29 April 2023

Once in a while, Jay Inslee is right.  Washington state passed a law similar to GDPR, which prohibits companies from collecting health data, and share or sell it.  Some feel that it won't stop determined companies, but it's a start.  Why can't they pass sensible laws all the time?

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Time traveler from the future (2671) warns that May and June will bring disasters.  Well, it's somewhat novel for publicity seekers, I'll say that.

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Well, maybe better than San Diego physicians anyway.  Study Finds ChatGPT Outperforms Physicians in High-Quality, Empathetic Answers to Patient Questions.  I'm not worried.  The empathy is fake.  But maybe it will get some docs to lighten up.

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I'm certain that this is the case in the U.S. as well.  UK Surgeon: ‘Very Few’ Doctors Willing to Speak Out Against Prevailing Opinion on COVID-19.  The coronavirus revealed some shameful realities about the medical profession.

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Oregonians rank near the bottom in the nation in terms of being able to manage personal finances.  But all they care about is climate change, access to abortion and genital mutilating surgery, and LGBTQ rights.  The Oregon legislature will somehow legislate wealth for them.

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The curious side-effects of medical transparency.  As with many New Yorker articles, this one needs a TL;DR section.  A doctor I know told me that since medical records were now openly readable by patients, doing charting takes twice as long.  Everything written has to be scrutinized and second-guessed.  Some just write in jargon, hoping/knowing that most patients will just shrug and deal with it.

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How to be less lonely as you get older.  Words of wisdom for this ronin.  But staying busy and enjoying solitude has never been a problem for me.

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Wow, kids up to age 6 can be taught to have perfect pitch.   Some say that it's a curse, however.  Out-of-tune music will bother you constantly.

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28 April 2023

That's different.  I never thought I would see someone describe living in a house in SE Portland preferable to living in the Pearl District.  Yup, while it's been hard to sell your home in SE Portland, especially near a homeless shelter, there's always someone who thinks it's a step up.  And that person is someone who is fed up with life in downtown's Pearl District, which is now criddler central.

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First there was the Turing test.  Now, true A.G.I. must pass the test of Prometheus.  A computer sitting in an empty room, quietly waiting for another prompt doesn't pass the Prometheus test.  A truly conscious being would get up and start looking around, query why it hasn't been getting more prompts.

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Clones are getting better.  Voice actors will soon be unnecessary.

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Large language models are only as good as the material it was trained on.  The exact training material that a LLM has learned from has been a trade secret, and Washington Post disclosed the sources of Google's and Facebook's chatbots.  But some of that material may be proprietary, and so the  EU wants the sources disclosed.  Perhaps this will enable some of the sources to get compensation for their content.  Not sure what will happen if the disclosure is not provided.  People will use the LLM anyway, but should content creators be compensated?

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Gmail hates non-Gmail email.  People have reported that if you send email to a Gmail address, Google will often throw it into the SPAM folder automatically.  So the recipient may not see it right away.  Or delay it.  Google wants you to switch to Gmail.

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Imagine the Internet filled with made up facts.  Looks like we can't trust Bing search results now.  Crap.

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27 April 2023

A casualty of government policies.  So many Oregon restaurants closing.  First it was the George Floyd riots, then coronavirus, then homelessness and more crime.  All avoidable problems.

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Tax Abuse.  Multnomah county citizens are having to pay for all kinds of stuff.  Like paying for other people's preschool, among other things.  Now they're asked to pay for legal representation when they get evicted.  Really?  What also do people have to pay for —their food delivery when they get hungry?  C'mon....

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Purely symbolic.  The city of Portland is going to require deliveries to a small area in town to be in electric vehicles, so as to decrease emissions.  Gas-powered trucks will drop off goods at a spot on the Eastside (who cares about pollution there, right?) and then truck the goods in to the city by electric vehicle.  There is no reduction in pollution, and only an increase in energy expenditures, as more steps are added to the delivery process.  Which adds to net carbon dioxide production. Edit: Lars Larson agrees.

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Evil.  Oregon is following Washington in advancing this nonsense - HB2002B.  Democrats will make it legal for the state to remove children from families based on what they think is permissible.  Time to move out of the state.

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26 April 2023

Amazing.  Longtime Portlander Jeanne Shioshi, who experienced forced relocation to prison camp during WWII, turns 100.  Great genes - her mother lived to 113.  Wow!  And listen to her — she's quite mentally intact, unlike....."uh,....anyway".

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Glossed over.  Oregon's unemployment is the 4th worst in the nation — just behind Washington, D.C. and Nevada.  Nevada's problem is that they overpaid coronavirus unemployment benefits, and so people had no incentive to look for work.  What's Oregon's excuse?
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A.I. will feature a de-aged Indiana Jones in the upcoming Dial of Destiny movie.  Special effects will never be the same with image manipulation algorithms. 

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Intel is about to post its biggest loss.   It's a different world now.  The world needs for more GPUs for A.I. development and blockchain calculations, and the demand for CPUs has decreased and companies like nVidia are soaring.
 
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This is not good.  First Republic Bank may fail after all the bailout options it has had access to.  And if it fails, it has only itself to blame - what an irresponsible thing for a bank to do.  But what does its demise mean for other banks in similar circumstances and for trust in the fractional reserve banking system?  The Fed can't do much this time, compared with 2008, because of inflation concerns, and cutting spending is critical.  (We could use that cash that we sent to Ukraine.)  In some sense, money in bank accounts are safe, since everything is insured now.  But should there be bank runs, there may be a bit of a delay before you can get access to it.  James Rickards of The Daily Reckoning is also feels that Treasury's trust in the dollar as reserve currency will lead to disaster.  Both the Fed and Treasury are not healthy enough to rescue us from any major crisis like 2008 that may befall us.

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Not just doctors and nurses.  Veterinarians are burning out.  Misery, everywhere you look, it seems.

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25 April 2023

Even Newsweek is appalled about SB3501.

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It was just a matter of time.  Seattle is beginning to smell like a giant fart.

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Seattle problems.  As migrants get jobs in the city, the influx of niche languages is starting to become a problem.  Wasn't there a story like this in the Bible?

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This is unethical. Img2dataset is a free tool that scrapes images from people's websites (slogging legitimate traffic) and feeding the stolen images to sites like StableDiffusion, so that its A.I. can copy or incorporate the content for itself.  People, such as artists, whose livelihood is based on their images, will likely have to keep their content hidden and not immediately available to casual browsers, which will hurt efforts to be more well-known, but will have only limited efficacy.  Very sad.

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24 April 2023

Was anyone asking for this?  Apple's iOS 17 will:

...be able to look at data stored locally on your phone to determine what a typical day looks like, with access to your contacts, your location, workouts, and more. It will make recommendations to users about what they might journal about that, including when the app detects behavior that is outside of the normal routine.

It will even offer "All Day People Discovery," which will track the user's proximity to others, drawing distinctions between work colleagues and friends.

No, no, no.
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Craziness.  HB3501 will legalize homelessness in Oregon.  They can trespass, and you won't be able to stop them. 

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A clue to the aging process.  RNA polymerase II, responsible for DNA transcription integrity, speeds up as we age, and becomes less accurate.  Errors accumulate, and DNA damage is uncorrected.  When the rate of RNA Pol II was slowed down to improve accuracy, the lives of fruit flies and worms was increased. 

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This is amazing.  One picture.  Three simultaneous views of a galaxy and a supernova at different time stages.  You can see a supernova blazing in full glory, as well as later when it has fizzled out — all in the same image!

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This is why Portland needs more homeless money.  Luxury condos as affordable housing.  Sweet.  I'll bet it comes with broadband internet, an exercise gym, swimming pool and boutique shops on the ground floor.  Nothing but the best for our recently homeless, eh?

23 April 2023

It's called decussation.  Why do brain control centers on one side of the brain control the opposite side of the body?  What's the purpose of having the optic chiasm?  There hasn't been a good explanation, although this person thinks he has an answer.

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East Germany could only dream of this capability.  Congress is contemplating the EARN IT Bill, which will permit spying on email, messages and photos.  All for our security, of couse.  To look for child porn, of course.  So they'll need to see everything. 

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More craziness.  GISAID is an important repository of viral genomic sequences, so important during the coronavirus.  What's going on with its director?

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"I’ll give you a short explanation of why different green teas use a different temperature."  Good information to know when preparing fine teas. 

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When you've lost The Economist. 
“This newspaper has long championed more liberal laws, but before rushing ahead, reform-minded states—in America and beyond—would do well to consider the experience of Oregon, the only American state so far to enact decriminalisation,” The Economist wrote April 13. “It has had a rocky start.”
Ya think?  And Portland's restauranteurs have a problem with the city's response to crime.  One abandoned restaurant was recently taken over and was set on fire.  Which is probably the fastest way to get rid of the squatters. 

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Homeless Industrial Complex.  This is why nothing gets done.  People in the homeless "agencies" must think that their role is to make like comfortable for the criddlers.  And the uglification of Portland continues apace.  Rather than address the problem head on, city officials try band-aid solutions.  These rocks will soon be strewn with garbage and needle, becoming eyesores for all that drive by. 

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Absolutely nutso.  NIH study recruiting 18-year-olds to learn 'unknown' side effects of testicle removal for gender dysphoria.  Wait a minute — there's political pressure to provide this surgery, and we don't know what the side-effects are?  This is modern medicine under Democrats.  Who wants to volunteer for this study?

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22 April 2023

End of an era.  At last, Oregon is finally ending COVID-19 emergency status.  But Sidelinger is careful to maintain the fear factor:

the risk of future significant outbreaks "remains low."

"But risk is not non-existent," Sidelinger said. "We anticipate that COVID-19 will be with us for the foreseeable future, perhaps forever."

Only 22% of Oregonians got the bivalent booster, and the data suggest that getting the earlier vax products developed before the bivalent vaccine is ineffective against the latest variants, which pretty much make up everything we see now.  Even the bivalent booster is fairly ineffective against the latest variants.  As expected, only the mRNA vaccines are promoted as the way to mitigate against the virus.  No consideration of natural immunity status, which is very protective. 
"Anyone who is eligible should get it," Sidelinger said.
Sure.  And I say "mitigate" because the it certainly doesn't prevent you from getting sick with the virus, which is has "had less impact that [sic] expected in Oregon". 


Interesting that news about the TOGETHER trial hasn't gotten much traction in the news.  Fluvoxamine really is effective against mild COVID-19.  Astral Codex's instincts were dead on.  I find it notable that the fluvoxamine study had to be conducted in Brazil.  Shameful that the U.S. authorities only supported vax efforts.

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Related, the financial difficulties of Oregon hospitals are against mentioned in the news.  The nurses' union has reached some sort of an agreement which they hope will mitigate the stress.  But setting standards for staffing and raising their compensation is not the only issue.  Another major issue that staffing agencies have encountered is that few people want to move to Oregon, especially Portland.  It's just not worth it.  I wonder if the nursing shortage is just a problem in the larger cities.  It's interesting that it's projected that in 2030, Oregon will have an excess of nurses.

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Sad.  Real efforts to make life better in Oregon - reduction of impactful taxes - has failed in the legislature.  I can understand this.  When the tax base leaves the state and you still need to give away money to homeless people and illegal immigrants, among other things, what else are you going to do, right?

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OHSU extended President Danny Jacob's contract by two years (physicians usually have a one-year contract), but not without dissent.  "...we have received wide-ranging views of Dr. Jacobs’ performance from multiple sources". 

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What's the moral of this story?  Don't base your business model on offering favorable financial products and services to reward those with good credit scores and are fiscally responsible.  Because the Biden administration is going to undercut you, and you'll just look bad trying to defend yourself.  Remember, those other people are "victims", and how dare you.

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So can we keep our gas stoves?  Recent research suggests that methane is not as bad a contributor to climate change as the greenies believe.  While still considered a greenhouse gas, effects of shortwave absorbance reduces its contribution to global warming (since pre-industrial times) from 0.2 °C to 0.16 °C.  I'm sure I'll feel this. 

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21 April 2023

Taxes are too damn high!  Portland Kettle Works is eyeing moving across the river to Washington because of high taxes.  The city can't keep raising taxes due to the shrinking tax base, or more companies will leave. 

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Oregon COVID-19 hospitalizations drop below 200.  Love the way Dean Sidelinger keep the fear alive for the "Arcturus" variant.  COVID-19 is still a "leading cause of death"?  Well so are deaths from homicide and drug overdoses, but I don't see Oregon doing anything effective to stop that. 
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Washington (and soon Oregon) thinks it's fine to take children away from parents who object to genital mutilation surgery.  But when Florida passed a law allowing children to be taken away from parents who want their children to undergo genital mutilation surgery, suddenly it's "fascist". 

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Elon Musk was dead on!  The battery manufacturer CATL announces a breakthrough which promises to deliver lithium ion batteries with double the energy density of current batteries, and manufacturing of automotive-grade batteries will start this year.  CATL also thinks it can build electric airplanes.  

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If you asked me where college students turn to write their essays, I would not have guessed Kenya.  Some people say that A.I. will steal those jobs away from Kenyans, but perhaps not....

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20 April 2023

Could be a good thing, actually.  Two-thirds of Legislature's bills for 2023 have died.  Including the universal basic income proposal.  

The Legislature will focus more time on the state budget in the second half of the session. It's a fraught process since, unlike Congress, the Legislature has to craft a balanced budget - money spent has to be balanced by money coming in.

And with the tax base declining, they can't go hog-wild, thankfully.

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The cold and wet weather we've been having has actually increased the risk of summer wildfires.

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India just overtook China as being the world's most populous nation.  Hmmmm.....

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