Sugoi & Yokunai

Why aren't we hearing more about this?  Third world countries are going to find out how bad things are going to get, as China calls in their loans.  Dictators are fleeing with suitcases full of cash, as the country deals with chaos. Anger and disbelief to follow.

Portland is shrinking.  The latest U.S. census figures came out recently.  Almost every major city in Oregon lost people.

Getting real tired of the legal system only around to target non-Democrats.  Laws broken, but when you're a Democrat, the rules bend.  Fines get reduced and criminal investigations get dropped.  Russian collusion hoax cost America so much in wasted money and time, and no one will be prosecuted for it.  Heck, even New Jersey's Gov Phil Murphy says that he'll ignore the Supreme Court if he wants to.  What does Law and Order mean to Democrats anymore? 

Nothing new.  For years, Canada has been relying on U.S. healthcare to help with cases they can't handle. 

How do you reconcile this information?  Fewer workers are commuting to Oregon from Clark County — but their tax payments are up.  Probably due to high rates, although the Oregonian think it's because people got wealthier after the pandemic ended.  I would doubt that's the cause.  Wealthier Portlanders have moved to Clark County.  Amazing to read that 2% of Oregon's tax take comes from Clark County folks. 

Party pooper.  Security holes posed by prompt injection are going to greatly limit applications of current Chat/GPT technologies.  This is until we truly understand what's going on under the hood.  For now, giving Chat access to all your computer files is very, very risky.  There's always someone out there who's smarter than you.

7 ways Multnomah and Portland are wasting your tax dollars

#1. $18,000 of tax dollars to send Multnomah and Portland politicians to Europe for a meeting (Willamette Week 6/30/22).

#2. Multnomah bought 22,700 brand new tents and 69,514 brand new tarps to lavish on the homeless. That is nearly five free tents/tarps per homeless person. (KGW-TV 12/7/22)

#3. Multnomah County gave out $500 cash loaded debit cards to the homeless. No wonder homeless grew 22% in Oregon while it only grew .3% nationwide (OPB 12/24/23).

#4. Portland ended up with a $62 million projected budget surplus in 2021 and $35 million surplus in 2022. Where did this near $100 million tax surplus go? (Oregonian 10/8/21, Willamette Week 5/6/2022).

#5. Portland unloaded millions of city taxpayer dollars in grants only available to private business marijuana shops. This happened as police were defunded, 911 calls hit record delays, street trash was left to expand into mountain-sized problems and pot holes remained unfixed.

#6. Over $85 million of tax dollars and government help for a private (yes, private) luxury Portland hotel that lasted about one year before facing a financial crisis and being bought out (Willamette Week 4/1/20).

#7. Portland gave out $3 million in cash loaded $364 debit cards to random strangers with the promise that they would use it for personal internet expenses. No record of who used it or how it was spent. One person alone took home 6 debit cards. (KGW 10/21/21)

There are two main reasons why creating artificial consciousness, whether deliberately or inadvertently, is a very bad idea. The first is that it may endow AI systems with new powers and capabilities that could wreak havoc if not properly designed and regulated. Ensuring that AI systems act in ways compatible with well-specified human values is hard enough as things are. With conscious AI, it gets a lot more challenging, since these systems will have their own interests rather than just the interests humans give them.

"Many of the tasks in white-collar land will look very different in the next five to 10 years"

After 20 Years as a Prosecutor in Illinois, I Quit.  It's happening.  Oregon is already short of public defenders, and supposedly this is one of the reasons those charged with crimes are set free.

In 2021, the Washington State Supreme Court invalidated the primary criminal drug possession statute in a case called State v. Blake. This decision effectively legalized the possession of hard drugs, including methamphetamines, fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin. The Legislature, at the time, approved a bill to make possession of hard drugs a misdemeanor after two pre-arrest “referrals.” Since 2021, the open use of hard drugs has significantly increased across the state, sparking demands for change from law enforcement, counties, and cities.

During this year’s legislative session, the legislature debated a bill, SB 5536, attempting to rectify the consequences of Blake. …Some Democrats voted against the bill, expressing the opposite view: that punishment for substance abuse is inherently inhumane.

You may have seen in the news that some cities, like the Bellingham City Council, have passed ordinances making public drug use an arrestable offense in response to Blake and growing concerns about drug use and crime in urban areas. If SB 5536 is passed by the full House of Representatives and signed by the governor, cities would be prevented from taking their own steps to address open drug abuse in their streets.

Oregon finally drops the requirements that healthcare workers be vaccinated against SARS-CoV2.  A little late, eh?

When compared to similar data taken from the US and Europe, the Tsimane fare much better, especially in old age. Tsimane brains lose about 2.3 percent of their volume per decade, compared with around 2.8 percent for the Moseten and about 3.5 percent for industrialized populations. For septuagenarians and older, the difference nearly doubled.

Superaging studies also suggest that being social, happy, and exercising your mind all play a role in keeping the brain healthy.

With the support of GPT-4, I feel unstoppable. The overnight surge in productivity is intoxicating, not for making money or starting a business, but for the sheer joy of continuously creating ideas from my mind, which feels like happiness.

Several participants in a study designed to simulate over-the-counter use of Perrigo's drug reported taking dozens or even hundreds more pills than they were dispensed to take. 

"This finding of improbable dosing in this study is really quite extraordinary. This is not something we see in a typical actual use study. And the results have to be incredibly extreme to show up in this kind of a study," the FDA's Theresa Michelle told the panel.

Almost a third of study participants reported taking far more tablets than they were supposed to receive, a result that the FDA worried cast doubt over the validity of all of the results from the study by Perrigo's contractor.