18 March 2024

Maglev is possible on regular train tracks. That's nice in theory but I'd hate to see trains whizz by on some of the crooked tracks that are around. We'd see so many derailments.

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Why, Apple, why?  Apple is going to use Google's Gemini A.I. to power the iPhone. This has got to be the dumbest decision. Why can't Apple buy a better A.I.? Why use the woke A.I. that everyone's dissing? No wonder their stock is tanking.

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18 Questions to ask your VPN provider. It's so hard to evaluate VPNs now. So many that were thought to be good are lousy. Private Internet Access and HideMyAss were touted as some of the best, only to keep logs and betray privacy promises.

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Washington follows Oregon's direction downward in not requiring passing the bar exam to be an attorney. Because Democrats have to lower standards so that minorities have a chance, right?

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Claude-3 has a higher I.Q. than the average human. Is this the Singularity?

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Never eat a mushroom based on what a phone app tells you, even if it's A.I.-powered. The technology just isn't that good yet.

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17 March 2024

Who has been the closest and the farthest from the Sun? Surprising answers.

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Can Large Language Models reason and plan? Nah.

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Stanford is no longer the Stanford it was when I was younger. No more anarchy or craziness. Probably just as well. Back then, there was no Internet. You could afford to be "out of bounds". Wink-wink. Now, you might do something, and it'll be recorded forever. Wouldn't want that to happen, right? Times have changed.

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This article makes it sound like we should put it in the drinking water.  Psilocybin therapy alters prefrontal and limbic brain circuitry in alcohol use disorder. Seems like it fixes all that ails you.
Specifically, psilocybin treatment led to increased activity in the medial and lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and left caudate — regions implicated in higher-order cognitive functions such as goal-directed behavior, decision-making, and emotional regulation.

Additionally, a decrease in activity was noted in the insula, motor, temporal, parietal, and occipital cortices, as well as the cerebellum. These areas are often associated with craving, automatic behavior patterns, and sensory processing, indicating that psilocybin may diminish the salience of alcohol cues.

The study also revealed unique responses to different types of emotional cues. For negative cues, psilocybin increased activity in the supramarginal gyrus, a region involved in empathy and emotional processing. For positive cues, there was an increase in right hippocampus activity and a decrease in left hippocampus activity, which may reflect changes in how positive emotional experiences are processed and integrated.

“Patients treated with psilocybin showed similar brain responses to pictures of alcohol and positive and negative emotional scenes,” Pagni told PsyPost. “This suggests psilocybin may have a general mood stabilizing effect, rather than altering processes specific to alcohol or negative emotions. The pattern of neural response was characterized by increased activity in the lateral and medial prefrontal cortex, brain regions associated with regulating emotions and behavior, and decreased activity in the insula, a brain region associated with craving for alcohol.”

Just what people living in modern society need right now.

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Moderate to severe sleep apnea was found in a quarter of women and half of men. This is probably linked to all that obesity. But likely people need to fix how they sleep. It's a vicious cycle, and being sleep-deprived can make you fat, too.

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Anxiety drug pregabalin linked to rising number of deaths. A lot of folks are takig pregabalin for treatment of neuropathy. Only now we realize how dangerous it can be?

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If you like Bach's Cello Suites, you definitely need to check out this page.

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The TikTok Problem Is Not What You Think. We do need to come to a consensus about what constitutes invasion of privacy. TikTok is not alone in what it's doing. We will need to talk about Google and Meta, and data harvesting companies, and define what it is that they should not be doing. Again, the adage is true – if the service is free, you are the product, not the customer.

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The Atlantic writes about Why Oregon’s Drug Decriminalization Failed. As I type this, though, Tina Kotek still hasn't signed the bill. What is she waiting for?

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Techies are getting laid-off. It seems strange that with all the boom in artificial intelligence that there is less of a need for them. It's because the current techies know little about artificial intelligence. They're old-school techies. The ones that are in demand need to know how to implement LLMs and Computer Vision and data science.  That's what matters now.

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What are the worst paying jobs five years out?  No surprises here. The article doesn't talk about what the best ones are. To get that info, you need to go to the source.

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As A.I. tools get smarter, they get more racist. 

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16 March 2024

Read the "In summary" statement at the bottom of this article. Someone forgot to hide the A.I. Where was the copy editor?

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The United States gained some territory at the end of last year. Didn't hear about it until just now.

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17 year old Phillips Exeter Academy student thinks he's figured out how convolutional computer vision models do feature extraction. This is cool.

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I saw the video taken of Starship, and was amazed at how far SpaceX has come. But then I read that Elon Musk's SpaceX is going to help U.S. intelligence agencies build their spy satellite network. Probably that's what they required of him, in order to be left alone.

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So they are being responsible? The more powerful language models are being red-teamed before they get released. If that's supposed to make me feel better, it doesn't. There already too much out there capable of generating trouble.

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Hospitals are still hurting. Adventist is closing three rural health clinics, in Welches, Lincoln City and Sheridan. Meanwhile, the OHSU-Legacy merger is up in the air.  Is it going to happen or not? Every day they delay, they lose money. And why is Kathryn Correia still out of commission for the fourth month from just hip surgery? So Legacy is without a leader, and OHSU...well.

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Portland's commercial real estate market still has some embers of life yet, according to the PBJ. That's good, but things are still far from healthy.

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Will PGE get that rate hike? Maybe, maybe not. We need some competition. PGE shouldn't be the only game in town.

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Why we can't have nice things. Sumner, WA just can't have an EV charging station. Someone keeps stealing the charging cables.

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FDA approves Rezdiffra as treatment for fatty liver (steatohepatitis). Resmetirom is a liver-directed thyroid hormone receptor beta–selective agonist. Interesting mechanism.  You need to have biopsy-confirmed NASH and a fibrosis stage of F1B, F2, or F3.

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What? Dr. Sam Parnia thinks he can resurrect people for up to three hours after they have died. That's crazy talk, man. But body cooling has been incorporated into the ACLS resuscitation cycle, so maybe if more people start doing it quickly, it may change things. But you've got have died from something that hasn't destroyed your body, or it's not going to work. Think this guy will get the Nobel Prize?

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Memory changes as we age. The peak is in the mid-20s. Really? So young. So eat your veggies, exercise, and sleep well.  Probably go easy on the alcohol, too. And stress-relief. Very important. So nothing new, really.

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OpenAI isn't going to wait on NVIDIA's GPU chips. Sam Altman wants a Dubai company to make special ones for him. Well, OK then.

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Physics lesson.
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15 March 2024

Thanks, Joe. Leprosy is on the rise, brought in by migrants. Right now, it's concentrated in the southeastern U.S. but Biden is shipping them all around. Had enough, yet?

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Creepy. A neighborhood snooping tool has been created by religious evangelists, and it looks like the product of a sick mind.

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Be wary of websites that let you leave anonymous commentary to inform others. At Glassdoor, this policy changed, and now they have blackmail on people who used their sites.

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What happens in your brain when you're "in the zone". Beta- and gamma waves in the left posterior cortex.

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The JWST has shown that the Hubble Tension problem is real.  So why is the expansion of space not uniform?

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Wow, the real estate world has been disrupted. The home buying/selling process will be a little different. It may not be as easy to find an agent now. We shall see.

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That's the way to deal with in the road protestors who refuse to budge:
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14 March 2024

People are noticing. Why are so many young people getting cancer?  I think I know why, but it's verboten to say.

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What's up with Nature these days? They're not sticking to science anymore.  Check out this article: Why the world cannot afford the rich. The reason? It's because all those rich people cause anxiety. And they drive up consumption. Geez.  Stick to science, Nature.

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AI reveals prostate cancer is not just one disease. Something like this has been suspected for a long time. Prostate cancer specialists have theorized that even at the start, there are seeds of cancer cells that exhibit androgen-independent growth, and eventually they predominate. It's nice to see that A.I. has drawn the same conclusions.

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Amazing fact.  Most of our taxes now just pay off interest on the national debt. It's also amazing that no one seems to care.

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Just like the meme.  Oregon Legislature allocates $4 million for graffiti removal. Graffiti should be gone any day now.

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Hmmm. United Healthcare's Optum wants to hurry up and acquire Corvallis Clinic.  Seems like a win-win for both parties: Optum purchases an asset which they really need after paying off hackers, and Corvallis Clinic is apparently on the financial ropes and needs to be bought out. But if both parties are hurting, how are they going to sqeeze money from a stone? This statement bothers me:
Corvallis Clinic "simply doesn't have time to undergo continuing regulatory review without necessitating further cost-cutting measures that would almost certainly impact care before the time that the clinic would be potentially forced to close its doors"
Imagine the "cost-cutting" that it's going to implement in order to remain profitable. How will that affect healthcare delivery? I agree with the concerned residents who see problems with this.
This is yet more fallout from Obamacare – the disappearance of the physician-owned practice. Now just about everything is owned by hospitals, private equity, hedge funds, large insurance carriers, etc.  Individual private practices are finding it tough to make it work on their own. Even hospitals are struggling.

Edit:
Well, it seemed like a win-win in paper.  The reality turned out to be far different. What a miscalculation.

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If you're a rat, exposure to the scent of females will shorten your survival. Is that true for humans? Maybe it's just as well that men and women are drifting apart. I disagree with the author of the article – I don't think that it's because men are less educated. It's just that they're not getting the woke indoctrination that women are. The rise of liberal women, especially in politics, has been the worst thing for society over the past decade. Here's an example, featuring Rep. McLain regarding her desire to "change some behaviors" with freeway tolling, despite everyone opposed to it:

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This could be interesting.  Steve Mnuchin is looking to buy TikTok.  Somehow, I think Mnuchin owning TikTok will end up destroying the brand. We'll see.

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Speaking of mentally ill. Check this out. This is kind of nutcase that works at the Pentagon in Biden's administration. Holy crap. I sure hope the transgender fad is fading. Can't happen soon enough.

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Devin. Have you seen Devin, the new coding agent?  Who needs software engineers anymore. Just kidding, I think. Software development has changed. And it's only six years since the publication of that paper that started it all "Attention is all you need".

Update:

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We may have a Great Comet in the sky in October.

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Soon to be Portland. Canadian cops recommend just giving criminals the keys to your car so they can steal without confrontation.

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CAR-T cell therapy works wondrously against glioblastoma. Fantastic news, as this is one of the most feared and resistant malignancies. Cell-based therapies are so much better than chemotherapy or radiation.

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Boy, I wonder what Jack Reacher would have to say about this:

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13 March 2024

Regence submits final offer to Legacy. The deadline is April 1. Who will blink?

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Tina Kotek canceled 205 tolling but don't relax. Dems are working to get around it. And we're still going to have I-5 tolling, and the status of the Abernathy bridge is up in the air. When the tax base has been reduced and the Dems still need money for spending on illegals and providing the criddlers with drug paraphernalia, union member salaries, etc. you know that this will happen.

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Gender-affirming surgery does NOT decrease suicide. In fact, creating fake vaginas has been found to double the suicide rate. Because it does nothing to fix the underlying mental illness.

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Comparing different composers at the end of Mahler's climactic Second Symphony.

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12 March 2024

Martin Kulldorff was fired from Harvard for speaking the truth about the COVID mRNA product. Interesting that Harvard had re-instated the vax mandate, only to rescind that just recently.

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Good news for incels. Now you can practice your dating skills with an A.I. girlfriend. Just kidding, this is such a privacy trap.

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This sticker is perfect for Portland.

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Yeah, Boeing is in big trouble. So many crashes. They used Dawn dish soap for lubricant. And why did that whistleblower die? Was it really suicide?

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A San Francisco startup is building a universal A.I. employee. It's called Ema, for enterprise machine assistant. Let's put everyone out of business, shall we? And given them universal basic income. Then we'll all be government dependents, playing video games or watching TV, until the next government check comes in.

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Does listening to music while working improve cognitive performance? I am doubtful about this. It's too distracting. For coding, there's Music for Programming. Not too melodic. Not too distracting. Just right to keep your brain occupied, while you work.

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Apple's preparing some new iPads. They'd better dazzle, because lately everything coming out of Apple is boring and just variations on what Steve Jobs came out with years ago.

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11 March 2024

What's going on in Britain? What's with this "massive increase in long-term sickness"?  Why is there "an increasingly sick workforce, where workers across the age spectrum are being prematurely retired because they are too sick to work"? I think I know, and I suspect it's true in the U.S. as well.

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China wants to rid itself of Western tech by 2027.  I don't think they'll actually be able to do it. But it will mean a more dedicate effort to steal and copy American technology.

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The progressives don't want to even have a discussion about woke gender ideology. The reason is that they're scared they will be debunked, and their nonsense ideology will be exposed for what it is. So they seek to cancel and stifle all discussion.

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A.I.-designed proteins are a pharma dream. But some people see how it can be weaponized. This is one of those situations where many people can't perceive the threat because they aren't smart enough or imaginative enough. But there are those who are both, and that's where the danger lies. You could have a different kind of weapon that never existed before, that could kill people in weird ways. Ways for which forensic evidence probably doesn't exist at this time.

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Super-strict schools are on the rise in England. Some folks probably said enough is enough with student activists who leave school with little knowledge and skills, who will not serve to advance humanity, but will only complain and bring society down. We need schools where students actually learn stuff. Of course, it's not for everyone (as it should be) and some get too stressed out.

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Modern Japanese men are so messed up now. The "lost decade" really screwed them over. So many have become otaku and hikkikomori now. And the women are taking over the workforce. What a sad state of affairs.

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The Mental State of the World in 2023. It's not good.
  • Mental well-being remained at its post-pandemic low with yet again no sign of movement towards pre-pandemic levels. In 2023, at both a global level and at the level of individual countries, MHQ scores remained largely unchanged relative to 2021 and 2022, after a sharp drop during the pandemic years. This raises important questions about the lasting impact of the pandemic, and how shifts in the way we live and work and the amplification of existing habits (e.g. remote working, online communication, consumption of ultra-processed food, use of single- use plastics) have cumulatively pushed us into a space of poorer mental well-being.
  • Younger generations, particularly those under age 35, saw the steepest declines in mental well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic while those over 65 stayed steady. With these declines persisting across all age groups, the pandemic amplified a pre-existing trend of poorer mental well-being for younger generations that is now visible across the globe.
  • As in previous years, several African and Latin American countries topped the country rankings, while wealthier countries of the Core Anglosphere such as the United Kingdom and Australia are towards the bottom. This pattern suggests that greater wealth and economic development do not necessarily lead to greater mental well-being. In 2023, data from the Global Mind Project identified key factors that explain these patterns, such as getting a smartphone at a young age, frequently eating ultra-processed food and a fraying of friendships and family relationships, that are typically more prevalent in Internet-enabled populations of wealthier countries.
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Interesting Veritasium video on the Prisoner's Dilemma. And here's Biden realizing that this means his policy doesn't make sense, Because a cease-fire means Hamas will survive and recover its strength, setting israel up for another terrorist attack in the future.

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Staff at Alan Turing Institute speak out after four men given top roles. I bet they wouldn't complain if four women got the roles. Just insane.

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The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is on the rise again. Their new leader is undoing the damage of the last leader, who was getting OSF in all kinds of antiracism nonsense, which had little to do with enjoying the Bard. Hopefully, Ashland will rise from the ashes.

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This is just amazing.
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10 March 2024

Trikafta is a real breakthrough for cystic fibrosis sufferers. It's for cystic fibrosis patients 12 years and older with at least one F508del mutation in the CFTR gene, which affects 90% of the population with cystic fibrosis or roughly 27,000 people in the United States. This drug, actually a triple combo of elexacaftor, tezacaftor, and ivacaftor, is an exemplar for molecular biology.

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Man, that's dedication to your team. Some fans at frigid Chiefs playoff game underwent amputations due to frostbite.

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Well, OK then. Doctor says we ‘need meat’ for mental health to thrive.  No arguments from me.

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10 states did not fall for the Medicaid expansion trap under Obamacare. The rest are suffering. Yeah, remember when the media and the Left were castigating those states that refused to embrace Medicaid? Oregon hospitals are all on the brink now, partly due to the high cost of labor, as well as the shift to Medicaid, which does not pay well.

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Oregon's strategy to fight against pharmacy benefits managers, who are shutting down rural pharmacies? Make them get a license. Yeah, that's it.

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Private citizen documents that filth that is downtown Portland. She's sad to see how much the city has fallen. And here's a video on drug decriminalization. The telling tidnit is that Sen. Kate Lieber can't admit that it was a bad idea. But Tina Kotek is signing the reversal of M110, so that's some good at least.


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Idaho needs doctors. But many don’t want to come here. Is that all doctors? Or just obstetrician/gynecologists? The article makes it look like just the latter.

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The Worst States to be Rich, Poor, or In Between.  Not many people know that Tom Yamachika is a math-wiz, super-genius. He knows his numbers.

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People With Limited English Lost Money And Help In Lahaina Response. Clearly FEMA was not prepared to handle Hawaii's immigrant population in Lahaina. There weren't too many people in the department who spoke Ilokano, Chuukese, Pohnpeian, etc. There are a LOT of unique languages in that area.

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9 March 2024

Seems that Tolkien hated a lot of things. Just found out he hated Dune.

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Asian-American women are at increased risk of getting lung cancer. The study was done in women from Northern California, so it may be a local phenomenon. I can't access the study since it's behind a paywall, but I'd like to know when this trend started.

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This has to be one of the greatest unintentional pro-Trump ads I watched. Love it!
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Scar-free surgery might be a thing soon. It uses 3-D printing of dermal tissue.

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Sabine Hossenfelder takes on those self-taught physics wackos who claims to have proven Einstein wrong, solved a long-standing physics problem, or something like that. Brave of her to interact with the potentially mentally-ill. You never know what they might do. It's a different world today.

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Oregon Medical Board Loosens Restrictions on Opioid Prescribers. This is good because it was making patients endure pain unnecessarily because doctors would be afraid to get their licenses yanked. Better to just target the few doctors who were abusing the system than to punish everybody.

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Newsweek says that OMSI is the best science museum in the nation. Hmm, I've been to the Exploratorium in San Francisco and thought it was way superior, but that was some years ago. Maybe things have changed, especially in SF.

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Personal and economic freedom in the United States - a rating. No surprise that all the western states (including Hawaii) rank towards the bottom. I'm surprised Arizona and Nevada beat Idaho – you sure that's right? It explains why so many in New York are moving to Florida. Colorado should be lower, with their wacko leadership.

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DEI killed the CHIPS Act. I remember a Democrat I met was so proud that his party passed the CHIPS Act, and that this would help boost the semiconductor industry in the U.S.  Leave it to the Dems to blow a good deal. 
The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS Act grants to encourage semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. But less than a week later, Intel announced that it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pushed back production at its second Arizona foundry. The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab. 
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Fake Starbucks Opens 50 Branches in China, Wildly Earns 40 Million in Half a Year. Boy, I haven't been to Starbucks that looked likw that in a LONG time. That's how it used to be, and the Chinese have captured the atmosphere. Starbucks has pared down the aesthetic, and now it's just an afterthought installment in Safeway stores. I miss the neighborhood coffee shop with the inviting atmosphere and coffee smells, the conversations, people reading or working on their laptops. Now it's just some GenZer behind the counter, and some cups for sale. Hey, I'd go to a Starper Coffee shop anytime.

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Be careful if you use Google and search for doctors and doctor's offices. You're being tracked, and your browser credentials (and probably your identity) is being sent to data brokers.

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