Sugoi & Yokunai

Synthetic clincal data is increasingly being used because it is simpler to generate than getting real clinical data. And oversight boards think it's safe because it doesn't use real PHI, and therefore ethics review is not necessary. But is that really true? It may be possible that traceable data can be found if the synthesis is not done properly.

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India's tech economy is being gutted, due to AI replacing lower-tier jobs. The dreams of many are evaporating. This will impact America's tech industry as well, since it has depended on the availability of such cheap outsourceable labor. Bad timing, bros. 

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As I predicted, the South Koreans are halting U.S. investments as a result of ICE wrongfully raiding the Georgia Hyundai plant, suspecting illegals. The State department apologized but the damage has been done.

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Japan has more centenarians than ever before. Or do they?  Could it also be bad recordkeeping?

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Colleges are about to see a big drop in enrollment. Probably just as well. College is no longer the "good investment" it used to be. A lot of kids seem to be just becoming activists and little else. And going into massive debt, because no one wants to pay for what they have to offer.

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Why is Taiwan the poorest of developed countries? Reminds me of India. So many brainy people working themselves to death. Yet they have very few billionaires. And the country has that bleak urban vibe. Somebody is getting rich, that's for sure. That's why it costs so much to live there. But it ain't the vast majority of workers. And fertility is very low, understandably.

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California is going to implement age verification.  All the big tech companies are in support. But it sounds weak and easily bypassable. 

It also doesn’t mandate photo ID uploads — a controversial feature that sparked outrage from privacy advocates when the United Kingdom implemented age-gating rules earlier this summer. Instead, Wicks’ bill asks parents to input their kids’ ages when setting up a smartphone, tablet or laptop; groups users into one of four age brackets; and sends their age info to apps like Facebook and Instagram.

Is that it?

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Museum of Failure. A place to remember past tech failures. A lot of them anyway.

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Scientists Have Summoned a Massless Demon Particle. Popular Mechanics is different from when I grew up. They should rename if Popular Quantum Mechanics.

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Seattle is losing their Blue Ribbon Program. The program reward schools "that have successfully narrowed academic gaps between student groups." Of course, Seattle's strategy has been to get rid of gifted students' programs and promote the lowest quintile. But it's so easy to game the system. Narrowing gaps shouldn't have been the goal. How about just raising everybody?

And in Portland, the Reynolds School District is facing tough times. Lots of layoffs, while senior employees get raises. That's the public sector!

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Marques Brownlee reviews the Air Pods Pro 3. He likes it. On my shopping list. 

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The West Coast Health Alliance, formed to be the vaccine voice of the western Blue states, looks like it might be led by Dean Sidelinger, the bow-tied dude that directed Oregon's insane COVID-19 policy. I had thought he was gone for good, but like a bad penny, he's turned up again. So are we going to have to mask up again, Dean? Six-feet distancing? Plexiglas shields? Stickers on the floor? Fire doctors and nurses who won't get boosters?

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Did NASA scientists finally find life on Mars? Maybe.

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Knowing less about AI makes users more likely to accept it in their lives. 

On the other hand, those with less understanding may see AI as magical and awe inspiring. We suggest this sense of magic makes them more open to using AI tools.

When it comes to tasks that don’t evoke the same sense of human-like qualities – such as analysing test results – the pattern flips. People with higher AI literacy are more receptive to these uses because they focus on AI’s efficiency, rather than any “magical” qualities.

People are still nervous that the AI hype bubble will burst. Star Trek featured episodes where a civilization finds that their magical "gods" were just advanced technology. But we never saw the aftermath of what happens next.

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Trump officials will reveal connections between the COVID vax and child & infant deaths.  Aaron Siri and others have already done some of that. Slowly, people will hear the truth at last, although it's 2025 and this should have happened in 2022.

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Telepathy is a thing now.  The article doesn't say explicitly but I bet the system is based on machine learning of brain waves and words and phrases. Much like speech recognition. So yes, it will need to be fine-tuned for every individual. That might make it too impractical for off-the-shelf use.

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Polylaminin can help heal spinal cord injuries, and restore motor function. This paper is a year old, and I've heard nothing more. Plus, it comes from Brazil. So who knows?

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This is the best opinion I've heard regarding all the people fired because of their anti-Charlie Kirk postings.

Download NJ4f-54vwQqYdIt4.mp4

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The Portland Trailblazers are being sold to the Tom Dundon and the Panda Express founders.  Tom Dundon owns the NHL team Carolina Hurricanes and Panda is based in Rosemead, California. So there's no guarantee that the team stays in Portland.

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Oregon's mass layoffs are now comparable to what was seen during the Great Recession. Except this time, there won't be inflation-generating "stimulus" money, which created a fake sense that everything was OK. And I'm sure since the Charlie Kirk affair, there are even more layoffs and firings.

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Obamacare always depended on subsidies to survive.  And now that those subsidies are going away, Obamacare will probably collapse. It needs to replaced by a more sustainable market-driven model.

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Oregon is hiding the truth about gender-mutilating surgery. 

Barbaric.  What ghouls.

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Sad. Geedge Networks is a Chinese company trying to export the Great Firewall to other countries.

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Boy, this guy is showing how when crazy TikTok users post Charlie Kirk sentiment on that platform, it's not difficult to find out where they are.  People think they can post anonymously, but in actuality TikTok collects tons of identifying data, and a site on the Dark Web exposes all that information for hackers to utilize. This is how many of them are getting exposed and reported to their employers. He's collected a lot of scalps so far.

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Scientists unveil a rubber band that generates electricity from body heat. Paper is here. Apparently there is enough temperature difference from body heat to generate useful electricity.  Still seems belief-defying.

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Watch out when riding e-bikes. They are prone to serious injury. It seems people go too fast riding them.

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Failed Machine Learning.  A collection of all the ways AI has failed. Some are funny:

Many have to do with racial bias. Well, it is supervised learning, you know.

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Transformers are the engine of LLMs, but they suffer from that fact that training time increases quadratically with the data size. This is not scalable forever.  So people are looking at other techniques, and one such technique is Low-Rank Attention. It's based on looking at lower resolution versions of the training data. Supposedly, it's "good enough" for most purposes.

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Geoffrey Hinton says that his girlfriend broke with him using AI. First of all, I'm impressed that Geoff had a girlfriend at his age. 

"She got ChatGPT to tell me what a rat I was," he told the newspaper. "She got the chatbot to explain how awful my behaviour was and gave it to me."

"I didn’t think I had been a rat, so it didn’t make me feel too bad," he added, in his own defense.

You deserve better, Geoff.

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Portlanders wasted a lot of money on failed hotel efforts. And now Portland wants to build the James Beard Market. Fix the city first, Portland.

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A Redditor is unhappy that the Safeway in the Rainier district locks up the ice cream, now. I'm sure, being a Redditor, that you voted in support of this. 

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Another Redditor wonders why gas prices increased to much this weekend in Washington. That person suspected that it was the carbon tax that voters supported. Another Redditor was quick to point to an article that blamed it on a shortage of refineries and pipeline issues. But if you read down in the article, it says:

And environmental programs in this region add to the cost of production, storage and distribution.

Yeah, about those "environmental programs". Like the one causing Phillips 66 to shut down their refinery because it no longer made sense to stay open. That special tax that was imposed on them.  Yeah, why is it that:

It's no coincidence.

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Nice tornado video. This shows how a rope tornado being born. I love tornado videos.

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Albania has appointed an AI minister, called Diella. Supposedly to root out corruption. This is not the way. People really need to learn about AI badly. This is not going to stop corruption. You don't put some random LLM in charge.

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Seattle-area inflation rises again in line with national rate. No, it's not tariffs. It's all those taxes and fees. Plus the high minimum wage and energy being so expensive. Journalists are so dumb these days.

Here's an example: West Seattle light rail costs soar again. Why so? It's not the tariffs. It's because Seattle, like other Blue cities, just can't seem to build things effectively. Everything takes much longer and is more expensive. And these days you can't even be sure about the laborers.

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How new loan caps could destroy diversity in medical education. I think we already have too much diversity in medicine. It has over-diversified and needs to be dialed back. A lot.

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VPN vs browser fingerprinting. Good review. For most people, this doesn't matter, but sometimes it does.

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Seattle tried to save the closure of 4 Fred Meyer stores. Didn't work. It's going to happen. Because Seattle is Seattle, that's why. And it's not the tariffs.

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NASA bars Chinese citizens from its facilities, networks, even Zoom calls. Race-based exclusions. Nice going, Chinese immigrants – you created this mess. A few bad eggs, and now, no one trusts you. And you make ALL Chinese look suspect now.

Here's another example: DOJ Charging Two Men With Pumping Up Chinese Company’s US Shares.

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Study Finds Male and Female Economists See the Economy Differently.  Wow, men and women think differently. Who knew. And this is no surprise:

Right-leaning female economists, for example, were more likely than their male peers to question orthodox ideas and emphasize equality and inclusion. Javdani’s data suggests that as economists shift right politically, men abandon progressive views more quickly than women do. 

It's not just economists. Those in leadership positions, too. And "orthodox" ideas is code for "ideas that have withstood the test of time".

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Microsoft doesn't want to depend just on OpenAI. They are also buying from Anthropic. Of course, they wouldn't buy from Google or Meta, and Grok is too flaky.  And here's an article that shows how Anthropic's models manage memory differently than OpenAI's models. 

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Disgusting. Verizon thought that selling their customers' location data was legal. They were wrong. Glad they're paying a fine. 

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The Rumpelstiltskin effect:  Just knowing what your diagnosis is provides some decrease in anxiety. Knowing what you are dealing with.

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This guy is running a search engine in his laundry room. His search engine returns results, but I haven't tested it rigorously to know how good it is. It did pick up this blog in the fourth position, which even Google struggles to do, so I think it's not bad. But when I saw that he uses AI for his results, I'm staying away. There are no details as to how he uses AI. Does he use an open source model, or does he just throw a wrapper around a foundational LLM? LLMs can pick up all sorts of information in the input, and I'd rather stay away.

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Someone thinks like I do. Apple has run out of ideas. Tim Cook only knows how to make thinner phones. This one will probably bend in someone's pocket. And the screen will crack. There's not much in the phone that makes it worth the upgrade.

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Someone coded a voice transcription app that supposedly is speedy and accurate. What attracts me is that it is pretty inexpensive at $20, and doesn't require a subscription like so much other software. That's not too bad.

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The mainstream media is waking up to the fact that to get news on the Charlie Kirk assassination, people went to social media instead of places like CNN, which used to be the place to go to get the latest. They aren't the gatekeeper anymore. We can get information much faster (and see the raw content, uncensored). And many people (mainly teachers, nurses and Democrat politicians) are spouting hateful opinions on social media, instead of keeping their opinions to themselves. And someone is collecting them all for posterity. The Internet can be forever. And people are getting fired for posting their hate. It's happening. 

There are some pretty clear shots of the alleged shooter. If they could get Luigi Mangione, they can get this guy.

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Have you heard of the Great Canadian Treasure Hunt? It's only until December 2026, and then the prize expires. This would be fun for a bunch of MIT kids. 

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OHSU has structural money problems. And of course, the nurses' union leader doesn't believe a word. There's some negotiations going on and they think that this is just to lower the union's expectations. Whatever. They can't touch the Knight money – it's a pledge not a donation (yet).

And Portland's ambulance quality is deteriorating. Don't get sick in Portland, man. 

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Well that sucks. In the last year, Oregon gained government workers and lost manufacturing jobs.  And government workers don't produce money. They just spend it.

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Signs of decline. The Pearl District loses a wine tasting bar, which gets turned into a homeless shelter. Owner looks to sell. They really ought to rename Pearl District, which it got during the dotcom boom. It's no longer the pearl of the city. 

And Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington is permanently closing due to lack of funding. Man, even the rich guys can't maintain their city. Maybe that can be a homeless shelter, too. Make a deal with City of Seattle.

And garbage overflow at a Home Forward property frustrates Southwest Portland neighborhood. Garbage is what Portland seems to produce in abundance. 

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A Portland program created to help youths find jobs is closing. Oh well, there aren't any jobs to find anyway, so it probably doesn't matter.

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CVS reverses course: won't give COVID-19 vaccines without a prescription now. This is good. I never understood why people could just get this without a prescription. This was another attempt at the ultimate goal – getting everyone jabbed. Vaccines should be given by prescription only, so it's administered properly. In 2025, I would venture to say that almost no one needs a COVID-19 vaccination, and no one needs the mRNA vaccine, which should be taken off the market. Get Novavax if you have to have it.

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Today, the BLS came out with the worst jobs report revision in history.  911,000 jobs were revised downward since last year. What happened? First of all, can we really believe what the jobs number were last year? I don't think Biden's numbers were credible at all. I expected the jobs numbers to go down, since we're seeing all the illegals leave the country and a lot of excess government employees lost their jobs. Plus, all the Blue states saw job loss (like Oregon) because their economies suck. So this wasn't all a surprise. The tariffs are not likely the cause of this. But the Fed could make things better by lowering interest rates. Not sure what Powell is waiting for.

And a leading economic observer thinks Oregon is "off-course" I knew that. 

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Well, Apple debuted the iPhone 17 today. Looks a lot like all the other iPhones. This one won't stand out. Tim Cook went back to his thinner strategy. Maybe we'll get some new emojis, too. Battery life is better than the iPhone 15 (but what about the 16)? The camera still sticks out, and even more so, since the phone is thinner. There's nothing really compelling for me. I might get the Air Pods Pro 3, though. I could use better battery life. The current one is just too short.  Then I read that AirPods 3 isn't going to be that much better than Air Pods 2. Well, crap. 

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Top Harvard mathematicians leaves for China. Harvard, like UCLA, would rather lose its brain power than just commit to being non-discriminatory, non-antisemitic and protect its students from disruptive protestors.  But nooooo – Trump is being "authoritarian!" He's trampling on "academic freedom!"  He can't dictate to universities what they should do!  Terry Tao may be next. 

This is what they're afraid of:

Should the Trump administration settle for one-time fines, universities, chastened by the threats of the past few months, may yet recover their footing. But if, as seems entirely possible, the administration is determined to reshape the intellectual life and values of faculty members and students alike, then such recovery will be impossible.

Oh my goodness, reshape their intellectual life and values. Horrors!

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OpenAI is going to make a Hollywood style movie using only AI. I might see it. Proof of concept.

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There's a legal battle going on that's not receiving much publicity.:

Sounds harsh. Surely the court won't be that disruptive. Anyone can make an accusation and do a lot of damage.

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Australia has a 150 kW laser weapon that can knock down 50 drones/minute. This could put a big dent on drone warfare. China has something like this.  War is going to look very different in a few years. 

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Yawn. And in the U.S. math and reading scores in the 12th grade continue to decline. Again. No one cares, why should I? And they're going to wonder why they can't pay off their student loan. Don't look at me.

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AI may cause you to forget some of your skills. I'm busy learning new ones anyway. This is only a problem if you let it. Stay sharp. Keep your edge.

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This is why I don't buy Nike shoes anymore. What a shoddy product.

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Health insurance is going to go up. By as much as 9%.  Something's gotta give.

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Apparently it's not too difficult to hack into the computer systems of all the major fast food companies.

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It turns out that AI consultants don't know as much as they claim. Companies are hiring consultants only to find out that they don't know any more AI than their own company geeks. Imposter syndrome for real. You guys are just faking it.

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Hey, those detained Hyundai workers in Georgia were not illegal. They had B-1 business visas and were hired as engineers for their specialized knowledge. They didn't overstay their visas and did not sneak in. Boy, ICE needs to own this mistake. Hyundai is going to have a tough time convincing other engineers to come over and help U.S. plants.

Update (14 Sep 2025): The State department has apologized. Those Koreans can re-enter the country without penalty. But will they?

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Can researchers stop AI making up citations?  Probably not.

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Oh dear.  King County auditor made $900 million error in recent report. That's a big mistake. But don't worry, the auditor probably won't get fired. No one gets fired for mistakes in Democrat world. The mistake was actually caught by the guy that retired and was just helping out.

I ran the article through Perplexity because this Seattle Times article was not making sense to me. I couldn't tell where the blame lay. I got this response:

The reason such a huge mistake happened and went unnoticed for so long is basically due to a combination of lax oversight, rapid growth in grant funding, and insufficient internal controls at the Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS).

Between 2019 and 2024, the grant funding managed by DCHS skyrocketed from $22 million to over $1.5 billion. This rapid expansion overwhelmed the department’s ability or preparedness to properly monitor and manage the grants. Auditors found that DCHS was largely failing to do basic financial oversight: in 2023, only 1% of grantees’ financial records were examined, a sharp drop from the policy that calls for 33% review annually.

DCHS also took on more financial risk intentionally by giving contracts to many organizations with little or no government contracting experience as part of an equity strategy. However, they failed to establish a sufficient “safety net” to monitor these new grantees properly.

Further, the audit detailed many instances of altered invoices, unapproved payments to subcontractors, and thousands of dollars in untracked stipends or prepaid debit card distributions. The department also lacked formal written policies and training for staff on how to review and approve expenses.

The $900 million reporting error itself was discovered only after a retired employee reviewed the auditor’s initial report and spotted the discrepancy. This indicates that the original audit report contained significant calculation or reporting errors that were not caught during the audit's initial review.

In summary, the mistake wasn’t just a simple math error but reflected deeper systemic problems: rapid growth of funds without corresponding oversight, internal control failures, inadequate policies and staff training, and an environment where errors and possibly fraud could flourish unnoticed until the recent audit exposed them. Public officials described the audit findings as a "total disaster" and "damning," emphasizing the need for urgent reform and better oversight.

Perplexity was able to access information from multiple other sources to get this assessment. Yeah, I think the King County auditor Kymber Waltmunson needs to go.

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Oregon man. Publishers Clearinghouse Winner now has no money. From dream to nightmare. Easy come, easy go.

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Intel is abandoning the DEI policies it once favored so much. But does it really matter anymore? Today, the CEO of chip design announced her resignation. Things are unraveling, and it is clear that company is doomed.

––– 良くない–––Portland's convention center business is declining. But listen to the director at Travel Portland.

Looks like Seattle has its own Decarlos Brown situation. Riding public transportation in Blue cities is a life-risking decision.

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Oregon among states with highest unemployment increases. No surprises here. And Intel isn't helping any. 

And Microsoft announced more layoffs today. They're spending more on AI.

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And Tina Kotek is doubling down to make sure Oregonians have access to the COVID jab. Why do Dems feel that this is the hill they will die on? Will pharmacists risk legal trouble to defy the FDA just to please Tina?

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Hermiston really wants the datacenter business badly. Hope they know what they're doing.

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Where are all the trillion dollar biotechs? Interesting article on where biotech is going. Less focus on drug repurposing now. I think the low-hanging fruit has been picked.

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Redditor asks: What's the adult equivalent of finding out Santa isn't real? So depressing. Here's a few:

• It doesn’t matter how nice you are or how good of a person you try to be, there will always be people who will hate you for things you can’t change.
• Life isnt fair. Ppeople get an unfair advantage and theres nothing you can do about it
• Hard work gets you more work.
• Hot people do get treated better.
• That simply existing costs a lot of money.
• “Get a job in something you enjoy doing and you’ll never work a day” is a lie.
• There are no "grown ups" nobody is running the show. We are all utterly incompetent from the top all the way down. It is amazing our world functions at all.
• "In sickness and in health, until death do you part." It really should say until it gets hard or until something better comes along.
• The realization that every adult is just faking it and absolutely nobody knows what they’re doing
• Most adults are just grown up children.

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If you meet someone wearing this, run the hell away. It's called The Friend, and it's not your friend. (Why, oh why, do some people think we need crap like this?)

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Uh, OK. http://http://http://@http://http://?http://#http:// is actually a valid URL.

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Here's a WaPo reporter, assigned to talk to Terry Tao about his loss of NSF grant funding. And what does she ask? Inane questions, at the level of "What's it like to discover something in math?" Why doesn't she ask him about whether he's talked to UCLA leadership about why they are so intransigent about working with the Trump administration, which just wants UCLA to be non-discriminatory and non-biased against Jewish students and permit disruptive protests that interfere with the academic environment. This is all that Trump wants. Playing brinksmanship while allowing math research like Tao's to suffer is pure idiocy. Tao should just leave and join some other institution in a Red state, where he won't be bothered by crap like this.

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What's going on in Wenatchee schools?  Fights, chair throwing, stabbing, teachers punched.  Sounds like an inner city school.

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Is this all the iOS 26 has to offer?  We go from iOS 28 to iOS 26 and all we get are modification to what's already there? One new ring tone and a few variations? Tim Cook is getting old.

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New York Times asks why Google got off so easy. No answers. Just asking why.

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Remember Jim Simons?  The math wiz who figured out how to beat Wall Street, and invented quant investing? Turns out he has a daughter.  Got daddy's money, and she's as woke as hell, and is a Mamdani supporter.

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Why some Oregonians are being turned away for COVID-19 vaccines.

Also

Because the CDC has not yet updated its guidance, the new COVID-19 vaccines are not part of Oregon’s pharmacy protocols. That means pharmacists can’t offer the shots without a prescription or clinician’s order — even to people who meet the FDA’s eligibility criteria.

Pharmacists could also face legal risk. During the pandemic, federal emergency declarations shielded pharmacists from lawsuits for administering COVID-19 vaccines. Those protections only apply to vaccines endorsed by the CDC’s advisory committee.

So the Blue west coasts forming their own Democrat version of the CDC isn't going to do much. It's just surely symbolic move to make them feel good. Give it up, guys. Most people don't need to risk the adverse effects for the meager protection you might get. Getting Omicron is the best vaccine. 

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Japan's PM, Shigeru Ishiba, has resigned. What a beta male. He was the Japanese Angela Merkel. The leading contender to take his place is Sanae Takaichi, who is of the Shinzo Abe faction. She's a hard-line conservative. Just what Japan needs. I think she and Trump will get along just fine.

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Funny but true. You are more likely to trust the code of strangers than someone you know.

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Weird things captured on Google's Street View. Kinda disturbing.

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MacBooks have a sensor that detects what angle the hinge is at. Someone made a theremin with it.

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Fructose is what is making people fat.

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Autism spectrum disorder may be caused by overactive connections between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex. Blocking this in mice was able to reverse autism. This makes sense because a lot of autistic people are hampered by overactive anxiety to things, making them hesitant to try anything new, and to resort to obsessive-compulsive behavior to avoid "bad luck".

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The Class of '26 will be the first class to have used (and depended on) generative AI all their college lives. We'll see how well they've learned things. Could be surprising, and not in a good way.

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Randall Childrens Hospital just scrubbed their website about offering genital mutilation surgery on children.  One day, Portlanders will look back on these days with great shame, that this brutal and monstrously evil practice was once tolerated and encouraged.

––– 良くない–––This is mandatory watching: How medicine has lost its way.

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Here's Why We Shouldn't Trust the Medical Establishment.  All the good reasons why trust in the medical profession is lost. Not to mention the money they took from Big Pharma. RFK Jr. was correct to exclude the Medicine, Inc. doctors from advisory boards. We don't need their recommendations.

Yeah, the "Experts" Unable to Explain Why Nobody Trusts the "Experts".

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Hydrogen production complex in Boardman, OR is being scrapped. Hydrogen is too risky and expensive. I can easily see a large bomb going off there. Nuclear is such a better way to go. We need to pursue this.

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The Tide Is Turning Against Vaccine Mandates, and That's a Good Thing. Yeah, finally. Only in the dumb West Coast Blue states (and Hawaii) is this an issue.

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Hillsboro, OR is turning into a data center city. I'm not sure that's a good thing. It's going to suck up a LOT of energy, and Hillsboro isn't exactly an energy producer. There's no hydroelectric dam nearby. It's going to come out of the grid. And that may mean blackouts or brownouts. And maybe higher electricity costs for everyone. I also don't think it's going to bring in a plethora of jobs. Datacenters don't require much in the way of personnel. Generally 45 people are needed total, and the engineers work in shifts, a few people at a time. 

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Typepad, an old blogging platform, is shutting down. It's symbolic of the old days in blogging. One of its famous bloggers, Dave Barry, is moving to Substack.

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OpenAI is going to make its own chips through Broadcom.  Intel can only look on in envy.

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Who cares? The iPhone 17 is going to have a smaller dynamic island. Apple sure can't keep secrets anymore – that's the price you pay for manufacturing in China. But this phone sure looks like it's going to be underwhelming.

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Physicists create a time crystal that people can actually see. Well good.

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The World's Smartest Nations. And the United States is not even in the top 20. But where's India? Where's Russia? Canada is #10? Really? And Iceland is #3 for scientific publications? Israel is only #14 in scientific publications?  Switzerland is #2?  

The more you look at this list, the less believable it gets.

––– 良くない––– Will Trump block outsourcing of tech jobs to India? That would be a devastating blow to the tech sector, as well as India. But for the American tech worker, it would be a big win.

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It appears that Elon Musk is weary of making EV automobiles now. He wants to make robotaxis and robots. Another reason not to buy a Tesla now.

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 5 Seattle restaurants discuss why they are pivoting or closing. It's rough trying to operate a low-margin business in a Blue city.

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Oregon lawmakers really want to keep vote-by-mail. So many advantages: you get to keep the number of real voters secret, you can manipulate the results, you can have early election results which you can use for "planning purposes", you can keep counting days after the election is over, and who really knows which ballots get counted.

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No surprises here. Oregon is 45th for housing production and availability.

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Here's a list of expensive stuff Portland taxpayers had to help pay for in order to make the city "attractive" to visitors. Hotels, restaurants, festivals. Did it work? Nah. Doom Loop!

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