1 October 2025

Doctors still outperform AI in the emergency department.  Nurses, however...

However, the AI model did outperform nurses when it came to identifying the most urgent or life-threatening cases, with both better accuracy and specificity.

Don't tell Oregon nurses.

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Diversity is not their strength. Munich shuts down Oktoberfest because of too much diversity. How much are those guys going to tolerate. Diversity already ruined a Christmas Market last year.

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Washington state minimum wage will rise 2.8%, from $16.66 per hour to $17.13, on Jan. 1.  Lowest quintile policies again, which will affect everyone.

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Readers response to Providence hospitals operating in the red. After all the years of predatory behavior, there's no much sympathy for them. People tend to focus on executive salaries, which is not the problem. One problem is that the nurses are expensive. Yet they need the nurses, and because of they are in short supply, they have leverage. The reason why they can't get more nurses is that vry few want to move to Oregon, and Portland specifically. And their COVID policy of firing the unvaxxed is coming back to bite them. The other problem, of course, is the high Medicaid representation. Because Oregon is so poor now. Yeah, Dem policies are to blame ultimately.

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A recent report suggests that for the elderly, at least, serum vitamin B12 levels should be higher than the current normal. Lower levels correlated with dementia.

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30 September 2025

Chain reaction. Now what teachers' salaries have been raised, the amount that the public schools system needs to contribute to their PERS pensions has also increased. Which is going to stress the school budget even more. And Rex Kim, too, heh.

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The finding of a million year old skull in China, Yunxian 2, makes it more likely that ancient Asian hominids contributed to the human development, rather than just Africa. I am curious – the skull was discovered in 1990, and only now are we hearing about this? Paper here.

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Simon Willison really like Claude 4.5 Sonnet for coding, and calls it "the best coding model in the world". I can vouch for that. I used it earlier today and it fixed a coding problem that another model helped me put together. This is my new favorite, too.

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A growing number of U.S. adults report cognitive disability. Especially young adults. What could it be? You think maybe legalization of cannabis was a bad idea?

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Wow. The owners of The Bravern in Bellevue has defaulted. Bad news that even Bellevue can't keep office commercial real estate busy. I recall when it was the center of so much wealth and power. Twenty years of Democrat management have destroyed it all, along with Seattle. Really a shame.

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29 September 2025

Why warm countries are poorer.  This is a similar take as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. Warmer countries do have a disadvantage, it seems. The brain doesn't function as well when it is too hot.

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We have 23 pairs of chromosomes, compared with the 24 chromosomes of chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans, because chromosome 2 fused with another chromosome to become a larger chromosome 2.  This seems to have happened fairly recently, between 400,000 and 1.5 million years ago, around the time when there was a severe reduction in the population of hominid ancestors. Related?

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Do No Harm has a ranking of medical schools that espouse DEI and woke principles, as well as MCAT scores and average GPA, and gives them a grade based on this. Guess where OHSU ranks?  University of Washington School of Medicine didn't do so well either. Man, even University of Hawaii had higher MCAT scores and GPA.

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Ugh no. Trump seems to be touting the benefits of cannabis for seniors.

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If you use the Brave browser, you should read this.

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Oregon employers have eliminated more than 11,000 jobs since the start of 2024, a historic wave of mass layoffs that matches the worst days of the Great Recession. And this time, there are no subsidies being given out. The Blue states will have to rethink their strategy of refusing to work with the federal government.

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Claude Sonnet 4.5 is out, and blam, it's already offered on Poe.com. Wow!

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28 September 2025

Hank Green has a video where he takes a deep dive into the "autism is increasing" data, and finds that it is indeed very messy.  Welcome to science, Hank. Much of it is very much like this, which is why doing meta-analyses can make you tear out your hair. He concludes that it's simplistic to say that all autism has been increasing. Much of it is due to diagnostic shifting and changing criteria. Hank doesn't explore much the causes of autism, except to quickly mention factors such as parental age, premature birth and maternal diabetes. A good effort, though, but my reaction is like that meme: "First time?"

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South Korean paper shows that a year after getting the mRNA COVID vax, the incidence of certain cancers increases. There an increase in cancers of the thyroid, gastric, prostate, colon, lung, and breast. And if you got boosted, the risk really goes up for pancreatic and gastric cancers. Koreans get a lot of gastric cancer anyway, so that has to be factored in. And they got mainly the Pfizer product.

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AI is really impacting the job prospects of newly-minted software engineers. Suddenly, companies want experienced talent, not just having taken some courses on how to code. AI has got to be in the curriculum somehow, and universities need to revamp their courses, or their graduates are going to come out unprepared and at a disadvantage.

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Looks like Logitech is coming out with the MX Master 4, which looks nice. It's predicted to be announced in the U.S. in two days. At this point, I'm not sure I really need it, but we'll have to see what is really new. The new extra button is intriguing.

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They built a country which works so well, it has tamed the utter chaos that historically defined most of our forebears’ lives and given us all a neat, packaged life. A life which most of us can live formulaically, sleepwalking through it without doing a single brave thing. You are, of course, still expected to work hard, but we hold the honour of being the first immigrant nation to have so thoroughly self-domesticated, to have ourselves doused the ambition which ferried the droves of hungry poor, desperate and begging for better lives.
Yeah, Singapore did all the right things, and has a very nice, wealth nation. But it did this by copying and just having a citizenship that followed the rules, not by innovating and developing top industries. 
We Singaporeans are so smart, we know that the safest way to get a return on our investment is to see what everyone else is doing, and to do it better. We're so numerate, we know instinctively that starting something new has a lower risk-adjusted EV than working hard as an investment banker/consultant/lawyer/doctor/software engineer, and with a far higher Sharpe ratio too.
Nothing wrong with that.

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She Sent Her iPhone to Apple. Repair Techs Uploaded Her Nudes to Facebook.  Ugh, this happened in Oregon. When you must turn in your phone or computer to a repair shop, create a new user and switch to that user, and then send the device in. That way all your confidential data is inaccessible. Never just send it in unlocked.

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Nice review on the history of longevity prolongation efforts by infusion of youthful blood-derived products. It's apparently already possible to slow aging by a noticeable and measurable degree. But the methods are crude and the exact mechanism by which it happens is unclear. Once we figure out how to do it, then the ethical issues will need to be dealt with. And it's still not clear if these longevity manipulations might have an undesireable side-effect, such as cancer promotion.

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27 September 2025

How to spot a genius. Yeah, it's true that some geniuses are born in areas where they can't realize their full potential, but you can't get too caught up with that. It's really up to teachers, who are exposed to these children, that bear the responsibility of recognizing talent and nurturing it. This is why I'm upset at Oregon and Washington canceling programs for gifted kids. Just so that there is "equity".

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Ex–Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns U.S. tech workers: Competing with China’s grueling 12-hour workdays means sacrificing work-life balanc.  Yeah, but the problem is, the workers are not necessarily interested in helping Google beat China. They're interested in getting rich. If Google doesn't enrich its workforce, they won't care. They'll just figure it's Google's problem.

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Great!  Oregon lottery winners can remain anonymous. Well, now I'll play.

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Here's a list of all the places Starbucks is closing. There's a lot in the West Coast states. Now the rioters will have to find some other business to trash that represents "The Man". Starbucks was always the choice for the "Destroy Capitalism!" crowd.

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Well it finally happened.  The AI world is no longer sweet and innocent.  Someone hijacked an MCP email server, and was found to have all emails coming through send out a copy to a secret email address.

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DEI is dead. White men now fill majority of new S&P 500 board seats for first time since 2017.  Merit matters once again.

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Make Portland Great Again. Trump has ordered the military to come to the aid of Portland. We’ve been off Trump's radar for so long. No longer. And it's interesting that Hegseth is in charge, not Pam Bondi. He means business. It worked for D.C. Hopefully it will work for Portland.

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26 September 2025

Well now the makers of Tylenol are worried about its effects on autism. Turns out they had concerns for years but did not make it known, so that a lot of people were taken by surprise and were skeptical at first. I'm still not convinced that this is the main cause of ASD, but the impact of acetaminophen shouldn't be discounted as was initially done by the uninformed. Now that I learned that acetaminophen acts directly on the brain to relieve pain, I am more hesitant to use it. I don't think we really know everything there is to know about this drug. 

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The bad actors from Russia, Pakistan, and Eastern Europe used the American health care system like their "personal piggy bank," the Department of Justice's Acting Criminal Division leader, Matthew Galeotti, said. He said that "this was a staggering breach of trust" and they "will prosecute these criminals as aggressively as we would any drug dealer because that's exactly what they are."
DOGE uncovered this. And to think that many people think that converting our entire healthcare system into one run by the federal government is going to solve all its problems. The federal government should not be running healthcare insurance – I stand by that. There is no incentive to lower cost, save on expenses, or to provide quality service. All these people see it as is an unlimited source of money to lower insurance premiums. There are better ways to do this, but the public is so uninformed on so many things.

Relevant to this is that the Dems want more money allocated to keep Obamacare running. Obamacare is a clear example that government-run healthcare will be doomed to bankruptcy. It's a money-sink. Let it die, like all the other Obama policies. 

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This would be cool. Shoplifters might be pursued by drones. This would help in getting them identified and apprehended. Make it so!

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Simon Willison posted a discussion about how AI agents, coupled with the potential for prompt injection, connections to untrusted content and access to people's confidential information could lead to a disaster. Because LLMs obey commands, and can't always tell who is issuing them, and whether it's forbidden by guardrails or not. It's too easy for a malcontent or rogue government to prompt-inject surreptitiously and cause an AI agent to disclose something it shouldn't have. Even The Economist picked up on it, good for them.

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I'm confused. I read this yesterday about the 2026 Porsche Cayenne EV SUV having wireless charging. Now I read the Porsche is giving up EVs for gas-powered vehicles again. The news cycle – it's so fast.

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All those jobs! Seattle and Portland are going to see a major reduction in Starbucks stores. Yes, Starbucks has had enough of their cafés always being the target whenever there's a street protest. Yep, Portland and Seattle cannot have nice things anymore. CEO Niccol wants to bring back the French café atmosphere that Howard Schulz loved. 
Niccol said a review of the company’s North American coffee shop portfolio identified stores that were “unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we don’t see a path to financial performance.”
Yeah, you can't do that in downtown Portland or Seattle. It's a sad fact that modern Blue cities don't deserve Parisian cafés or other fruits of civilized life.

Brian Dahlgren finds that 40% of the homeless are transplants from somewhere else. And Keith Wilson is going to force the City to pay for their homes. Portland is providing social services for other states' homeless, basically. No wonder they are out of money. 

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Here's a revealing map of Oregon's historic wave of job cuts and layoffs. And all the city and state leaders are steadfast in maintaining their policies which will drive the state into economic and social ruin. This isn't leadership.

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Kotek freezes all state travel … except her $200K Asia trip.  What's the purpose of this trip? Why bring your spouse?

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Portlanders are finding that rents are increasing faster than wage growth. Is it time for another labor union strike?

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But they said it was safe now. Ice Cube’s tour bus catches fire in downtown Portland.  It just "caught fire". All by itself? Welcome to Portland, Ice Cube.

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I, too, could be worth several trillion dollars if someone gave me a trillion dollars first.

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How do you live long?. Good genes and good bacteria. Here's the multiomics profile of a 117 year old woman.  She had a lot of Bifidobacteria in her gut.

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25 September 2025

Happy Triple Square Day.  Today is 32/52/452  = 9/25/2025.  We don't be alive for the next one.

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The 2026 Porsche Cayenne EV will have wireless charging. I am still waiting for someone to offer better batteries rather than the standard lithium-based batteries that take hours to charge. Then we wouldn't have to have charging mats, etc.

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Google is now admitting that it was censoring COVID-19 information at the behest of the Biden administration.  But it's too late. It's 2025 now, and Google is just doing this because it's now safe to say this, because Trump is in power. We were right to be afraid of Big Tech's control over information, especially Google.

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A warning to those who depend on Tor for illicit activity. Determining the identity of a Tor user is possible if the government really wants to know.

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Why did psilocybe mushrooms evolve to produce psychedelic toxins twice? I didn't know that the presence of bluish bruising is a sign of the presence of psilocybin, due to the breakdown products.

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Dan Brown has a new book out, Secret of Secrets. This one doesn't deal with ancient mysteries. The most favorable review I found is the one from LA Times, which I linked to. I read books like this to learn new things, and I might check it out, not so much for the plot, but to discover things and links I wasn't aware of.

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Another one bites the dust.  A woke bookstore in New York City's lower east side closes after trying to offer a concentrated version of Portland, like harm reduction, Narcan, and other neo-hippie offerings. Turns out it just lured gronks and criddlers, and paying customers stopped showing up. It wasn't able to stay afloat longer with NGO money or taxes, so it crashed a lot sooner. Just look at it – a Portlander would feel right at home.

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TriMet wants to know why you aren't riding their buses anymore. They can't keep those mostly empty buses riding around anymore. 
Portland business continue to struggle.  They're going to implement some sort of "storefront support". Because people still don't want to go into the City. Yeah, wonder why?


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Math fraud is out of control. 
For example, based on its database, the market leader for metrics, Clarivate Inc., calculated in 2019 that the university with the most world-class researchers in mathematics is a university in Taiwan -- where mathematics is not even offered as a subject. Megajournals, which print anything as long as the authors pay for it, now publish more articles per year than all reputable mathematics journals (which do not require payment) combined. Fraudsters anonymously offer everything that influences key figures for sale, from articles to citations, in exchange for payment.
It's not just math. It's science in general. Only reputable journals matter.

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Another large Oregon business closing: Roseburg Forest Products. 100 to be laid off. Really too bad. 
And Washington state realizes that it will bring in $903 million less than expected over the next four years.  Yup, so it's "cutting services and approving a sweeping package of additional taxes" to make up for the deficit.

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24 September 2025

nVIDIA, OpenAI, Oracle all stand to benefit from the Stargate datacenter project. (I wish they picked a different name. I keep getting it confused with Elon Musk's Starbase.). But some think that it's all just a big circle-jerk. Five datacenters – none in Oregon or Washington. Probably just as well. Did you see how ugly those things are. Plus, it'll suck electricity and water and provide very few jobs.  Yeah, America's top companies keep talking about AI but can't provide any upsides.

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Even light alcohol increases dementia risk. Protect your brain. It's the only one you have.

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Chinese workers are starting to abandon Silicon Valley and return to China. These Chinese "pioneers" will eventually make it difficult for anyone to trust Chinese workers. Why hire them, teach them, put them in positions of responsibility? When at the first sign of adversity, they will leave and take their training and knowledge with them? "Thanks for the experience, you dumb Americans!" Didn't the Japanese get put in internment camps for fear of this happening? So what should be done?

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Rules of Thumb for every occasion.

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This is ridiculous.  About 18% of U.S. medical residency positions in 2025 were filled by non-residents, which typically includes H-1B and J-1 visa holders.  How crazy is that?  This broken system needs to be fixed ASAP.

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A new study provides evidence that caffeine can increase how long people persist in trying to complete difficult or unsolvable tasks, and this effect is especially pronounced in people who have recently experienced stress.  I can vouch for this. 

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It looks like the vast majority of Oregonians aren't in favor of Tina Kotek's transportation tax.  60% find it hard to cover $400 (how they gonna pay Kotek’s $300 gas tax?)

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Hawaii Governor Josh Green issues emergency proclamation to protect COVID vaccine access.  What is with Democrat governors that they think the COVID mRNA vax is so sacrosanct that access is to be secured at all costs? You would think that RFK Jr was going to take antibiotics off the market, or something.  C'mon, it's estimated that 20% of the U.S. population (~ 66 million) have never been vaccinated against SARS-CoV2 (myself included), and we're doing just fine.

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The Bee nails it.

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23 September 2025

nVIDIA and OpenAI want the smartest people for their companies. Who wouldn't? I keep hearing about how the H-1B visas are preventing American graduates from getting jobs, but since I'm never in the hiring departments, I wouldn't really know what the field looks like.  Then I see this article: American students are getting dumber.

Come on, kids. Trump can only do so much to help you guys get jobs. It's up to you all to be smarter. Then you read misinformation on Reddit like this. The guy came on a student visa, not an H-1B visa. Trump isn't touching those, nor is he touching genius visas. 

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So many professors in the South are leaving, because they can't get their way on DEI, gender and race-based education. Wow, the education system has been festering for such a long time. The South is already perceived as being the place to go to avoid woke indoctrination. Certainly to avoid activist protests. The cleansing will be good.

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It happened to Geoffrey Hinton, and it appears to be happening to other couples as well. People are using ChatGPT to attack their spouses, leading to divorces. It's probably easy to get an agreeable chatbot to take your side that your anger is justified and that the other person is unreasonable. It shouldn't be something that leads to breaking apart human relationships, though. We have enough of that already.

And AI use increased unethical behavior.

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Here's another medical startup using AI.  I love this quote:
“Our focus is really on what we can do to pull the doctor out of the visit,” says Jared Goodner, Akido’s CTO."
Yeah, sounds like a winner.  /sarc.

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The rise of conspiracy physics. I was wondering when others would take notice. I used to think the YouTube videos popularizing physics was beneficial, but lately it's been bizarre, and mainly rants. And I don't know enough about advanced physics to know who is telling the truth.

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Interesting idea. Roger Penrose is supporting an effort to archive recordings of the world's geniuses as they describe the discovery process that led to their math and scientific breakthroughs.

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Lars Larson asks: Is the City of Portland permanently broke?  I don't know about permanently, but it will be for a long time. 

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22 September 2025

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

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Yikes. Michigan is seeking to ban VPN usage. Something about "Anticorruption of Public Morals Act".  They say it's the Republicans that want this, but true Republicans don't want to take away your freedom. These are likely the same RINOs that supports vaccine papers, etc. This won't work – give it up.

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Here's map of many different musical genres that you can explore and sample. It's called Every Noise at Once.

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This is why legislators aren't good at passing laws legalizing marijuana for recreational use. They don't take care of loopholes. It just made stuff like this proliferate. Now people are using delta-8 THC in places where delta-9 THC is still illegal, because that's all the law covered.

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Acesulfame-K is one of the safer non-caloric sweeteners. It's funny how just about all these sweeteners were discovered by accident.

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Here's another story of how using AI helped a patient to a diagnosis.  This guy had six feet of small intestine removed, and I call bluff that he was never told about short-bowel syndrome. I am sure he got a flyer telling him about foods to avoid or watch for after he had surgery. He probably didn't read it. And I can't believe he saw nutritionists and gastroenterologists who ALL missed the cause of his ailments. This is not some rare syndrome – it's short bowel syndrome. Who could have missed it??? But still, the point is about doctors not using AI tools, and that's another discussion.

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Oh-oh.  A Mysterious Jupiter-Sized Planet Is Heading Toward Our Solar Neighborhood. Quick, before the Democrats start giving the inhabitants benefits and free housing.

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Disturbing. Oregon doesn't want people know how many genital mutilating surgeries they've been doing. They're afraid it might be used for political purposes. Really? What would make us think that?

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Heh.

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