2 August 2023

Far-reaching, I'd say.  Meta breaks down and hands over data disclosing identity of a user who thought he/she was anonymous.  This actually may be a good thing.  As sage Mike Tyson said:  ""Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it."  He's right, you know.

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The Ultra-rich are staying in California.  "...some of her friends have come to regret leaving the area".  On the face of it, you might ask why.  Some, like those in the UC system have exorbitant compensation deals that they would never be able to get anywhere else.  Other ultra-rich have influence over the government.  Yeah, I can understand why some ultra-rich would not want to leave.  As long as there is an adequate supply of poors to service them, why leave?

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We look like our names.  Heh.  Gotta love science.

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Marijuana addiction is real.  What's out there ain't your grandfather's Maui Wowee.  I was trained to think that cannabis was safer than alcohol.  Maybe in one way.  But it has its own dangers.  Oregon's downfall started the year they legalized this drug.

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Local hospitals still facing financial headwinds.  It's more than the vax.  It's that no one wants to move to Portland (or even Oregon) as it has a reputation now.  And it's still dangerous to live in the city.  And we'll let your kids transition and not tell you.  And we have a surgeon ready to cut off their genitals.  We can't counter this with the wealth and culture advantages that the Bay Area or Seattle have, that might make some people look the other way.  People are drugged out, on disability and therefore more of them are on Medicaid which reimburses poorly.  Hospital leadership is lefty and subscribe to the latest progressive agenda.  Only two genders?  Wrong pronoun?  You could get reprimanded and disciplined.  Why not just work in a different state?
This is why some people are giving up on hiring workers and using robots, like this restaurant in Estacada.

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America's Fitch rating dropped, and yet Biden still wants to add to inflation by forgiving student loans.  Geez, guy, give it up already.  The people knowing took the deal.  Too bad no one wants to buy what they have to sell. 

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Yes!  Pfizer profits plummet as vax sales evaoprate.  However, like at Anheuser-Busch, nothing will happen to the guy at the top. 

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Why not?  Japan is using Meta to get the hikkikomoris back into society.  They're already online anyway, right?

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Program director at Scripps gets Long Covid and decries the lack of urgency in finding better ways to treat it.  Well this important and revealing study came out, but there's not been much news about it.  Is it really Long-Covid?  Or did the vax have something to do with it?  All but one of these study subjects got jabbed.  But what's the enthusiasm for a jabbed scientist to investigate why the mRNA persists for many months?

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Doctor gets knocked unconscious near Providence Park.  Random dude comes out of nowhere, decks her, then runs.  This is all too common, and it's not just happening to people living near encampments. This lady's lucky.  Something worse would likely have happened to her if her boyfriend were not with her.
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1 August 2023

Portland makes national news again - for the same reasonThe city's getting such publicity, this time in the New York Times.  The problem is that none of it is good.  Takeaway quotes:

Come to Portland, his sister said. It’s green and beautiful, people are friendly and there are plenty of jobs.

Mr. Hollenbeck, who is a believer in progressive approaches, said the city can only truly solve the problem by providing more affordable housing and mental health services.

Just as Portland has attracted college-educated transplants, it has also offered respite to people from around the country who are living on the margins.

The couple had hoped to find a sense of community in the encampments.  She was stabbed six times in the torso and hands, according to the police report, and was “fainting” shortly after officers arrived on the scene.  They planned to head back to Tennessee last month. Portland “is definitely not what I expected,” Irida said.

Let's just face the cold hard facts:  If you have mental issues, you should just stay away from Portland.  The city has enough already, and they aren't going to help you.  You come to Portland to get robbed or stabbed, shot or beaten, raped or imprisoned. 

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No amount of money is enticing teachers and superintendents to stay in Oregon.  Could it be the "progressive values"?

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31 July 2023

Time wasters.  As this ronin gets older, he has less time for B.S. like this.  You'll know it when you see it.

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Speaking of time wasters.  Apparently some Oregon Dems were thinking we needed a state bank.  Good grief.  Glad some saner minds prevailed.

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Portland makes national news again.  Who would want to come to Portland?  Criddlers from nearby homeless camps are ready to assault you. 

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K-mart fire lawsuits begin.  Seems like low-hanging fruit to me.  Maybe this is what it will take to get people off their butts.

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Over at Portland Dissent, they think this issue is going to be big.  Maybe Kotek won't be able to stay in office.  If so, our new guv could be Sec State Lavonne Griffin-Valade.  There's not much about her politics that I can read.  We'll have to see how this plays out.

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Well, well.  Fauci may not be able to enjoy his retirement after all.  Glad to see some action being taken. 

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The Socio Political Demography of Happiness.  Conservatives are happier than liberals.  That's obvious.  Liberals are always angry.  Outraged.  Aggrieved.  Affronted.  Never grateful for anything.  Who could stay happy?

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Trying to run a business in a blue city (like Seattle) is always risky.  This landlord really had bad luck.  If you're a landlord in Seattle, do something about it – if you can.  Now that this is out, it may be too late.  People now know they can stay rent-free in your property.

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SickBiden administration finds out minority kids like Japanese manga.  So what do they do?  Create some American manga, fulls of LGBT and transgender material, genital-focused stories, disability kink.  R-rated and X-rated stuff, of course.  Stay out of our art-form!  Absolutely disgusting.

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Why is the movie titled Blade Runner?  I always thought it was in Philip Dick's book.  Well it wasn't.  Here's the story.

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30 July 2023

I've occasionally wondered about this myself“Why were some periods and places (in history) so astonishingly more productive than the rest?”  Whatever it was, I am doubtful that the conditions can be readily re-created.  These events just happen organically.  Being large-scale stupid is far easier, and in fact, we're living in those conditions right now.

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This is cool. NASA will be launching their own streaming service, NASA+, so people can watch space events.

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Yokunai, desuOlder Japanese men with no sexual interest in women at risk of earlier death.  Perhaps it's depression.  Maybe it's an epiphenomenon - an underlying sign of something that causes both events.  Whatever it is, libido deficiency seems to be a real problem in Japan.  And those with some libido are pursuing A.I. girlfriends.  Unhealthy. 

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The Oregon legislature passes laws to address the affordable housing shortage, apparently thinking that it's going to solve homelessness. The West Coast doesn't really have an affordable housing shortage so much as it has an illegal camping out on the streets problem.  These are different.  Many of the illegal campers aren't interested in a house.  They just want to be left alone to do drugs and be supported by the government, with free money and drug supplies (which is only too easily being supplied).  This is why things aren't getting better. This is a UK-based report but I predict we'll see more of it here in the blue cities. 

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29 July 2023

Yamanaka factors.  Scientists make progress in reversing aging - not just halting it.  Great news.

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An old antihistamine can reverse multiple sclerosis?  The answer has been around all along?

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Very sad.  The Cochrane UK lost its NIH funding, and so only has enough to operate until March 2024.  The Cochrane Database has been a great way to evaluate science progress.  This ronin has used it now and then.  They will try to find alternate funding in the meantime, but if they aren't successful, they'll have to shut down.  Everyone's having to tighten their belts.  (Except Zelensky, maybe.)

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 Cigna sued over algorithm used to deny coverage for treatments, even without reading clinical notes.
alleges the company systematically rejects claims in a matter of seconds, thanks to an algorithmic system put in place to help automate the process....While medical doctors signed off on the denials, the system didn’t require them to open patient medical records for the review.
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This is major and getting very little attention.  A paper shows that in healthcare workers getting their booster COVID-19 jab, the incidence of myocarditis is far more common that appreciated – seen in 3.7% of women and 0.8% of men.  More in women than men, opposite of what the adolescent data had suggested.  They investigators were comforted that no cardiac events happened in the ensuing 30 days, but who knows?  Why risk this for something as mild as the common cold now?

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Portland Public Schools still focusing on fixing the numbers so that a higher graduation rate is seen as an accomplishment.  But
“historically underserved” students continue to lag about 40% behind white students in English Language Arts (ELA) and math
So what will they do?  What can they do?  Can anything be done?
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Sounds like bad science.  Scientists figure out how to make hangover end more quickly by adding FGF21 (fibroblast growth factor-21) to synthetic alcohol.  Adding hormones?  Just to shorten a hangover?  Why not just not abuse alcohol?  No thanks.

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This is nuts.  Voter initiatives are NOT tested for legality before being put on the ballot.  And so we waste time and money with court challenges.  So dumb.

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28 July 2023

Not making the same mistake.  Beaverton School District will retain armed guards

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Eugene withdraws ban on natural gas stoves.  Sanity prevails yet again. 

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No ambulances in Portland.  So an injured federal officer had to be taken to the hospital by his colleagues.  Welcome to Portland, where infrastructure is broken. 😳

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Oregon is the 8th most expensive state in the nation.  Why is that?  We're just Oregon, not New York or Hawaii.  Why can Idaho keep costs down and we can't?  Oh yeah, Democrats are in charge, that's why.

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Yup, Worldcoin is worse than it looks.  Exploitation of the poor, on top of that.  The techies will do anything to get rich.   And they like it when most of the public are too ignorant to know the dangers.

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ChatGPT broke the Turing test.  It was time to develop a better test anyway.  Alan Turing probably didn't think a machine could get close to doing what it's doing today, without being really human.  Machines need to initial conversation and human interaction, it has to have a memory that lasts more than several days, and it needs to have a working world model, where it can convey understanding of how physics determines how objects in the world interact and behave.  And it has to react to external events with emotional context. 

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An example of insanity from Washington state:
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26 July 2023

How to write email with military precision. This is not for everyone.  Apply the Bruce Lee principle here.

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SeattleProgress. Very interesting map of all the new developments around Seattle.  I'll go back to this time and again.

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Reddit is erasing all the comments made prior to January 2023.  What a waste.  All that treasure trove of knowledge.  Poof.  All gone.

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Quirky flaw in ChatGPTSome simple phrases can bring it down.

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Is this for real?  The first ambient room temperature superconductorBeen fooled before, right?
Edit: More info at phys.org.

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Do you have to ask?  Was I Right to Call the Cops on a Black Man Breaking Into a Car?  In a blue city, such as Portland or Seattle, yeah, you should think hard about it.  But in a small town?  Sure.

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The Japanese population continues to decline.  Lots of reasons for this, but the men are not as manly as in the past.  No Toshiro Mifunes anymore.  But lots of otakus. 

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Here's the rub about climate change.  John Kerry is so arrogant telling other countries that they must cut back their CO2 emissions, essentially stalling their economic growth, just so he can look good back in the U.S.  Meanwhile, Kerry flies private planes and lives large.

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A lot of folks are deriding Elon Musk for letting Twitter fail, but few talk about The Washington Post, which is also experiencing spectacular declineGo woke, go broke.

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Those walkout Oregon GOP senators are planning to run again.  That's great.  Why should only Dems get to break Oregon's laws?

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We Asked Elected Officials to Explain What They’re Doing About the Social Cost of Fentanyl in Downtown Portland.  Of course, it was all excuses.  I know what I would do for starters – clean slate.  That would be a great move.

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25 July 2023

Oregon received $688 million to expand broadband in rural communities.  Maybe the cheapest and quickest solution would be to just set up Starlink connections for those interested, they would probably be against this because it would be supporting Elon Musk. 

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Some geeks are upset that the major tech companies will impose attestation token requirements on hardware in order to provide zero-knowledge proof that a legitimate entity is making an http request.  Because there are bots and fraud, and CAPTCHA is getting in people's way.  The Web Environment Integrity initiative was started by Google (of course) and they have their best interest at heart, right?  Bad players making life difficult for everyone.  Why does this remind me of Portland?

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24 July 2023

Another scam?  Or investment opportunity?  Sam Altman launched WorldCoin in October 2021, which is part cryptocurrency (based on Etherium 2) but also a worldwide ID system, to identify you as a unique human, based on retinal scan.  I read their FAQ, and am still not convinced that it will take off.  It appears that this isn't available in the U.S. anyway.  And then I read that Sam Bankman-Fried is a founding investor, and yeah, I think I'm going to hold off (why isn't that guy in jail anyway?).

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How to navigate medical privacy in today's landscape.  I came looking for tips, but just got discouraged.  You may try to maintain privacy, but once you release any confidential information, it's passed on everywhere, and it's no longer in your control.  I think what we need to have is a system of tokens, where you control what information is accessible.  A company needs to be created that issues tokens to healthcare systems that is in control by the patient.  This token can be revoked.  Sure, it's a new inconvenience for doctors, but things are different now.  No longer are your medical secrets just between you and your physician.  That information is networked, and all healthcare systems linked to the doctor's office can access that information now.  No more secrets, despite whatever HIPAA says. 

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Bruce Lee and me.  A nice excerpt from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's biography.  Can't believe it's been that long. 

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The Three Things exercise.  A novel way of making sure you listen to that math lecture. 

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