Sugoi & Yokunai

Over 10% of Japan's population is over 80 years, for the first time.  Not good. 

Jens Haaning, a conceptual artist whose work focuses on power and inequality, was commissioned in 2021 by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, northern Denmark, to recreate two earlier works that used scores of banknotes to represent average incomes.

Haaning’s 2007 work, An Average Danish Annual Income, displayed krone notes fixed to canvas in a frame, and a second 2011 work about Austrian incomes used euro bills.

The museum provided about 532,000 krone (£61,500) from its reserves to recreate artworks as well as an artist’s fee of about 40,000 krone. But when staff unpacked the newly delivered works, they found two empty frames with the title Take the Money and Run.

Sorry, this is a BuzzFeed link, but what the hell.  People over 60 share some of the good things about being older.  It's all good if you are still healthy and have taken steps earlier to avoid the avoidable troubles. 

'Dr. Google' meets its match in Dr. ChatGPT'.  Not quite, but a doctor who can use a chat model will be a better diagnostician than one what doesn't.

It’s based solely on what we want in an ideal world and doesn’t appear to address what are the resources we have to accomplish that. I’m very concerned about how Oregon hospitals are going to do this.

It’s not easy. An RN is a highly educated person. It’s not something you can snap your fingers and say, “You’re an RN today.”

Take a regular med-surge floor. Under the bill, there’s a 1:5 ratio. That’s one nurse for every five patients. If you’ve got a med-surge unit of 30 beds, it requires you to have six nurses. If you’ve been doing this long enough, you know that sooner or later one will get sick. Does that mean your 30-bed unit is only a 25-bed unit and what do you tell those patients? The statute is specific in that no nurse can be assigned patients in excess of the ratio, with the exception for critical patients in an ED. That’s not good care management at all. If the patient isn’t critical but you’re one of those five, you’ve got to what, wait in the lobby? Get transferred to a different hospital? You’ve got that kind of real-world issue that isn’t adequately addressed.

Two more bite the dust.  JaCiva bakery and The Pied Cow.  They blame the coronavirus epidemic.  No it wasn't the virus, but government policies that caused the decreased foot traffic.  JaCiva used to make the best pumpkin pie in the city.  No more.

This should be required reading for all young poliical aspirants:

The mere imagining of a better tomorrow, in its view, is sufficient to reform the longest-standing democracy on Earth. In effect, it is a party that seeks to attract support by standing for nothing other than disruption — call it the Seinfeld Party.

This is an extraordinarily dangerous approach in a democracy, where stability and slow, methodical and deliberative decision-making is a virtue. Altering democracy should not be approached like building an app where the primary focus is getting clicks and eyeballs and then figuring out how to monetize it later. This is not Uber upending the cab industry, or Airbnb trying to engineer the way we live and travel. This is our republic.

Trump made it look easy.  It's not.

"CUD was associated with an increased risk of psychotic and nonpsychotic bipolar disorder and unipolar depression."

“The health and safety of our patients, caregivers, and community are our highest priority. As such, we ask that all employees receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine or booster,” said Michael Connors, Providence Public Relations.

However, Providence was quick to point out that this is not a mandate. According to Connors, Providence’s policy diverges from the strict vaccine mandates enforced by state law and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) during the peak of the pandemic.

“This is not the same as the vaccine mandates that we were required to implement by state law and CMS during the pandemic. Caregivers can choose to decline the vaccine. Those who do not wish to receive it simply need to submit a declination form by Nov. 30. They no longer need to request approval for a medical or religious exemption as many of our states and CMS required at the height of COVID,” said Connors.

“All declinations will be automatically accepted. They do not need to be approved. This process is not the same as the medical or religious exemptions that many states and federal regulators required us to review and approve during the pandemic,” he added.

Sanity prevails.  Federal judge blocks Gov Luhan's unconstitutional gun ban. 

Google vs US government trial is underway.  This will be interesting.  Wonder what took them so long?

Related:  Tracking is now baked into Google Chrome browser.  Why do people continue to use this browser? 
Also, Google wants to create a digital watermark to secretly tag images in art.  Many questions about this technology.

Genetically endowed to breath-hold for 13 minutes.  Some residents of the Bajau islands can stay underwater for as long as 13 minutes.  Not sure if it's because of the enlarged spleen, or if having a larger spleen is a byproduct of the mutation.