28 March 2023

John Cook lays out some good reasons why you can't ever be sure about the promise "We will not sell your personal information."

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Some Seattle hospitals will still require masking, despite the state dropping the requirement.  The reason:  "immunocompromised and high-risk patients still need protective measures."  Well, if that's true, why is that hospitals in New York and California are dropping masking requirements?  I can't find reports of masking requirements being reinstated.  Why don't officials look at what's working in other states, and realize that it's OK to relax requirements?  As Voltaire said, "It's difficule to free fools from the chains they embrace."

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Samsung cameras add teeth to baby photos, and fake pictures of the moon.  Do you really want a camera like that? 

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Washington's vagrant population is increasing, sadly.  Seattle's and King County's grew by 32%. 

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I'd bet that real estate magnate Barry Menashe never dreamed that he'd someday own an open-air fentanyl market.  Strange times.

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Following New York City's lead, Oregon lawmakers have proposed a bill to lower penalties for major crimes.  A proponent thinks that lower punishment will be an incentive against recidivism.  Tell that to this guy.

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One keeps reading about battery breakthroughs, but then, nothing more.  Like an aluminum-sulfur battery.  Or the vanadium redox flow battery that the DoE allowed to go to China to develop.  Or solid state lithium batteries.  Now researchers at OSU have developed a zinc battery based on a different electrolyte solution that approaches "nearly 100%" efficiency.  The world is waiting for battery breakthroughs to reach the market.

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First, there was this Reddit posting about a guy who felt that AI had robbed him of his delight in coding for games.  Now his job feels "dystopian".  Now this posting about how "ChatGPT robs students of motivation to write and think for themselves".  I knew that AI would present a challenge to humans, but I never suspected that humans would capitulate to AI so easily.  Maybe the low-hanging branches will not be so low now, but is that a reason to despair? 

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Well now I'm glad the Northwest Ronin isn't on Substack.  I wouldn't want to have to migrate to some other platform after all this, and start from scratch.  I hope Substack survives, as there are some favorite 'stacks that I would hate to lose, like Portland Dissent and Oregon Roundup. 

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Student loan payments will likely resume by August 29.  This will put some extra financial stress on people.  Unless SCOTUS thinks it's legit for Biden to single-handedly indebt the economy by $400 billion.  Even money to Ukraine had to have the assent of Congress.

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The Fed has apparently lost money for the first time.  Wait, I don't get it - can't they just print more?  You mean, they can't just do that?  Why not?  Oh...

While the Federal Reserve Act requires the Fed to avoid taking credit related losses that could have an impact on taxpayers, it makes no mention of losses from interest-rate risk exposures. The act’s authors never imagined such losses. Monetary policy was all but assured to generate Fed profits prior to 2008. That changed once the Fed started paying banks interest on their reserve balances and making large open market purchases of long-maturity Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.

Fed losses from its interest-rate-risk exposures—unrecognized taxpayer losses—are now being realized in ways Congress never intended and at magnitudes neither the Congress nor the Fed ever expected.


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27 March 2023

Cargo theft is getting much worse.  Another factor ultimately making inflation worse.

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Apple just launched Apple Music Classical.  Might be worth a go.  Some helpful commentary here.

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Nice list of due diligence questions to ask when evaluating a company. 

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A Florida family physician was stripped of his board certification, accused of spreading "misinformation" about COVID-19.  The "misinformation" he touts has some data behind it, and is slowly gaining traction as more data become available.  He might have a case for a lawsuit.

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Twitter's source code (at least part of it) has been posted on Github.  Naturally Elon Musk is upset.  This warrants more than a snarky emoji.

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The WSJ notices that housing prices are dropping in major cities in the West, and increasing in cities in the Midwest and East.  I guess people like to live in places where crime is under control.  Who knew?

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A website (play.ht) will generate a voice snippet that is based on about 20 seconds of a voice sample.  Someone has already recorded this snippet.  This is very dangerous, and has much potential for mischief.  The tech to duplicate this is not that difficult to duplicate, and I can see this being abused.
 
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And employees of some companies are feeding confidential and sensitive proprietary information into ChatGPT,  AI is turning into a nightmare of sorts.  Geeks have handed society some dangerous toys.

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26 March 2023

This article was on CNBC recently.  What caught my eye was the word "damage" to the CD8+ T-cell response.  So I clicked on the report that was referenced, which was an NIH article.  (Of course, the NIH would highlight any article that would make getting vaccinated superior to not getting vaccinated.  The original report from Cell, is not a clinical paper, but looks at lymphocyte subset responses based on selected antigens they selected as stimuli.  Looking at the actual data, there doesn't seem, to my eye, that there is that much difference between those that got vaccinated after infection vs those that didn't.  The authors admit in the Limitations section of their paper that the paper only looked at a subset of potential immune responses, and that there could be differences in tissue localization of immune cells, a difference in the kinetics of response, and that the spike antigenicity might be different in the two populations.  Using the word "damage" seems inappropriate, as there is really no evidence of injury.

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ChatGPT and LLM, which seem to be taking the industry by storm, may allow hidden security risks.  Companies should be cautious before jumping on the AI bandwagon just yet before understanding fully what is going on.

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Seriously?  California wants Medicaid to cover 6 months of rent.  Hey, why stop there?  How about six months of cable, and travel expenses?

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A letter to the editor from a compassionate liberal decries that Oregonians don't want homeless shelters in their neighborhood, and that we should be accepting of them, and welcome them with open arms.  Meanwhile county leaders find that they can't or don't want to put more houseless into houses, either because it means converting motels to shelters, or they don't have money or personnel to do anything else.   Meanwhile, city leaders fail to address the real problem - drug addiction, especially fentanyl.  (Kate Brown was so eager to declare Oregon a sanctuary state for illegals.)  Now, they run the show, and Portland burns. (photo credit).

Meanwhile, up in Seattle, unfavorable rental regulations are causing landlords to flee, leaving Seattle with a shortage of rental property.
 
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So people are giving ChatGPT ears and eyes and real-world interface plug-ins.  Wait till they put this in one of those Boston Dynamic dogs.

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Seen in Seattle.  Modern problems call for modern solutions.


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This post has appeared in several conservative posts, and was said to be debunked.  But the rebuttals sound kinda weak, like they just got the dollar figures wrong.  And the incentives were just meant to promote quality of care, which is a good thing right?  Or this statement: "Such incentives are common, said Thomas Buchmueller, a professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Michigan."  This is why trust in the medical profession has deteriorated.

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What don't we just sell law school and medical school diplomas to whomever has the money?  No need for standards anymore, right?  This is the new DIVERSITY world.  Where quality and competence go out the window so as to get the right kind of representation.  This isn't the diversity I expected to see.


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25 March 2023

Well that's not very scientific is t?  UCSF orders their doctors to ignore COVID vaccine injuries.

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This is the other major cause of inflation:  ‘People Will Die:’ The Supply Chain Crisis Is About to Get Worse.  There is both cost-push and demand-pull inflation working here. 

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Thomas Massie had a point.  How can one man (even with a small committee behind him) single-handedly make decisions that will affect trillions of dollars?  Should the people (through Congress) have a say in bailing out banks?  It's like Biden alone making decisions about student loans.  C'mon now.
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Even free isn't working:  Oregon community colleges plan budget cuts due to falling enrollment, loss of pandemic funding.  Something tells me that it wasn't the cost of community colleges that was the problem.  What could it be?

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Sad.  Lebanon-based Entek is building a large battery manufacturing plant not in Oregon, but in Indiana.  Better business conditions, they say.  Man, what is it in Oregon.  We can't even keep cannabis afloat.
 
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The uglification of Portland continues.  More ugly shed-homes.  Instead of shooting up in tents along the street, they'll be shooting up in these.
 
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Who wants to go downtown anymore.  Your kid might get punched in the face by a random bum who just wants to go back to jail.  Or if you're shopping at what used to be the upscale Washington Square, you might encounter a violent shoplifter.  Life in a blue state.

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Not being satisfied with taking away your gas stove, Biden wants to take away your air conditioner now.
 
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iPhones and iPads have AI chips in them already - neural engines capable of rapid machine learning processing.  Who knew?

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On Reddit (and elsewhere), I keep seeing sentiment like this:

Don't people realize that minimum wage goes to people who have no real skills?  It's basic pay, to do menial jobs that need doing, while more qualified people can do more skilled endeavors.  It was meant to get people started, working in a business where you could see what goes on, and get some training and develop skills.  It's for high schoolers or college kids.  It wasn't intended to be someone's living wage as an adult.  SMH.

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24 March 2023

It's only been 20 years since Thomas Friedman's globalism celebrating books, and now it's clear that Trump was right.  We should have tried to keep critical manufacturing at home.  Now the number of new drug shortages has increased 30% because they are made overseas (China and India), and for various reasons, can't get to the shelves. 

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Washington hospitals are really hurting.  Portland's hospitals are hurting, too.  OHSU was apparently able to get some cash from the state, but other hospitals were not that fortunate.  The problems are that they can't employ enough nurses, and so have to resort to expensive temporary staffing, which is really draining their budget.  Much of the population doesn't want to get the Fauci jab anymore, and Oregon and Washington are one of six holdout states that refuse to join reality.  Another factor is that the payor mix has changed and a lot more people are on Medicaid type plans, which don't pay as well.

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I think Apple is making a mistake taking down the fencing surrounding its downtown store.  Downtown's problems are worse than before, not better.  We're just a news item away from more rioting.  But hey, it's not my company.

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Well that's not good:  US Banking “Turmoil” Can’t Be Contained – Moody’s Alerts.  So what now?

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Yay:  The Fifth Circuit blocked the Biden administrations attempt to overturn the ruling that they can't mandate the jab (not really a vaccine) on federal workers.

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23 March 2023

The ongoing decline of Portland continues:

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Once again, the Democrat solution to a vexing problem, is to let government take over.  Universal healthcare for all.  Looking forward to more expensive care with government determination as to what services are covered.  /sarc

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Amazing:  Tulare Lake is back.  The heavy rains in California allowed it to reappear.

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OHSU has an outpatient remdesivir clinic to treat people with moderate COVID-19 infection.  This is probably the best we can do at this point.  Paxlovid (nirmaltrevir/ritonavir) has many drug interactions that make it unsuitable, and molnupiravir did not seem to convey benefit in terms of death or hospitalizations in vaccinated individuals.  That said, a Cochrane meta-analysis showed the limitations of benefit with remdesivir.  It is likely to be of most benefit if someone is ill enough to require oxygen, but no benefit was seen in another meta-analysis of those who needed mechanical ventilation, or those who had mild enough disease not to require supplemental oxygen.  Interestingly, the benefits were best seen in studies where there was a low concomitant usage of systemic corticosteroids (ACTT-1 and Spinner et al).  Perhaps this is an antagonistic factor? 

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I keep seeing these headlines saying that "Biden's approval is the lowest of his presidency", and it's always around 38%.  Sheesh.

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This newly-discovered aperiodic tiling that never repeats would make a cool bathroom floor tile in a mathematician's house.

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22 March 2023

Very interesting video of a woman who pays no income tax because she never got a SSN when she was born, so she is not in the system.  She was able to get a passport and that's all she needs to get a bank account and a driver's license, because the system has been relaxed due to the Democrats making it easy for illegal immigrants to enter into American society.  No necesito SSN.


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THAT'S WHY THEY'RE THE BLUE STATES:  Seattle is the most anxious major metro city.  I'm surprised Portland didn't make it.
 
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I agree.  It would be better to stay with PST than PDT.

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21 March 2023

Boy, being an emergency room doctor used to be a cool job.  Pay was pretty good, and you worked intensely and got the adrenaline rush, but there was no longitudinal care to worry about.  Your work obligations didn't spill over into your off-duty time, and the hours were usually not too demanding, and you had decent free time in between shifts.  Now, thanks to COVID-19, no one wants to be an emergency room doc anymore.  The patients are demanding, irritable for having waited so long, and more often violent.  The pay is less and you see nurse practioners doing your job, which can't be too good for the ego. 

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Insurers junk EVs with only minor damage because even light batteries damage is risky.  And it's too expensive to replace the battery.  Well, there goes the green energy savings.
 
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The HustleGPT experiment has so far turned $100 into $7812, but so far it hasn't made any money.  It's all investor money so far, but who knows.  Someone will probably buy the company.  Profit!

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Oregon politicians are worried that the homeless camps will contaminate precious waterways.  In a classic Democrat maneuver, they pass a bill to make it illegal.  Problem solved!

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FOX News ridicules Oregon's spending of over $200 million to address the growing homelessness problem.
"Putting an addict behind four walls in an apartment and isolating them is not solving anything. Instead of OD'ing on the street, they're OD'ing on a hardwood floor."
Yep, I coulda told you that.

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Homeless tent resident threatens to burn down nearby house.  She calls police, they come, but don't arrest the man.  Here's the problem:
Elliott wondered where the new tent came from and found out an organization called People’s Housing Project was handing them out and setting them up, in this case, in her neighborhood.
And the state is providing more funding to organizations like this.

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20 March 2023

Oh-oh.  Thailand may be experiencing a miniature Chernobyl-type situation.  A cesium-137 cylinder has been smelted resulting in the emission of radioactive red dust.  Officials think that it's contained, but reading the article, it doesn't seem that they are certain.

The “red dust” was sent to a metal factory in Rayong province. Office of Atoms for Peace officials travelled to the factory in Rayong and found 24 tonnes of “red dust” contaminated with caesium-137.

That's a lot of dust.

Several Thai media outlets reported earlier that the cylinder was found crushed into a block with other metals in preparation to be smelted but “tragedy was avoided” as it hadn’t yet been put into the furnace. It turns out this was not true and the cylinder had been smelted.

National Power Plant 5A Co., Ltd., and the Office of Atoms for Peace set up a team of 50 people to search for the missing radioactive isotope but couldn’t find it anywhere on the plant grounds. They believe it has been taken away.

Yikes.

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If you've been paying attention, people are realizing suddenly that AI will upend the world.  When those closely involved with AI say things like:

"But what we're looking at now is intelligence itself... This is the first time we're able to create intelligence itself and increase its amount in the universe,"

They aren't kidding.  Google will soon release an AI model that can answer health questions with a passable degree of accuracy.  Whereas IBM's Watson failed spectacularly, such that even MD Anderson Cancer Center couldn't make it work, the power of GPT-4 has been used to create MedPaLM-2, which has been able to pass medical board exams at a level which equates it to an expert physician.

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How did I not know this before?  Sets of letters that I used to call alphabets, are not really that.  True alphabets are where symbols representing vowels and consonants are treated equally.  But some character sets, like the Japanese hiragana and katakana are representation of syllables, and are called syllabaries.  When character sets are consonant-vowel pairs, like Javanese or Ethiopian, they are called abugidas.  And if they are just consonant sounds, and you are expected to fill in vowel sounds that aren't provided (like Hebrew and Arabic), those are called abjads.   Here's a very pretty and unusual abugida, the Ditema, used by the Xhosa and Zulu.


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Here's an interesting set of statistics from PDX Real, that our city leaders should be aware of:


Coupled with the fact that pedestrian traffic of "normal people" is down (because who wants to walk around downtown these days), that's a lot of avoidable tragedy.  How is it compassionate to let the homeless wander the streets like feral animals, shooting up drugs, trashing the city, setting things on fire, while we pay increasingly higher taxes to clean up the mess?

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Well, as long as I'm not expected to pay off their student loans.  Academia is adrift in a sea of low standards. 

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Strange: Elon Musk used to warn us about the danger of AI, and now I read that he put money into its development?  And he's surprised that it's closed-source and making money? Hmmmm....

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I guess many wealthy people decided not to pay the Metro tax.  Wealthy people generally tend to know when something is a good investment.  I don't think they "forgot".  I think they're sending a message.  And of course, here's Salem, trying to figure out how to keep Oregonian's kicker refund.  Because they have a whole slew of give-aways that need funding.  They don't even have enough money to fund solutions for the problems they create!

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Not grounded in reality, but we can always dream, right?


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Sigh, I don't know why city leaders insist on peppering the city with the urban blight of sanctioned encampments for the homeless.  Portland is getting uglier.

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What they're doing in Arkansas would be fantastic to have in Oregon.  Financial support for school choice freedom.  So parents and students can avoid crap like this.  But the teachers union will have none of it.  And they got Tina Kotek elected. 

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The secret dealings behind the COVID-19 agitprop are finally coming to light.  This guy wasn't fooled.

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Over 50% of GenZers and millennials report that they are "not adulting right".  These are the grandchildren of the hippie generation.  I can't imagine what guidance they were given as they were growing up.

Fifty-seven percent of Gen Zers and Millenials say they do not feel like they have adulting figured out. In the survey, 63% of Gen Zers and Millennials said they did not feel like they were prepared for the responsibility of being an adult, and admitted they feel burned out by adulthood.

The biggest struggle for both generations seems to revolve around cars with 63% of the younger generations having no idea how to change the oil in a car, 48% not knowing how to change a tire and 42% not knowing how to jumpstart a car.

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Congratulations to Daniel Stenberg, on the 25th anniversary of cURL.  He's one of the unsung heroes of the Internet that most people have never heard of.

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Guess what country has a lower fertility rate than Japan?

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19 March 2023

Chat AI models are developing a sense of the world.  It is truly interesting to see how much improvement in object understanding has developed from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4.

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I was wondering when someone would do this.  Ask GPT-4 how to become rich.  And it recommends setting up a business.  Bravo!  That shows real-life understanding.

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High-school graduates are increasingly turning away from college, and going to apprenticeships.  This might allow them an easier track to starting a business - and getting rich!

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Speaking of which, this is marvelous technology - and coming out of Africa!  This guy made use of his college education, for sure, unlike many American graduates.  Bravo!


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This ronin used Emacs in college, a very long time ago.  This was because there were few available text editors for the mainframes that were used.  I think this is the only way something with as high a learning curve could gain traction.  Many geeks who grew up on this still use Emacs, and if you are proficient, and customize to how you like, it feels very powerful.  But there are now editors with lower learning curves, and I would only take the time to master it if I were coding for a living.  This is another "Learn Emacs in a year" posting.  Interesting that the author, who was born and raised in Asia, takes the "learn from the master" approach.  I notice that some in the comments section of western geek boards are "meh". 

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Remember the Edith Macefield House?  It was Seattle's version of the UP house.  It seems that nothing has happened since 2018.  This is what it looks like today:


It's a squatter's encampment fire waiting to happen.
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Crime strikes the Multnomah County Health Department.  Client health records may have been stolen. 
 
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