Sugoi & Yokunai

The cancer-predicting blood test Grail got a lot of hype several years ago.  Now, there's concern that maybe it's not as good as initially thought.  

Grail is facing a class action lawsuit in the US. Embittered investors, faced with steep losses, claim the company exaggerated Galleri's effectiveness in order to increase share price.

Oh-oh.

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Sugar-substitute erythritol may enhance platelet aggregation, leading to strokes. All the sugar substitutes are flawed. Except maybe monkfruit sweetener, which actually tastes pretty close to sugar. That's the only one I'll use.

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A substance, compound DDL-920, was shown (in mice) to "restore cognition, memory in Alzheimer’s disease".  Sounds promising, but many a drug has failed phase III clinical trials. Don't get too excited yet.

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Sounds like Gilligan's Island. These two were supposed to be in space for only 8 days. Now they can't return until 2025, earliest.  Jeez.

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Nice review of Universal Basic Income, and why it fails. The people that need to read it, probably won't.

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The first nasal-spray delivery anaphylaxis treatment drug was FDA-approved. It's called Neffy.

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Interesting. Breast cancer cells stimulate sensory nerves to release substance P, which interacts with the tumor's TACR1 receptor, killing them, but the dead cancer cells' single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) stimulates the tumor cell's toll-like receptor, TLR7, which activates a pro-metastatic gene expression program. Kudos to them for not stopping at the first step and figuring out what it was that produced the end result of metastatic stimulation.  The good news is that aprepitant can stop this process, and oncologists are already giving it with very nauseating chemo regimens. The bad news is that ssRNA can come from other sources – such as the COVID mRNA vax. Do you think all the side-effects of RNA injection have been really studied well?

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Google, Microsoft and Amazon are taking a different tack with AI startups. Instead of buying up the startup, they just license the technology, hire all the top employees, buy out the shareholders, but the founders and investors are no longer in control. They'll still get money for their efforts, but it's not quite the same. Maybe this is a better way? This is because of increased scrutiny over monopolization.

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Boiling water that has enough calcium carbonate is a way to reduce microplastics. But you need the calcium, so it doesn't work for water that doesn't have minerals. There are filters you can buy, but they aren't as convenient to use, and I note that many of them are plastic-based anyway.

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The Mac Mini with M4 chip will basically just be an iPad Pro running on MacOS. Will it be significantly better? Remains to be seen.

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Practice works, but genes work better. This piece says that you can work hard and practice a skill, but innate talent will be better. But better to practice than not practice.  So "choose niches which are so small or esoteric that there is less competition, or lower expectations accordingly." Is this something we didn't already know?

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Taiwan Semiconductor finds that what works in Taiwan doesn't necessarily work in Arizona.

Jefferson Patz, an engineer fresh off a master’s degree from the University of California, San Diego, went to Tainan in 2021 for 18 months of training shortly after he joined the company.
“Oh, my gosh, people work hard,” Mr. Patz said. He recalled that this initial impression had given him a strong sense of what it took to succeed in the industry.

After returning to Arizona, Mr. Patz said, employees were expected to pitch in with work outside their job descriptions because construction of the facility was behind schedule.
This approach did not sit well with everyone.

SunPower, a major solar panel company is filing Chapter 11. Green isn't working, and maintaining a business in California adds an additional burden.

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Republicans are fighting to prevent ballots received after election day from counting. Dems love this because they can calculate how many ballots they need to create to defeat the real winner. We've seen this so many times. In fact, we've been warned that results may not be known for several days. They're already preparing us for this: AP news, PBS news, LA Times, Politico.

Heh. Now Oregon is having second thoughts about Clackamas county. They didn't cave and criminals will have to face jail time. So they agreed to a second review.

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What happens when private equity buys hospitals?  

Private equity firms spent $505 billion on health care acquisitions between 2018 and 2023. Financial infusions may augment resources for care. However, firms have sometimes sold acquired hospitals’ land and buildings, repaying investors with proceeds and burdening hospitals with rent payments for facilities they once owned. Financial outcome of private equity hospital acquisitions and effects on patient care require further study.

Looks like they buy assets for cheap, squeeze whatever juice there is, and hospitals are left with less than they had before.

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Another one bites the dust.  Mt Tabor Brewing is shutting down. 

OHSU researchers are getting closer to striking, unless their demands are met.  It worked for the nurses, right? Except, they aren't nurses.

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AI leaders hail California's SB1047 artificial intelligence safety bill.  This is a start but should be a national regulation, than just California.

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Mental health crisis.  I note that Reddit and Imgur are full out of posts were people try to make light of their mental health problems. A combination of letting off steam, trolling for support, and trying to make sense of it all. In the beginning, it was funny and we could relate. But man, it's getting tiresome now. Everyone is making excuses for slacker behavior.  Now the CDC thinks the mental health crisis in youth is still grim.  Then I read that mental health of liberal girls fell first and fastest.  And this is why there is so much triggering and cancel culture, because they must be protected against assaults on their fragile mental health.  And that fear of participating has replaced fear of missing out.  So maybe JD Vance was on to something?

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Ewwwww.... Being the world's richest man was a hell of an aphrodisiac. 

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Why primary care physicians are becoming harder to find in WA. Nursing shortages were in the news, and now doctor shortages. Gee, maybe they shouldn't have forced out the doctors who didn't want to get jabbed?  The younger doctors embrace telemedicine and want to work from home. Especially as it gets more dangerous for females to venture outside. But you never get the same quality of care as when a doctor sees you in person.  Telemedicine is getting to me more like the "Dear Doctor" column on Oregon Live.  Right now, there aren't as many regulations for teleprescribers, and so we're seeing a lot of flaky internet doctors, but that could change. Another problem is the burden of unreimbursed EHR charting time. This takes up so much time. With lower Medicare reimbursements, no wonder why so many doctors are burning out.

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Could airplanes someday be powered by ground-based microwave antennas? I can envision the horrifying accidents waiting to happen.

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PIPE-307 could be a new drug against multiple sclerosis.

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The FoxVox browser extension changes the language of a webpage to impart a more conservative or liberal slant. Might provide some amusement for a few minutes.  Maybe it can stimulate discussion.

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Psychotic symptoms in mass shootings v. mass murders not involving firearms: findings from the Columbia mass murder database. They conclude:

...policies aimed at preventing mass shootings by focusing on serious mental illness, characterized by psychotic symptoms, may have limited impact. Policies such as those targeting firearm access, recreational drug use and alcohol misuse, legal history, and non-psychotic psychopathology might yield more substantial results.

2.9 billion hit in identify theft incident, with names and full SSN stolen. Why is no one else reporting this? This goes back 30 years, which would make more sense since there aren't that many people in the USA.

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Scammerlocker claims to be able to take down a fraudulent website for you.

Here's how it works:- The tool does a WHOIS lookup to get the domain registrar's abuse contact email. Then it uses Groq's mixtral-8x7b model to use the context and target URL provided by the user to generate an abuse report email with a matching subject. Using Mailgun, it emails the domain provider at their designated abuse contact.

The tool works for any illegal websites, including but not limited to investment scams, crypto pump, and dump, phishing pages, animal abuse, etc. All domain registrars, hosting providers, and TLDs are legally required to take action when they receive an abuse report. Typically, it takes several days to a few weeks to take the website down.

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Costly coding errors. The winner is a doozy. Funny in the rear view mirror, though.

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Here's why you should never let Democrats be in charge of expensive projects. So $42.5 billion was allocated to giving rural areas broadband Internet access under a federal modernization program.  To this date, not a single home or business has been connected to new broadband networks nearly three years after President Biden signed the funding into law, and no project will break ground until sometime in 2025.  The reasons:

• Preference for hiring union workers, who are scarce in some rural areas.
• Requiring providers to prioritize “certain segments of the workforce, such as individuals with past criminal records,” when building broadband networks.
• Requiring eligible entities to “account not only for current [climate-related] risks but also for how the frequency, severity, and nature of these extreme events may plausibly evolve as our climate continues to change over the coming decades.”

That unsightly Willamette Falls paper mill is shutting down. 158 jobs lost. More to be added to the unemployment rolls for the state to process. Lots of layoffs recently.

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Oregon lawmakers urge OHSU to increase pay for unionized researchers. Completely clueless that the reason why the need more pay is because the lawmakers have contributed to making it expensive to live here. Plus, the money to pay the researchers comes out of grants. It's not something you can increase just because you live in a high cost of living state. So if the researchers have to get paid more, it comes out of fixed grant money, and that means researchers will likely want to seek other venues for doing their research.

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Google is not having a good week. Their stock has tanked, along with the rest of NASDAQ. They were declared a monopolist in a U.S. District Court.  And now comes word that they disclose search histories to the government. You probably already suspected that, but it's now shown to be true. If you use Google, don't access the search engine straight.  Use a different interface.

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I read this article on "What should we do with lazy and ungrateful migrants?" The author agrees with Trump, but he has to say "At the risk of sounding Trumpian". What is wrong with echoing Trump's policies? Maybe they are the reason why Trump is supported. This is like when other people preface a statement with "Now, I'm not a Trump supporter by any means, but...."  Who gives a sh#t?

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Moar! Moar!  California fast food workers want to be paid a $30/hour minimum wage now.  Imagine that? For unskilled labor.  Good luck with that passing.

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Homeless camps next to your property? You could have a problem, as this person discovered.  Further evidence that we can't have nice things anymore in Portland is the fence going up around the Lan Su Chinese garden.  Kinda spoils the serenity and tranquility feeling, doesn't it?

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Seattle is running out of jail space, so they want to rent out the SCORE facility in Des Moines. And the Des Moines residents don't like it. Who can blame them?

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"For a ‘quality’ education in Oregon, the price tag tops $13.5 billion."  Everything is just beyond the horizon. Just a little bit more money and everything will be fine. Haven't we heard that enough?

Soon, you can get legal psilocybin edibles in Oregon. Just what we need – more substances to abuse. Like we didn't have enough. Now its psychedelics. Just great.

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It won't be that easy for China to invade Taiwan. Nice explanation. Plus, I hear they have missiles aimed directly at the Three Gorges Dam.  That'll keep China busy.

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Apparently some people are excited about cerebrolysin.  Seems like snake oil.

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Calling someone too old is "ageist".  I have two problems with this essay. The first is that the author falls into the trap of many lefties. If you call someone X, you're an X-ist. The desire to categorize someone, so you can dismiss him from serious consideration, is a common Lefty tactic. I refuse to buy in. The second is the sentiment that it's wrong to say that something can be "too THIS" or "too THAT". Like "too Asian" or "too female".  Well, sometimes things are too much of something. And we have every right to call it out. The problem with putting Diversity hires in charge is that once they are in a position of power, they hire more like them solely because of an irrelevant identity characteristic, such as being female, etc. Suddenly, no one else can have a position in that power structure. It's all that one minority thing. We've seen it everywhere, and people are afraid to call it out. We see it in Oregon's government leadership, and even in Washington D.C.  Yeah, diversity was cool at one point, but no longer. We need to recognize this and call it out.  With regard to age, sometimes age is indeed an issue. It wasn't really Biden's age that we complained about. It was his dementia,  Trump is fine.

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X/Twitter is moving out of San Francisco. More taxbase loss for the city.  They're moving to South Bay, but I predict Elon Musk will move them out of the state entirely.  One step at a time.

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Funniest comment I've read this morning:

We've seen what a Trump presidency is like. Now we'll get to see what a Kamala presidency will be like.

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The music industry is now having to figure out what is copyrightable and what is not. This is very much like a Ship of Theseus argument.

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Some geeks are asking: Does Sundar Pichai/Search team know how bad Google search is?  I think he knows, but can't do anything about it. There's still money being made, and it would be risky to change things.

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Has the AI bubble burst?  AI is already making money. But the low-hanging fruit solutions were just mirages. LLMs were offering illusion of conscious all-knowing human-like entity, when it was all sophisticated probabilistic models. People were provided with solutions that looked like they could be the answers you are looking for, but with no guarantee that the answers you received are actually correct. But hucksters are still selling it.

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I think that there is definitely a genetic determinant to brain capability. This news item strongly supports that. Brains, as with other physical characteristics, developed differently in different parts of the world. Different genetics result in different brains, with different thinking patterns, etc.

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Bravo! Some schools are incorporating meditation in the classroom. This is excellent. It will improve a child's mental health and provide them with a survival skill that will help them in adulthood.

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This is disheartening.  As academic is increasingly plagued with cheaters, we are seeing a growth of fringe intellectuals.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine have developed a new class of ring-fused 2-pyridone antibiotic, which they call GmPcides (for gram-positive-icide). These agents are especially effective against Strep pyogenes, associated with "flesh-eating" disease.  It's interesting that this got published in a physics journal, rather than the usual biomedical journals.

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There's always something new. There's a condition where people see grotesque distortions in other people's faces. There's no single cause of this phenomonenon. Could be post-infectious. Could be a delayed trauma effect. It's called prosopometamorphopsia, or PMO. I suspect it's related to the flashed face distortion illusion, but you see it all the time.

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ChatGPT (based on GPT 3.5) isn't that good at medical diagnosis. This is no surprise. No one thinks ChatGPT is the standard anymore. I wish they did the study on more recent architectures, such as MedPaLM2 or Palmyra-Med.

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Washington state is facing a shortage of public defenders, too. What a coincidence, huh?

The progressive Washington State Supreme Court (WASC) may green-light the Washington State Bar Association’s (WSBA) new public defense standards. If approved, thousands of violent and non-violent criminals will go without any charges, let alone punishment. And it appears that releasing criminals from punishment is the very point from some public defenders.

If this sounds dramatic, it’s because it is that dramatic. It would lower the number of cases a public defender can take, limits the ability of private attorneys to take on cases for counties and coincides with a shortage of attorneys across the state.

Nice, huh? Their solution is so bad, you'd think Oregon's legislature came up with it.

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More Oregonians are worried about the economy. But they'll still vote Democrat. Betcha most would wish the economy went back to 2019, before COVID.

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Washington's stupid primary election system is a great argument Ranked Choice Voting.  Votes for stupid candidates need to just die. Not be re-allocated to the next-stupidest loser candidate.  What a mess.

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Remember when living near a greenbelt was an asset? Now it's a liability, as Tacoma residents are finding out. Criddlers and gronks live there. And they start fires.

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The WSJ suspects that we will have an election recession. It's already here, folks. And Warren Buffet is trimming back his Apple stock holdings. I agree – Apple doesn't know what to do. Phones are already as thin as they need to be. We won't notice more pixels. And who cares about more emojis. Better cameras, yes. Agentic frameworks, yes, if they work well.

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So obvious. First they depose Joe in a coup. Now Obama's people are taking over Harris' campaign. But is it Obama's doing? Or forces even above him? Who aren't ready to give up the control that a brain-dead Biden allowed?

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Man, you can't even go to a Star Trek convention before encountering loony liberal politics from your TV characters. What a pile of crap.

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Clackamas County isn't going to fool around. You get arrested for a drug crime, you're getting prosecuted. No "deflection" crap. That's the way to do it.

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Maui residents enter into a $4 billion settlement.  Who's paying?  The state of Hawai'i, County of Maui, Hawaiian Electric, Kamehameha Schools, West Maui Land Co., Hawaiian Telcom and Spectrum/Charter Communications.  Hope the money helps people get back on their feet.

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Canadian scientists find a novel way to use CAR-T cell therapy against glioblastomas. The target is the protein, Roundabout Guidance Receptor 1 (ROBO1).  Happy to see progress being made against this deadly disease.

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Another one bites the dust. Big Lots is closing 6 more stores in Oregon. Only 8 stores left. More unemployment. Less tax revenue for the state.  Way to go, Kotek.

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The state of Oregon continues to waste money. Tina Kotek is so corrupt and irresponsible with taxpayer money.

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This is not from 2021. This is from last week. So-called Dr. Peter Hotez, probably still mad that he's not getting the praise he once got on cable networks, now wants the unvaxxed to be taken into custody by UN and NATO security forces.  That'll punish them for not taking him seriously, right?  The COVID affair recently uncovered a lot of mini-dictators that would not have been evident.

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The reason reason why people aren't having kids. People aren't as mentally stable as before, and don't feel able to handle the added stress of being parents. So more childless cat ladies?

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Nice backstory on what's going on with Intel. The company has major problems that won't be fixed for a few years, likely. This truly is existential for them. Too bad the CEO couldn't see the future. Intel was heavily involved in DEI efforts, like celebrating Black history 365 days a year, instead of, you know, making excellent chips. Like many others, they felt that diversity was their strength. Insiders told a different story. Go woke, go broke, as they say.

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No shame. Man, Samsung is really blatant about ripping off Apple's designs. They seem to be incapable of embarrassement.

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Antidepressants permanently numb your genitals? Never heard that before. They mention Prozac and Zoloft, but this could happen with other SSRIs. 

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You get what you pay for. There's a California company (of course) that lets you access a doctor (supposedly a real one) at $19 for a "visit". Then you'll get a prescription. Only available in certain states. They must have an iron-clad malpractice policy, where you have to agree to be responsible for anything that goes wrong. I can't imagine the doctors they have on their "panel".   

Their CTO says:

FLUX.1 is a new image generator that looks to be as good as Stable Diffusion, but can create hands better. I've found DALL-E to be better than Stable Diffusion. The creators of FLUX think that their text-to-image outperforms Midjourney and DALL-E. I'll check it out on Poe.

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Starbucks closes their First and Pike store.  That was one of their most popular. Well, gotta adapt to changing times. Seattlites can't have nice things anymore.  And Seattle wants to have "drug-free zones" in the city. Good luck with that. It's like those old feminist responses to rape violence where they stood around with a candle and mumbled a chant about "I'm taking back the darkness". Sure.

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Jay Inslee wants to take taxpayer money and use it to con lower income people into buying EVs. Yeah, wait until the find out what a "good deal" owning an EV is. Especially in the winter. Or when copper thieves dismantle charging stations. And they can find Type 2 charging outlets near their low-income housing. Or when they get into a minor fender bender and damage their battery, and don't have the money to replace it. Or find that the resale value of their car is really low.

And after spending $1.1 million to get only 126 people to transitioned out of homelessness, Inslee wants more money. Man, can that guy leave office fast enough? He's like a male version of Kate Brown.

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Elon Musk's Ad Astra school is accepting applications in Texas. Curious to see how that goes. It won't be woke, for sure, and will probably stress STEM fields.  Could be good. We'll see.

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The AI boom is deflating. Microsoft has lost a lot of money on AI investments. No real returns just yet.  Zuckerberg says he'll need 10X more computing power to train Llama 4 than Llama 3. Plus, he already needs power for datacenters to support Facebook. Isn't he concerned about his carbon footprint? Oh, right. That's just for us to worry about.  And Amazon is shrinking their AWS offerings.  Everyone is cutting back.

Intel downtown is so bad, some are calling it an "existential risk".  15,000 are being let go, starting October, and ending November, just in time for Thanksgiving. Well, Intel overwhelmingly supports Democrats, so they got what they voted for.

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I remember when Portland Opera and All Classical Radio were so pleased with their nice new digs near OMSI. Nice views of the city and so near Tillicum Bridge and OHSU. Now they are moving out.  Can't imagine why.

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News from California.  Chevron is moving to Texas. And fast food workers want even more pay. Even after the recent minimum wage hike. Sure.

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Portland General Electric and Pacific Power want to raise rates by a lot. Everyone wants more money.

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Oregon health insurance rates will increase, too.  Why not? Join the club.

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Multnomah County blinked. Finally they will allow one paramedic per vehicle. Sorry, you can't be rigid when the situation in Portland is what it is.

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Fecal transplants can help boost responses to immunotherapy, given to treat cancer.  But it's not likely that this will be a widespread practice. Too icky, I guess.

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MIR scans generated by variation autoencoders are now so good they can be used in data analytics. Thay're that good.

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Hawaiian Electric warns of possible rolling blackouts as a power station went down unexpectedly. The grid is pretty fragile if you ask me.

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CRISPR technology may provide an inexpensive antidote to cobra venom. Cobra venom binds to heparan and heparin, which depletes tissues of anticoagulant, and so tissue thrombosis ensues. The drug works be flooding the circulation with decoy molecules designed to bind to and soak up venom, thereby avoid clotting and tissue necrosis. Heparin and heparan are inexpensive, and modifying these is also not expensive. Unlike cobra antivenom.

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Nifty. First time use of a titanium Maglev mechanical heart.

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Websites are being pestered by AI scrapers, who don't respect robots.txt. The inventors of the Web never figured that there would be problem of people wanted to avoid certain visitors to come to their site. Everything was supposed to be open and connected. We were so innocent back then.

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Yawn. COVID infections are rising again. And OHA is still pushing the vax. Give it up, guys. It's not working. Let people get natural immunity. 

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Oregon is one of the most expensive states to be driving.  That's maintenance, insurance and gas prices.

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Portland is a poor city. So much of the city is below the poverty line.  Man...

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Scammers are using Proofpoint to send realistic scam spoofed emails to people.  You can't tell them apart from a real company-issued email. Many companies got burned when they used Crowdstrike for security. I think these companies are going to get burned from using Proofpoint to route their emails.

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Telehealth is hurting rural hospitals. Telehealth visits only made sense for major urban hospitals. For rural hospitals, there was no real need to implement them. So they didn't. And now they aren't getting the business that customers prefer.

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Lilly's Zepbound (tirzepatide) decreases congestive heart failure risk by 38%. Coupled with weight loss, diabetes control, decrease in addictive behavior and now decreased congestive heart failure risk, it sounds like a winner.

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Uruguayans are upset because Google's planned datacenter is going to suck a lot of water and spew lots of toxins and CO2.  Plus it will probably raise energy prices, since there will be increased demand.

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Outpace is a Seattle biotech company that will synthesize proteins that can be used as targets for T cell therapy. This is the kind of research that should have come from OHSU.  Phil Knight's money was supposed to make stuff like this happen locally. The Knight Cancer Institute has been quiet lately.

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Documents, Whistleblowers, and Public Comments Are Clear: Oil Companies Know Carbon Capture Is Not a Climate Solution. No, it isn't, and the sooner people realize this, the better.

And many apparently want to amend the state constitution to say that we have a "right" to a clean environment. No, it's not a right. 

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Putting criminals in jail is not the answer.  How many times have we heard variations of this screed? The Multnomah County sheriff is saying something very similar, She won't arrest anyone violating city regulations. Even Ted Wheeler is unhappy with this.

And if someone abuses fentanyl, Multnomah County wants to do anything they can short of sending these criminals to jail. Bonham County is not buying it. Good for them.