12 March 2023

There's a blood test for anxiety now.  Also, there's a journal Molecular Psychiatry.  Interesting.

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Not long ago I had my own Fermi moment. I looked at the world around me and asked: Where are all the polygamists?

Consider almost any past empire or civilisation — Mongol, native American, Chinese, Indian, African, old European — and you will find powerful men with many wives. It’s all over the Hebrew Bible. 90% (!) of hunter gather societies around the world practice some degree of polygamy.
Yet we look around today and… zilch?
Oh, polygamy is still here.  In modern times, the polygamy is just done serially, instead of at the same time.  Isn't that right, Mr. DiCaprio?

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Janet Yellen says no to a bailout for SVB.  But she's planning a special fund in case there are future bank runs.  But a bank run has already started at First Republic.

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The next generation of doctors will be browner, for sure.  But medical schools don't seem to care if they're admitting smart people anymore.  Instead, what counts is "equity" and "lived experience".  Hey, it worked for government positions, right?

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Reverse racism strikes again.  Zelensky won't have an appearance at this year's Oscars, because the Ukraine/Russian war is just between white people, according to producer Will Packer, who is, as you might expect, black.  Nothing really matters if it's just between white people, right?  And nobody bats an eye when sentiment like this gets expressed.  Oh well, interest in Ukraine is declining anyway, so it's just as well.

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Never put a pile of emergency savings where Democrats can get a hold of it. 

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Scarecrow Video in Seattle is going to liberate patrons from mask-wearing, and for some "this change will be a challenge"!  Sigh. As Voltaire said, "It is difficult to free fools who revere their chains."


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Desperate times call for desperate measures.  Some on the Left are freaking out at this Texan bill being considered.  I suspect that whether or not anyone gets any money from this, its purpose will have been served.  And that's the main point.


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Things are moving fast this weekend.  Signature Bank was shut down today.  It was a crypto-friendly bank, but Bitcoin has not been adversely affected.  Just yesterday, people were saying that the Fed would not change course on interest rates, but today, the consensus is that the Fed will have to lower its target, and the odds of a pivot are increasing.

11 March 2023

The American College of Physicians has announced that they have enlisted the help of the Coalition for Trust in Health and Science.  The latter has a myth-busting section where they combat the "myth" that the coronavirus vax has been associated with Damar Hamlin's injury.  The statement made was that "Nearly 95% of the roughly 1700 NFL players are vaccinated against COVID – none of them have had sudden death on the field."  Well, none may have had a dramatic on-the-field death like Damar, but there sure is a lot of players who are out for "undisclosed" reasons.  And why was Damar unwilling to discuss his condition?  Why say "that's something I want to stay away from".

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This chart is a bit misleading:


If you factor in the population of each principality, then LA doesn't stick out as much, and Portland looks bad.
Homeless/per population
  • Los Angeles county   - 0.0066
  • Seattle/King County - 0.0059
  • Portland                       - 0.0092
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Two excellent post-mortems on the SVB crash yesterday.  Here and here.  Or you can just watch the video:



Will Powell cut interest rates on Monday?  Mish doesn't think so.
 
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The woke mob has also destroyed Bon Appetit magazine. 

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The Oregon Symphony Waterfront festival, Oregon Brewer’s Festival, and Feast are no more.  More casualties to Ted Wheeler's city governance.  It's amazing that people just seem to take it. 

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Missed this last month, but the FDA agreed that cocoa flavonoids do have beneficial cardiovascular benefits.  But you're not going to get those benefits from eating chocolate bars.  Too much sugar and fat.  To get those benefits, the study participants used this product. 

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Why is UTC the abbreviation for Coordinated Universal Time?  It was a compromise.  The English-speaking countries wanted CUT.  The French wanted TUC. 

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10 March 2023

"Don't Portland my Oregon!"  Phrase of the day.
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Washington state bans assault weapons, so now they will only be in the hands of criminals.  The Second Amendment gets chipped away further.  Maybe places like fieldseats.com will the only place to go to get self-defense protection.  (You're not technically purchasing a gun.)  But AR-15 guns are surprisingly safe.  Americans are more likely to die from a lawnmower than an AR-15.


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Could pharmacies be dispensing fake drugs now?  Some ADHD patients are claiming that the Adderal they're getting is not the same.  They wouldn't do that would they?

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SARS-CoV2 origins info to be declassified?  While I think this is long overdue, I'm wondering why it's suddenly acceptable.

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You'd think the telehealth industry wants to kill itself in its pursuit for money.  Selling customers info to advertisers? No.

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What is Long Covid?  At this time, there aren't a definitive set of diagnostic criteria for this.  But I've observed that in 2020, when this condition was discussed, the defining presentation was that of a chronic fatigue that lasted long after the acute phase of the condition.  There were some reports of myocarditis as well.  Sometime after the roll-out of the vaccine, people began to associated it with myalgic-encephalomyelitis, and designated this as ME/CFS, as if it were the same thing.  Surveys were designed to elucidate risk factors for this condition, but it is interesting that questions involving the vaccine were directed to whether the vaccine prevented LongCOVID or protected against it, not whether it might have triggered the condition or made it worse.  Although it was acknowledged that vaccines could cause injury, when it came to LongCOVID, the recommendation made was to get fully vaccinated, as though it were scientifically impossible for the vaccine itself to contribute to this condition.  Some researchers from China presented data that genomically distinguished chronic fatigue from LongCOVID, although they shared some genes, the significance of which was unclear.  By 2023, it began to emerge that just having severe fatigue was different from having myalgic encephalomyelitis.  Only recently (this month) has it been stated that the vaccine might be a risk factor for what it is still referred to as ME/CFS.  Multiple episodes of COVID-19 are also a risk factor, and it seems (empirically) that recurrent/multiple infections are primarily seen in the vaccinated.  Those with natural immunity and unvaccinated have not reported being infected again.  Different vaccines have different risk profiles.  Most AEs are reported with the Astra-Zeneca vax.


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Who determines what becomes a slur?  It's complicated.

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9 March 2023

A couple of days ago, it looked like author R.L. Stine was fine with edits being made to his books to eliminate "offensive" content.  Turns out that he did not agree to this.  The edits were made without his consent.  They've already done this to Ian Fleming's Bond novels, and given that few seem to be complaining, will continue to do so.  Buy print books now, so they can't revise them.

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A new movie in the Alien franchise is being made.  Check out the cast.  The movie will probably not be called "Alien" because, you know, it's offensive to some.  So, it'll probably be called "Xenomorph". 

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Speaking of movies, check out Paramount's new StarTrek poster.  Where's Kirk?  Oh, yeah.  He's too far-right and had to be canceled.

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If you're not already getting your drugs from Mark Cuban's pharmacy, GoodRx, you really ought to.  It will save you money.  He's cut out the pharmacy benefits managers.

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Do you have a Ring doorbell?  You might want to read this.

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About 80% of Portland small businesses saw theft and/or vandalism this past year.  I'm guessing their insurance premiums increased, and maybe some no longer have policies?  I don't see things getting better, do you?  And riding the Max transit is getting to be like riding the subway in NYC.  No thanks, Lori.  We already have Ted Wheeler.


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I missed this story from December, but it is a doozy (if true).  How did your investments do this past year?  Did they do as well as the American Board of Internal Medicine?

How did they get that money?  And I didn't know that in 2014 they set up an account in a bank in the Cayman Islands.  The American Board of Pediatrics also made out quite well.

How did they get this money?  As you can see from the charts they provide, it doesn't seem to come from certification exams that they sell.  Could this have to do with why they are ready to censure physicians who pass along vaccine information?  They wouldn't sell out for money, right? 

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Well now Portland's homeless are punching holes in and possibly threatening the structural integrity of a bridge on-ramp.  That's just great.  What next?

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This is why neighborhoods don't want "behavioral health centers" in their neighborhood.  Sidewalk scuffles, people slumped on sidewalks doing drugs, windows smashes in.  Gets old, you know?

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Are you following the buzz about the J6 videotapes that Tucker Carlson release?  The co-chair of the J6 Select Committee just admitted that members did not actually see the videos themselves.  They left it to their staff.  These are Democrats, folks.  Meanwhile, prisoners rot in jail. 

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This is why we can't have nice things.  The scourge of TikTok is even hitting Japan.  If I were in the kaiten sushi business, I would get out fast.

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8 March 2023

France is rebelling over their government's plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.  Meanwhile, our government contemplates raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 years. 


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Yikes, Physics Girl is quite ill.  Hope she improves.


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The numbers are terrible.  We are not doing them a favor enabling them to abuse more drugs.  Separating them from their fentanyl, instead of just giving them money or providing them with tents or a tiny house, is not doing them a favor.  We've play the game long enough.  Time to try a different tactic.


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This is what TikTok feeds to America's youth.  China really wants America to rot.  But this may be true with any social media platform.  It sure explains the prevalence of pathologic psychopathic behavior we're seeing so much today.

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New York Oregon Sen Ron Wyden is agreeable to making Daylight Saving Time permanent.  We read this every year and nothing happens.  I would vote for making Standard Time permanent, though.  Doing this would be easy for Congress to declare, and I don't know why they won't do it.  Heck, it would provide jobs for software engineers all over, just like what happened with Y2K.

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This ronin just buys American Eagles, Austrian Philharmonics and Canadian Eagle gold coins.  Perth Mint gold is cheaper, and this is probably why.  When you make one mistake like this, no one will trust you, even if you identify and root out the inside job.

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Truly there are two worlds.  There is this world, where people invest in whisky, handbags, rare automobiles, etc.  And then there is this world, where people struggle to make rent or mortgage payments.  And as I showed in yesterday's post, income disparity began around the mysterious year, 1971.  

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Tesla steering wheels can just, come off!  Didn't know that.  Did you?

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The Biden administration tried to legislate wealth by pausing student loan payments.  Of course, we don't live in fantasy world, so there are real life consequences, and the loan business is hurting.  I understand that the coronavirus pandemic hurt the economy, but the government's policies (not the virus) messed this up.  Now the government is messing things up even further.  But according to Jay Powell, the economy is hot, so workers should easily be able to find jobs that will help them pay off their debt, right? (I jest.)  There are so many moving parts, but the more the government interferes, the worse things get.  Now Biden is even contemplating making everyone pay off others' student debts.  <facepalm.jpg>

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OMSI is hosting a Studio Ghibli film festival.  Yay!  (Now, you just have to decide whether you want to risk parking your car at OMSI or risk taking the Max there.) 

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Crime in Democrat-run cities have gotten so bad, that just sitting in your car looking at your phone is considered risky behavior.

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7 March 2023

What happened in 1971?  Recently, someone posted a graph on Japan's birth and rates over the past several decades.

You'll notice a sharp decline in the birth rate around 1971.  This led another person to post this website: wtfhappenedin1971.com.  1971 seems to have been a turning point in something.  What was it?  Even Noahpinion noticed it earlier. 

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At last, the COVID-19 narrative is collapsing.  It's pretty much just a bad cold for some people, even asymptomatic for others.  Time to wait for the next pandemic that the elites have planned for us.

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Inhaling fentanyl fumes is making a bus driver sick.  Pray tell, when did this start to become a normal aspect of Seattle life?

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Speaking of Seattle, single family zoning will soon be eliminated.  Will Bill Gates house have multi-family units built nearby?  We'll see.
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Everyone's talking about GPT3 and ChatGPT and other chat LLM artificial intelligence models.  Here's a less technical explanation of how the magic works.  For those looking for something a but more in depth, Stephen Wolfram wrote another piece on it.

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6 March 2023

Asian Americans are drifting toward the GOP.  Boy, about time.  I left the Democrat party a long time ago.  You know, the party that put the Japanese in internment camps.  The party that favors discrimination against Asians in higher education.  What took you so long, folks?

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The headline is misleading.  Brazil's biggest serial killer shot dead, it says.  The guy was like a Dexter, and offed a lot of murderers, rapists, and drug dealers.  The guy was a vigilante hero. 

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This poor guy is lucky to have a condo, but is unlucky that squatters live above him, and flood their unit, causing his unit to get wet, too.  Life in Portland.

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No, 16 year olds should not vote.  Too many Hollywood movies have given kids crazy ideas.  Looking back, kids my age believed all sorts of ridiculous crap.  They'll want to shut down oil refineries, ban gasoline, confiscate guns, all because their teachers told them to.  They haven't experienced life as independent adults, facing real world challenges.  How many of them would have the conviction to stand up to their teachers and tell 'em that, yeah, they voted for Trump?  Unlikely.  We don't need more naïve and uninformed people voting.  We already have too many.  No. No. And No.

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Oregon is lifting mask mandates finally, after over 3 years of the pandemic.  Yet the hospital leadership is not sure what they will do in response.  Seriously, folks?  You have to think about it?  Like Voltaire said, "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere."

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Twitter insiders lament that they can't protect users from the bad things happening in the world.  Sorry, but most Twitter users don't need the kind of "protection" that the progressive libs were previously providing.  Maybe people will start posting only stuff that is, you know, actually worthy of being published.  Stuff that's of genuine interest or positions that can be defended with facts, instead of lame and half-baked ideas and opinion that support the opinions of just one political party.  The Internet is a wild place, Twitter especially. 

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Japan is facing a population crisis, and actually, so is much of the Western world, as I've mentioned before.  America may face something similar, if the birthrate doesn't improve.  Trump promised a baby bonus, though.  Too late for this ronin, but it may spur population growth in the United States, which would be good.


5 March 2023

Here's where things get interesting.  Scammers are using AI to get money from the elderly. 

"Technology is making it easier and cheaper for bad actors to mimic voices, convincing people, often the elderly, that their loved ones are in distress."

Not good.
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Academic urban legends.  Popeye was misled by a misplaced decimal point, it seems.

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If you're an app writer, choose your words carefully.  Apple publishes a style guide.

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For a man, losing a full-time job could lead to more problems.  33% more likely to divorce.  That could set off a spiral of hurt. 

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Here's another crazy bill that the Oregon legislature is considering.

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Gotta love the Willamette Week.  Discussing the easy theft or Kias and Hyundais and providing the YouTube link to tell you how to steal them.  Such journalism!

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Oregon's lax illegal drug laws have naturally caught the attention of a powerful Mexican crime syndicate, CJGN.  Wonderful.

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It's so nice to come across someone who's obviously spent a lot of time thinking about life and people.  Alas, much of his advice would have been applicable to this ronin from years ago.  If I haven't learned life's lessons by now - well, shikata ga nai, as they say.  But I like this philosophy - that's my life now.

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SUCH HUBRIS.  No, Ansel.  A random group of strangers could not run a large city well.  This is emblematic of the kind of thinking going on now - probably because a lot of the younger generation grew up watching Hollywood movies where spirited youth come in to save the day.  Real life doesn't work that way.  I want a city, state or country run by people who have proven themselves to be competent at running complex systems.  People proven to be able to achieve things by working well with others.  Not the random psychopath so prevalent in our society today.  Ansel bolsters his arguments by referencing the etymology of democracy.  This system could work well in small groups, like a book club, but there's a reason why the nation's founding fathers chose a republic model instead for the United States government. 

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4 March 2023

"When do we deploy the new variant?"  So it looks like the whole COVID scare was planned.  Governments were coordinating this to get the public to comply.  Pitchforks, anyone?

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This is the problem with cutting-edge technology.  One country can establish policies that try to prevent unauthorized experimentation on humans until the full implications have been defined, but then countries (like China) will ignore these, copy the technology and plough on ahead.  Screw ethics, right? 

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Two Canadian companies can now manufacture cocaine, heroin and MDMA.  It'll be for medical purposes, they say.  It always starts that way, doesn't it?

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Another reason to make sure that your 25-OH vitamin D levels are in the recommended range.  Dementia prevention.

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Speaking of cutting-edge, the Stable Diffusion AI model can decode brain waves to figure out what image you are thinking of.  This is cool, but raises privacy concerns, of course.

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Better start buying print books from now on.  If you purchase electronic books, they could be modified and edited to meet today's "woke" diversity and equity demands to remove racist or offensive content.  They're doing it to Roald Dahl now, and will probably target Ian Fleming next.

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Here's a video of Portland today.


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Pediatrician-congressperson Dr. Lisa Reynolds, "at the request of the Department of Human Services" wants to anonymize food stamp debit cards, presumably to make it easier to trade them like currency.

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San Francisco wants to create "supervised drug consumption sites".  Looks like we're having opium dens again.  People haven't learned the lessons of history.

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This is interesting: Permitless concealed carry could be on the 2024 Oregon ballot.  Finally, some sensible legislation, as police presence declines in Portland.

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It's very sad when Washington Square is turning into Lloyd Center.  A retail outlet has to close due to rampant theft.  We need to keep Portland problems in Portland!

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3 March 2023

Probably the strangest things you'll see today.  A Kim Jong Un impersonator and a Putin impersonator helping a Zelensky impersonator.

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Burned by taking investment advice from Jim Cramer?  Well burn no more.  Use his negative energy to your advantage!

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Replika users fell in love with their chatbot companion.  Then the company did a software update, and poof, they were gone.

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This is a joke, right?
"If you come across a bear, never push a slower friend down...even if you feel the friendship has run its course⁣," the NPS tweeted.
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The homeless don't want shelters and tiny homes, and we shouldn't be wasting money building them.  Clearly they run the show.  We pay the taxes and they enjoy the benefits.  We've done it their way, and it's not working.  Time to change the rules.

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Well this changes things a bit, doesn't it?  Having the second largest lithium deposit in the world is not a thing to ignore.  What will Biden do?

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What GenZ wants may not be financially worthwhile.  A GenZ ETF based on their buying habits and interests has fizzled.

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California is dropping mask AND vaccine mandates for healthcare workers.  Oregon is only dropping mask requirements.  Kate Brown had always waited to get her direction from California.  I guess Tina Kotek is doing the same thing.

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Yes, the world would like to see what secret agreements were made between Pfizer and the EU.  I'd bet someone got rich from the agreement, and that person wouldn't want it known.

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There's this piece (and the video) with Jon Stewart debating OK congressman Nathan Dahm that's going around right now.  Dahm may not be the most articulate guy around, and that's maybe why he was picked, but someone needs to point out some things to Stewart.  Until the past few years, motor vehicles were by far the highest cause of death in children.  I didn't see Stewart advocating for eliminating cars.  They serve a greater purpose, just like guns.


But look at the data.  You can see that firearm deaths sharply overtook motor vehicle deaths in 2020.  What happened in 2020?  Hmmm.  Was there some pandemic?  Was there some rioting as a protest against some political figure?  And the New England Journal of Medicine published some statistics about gun violence in children, and take a look:

It may not be convenient for Stewart to note that if you consider gun deaths in Asians, Whites and Hispanics, the firearm mortality rate was still less than that from motor vehicles.  But in the Black population, the firearm mortality rate was so high in 2020 that it was off the scale in the first chart above.  So I don't care what Stewart thinks - I'm not in support of taking away guns just because of irresponsible gun use in a particular demographic.  It's difficult to find updated FBI statistics that include the recent few years.  This report from 1999 showed that gun violence in Black males aged 18 to 24 was 28x of their population representation.  If Stewart wants to advocate for something, he should campaign to take away guns from young Blacks, but that wouldn't fly would it?   This isn't racism - this is just going by the numbers and facts. 

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