the Japanese had such a low sex-drive, which is why their birth rate is so low. Ah, but maybe it's not low – they're just dealing with it in other ways that don't result in children. Well that's not good. And I learned that the recent non-Japanese Miss Japan had to resign because she was having an affair with a married man.

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Novel antibiotic, cresomycin, effective in vitro and in vivo efficacy against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including multidrug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Great!

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This is crazy!  Neil Gaiman, Paul Weimer among writers excluded from Hugo Awards over fear of offending China. If you're that afraid, Don't have the Hugo Awards ceremony in China!

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A lot of folks are talking about OpenAI's Sora. Here are some of the videos made with it (although some suspect that at least one of the videos is not made with Sora). This old ronin gets the same vibe as when he saw the Commodore Amiga. What amazing graphics that had. We all wanted one. And it turned out that although we had those capabilities in the consumer sphere, it didn't replace artists and other creatives from dazzling us. It takes more than just the tools. There has to be something more. The low-hanging fruit is coming out now. When we get tired of that, we'll see some great stuff.

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Nike is laying off 2% of its workforce. Now Cisco Systems is laying off 5% in the Bay Area. Signs of a still-unhealthy economy, no matter what the stock market says.

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Download Thanks_Portland.mp4

Yeah, the new normal in Portland is slower job growth.
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Democrats vote down policies that Republicans propose to help children's education. HB 4095 re-establishes basic proficiency standards for reading, writing, and math. HB 4161 effectively removes the cap on students who can enroll in a virtual charter school without their resident school district’s approval. And HJR 203 proposes an amendment to the Oregon Constitution to establish the fundamental right of parents to direct the education, upbringing, and care of their children. Democrats want kids locked into the public school system, where the teachers can expose them to critical race theory and gender deviancy studies.  And to give the Teachers' Union a reason to exist.

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Great news!  Over 2 Billion Metric Tons of Rare Earth Minerals Discovered in Wyoming. This looks to make the United States the leader in rare earth metal production, so we won't be dependent on countries that hate us.

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Oregon Senate votes to end Daylight Saving Time. There'll be a lot more hurdles to jump before it actually happens, however. But it's a start.

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It's starting. The UK has fallen into recession. Japan has fallen into recession. Germany barely avoided it. Things aren't looking good.

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Wow. There's a drug that prevents amputation from frostbite not – iloprost.

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Removing the bottleneck. Oregon lawmakers are considering removing the need for a Certificate of Need, which should allow for more healthcare facilities. Not surprising that the law was put in place to prevent new healthcare facilities from attracting those with good insurance, leaving the socialist Medicare and Medicaid patients to other hospitals. Once again, fallout from lefty policies beget bad law, which begets other bad outcomes. Also, Oregon will pay for more "public guardians" to take care of those in need of nursing care, because they can't find regular staffing at nursing homes and assisted living homes. Stopgaps.

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Portland passed a law, where you can get fined if there is graffiti on your private property. They created the problem. But you'd better clean up the consequences.

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iPhone 16 is rumored to have an upgraded Neural Engine, and will have some generative AI features. Maybe this will include an autoregressor to unblur your photos.

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It's come to this. The future of precision cancer therapy might be to try everything. I thought this was a bad thing. So, it's apparently frowned upon to "try everything" serially, but it's OK when you do it all at once.

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Looks like the mainstream journals are just like mainstream media. Now journals like Nature and New England Journal of Medicine are telling you how to vote. Stay in your lane, folks.

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Written by a supporter of M110. And she uses the term "LatinX" which is a clue. She went on the Soros-funded Portugal boondoggle, so she's doing her bit to justify the trip expenses. No, Mercedes, M110 isn't working, and needs to be scrapped.

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Danny Jacobs take note.  Diversity training increases feelings of bigotry. Makes sense.

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Obituary spam – yet another thing brought to you by artificial intelligence. 

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Don’t believe the citation count on Google Scholar – it's manipulatable.

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It's 2024 and we still don't have an easy way to copy files between devices. At this time, you can't beat the trust USB drive. If it's a link, I just use Firefox Sync in a special folder I create. If it's a file, I use Sync or email.

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