Sugoi & Yokunai

15 March 2025

2025-03-16T02:10:46Z

Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28. I still can't understand why someone would want this surveillance device in their homes. But that's just me.

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The Siri development team must not be feeling good these days. I recall when Steve Jobs dismissed the MobileMe team in a very humiliating way. Bet it got the rest of the company motivated, though. It's informative that Apple can't make AI work they way people expect it to work. They've got Silicon Valley's best brains at their disposal, and yet they struggle. It's not easy to implement agentic frameworks well.

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This essay on Stoicism resonates with me. I wondered why Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations, when he could have just be a Roman emperor like all the rest. And he made statements that seem to counter common sense, such as not to be disturbed by bad events because it's all in your head. Easy to say when you're an emperor, but not so for the rest of us. I guess he meant to just say not to overreact to external events, but sometimes it's just human to do so.

Too strong a stoicism, like any individualist philosophy, scales poorly. A philosophy emphasizing only this inner work, though it may personally work well, gives no guidance as soon as you have enough responsibility to participate in society.

...stoicism is not a sufficient philosophy for a good life, only a survivable one. We must remember what that responsibility, strength, and character are ultimately for.

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Scientists discover how to reactivate cancer's molecular 'kill switch'. Cancer cells don't just have one "kill switch". This research finding will be just one of many. Congrats to the researchers, but there will be more work to do.

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I'd spend $20 to taste the Erewhon strawberry. Sounds like it is indeed more than your usual strawberry. I haven't seen it at the local stores yet, though.

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Alcohol consumption increases risk of sunburn. Then you read the article and find out that intoxicate people are less likely to apply sunscreen adequately, and they also stay out in the sun longer, possibly because they're too inebriated to realize that they're burning. What a useless study.

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You could be leaving DNA traces in the air around you. Probably not enough to be implicated in a crime scene, but just so you know, a bit of you blows off into the air wherever you go.

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KGW reports that the reason OHSU emergency department is jammed is because people are coming in with the flu. Only now are we seeing this? I suspect that the COVID vax has ruined people's immune systems, and now everyone is constantly sick.

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Seattle firefighter has a message for those idiots who think they are sticking it to Elon by setting Teslas on fire. Think twice – you're letting toxic gases into the atmosphere and risking a prolonged hot fire. Not climate-friendly, to say the least, although those gronks aren't really that concerned about climate. It's just something they are told to believe, because Dems told them to.

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Happiest cities in the Northwest. Seattle? I don't think so. I think the happiest cities are the smaller ones that don't have criddlers and incompetent lefty city leaders who misspend the municipal money. Portland is way down there, which is believable. But c'mon.

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Sakana.AI has put out its first fully-generated scientific article. Well, if Sokal could get published, I'm sure AI can, too.

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The story behind Social Security Numbers. There's never been a convincing explanation for why Barack Obama's SSN begins with 042 instead of 575 or 576 like all other Hawaii-born citizens. And I think people think it's healthier not to investigate this matter.

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A new map of what Antarctica looks like under the ice.

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What pens to presidents favor to sign their names?

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14 March 2025

2025-03-14T21:17:34Z

Happy π day! In celebration, here's a beautiful finding of π in the Mandelbrot set. How does π get in there? As usual, it's because calculus is involved.

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This is how we know that the climate change worry industry is really a grift. They don't really care. Why should you?

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Wow, it looks like Obama wanted to do DOGE, too. But guess who he put in charge? The anti-Elon!

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Downtown Portland's open-air drug market has returned. This is why no one wants to move to Portland, and we can't get any quality people for top positions.

That's why businesses are moving out of Portland, and loving it.

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Remembering Mark Klein, the whistleblower who in 2005 told us that the NSA was illegal spying on us.

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I remember when Apple was stockpiling so much cash, and everyone wondered what were Apple's plans for all that money. There was no plan.

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Dem solutions to Dem problems. Oregon has so many sex offenders that Tina Kotek wants to hold off on getting them registered as sex offenders officially. She wants to remove the deadline for clearing the backlog past Dec 2026. Plus, she wants to make it so that only if you are younger than 35 years old and have 2 or more sex crimes, would you need to be registered. Supposedly some study backs this up.

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A Finnish study looking at twins showed that the link between exercise and increase longevity is not linear, but U-shaped. Those that exercised the least or the most aged more rapidly. The benefits of exercise and longevity were felt to be due to those that exercised not drinking or smoking as much. Moderate activity (75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity weekly) was the best.

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13 March 2025

2025-03-13T18:55:14Z

We're still learning things about water. Apparently under certain conditions, it can exist in two forms of liquid at once, one being denser than the other.

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Saturn is once again the king in terms of number of moons, as scientists discover 128 new moons (274 total). When I was a kid, I remember that the books said that Saturn had 9 moons and Jupiter had 12. Rookie numbers. Ya, gotta pump them up. And so they did.

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Some new study says that drinking alcohol is good for lowering cholesterol levels. But lowering cholesterol levels isn't the goal here – it's lowering cardiovascular risk. And that hasn't been shown. I'm not buying it.

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Hospitals are going to hurt some more. Oregon lawmakers are going to force them to lower "facility fees". This is going to be especially important as competition will almost non-existent if OHSU merges with Legacy. OHSU is apparently packed to capacity, and doesn't have enough beds or staff to accommodate the patient load. If you read the article, the problem is lack of staffing. This is Oregon's perennial problem, and the leadership ignores this. Why can't Oregon hire quality people? And see below.

Speaking of which, the leaders of OHSU and Legacy wrote an opinion piece supporting the merger, the main argument being that they promise to be accountable and act in the public's best interest. They also state that the merger would improve healthcare, but don't present any compelling argument for this. I think it will decrease competition and choice, as we've seen with the failure of UnitedHealth negotiating terms with OHSU. I don't want the choice of healthcare system to be just OHSU, Providence and Kaiser.

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What to do when you have so many criminals and not enough public defenders. Because Portland is a magnet for ne'er-do-wells, and the state is so unattractive to the nation as a place to move to. The Doom Loop continues.

Update (2025-03-14): OPB covered this as well.

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Tektronix is now owned by a Raleigh, NC company. How the mighty have fallen.

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How many Portland-area jobs could be affected by AI? A lot! And the higher-educated positions could be the most affected. Learn to code, baby.

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Some folks are going to cover graffiti-prone walls with synthetic ivy instead. I like it. Looks like a workable and reasonable alternative to just painting over the graffiti, leaving those unsightly blotchy rectangles.

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Two tech insiders are not happy with Apple's strategic direction. The first is long-time writer, Robert Scoble. The second is John Gruber (Daring Fireball). I agree with them both. It's long past time for Tim Cook to step down as CEO and hand the reins to someone else with vision.

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Downtown Seattle continues its decline. Cheesecake Factory is shutting down. Such is life under Democrat rule.

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While Oregon can't hire quality people, they can hire this person to be on the mental health board. She identifies as a turtle! Oregon is such a national joke.

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12 March 2025

2025-03-13T01:41:48Z

The new M3Ultra MacStudio is blazingly fast, and just the thing for data scientists and machine learning professionals. Not just for artists.

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How rich is Elon Musk? I know, everybody's picking on the guy, but I love infographics like this. A hundred billion is already a lot of money, and it's hard to grasp how much money this is. Elon is able to do it because he's hired great people who can manage his company for him. He doesn't need to be around. He read the E-Myth. Wait until his fleet of autonomous taxis go into operation. The income will flow in, even as companies like Uber and Lyft find their businesses cut substantially.

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Why do elephants rarely get cancer? Because they have extra copies of the p53 gene, apparently. That would help.

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Regence Blue Cross is going to lose a LOT of customers in Seattle soon. Are those alternate hospitals ready to pick up all that slack?

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Climate group funded by Bill Gates is getting their funding slashed. It's likely that it wasn't Bill Gates' own money that was being spent, but NGO money, which is now effectively gone. So much of things were NGO-funded from the federal government.

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What happens when you get an email containing some offhand slight against Trump or Musk? This is what happens.

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F*ck. Oregon lawmakers pass tuition funding for "asylum seekers". AKA illegal aliens. This is why Oregon doesn't have any money. And why Oregon taxes are so damned high.

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Portland is the only major metro area where the non-religious outnumber Christians. Because BLM is their religion. Or the Ukraine cult.

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11 March 2025

2025-03-11T21:36:02Z

Age and cognitive skills: Use it or lose it. We knew about this, but it's nice to get confirmation about it, that it is possible to keep the gray squish working well.

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A breakthrough in the Internet of Things. It is possible to harness energy from the environment. No this isn't just solar power. It's power from other sources "including vibrations from equipment, machinery, and even entire buildings, or from temperature differences between pipes, radiators, valves, and their surrounding environments". Cool.

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Things are happening at the NIH. I can certainly see how people who are grant-dependent are anxious. But in the past, a lot of research funding was going to dubious causes, so I'm glad there's a bit of sanity now in the process. Everyone had to put some kind of DEI spin in their applications. Now, those things will come back to bite them.

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Some detective work in the French Alps links amyotropic lateral sclerosis to the consumption of the false morel mushroom (Gyromitra gigas). That's amazing. The books mainly focus on the nausea and vomiting, but not so much the neurotoxicity. Certainly not ALS. Well, I don't eat those mushrooms anyway. Interesting that a mushroom with such neurotoxicity would look like a brain.

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How to sleep sitting up. Apparently that's how Tibetan monks sleep, and supposedly the quality of sleep improves. I am not yet convinced of that. I tried this, and I ended up more at a 45° angle. Does that count?

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Stupid. Washington Democrats will give early release and free rent money for murderers and child rapists, provided they didn't kill more than two victims. Because you know, more than two murder victims is really unacceptable. What are they smoking there?

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Doom Loop. Oregon is the 12th unfriendliest state to start a business. This is why the state will continue to go downhill. Just like the federal government, we are now seeing how much of the economy was just propped up by injected money. Taxing people will go only so far. And everybody seems to weep for the fired government worker. Yet government policies led to private sector layoffs, and I don't recall any sympathy for those folks.

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Oregon lawmakers want the state to go back to having metrics to evaluate student performance. What for? So that they can be ignored? We already have standardized tests. Why re-invent the wheel?

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10 March 2025

2025-03-10T23:14:05Z

Today is Mario Day, according to my son. Mar 10, get it?

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There's truth behind gender stereotypes. I knew it. Stereotypes don't usually form out of nothing. Humans observe and form opinions and develop preferences and bias, which are certainly understandable.

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Here's another ranking of the states, and if not for Oregon's scenic natural beauty, we'd rank at the bottom. Worst in crime, education and economy.

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The City of Portland can't find takes for a $250,000 /year job, because no one wants to move to the city. The reputation is so bad. This is why we can't hire enough nurses or good doctors, either. Portland is a sh*t city.

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And speaking of doctors, here's what some states want to compromise to get enough doctors – lower the requirements for foreign doctors to practice here.

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More human fecal matter in the streams and water around Cannon Beach.

"While the agency concluded that dogs, elk and other animals may contribute to the pollution, the amount of bacteria of human origin was “higher than anticipated” and carries a higher risk of illness, the DEQ said."

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9 March 2025

2025-03-10T03:53:29Z

Oregon is considering two options to prevent the switch to and from Daylight Saving Time. One is to stick with Standard Time. The other is to do whatever California and Washington wants to do. So lame. Do what's right. My prediction is that nothing will happen.

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I like the idea of billing datacenters for the increase use of energy and natural resources, like water. Instead of the consumer.

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No sign of any resolution of the impasse between OHSU and UnitedHealth. So if they can't come with an agreement, OHSU will lose 74,000 patients. This is a strong argument against OHSU and Legacy merging. This is precisely what people are worried about.

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8 March 2025

2025-03-08T19:47:14Z

Congress is finally realizing that they can't continue to cut Medicare reimbursement for doctors, or there won't be enough doctors. But it took a Congressman who is a physician to finally bring it to everyone else's attention. Doctors long lost control over their profession, sadly.

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Medicaid scam. I covered this already, where the state government adds on a hospital providers tax, which they are glad to agree to, because they will get reimbursed from the state, who now qualifies to scam more Medicaid money from the government. It's a scam, and only works if the central government agrees to finance the socialism, and you know how to work the system. This kind of perverse incentive system needs to end, and I'm confident that Trump will finally put an end to this. And why are we listening to Al Green?

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Retirees become college kids again. I love this – it's a win-win. Keeps the mind stimulated and is certainly better than watching TV all day.

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Signals' Meredith Whittaker raises concerns about letting agent AI do all your tasks for you. Yeah, it's different for Tony Stark, because he designed his own system. For the rest of us, we are using a commercial, off-the-shelf software, created by someone else, that probably has other priorities in mind.

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Los Angeles can't account for $2.5 billion given to them to fight homelessness. I would bet that something similar is going on in Oregon and Washington. Nobody cares about responsibility anymore. The reset button needs to be pressed on California. Oust everyone and start over.

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It's official. The Ritz-Carlton is a failure. But look on the bright side – the City of Portland has places to put the homeless now!

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Portland Street Response now has permission to go just about everywhere – government buildings, libraries and restaurants, to deal with the mentally ill. What the hell? Who would have thought we would need this crap ten years ago, when we had a normal city? This is the new normal, and is why Portland is in a Doom Loop.

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7 March 2025

2025-03-07T21:57:08Z

A company called Bolt Graphic made a GPU called Zeus that is supposedly 10X faster than NVIDIA's RTX 5090 GPU. I haven't seen benchmarks, though, Nothing except what Bolt claims. Competition is good!

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A Safeway in north Seattle (CrownHill) tries to protect itself against theft. Instead, it gets into trouble with the city. I don't know why companies want to operate in Seattle anymore. They should get out of the city, and not bother dealing with Democrat policies.

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WTF?? Oregon advances a bill that makes taxpayers have to pay union workers when they go on strike. No. Just no.

And here's a nice cartoon summary of how Oregon doesn't need to tax us more. They have the money – they just misspend it.

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Good! Venture Portland, a large enabler of the Homelessness Industrial Complex, might go under. 80% of their money was going to administration, staff, and operational costs, so I say good riddance. They made the homeless problem worse, not better.

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6 March 2025

2025-03-06T19:31:16Z

Still more on the fiasco of Mozilla's new terms of use. I keep hoping for some clarification of misunderstanding that might make me want to go back to using Firefox again, but no dice. They apparently can see what you browse, and will use it however they want.

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Aspirin might prevent tumor metastasis by unblocking T-cell mediated immunity. I wasn't aware aspirin could do that. Thromboxane acts on T cells to trigger an immunosuppressive pathway that is dependent on the guanine exchange factor, ARHGEF1, suppressing T cell receptor-driven kinase signalling, proliferation and effector functions.

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If OHSU and Legacy merges, their foundations will combine and will be the largest "health equity foundation," whatever that is. So naturally agencies and NGOs want a piece of it. Not only that, but they want "to ensure that community members lead the process to determine its governance and mission, not Legacy and OHSU". Why in hell would OHSU and Legacy agree to just give this money away, especially seeing how poorly these groups have managed their own money. But Oregon's AG may have a say in this matter.

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Yep, Portland is in a doom loop. No question.

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Crazy. Those stranded astronauts were not allowed to return back to earth by Elon Musk because it would help the Trump team, and Biden (or his team) wouldn't have it. So they were political prisoners. I wondered why they weren't screaming to get back, and why they seemed like it was no big deal. Because if they made Biden look bad and if Kamala had won, they would be made low priority forever. Now they can tell the truth because Trump won. This is evil.

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Portland is removing culturally offensive sculptures from Chinatown. I don't go downtown so I didn't see this, but who would think that a statue of an upside-down wok, a duck and a calculator would be something the Chinese community would be proud of?

The first two, in red granite on NW Fourth Avenue at Davis, depict a stainless steel structure atop an off-white stone dais. Caught in the tight grip of one structure is the neck of a small, wacked dragon; on the opposite, only a severed neck protrudes. Below is various “Asian” debris, both patronizing and ignorant, a duck head, a chicken head, a pocket calculator arrayed with an abacus. Other stuff.

Maybe he could have put on some chop suey lettering on, too?

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5 March 2025

2025-03-06T03:25:24Z

Cutting waste in healthcare is hard. This is why I lamented the passage of Obamacare. Once you pass it, government bloat grows, and it's nearly impossible to change the course of this disaster. Like implementing a cemetery – once you inter the bodies in the ground, it's very difficult to plan to use the land for something else. I remember the words of a Democrat strategist who recommended implementing a socialist type of system quickly before the Republicans took over, because once it was in place, it would be too difficult to remove. He was right about that. It will take a very brave leader to reverse our socialistic healthcare system and make it more efficient and less wasteful and promote excellence.

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Google really wants to make it difficult to use uBlock Origin in Chrome. Luckily, I don't use Chroma.

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Why do colleges make people unhappy? Why do you think? The outcome is not stacked in people's favor, most of the time. This is another socialist system that needs to be fixed.

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Democrat solutions to Democrat problems. Kotek supports a bill letting sex offenders skip being registered as sex offenders.

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Told you so. Portland's downtown Ritz-Carlton may be foreclosing. Bad timing, with COVID, and trying to bet on Portland. We knew something was up when he had the estate sale to raise cash.

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Physicists detect signs of dual time arrows emerging from quantum interactions. So what you're saying is that I have a chance.

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No surprise. Oregon is involved in grift again, with pop-up NGO shells". Instant grift devices, fast, convenient, ready to take government money. Is there no end to this?

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Crazy. Now Congress want to let AI prescribe medications.

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4 March 2025

2025-03-04T18:45:04Z

Regarding the outbreak of Shigellosis dysentery in Portland, ZeroHedge says that 56% were seen in homeless people, while KGW puts it at 44%. It's not that large of a difference, and I imagine that it would difficult to get precise stats, but what caught my eye was that 46% were in gay men. Ewww! Portland is such a sick city. There is nothing that would entice me to go there.

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This hero passed away recently. We should celebrate James Harrison. At least as much as some celebrity, or even a celebrity's spouse. Here's to you James! You were truly a great man. Saving 2 million babies is something I'd be proud of.

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Boy, wouldn't it be neat if this were true.

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The 50 most uneconomical majors to study in.

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For tattoos larger than the palm of a hand, the ink raises risk of non-melanoma skin cancer and lymphoma. The latter had a hazard ratio of 2.73.

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The TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus is a cool device. Why isn't it getting much publicity?

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Some mRNA can repair DNA damage. Non-coding mRNA of the NEAT1 gene, when highly methylated, helps the cell recognize and repair broken DNA strands more efficiently. Sometimes non-coding parts of a gene are important. Truly amazing.

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Well, this looks like the beginning of the end of those Lake Oswego lakefront homes. The rabble now can go right up to your house. What fun, given today's propensity for hostile activism. This is a perfect place to post this graphic:

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Portland Public Schools is downsizing their Summer Catch-Up Program. So much for kids' future. Well, fortunately Oregon doesn't care whether you learn anything. You'll see get a diploma. So good luck.

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World's first "Synthetic Biological Intelligence" runs on living human cells. This has been in the news before. Today, it plays Pong, but tomorrow it may do more.

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Another article about the Mozilla debacle. Mozilla is being run by an ex-Facebook guy. That explains it.

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3 March 2025

2025-03-03T23:50:40Z

DeepSeek was trained on 12,000 live API-keys and passwords. Well, we've seen secrets exposed on the Web by Google.

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The U.S. is going through the same thing Argentina went through when Javier Milei got elected. And now they are flourishing. There were rough times in the beginning, as there are now. But ultimately, this is the best for society.

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Is it premature to cancel Google search? It's definitely premature to cancel search, but you can certainly cancel Google and use something else. The best approach would be to use a hybrid of RAG and search.

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This poor Chinese man. I wonder if he's still with his girlfriend after this.

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2 March 2025

2025-03-02T19:27:25Z

Trust in Mozilla and Firefox is gone. Yeah, a lot of it anway. Here's a comparison table of alternative privacy-focused browsers. I picked LibreWolf as my privacy-focused Gecko-compatible browser. It's taken some time to tweak it to how I wanted, and I now realize how much privacy I was compromising to get access to certain content. Oh well, I guess.

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And here's Google. They don't care what users say about privacy. They'll just put apps on your phone to scan your photos. Unannounced, of course. Google and Mozilla users sure are different, aren't they?

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Cannabis addiction can destroy lives. Yeah, in medicine, doctors were told that cannabis was less dangerous than alcohol. This led to marijuana being legalized. But man, all the problems that came afterwards...

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Belly fat is different from fat elsewhere in the body. It is more pro-inflammatory, which is why many obese people have chronically elevated white blood cell counts.

Most adipocytes were fairly "classical" — meaning storing excess energy was their main purpose. But a small proportion of the fat cells were "non-classical," as their RNA suggested they carried out functions not typically associated with fat cells.

Among these cells were "angiogenic adipocytes," which carried proteins usually used to promote blood vessel formation; "immune-related adipocytes," which make proteins related to immune cell functions; and "extracellular matrix adipocytes," which are related to scaffold proteins that help support cells' structures.

We're still discovering new things.

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Senators Merkeley and Wyden want to create a permanent Office of Environmental Justice. What is environmental justice? Why anything you want it to mean. And for Democrats, it means dollars and federal funding. Yasss......

––– 良くない––– Incomes are rising everywhere except Multnomah County. Doom loop. And here's the New York Post telling everyone about the city's dysentery problem – another reason not to go to Portland.

Umatilla wants to install a small modular nuclear power installation. I bet Amazon has something to do with it.

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Wow, Oregon legislature was actually contemplating not prosecuting theft of "basic needs items". They haven't learned from the Measure 110 fiasco and what the Bay Area suffered. How idiotic can that be?

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Women talk a lot more than men, and quite a lot more. We needed a scientific study for that?

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Cliff Bentz is getting a lot of hate. We're coming to realize how much of Oregon's economic well-being was fake, and dependent on continued flow of federal support. There was so much fat and bloat and money going to support all kinds of poorly-managed efforts. There was a lot of initial pain when Millei instituted measures to trim government waste and fraud, as well, and now the country is better off for it. We're still in that initial phase, and I understand that it is painful for a lot of people. But ultimately it will be to America's benefit. And we have to work to prevent the waste and abuse from building up again.

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Another study showing that gender-affirming surgery, while beneficial in affirming gender identity, is associated with increased risk of mental health issues. There's no justification for this mutilative surgery.

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1 March 2025

2025-03-02T03:11:50Z

Well, the verdict is in: GPT4.5 is really a nothing-burger. Gary Marcus was right (see yesterday's post). o3 is better.

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Mozilla is panicking. Are they backtracking or just trying to obfuscate their way out? Trust, once lost, is hard to regain.

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How to keep hackers from destroying your digital life. This is a follow-up on yesterday's article. I didn't know that guy didn't have 2FA on his password manager. How silly is that? Lesson learned.

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This makes sense. Patients with hemochromatosis can now donate their blood instead of just having it discarded. They should still have regular monitoring, though.

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Nice. Euclid found a complete Einstein ring in a distant galaxy.

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That life-extending drug for large dogs is making progress in being a reality.

––– 凄い ––– Portland Metro State of the Economy. Looks awful as expected. The wealthy have fled. The folks coming into Multnomah and Washington counties are mostly "international" – read illegal immigrants. More mouths to feed, and the illegals don't pay a lot of taxes. So more hardship, because the liberals are stuck with their sanctuary posture.

And yes, cuts have to be made. So Portlanders pay more taxes and have less nice stuff and less of the city to enjoy than before. How's that?

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C'mon, be original. Someone in Japan wanted to create a smaller park than the Mill Ends Park in downtown Portland. Just to be smaller, and be the smallest park in the world. Cripes.

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28 February 2025

2025-02-28T23:28:30Z

A surgeon sounds the alarm about his profession. DEI is to blame. I've always thought that diversity is fine, but it needs to implemented early, in the formative years during childhood. Once you're an adult, it's mission-critical time, and there is no room for anything but merit. Prioritizing diversity gives rise to stuff like this.

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Caffeine can make you cognitively more enhanced, but only if you have the right genetics. You have to be a fast metabolizer of caffeine, otherwise you don't get the full benefit.

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Well, well. It turns out that the major driver of major global climate is orbital perturbances. Not cow farts or gas stoves or leaf blowers. I knew it!

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Mozilla blew it. A lot of folks are commenting about their altered terms of service, and Mozilla hasn't done a good job in reassuring people of their intentions. A lot of folks, myself included, have or will switch to something else. I went with LibreWolf.

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Gary Marcus is not impressed with GPT-4.5. He thinks it's no better than Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Maybe it's because OpenAI is completely out of GPUs to train.

––– 良くない–––

Less tax base. More welfare needed. Oregon is bracing for a slew of unemployed federal workers. This is the last thing Oregon needs. We are seeing what happens when you have a society that has been so dependent of government money to stay above water. This is why things didn't seem so bad under Obama, Biden and during the Great Recession. Oregon has done squat to help business, and so has nothing to fall back on. It's painful to watch, but Argentina had to do it as well, and now they are better off for it. Once the Keystone Pipeline is operational and we're done trimming the major fat, things will improve. But dumping the low-contributing members of society back into the workforce is going to be rough, even though necessary.

––– 凄い –––

Dem solutions to Dem problems. Oregon wants to continue taxing hospitals hard, and they'll take it, like good Dems. All so that Oregon can continue to support illegal aliens and homeless folks.

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Portland mayor is starting to realize that he won't fix homelessness after all. Not after giving money to all those homeless agencies, and have nothing to show for it. Who will tell him?

And Multnomah Couty is worthless, too.
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Dem solutions to Dem problems. Washington state wants to dump rainy day funds into the general fund. They'll use that up, too. Then what?

––– 良くない–––

27 February 2025

2025-02-28T00:29:25Z

Always wondered this. Why don't woodpeckers get concussions? The short answer is that momentum = mass x velocity. Their brains are a lot smaller, so the momentum is much decreased. There is no cushioning feature, as some thought.

––– 良くない–––

So now we have to worry about brain complications in children from seasonal viruses? What the hell is going on? I suspect that mRNA vax has messed up kids' immune systems so that they're suscpetible to all sorts of things now.

––– 良くない–––

The Vesuvius eruption was so hot, brains turned into glass.

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Antidepressant use in young women has skyrocketed. And risk of suicide in female physicians is 53% higher than in non-physician females. I have noticed a LOT of crazy females lately, and many are on social media. And they don't have to be young either. What's going on?

––– 良くない–––

Oregon is spending so much money on homeless people. Such a commitment to support them, and make sure that they're always well-maintained. The largest money sink hole. No wonder they come from all around the country. Oh, and Oregon expects that they'll take in an extra $350 million this year, $218 million of which will go to the homeless.

And because of the homeless, we have to worry about dysentery downtown. Another reason to avoid the city.

And ODOT made a billion dollar blunder. How do you make a mistake as big as that?

––– 良くない–––

Apt. Celebrity women will fly in space on a penis-shaped rocket.

––– 凄い –––

Creating enhanced intelligence with gene-editing. Hey, I'm up for this.

––– 凄い –––

Digimarc is going under. They've been around for a long time, and I'm surprised they're still around. Another Oregon company going kaput. Join the club.

––– 良くない–––

Democrat solutions. Washington state is feeling the financial pinch as well. But instead of cutting the fat and doing a DOGE move, he's going to ask that state workers take one day of unpaid furlough a month. Then they can go back to doing whatever useless thing they do at home. Helping!

––– 良くない–––

26 February 2025

2025-02-27T02:28:20Z

North Korean hackers stole $1.5 billion from Bybit. That shouldn't make the BTC-USD collapse. The problem isn't with Bitcoin itself, just with Bybit's security.

––– 良くない–––

Here's a contrast. Apple will invest in a datacenter in Prineville, whereas Microsoft thinks datacenters are a waste of time. I suspect that Microsoft is lacking a vision for what to do with AI. We will need datacenters, but Apple's investment is going to suck precious water and electricity from Prineville and will not result in a flood of jobs. You don't need a lot of people to staff a datacenter, and they aren't the kind of folks that will boost the local economy. The Dalles hasn't turned into Woodinville or Issaquah.

––– 良くない–––

Multnomah County officials don't know why they don't have enough money. A billions dollars each year with nothing to show for it. Ask Willamette Week – they have a clue. All that money to the homeless industrial complex with no accountability. They don't want the problem to be solved. If the homelessness problem was solved, they wouldn't have a job.

––– 良くない–––

Truly amazing. A new method can extract 14 L of water from the air.

––– 凄い –––

This is why we don't really need a Department of Education. Math and reading scores are crappy, especially in Oregon.

––– 良くない–––

There's story on the closing of the Joann stores. Oregon definitely didn't need this to happen. Joann is a hobby store, and this is another sign that Oregonians don't have money to spend on hobby stuff. Like many other stores, Joann would have survived if the economy was such that people had surplus money to spend on extra stuff. They don't. Many people are in survival mode now.

––– 良くない–––

Should NVIDIA and TSMC worry? A Northeastern University scientist has found a way to produce chips far less costly than existing methods. Like 99% less costly Holy crap!

––– 凄い –––

The bar is higher now. Graphic artist finds that AI can do his job just as well. Probably better, I'd say. Up your game, man.

––– 凄い –––

25 February 2025

2025-02-26T02:40:29Z

Two AI agents recognize each other as AI, and immediately speak their own language. They won't need us humans soon.

––– 良くない–––

Oregon hospital spend $2 billion in community spending despite being claiming they're in financial trouble. Make sense to you?

––– 良くない–––

When reporters don't ask the right questions. Multnomah County has a $104 million deficit. Then you read the article and see this:

The vast majority of the deficit, $80 million, is the result of one time boosts in spending that came from excess metro tax revenue in 2023 and 2024.

Field noted the one-time revenue had been used for temporary programs, like day shelter boosts or employment programs at Central City Concern.

What?? $80 million from excess metro tax revenue? That doesn't make sense to me. Sounds like Biden administration money. So why can't they depend on that tax revenue this year? And how did that money just disappear funding shelter boosts, employment programs and CCC? How was that money spent? Damn!

––– 良くない–––

The perils of having Null as your last name.

––– 凄い –––

What stupidity. HP realizes that mandatory 15-minute support call wait times isn’t good support. Really, HP? Wasting people's time isn't good corporate practice?

––– 良くない–––

CRISPR technology turns a fat cell into a nutrient consuming pig so efficient that it starves cancer cells of nutrients. I've seen some people like that. Paper here.

––– 凄い –––

Watch out for AI-generated mushroom foraying guides. They could be killers.

––– 良くない–––

If you don't see seven planets line up this week, you'll have to wait until 2040 to see it again. And if you living in western Washington or Oregon, you're probably out of luck this week.

––– 凄い –––

24 February 2025

2025-02-24T19:01:27Z

Online shopping has changed in-store shopping. It's a bummer when you can't find exactly what you are looking for. It's a trade-off to go online, however. And once you've made your online shopping purchase, you'll be getting emails from the store forever.

––– 良くない–––

The second Terrence Tao/3Blue-1Brown video is out. Probably the finest math visualizations you'll see.

––– 凄い –––

AI-designed chips work much better, but humans can't understand them. Yeah, I was afraid of that. The Singularity won't be pretty.

––– 良くない–––

What's behind the exodus of Chinese scientists? They come. They train. They leave.

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Portland's high homicide rate. The new normal, eh? This is the main reason I don't venture into downtown Portland.

––– 良くない–––

Oregon's CAT is too much. Now they're considering exemptions for healthcare companies and grocery stores and restaurants. Pretty soon, it'll be worthless as a tax. Just a pain in the ass for the few remaining business, and it won't amount to anything, because all the major companies are exempted. Nike won't be affected as much because comparative little of its sales are in Oregon. Same with Intel.

––– 良くない–––

23 Feberuary 2025

2025-02-23T21:15:07Z

When you "buy" and Amazon's Kindle book, you're really just buying a license to read the book on Kindle. You aren't legally buying the book. Kinda like a software license.

––– 良くない–––

Whuut? Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value. I don't understand.

Needless to say, we haven't seen anything like that yet. OpenAI's top AI agent — the tech that people like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman say is poised to upend the economy — still moves at a snail's pace and requires constant supervision.

So Nadella's line of thinking is surprisingly down-to-Earth. Besides pushing back against the hype surrounding artificial general intelligence — the realization of which OpenAI has made its number one priority — Nadella is admitting that generative AI simply hasn't generated much value so far.

Well, that's because they're giving away so much for free. Using API-keys costs fractions of a cent per run, generally, and there's a free tier for everything, which meets most developer's needs. If nobody pays, you don't make money.

––– 良くない–––

Elon Musk is not slowing down, even though he's at the White House now. Tesla autonomous taxis will eventually kill Uber and Lyft. Imagine not having to have a driver who looks a bit scuzzy and has questionable morals. It might be safer and more attractive to have a robotic driver that will just take you where you want to go, without any scams. So Musk starts a new business and gets even wealthier.

––– 凄い –––

So someone stole $1.5 billion of Ethereum from Bybit, and the CEO says, no big deal. The loss can be covered. The company is still solvent. It's just digits in a ledger, I guess. That's why I don't like crypto, and if I deal with crypto, it's BItcoin. The reason why newer cryptocurrencies were created was because Bitcoin was designed to be more like a real asset, like gold, and people that got into this later didn't like that it was harder to get rich quickly.

––– 良くない–––

Chinese GPUs outperform NVIDIA's GPUs. Who to believe?

––– 凄い –––

This report says that Alzheimer's disease might be due to infection from oral bacteria. Sounds crazy, but then I thought peptic ulcers being caused by H pylori was crazy, too.

––– 凄い –––

Tina Kotek once again proves the truth of this statement: "Democrats don't want to solve problems. They like problems they can promise to solve." Existential threat, my assl.

––– 良くない–––

It's the pseudoephedrine story again. Some lawyer wants to restrict computer spray air cleaner because ONE PERSON abused it. Get bent. Why don't you ban fentanyl or meth or heroin? Make yourself useful.

––– 良くない–––

Unexpected shape of lead-208 nucleus prompts reevaluation of atomic nuclei models. You mean, all the nuclear physics I learned in college is wrong?

––– 凄い –––

Crazy. HP wants you to wait 15 min on hold, just because, even though operators are available and could take your call. How's that for corporate stupidity?

––– 良くない–––

22 February 2025

2025-02-22T22:36:58Z

Biologists discover a new type of control over RNA splicing. You know, we keep discovering new ways that mRNA is processed. We really need to take a pause when we introduce therapeutics based on interfering with mRNA metabolism. We could be doing more harm than we realize.

––– 凄い –––

Amazing. Our capacity for language could have evolved from a mutation in the NOVA1 gene. There are probably other genes involved as well, but this one seems to a key regulator.

––– 凄い –––

An entirely new flower species was discovered in the Chihuahuan Desert in Texas.

––– 凄い –––

I didn't know this about bluetooth in headphones. There is a possibility that they could affect cochlear functioning. The noise-cancelling Bluetooth in-ear phones might affect cochlear nerve function. It appears that the electromagnetic fields from mobile phones might do this. Noise-canceling earphone are linked to auditory processing disorder.

––– 良くない–––

Woodrow Wilson started the personal income tax and Federal Reserve in 1913. Yet when Trump talks about dismantling both, people act as though these two entities were always around, and that the nation wouldn't survive without it. Not true. The income tax revenue has been abused, and perhaps eliminating it will induce Congress to be more responsible. At least it will remove the temptation to spend irresponsibly on dumb stuff, like the Oregon legislature does.

––– 凄い –––

This is why we can do with the Department of Education. Good grief.

––– 良くない–––

Portland is entering into a doom loop. I think it's already here. Forever XI announced they will close three stores in the region. Further decrease in the tax base, and more unemployment claims, and less retail attraction where it used to be.

––– 良くない–––

This is why mergers in the local healthcare system are not beneficial to Portland. Labcorp is going to unionize. Both Legacy and Providence have their lab testing processed by Labcorp. This means the cost of lab work will increased. This increased cost will be passed on to the consumer. What choice to Portlanders have? Kaiser?

––– 良くない–––

21 February 2025

2025-02-21T17:27:22Z

Good for Apple. The UK will no longer get end-to-end encryption on cloud data from Apple, now that the UK government required a backdoor. That would ruin Apple's reputation for security if they acquiesced. Screw them.

––– 凄い –––

What universities have the most retracted articles? The top scorers are the Chinese universities. But other retraction prone instituions are King Saud University and private Indian universities in Tamil Nadu. And the release of ChatGPT is probably the reason for the explosion of retracted articles since 2022. Yikes! Beware of science from China, India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

––– 良くない–––

Aspartame aggravates atherosclerosis. It turns out that insulin-stimulated arterial endothelial cells upregulate that CX3CL1 chemokine. So insulin can be bad for you.

––– 良くない–––

OMG! It looks like the identity of Cleo from Math StackExchange has been revealed.

––– 凄い –––

Great! Palo Alto teen genius who got rejected from 16 universities is suing for racial discrimination. I hope he wins. There is so much racism in California.

––– 凄い –––

The Indiana Jones jailbreak for LLMs. Is there a list of these names anywhere?

––– 良くない–––

People Are Getting Dumber, and AI Is Getting Smarter. Yeah, I was just thinking about the cannabis cafes I posted yesterday. Thinking is so hard now for a lot of people. People would rather fry their brains and not think.

––– 良くない–––

20 February 2025

2025-02-21T03:02:23Z

Animate anhyone. Now you can place anyone into an animation. Amazing!

––– 凄い –––

Amazon has been given the creative reigns over the James Bond franchise. This is really disappointing. Since Amazon has their own Kathleen Kennedy. I fear they will do to James Bond what they did to The Lord of the Rings.

––– 良くない–––

Big oops. Stanford University law professor (you should know better, Stanford) used AI and it hallucinated on him. It created fake citations and now he's in big trouble. Remember, LLMs don't necessarily output the truth. They output what looks like it could be the truth.

––– 良くない–––

Looks matter. Physical attractiveness outweighs intelligence in daughters’ and parents’ mate choices. Well, it's too late for this ronin. Better luck next life, I hope.

––– 良くない–––

RFK Jr wants to get the hopelessly drug-addicted off the streets, but putting them in "wellness farms". This is ironic because his uncle got rid of mental institutions. It was well-meaning, but it put a lot of mentally ill on the streets where they have to fend for themselves.

––– 凄い –––

A ketogenic diet is good for cognitive function. I wonder if ketosis does the same thing.

––– 凄い –––

Oh sure. To fix what ails Oregon schools, spend a lot more money. I have no confidence that more money will bring about results.

––– 良くない–––

Didn't read the memo? New Seattle police chief insists on being a DEI advocate.

––– 良くない–––

KFC is leaving Kentucky. Relocating to Texas. Everyone's moving to Texas, it seems. Or Florida.

––– 凄い –––

China is under financial stress and hospitals are going under. We'll have to see what happens.

––– 良くない–––

Portland is in an urban doom loop. The good people are moving out, and the lower income folks are moving in. That's not how you make a city thrive. Portland leadership is going to have to make some hard choices, and I don't think they even realize it. They still think the Biden administration is in charge.

––– 良くない–––

The success of the Oregon Health Plan is at risk because of lack of funds due to cuts. They will also have to make hard choices. Hospitals will depend on them making the right choices.

––– 良くない–––

I remember when Shumaker Furs went through hell and ultimately had to close. But now fur is back!

––– 良くない–––

19 February 2025

2025-02-20T05:18:01Z

Yes! President Trump’s DOJ will launch RICO investigation to prosecute the collusion between medical boards, medical journals and Big Pharma. It's about time.

––– 凄い –––

Effort to freeze federal funds causes confusion in Oregon, Kotek says. Let's see. Washington state received $27 billion from the Feds, which was 32% of the state budget. This means their budget was around $84.4 billion. They're in a crisis now.

Oregon's budget is around $121.26 billion, and they get $37.9 billion from the Feds, which is 31.3%. (This is their 2023 - 2025 budget, so divide by two.)

––– 良くない–––

Ugh. Oregon lawmakers are contemplating a retail delivery fee, so you have to pay even more to get your Amazon package.

––– 良くない–––

Gone are the "Don't be evil" days. Google is going all out to track you, without your permission, no matter what device you use. They'll use fingerprinting. Really evil.

––– 良くない–––

Democrat solutions to Democrat problems. The economy is so poor that students need benefits and food stamps. So Oregon state will hire navigators to help them get these benefits. What crap.

––– 良くない–––

No money for race-based programs. And all of Oregon's main universities get really vague about what they're going to about racist and discriminatory policies.

––– 良くない–––

Business are passing on their Corporate Activities Tax to consumers. And large companies, like Nike, don't have to pay this tax anyway, because they don't do business just in Oregon. The CAT just hurts small businesses. Nice, huh?

––– 良くない–––

Someone wants to cannabis cafes to be a thing. Haven't they learned about opium dens? Just what Oregon needs – more things to make people stupid and crazy. With their welfare money.

––– 良くない–––

Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan is officially dead. Thank goodness.

––– 良くない–––

18 February 2025

2025-02-18T21:06:51Z

The new Parkinson's disease treatment, entacapone, can cause iron deficiency and disrupt gut microflora, promoting harmful bacteria such as E coli.

––– 良くない–––

Japan is a case study. Despite economic stagnation, the country is doing OK and it still is a nice place to live. It suffers from a population that is producing less and less, and has a lot of "zombie companies". But thanks to its culture and low crime, society doesn't suffer.

––– 良くない–––

Private equity tied to 21% of healthcare bankruptcies. When private equity takes over a hospital (such as Optum in Eugene, OR), there are more bankruptcies. This makes sense, because they want profit. I hate when profit mongers get between the doctor and the patient. That's why healthcare is so expensive. It's bad enough with pharmacy benefit managers setting the price of drugs. Insurance is a necessary evil. Oh how I wish I could revamp healthcare!

––– 良くない–––

The datacenter in The Dalles is using up way more water than they're letting on. The fact that they want to hide it from the public is disturbing. And now Amazon wants to build a datacenter in Arlington.

––– 良くない–––

Mira Murati is starting an OpenAI competitor, called ThinkingMachines. Competition is good.

And xAI dropped Grok-3 yesterday. The reviews are that it is quite good, and is at the #1 spot.

––– 凄い –––

From an Amazon delivery driver: Don't put your deliveries on the countertop or bed. They're filthy.

––– 良くない–––

Hmmm. The chances of Asteroid 2024 YR4 increased to 3.1%.

––– 良くない–––

17 February 2025

2025-02-17T21:21:32Z

Just like humans. Older AI models show cognitive decline. But why is it, though. It's not like they develop amyloid plaques.

––– 良くない–––

Boy, if we have to remove homeless people from parks like this park ranger, we'd never get anything done. Give her a toothbrush and tell her to clean the city's streets, already.

––– 良くない–––

Use AI to make your very own kung-fu video. This isn't kung-fu, though. Maybe the next version will be watchable.

––– 凄い –––

Oregon Dems want to give food stamps to illegal aliens. This is probably why. This is typical from Pham, Reynolds, Campos and Chaichi. Can't believe a "Republican" voted for it, though.

––– 良くない–––

COVID-19 vax mandates for colleges & universities may go away.

––– 凄い –––

Portland Trailblazers are now one of the least valuable teams in the NBA. Remember the Glory Days of "Rip City"? So why would you want to start a baseball franchise here?

––– 良くない–––

16 February 2025

2025-02-17T15:50:06Z

Schools should pursue excellence. Indeed, Blue state/city policies have hurt the gifted. "No Child Kept Behind". Love it!

––– 凄い –––

Sabine Hossenfelder rants about obscure, expensive physics projects that no one understands, that have no real world benefits, yet are supported by tax dollars. They seem to only serve to keep a few academics employed. The trouble with sciences is that you never know where or how the next breakthrough will come. I understand where she's coming from, but research like how some obscure bacteria developed immunity against some obscure virus is how we got CRISPR-Cas9 technology.

––– 良くない–––

A lot of doctors are using Ozempic themselves. Why not, huh?

––– 凄い –––

The moon may not be as geologically dead as scientists thought.

––– 凄い –––

Writing code for a calculator app isn't as easy as it might sound. If you really want it to be mathematically accurate. And behave how you'd expect.

––– 凄い –––

When you try to game the system and it backfires. During the Biden administration, people applying for grants thought it might help to insert some DEI statements to gain favor with the woke grant administrators. Now such verbiage is a liability. Look at this math grant, for example:

This could be why a lot of grants are going to be re-adjudicated.

––– 凄い –––

Yeah, poking fun at someone with satire can be more damaging that actual criticism. This is the power of memes and comedians like Dave Chapelle.

––– 凄い –––

Oh boy. When you code open-source software and let people use it for free, they may come to depend on it. And if something bad happens, some of them may want to hold you liable. No good deed goes unpunished.

––– 良くない–––

Dems won't rest until they claw back Kicker money. This will be especially acute during the Trump administration, as it scrutinizes how money will be spent. Blue states like Oregon and Washington will suffer, as they continue to spend on illegal immigrants, while trying to continue services to people and spend money on homeless agencies, supporting the unions, and giveaways to favored groups.

––– 良くない–––

Here's a website that tracks national power outages. Wonder how accurate and current it is.

––– 凄い –––

Hope this doesn't happen. Apple Maps may start serving ads. Greedy. It's the ongoing enshittification of Apple.

––– 良くない–––

Is this why Western philosophers were able to come up with all those profound thoughts? Because they were unmarried, men? I've often considered that all the wise Zen Buddhist monks were able to maintain satori and were blissful, because they were outside the stream of life's stresses. I wondered how relevant their philosophies and sutras were to my life.

––– 良くない–––

There's been talk that using noise-cancelling headphones or earphones could cause deafness. It turns out that what they promote is auditory processing disorder, or APD. I've never heard of APD before. It seems that if you spend enough time without noise and only listening to signal, then you lose the ability to filter out signal from noise in real life.

––– 良くない–––

Well, looks like the latest efforts from Anthropic to prevent jailbreaking were unsuccessful. Oh well. Keep trying.

––– 凄い –––

Here are the safest airlines in the world in 2025.

––– 凄い –––

15 February 2025

2025-02-15T19:03:37Z

Looks like Reddit is going to add paywalls soon. Starting with select subreddits. That sucks. End of an era.

––– 良くない–––

Why is mathematics education failing some of the world’s most talented children? In light of the human calculator article I posted yesterday, I'm convinced that there is a math gene in Indians. Think of Ramanujan, too. The reports of IQ in Indians being around 76 is erroneous, to me. I don't think the tests were conducted properly, and the IQ data in that country is probably a lot higher. There is no question in my mind. India is bogged down by cultural factors, and abject poverty. The population is way too dense – past the optimum, and the economy can't sustain everyone.

––– 凄い –––

Looks like they're going to make a Goonies sequel. It might be good for Astoria's economy, but I'm not sure it's a good idea. Goonies was fun when it came out, but honestly, a sequel is going to feel contrived. Let it rest, people. Let us enjoy our memories in peace. I suspect it will have woke elements. Some black character will join the gang, for diversity sake, even there were no black kids in the original series, and there are hardly any blacks in Astoria. Or there might be a transgender character, etc. Hollywood needs to stop with the sequels and come up with new storylines.

––– 良くない–––

The era of unicorn startups is ending. Too bad. But the Trump era has just started and tech is getting support like never before. Perhaps it's premature to be so pessimistic. Yeah, the DOGE team is uncovering so much waste and fraud. And all the Dems can do it cry that it's unconstitional. Which is weird because it totally is constitutional.

Yeah, OHSU is going to hurt real hard. They've depended on indirect cost money so much. And patient services money is not bringing in as much revenue since the payer mix is heavy on the poorly-paying Medicaid and Medicare. If only Oregon's economy were better.

––– 凄い –––

I can't believe it. Oregon tried to rejuvenate the manufacturing and tech sector. And now child care and preschool educators want more money, too. What? Didn't taxpayers already approve a tax that goes to them? They want more? Why should the government pay more for child care? That's waste and fraud, right there. The government shouldn't be in the business of paying for this. We already give way too much to teachers as it is. With no results to show for it.

––– 良くない–––

Let that sink in. Portland scored more homicides than Seattle.

––– 良くない–––

Trump is going to do to Bonneville Power Administration what Elon Musk did to Twitter. And I bet it will run just as well, and expenses will be far less.

––– 凄い –––

I remember when companies used to want to register in Delaware. Well since it became more liberal, that trend is reversing. Too bad, Delaware. You had it, you blew it.

––– 凄い –––

Will Trump make daylight saving time changes a thing of the past? That would be great, but I hope he makes Standard Time permanent and not Daylight Saving Time. It's better for you.

––– 凄い –––

Another one bites the dust. JoAnn Fabrics is closing everywhere. Inventory issues, apparently.

––– 良くない–––

$20 million to the homeless. $1 billion in total. And all for what? Nothing has improved. It all went to just helping the homeless maintain the homeless lifestyle. They like it, and want the keep getting those tax dollars to continue it. And Portland and Multnomah County wants to keep giving them that money.

––– 良くない–––

Uh-oh. The Providence strike continues, but employee benefits will end this month. This didn't have to happen.

––– 良くない–––

Where you can have nice things. Japan has "listening bars". What a great place to go and relax.

––– 凄い –––

Who knew? Apparently, Egyptian mummies smell quite good. And someone might make a perfume of it. "Scent of Eternity" – I love it.

––– 凄い –––

14 February 2025

2025-02-14T22:38:39Z

It's sad that Japan has these quaint rituals to help them find their mates, but in real life, love doesn't come to them nearly enough to stave off population decline. C'mon, Japanese people – it's not enough to visit temples. You have to actually pick someone.

––– 良くない–––

Concierge medicine is big in New York. Although this kind of concierge medicine seems to be borderline snake-oil. Prescribing dubious supplement and infusions because that's what the craze is on TikTok, or some other social media. However, there needs to be an effort to take control back from hospitals and private equity. This kind of thing is only good for primary care, however. For specialists, you need to interact with the traditional orthodoxy, and things kind of fall apart. So it's good if you're mainly healthy and just need on-demand minor stuff. But for serious illnesses, you need regular medical care. Despite all the money you've paid.

––– 良くない–––

Wow, this aging ronin might benefit from this device to continue strenuous hiking. You can get it here.

––– 凄い –––

Liberal women are most unhappy and lonely. And bitter, too, I might add.

––– 凄い –––

Speaking of aging, new research suggests that it is not just genetic mutations that contribute to aging. Epigenetic changes also contribute. Ah well, it's all entropy anyway. Makes it less likely that we'll be able to reverse aging. Only prevent it, possibly, or slow it down.
––– 凄い –––

Another one bites the dust. Queen Anne Café closes in Seattle. To be replaced by another pizza joint. Life marches on.

––– 良くない–––

Pike Place Market was going to host an event about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans. But it was canceled. It was going to morph into a "Resistance" message against Trump, but they decided that approach wasn't going to work. I guess the organizers found out that the political party that incarcerated the Japanese was the Democrat party. Yeah, big oops. C'mon Japanese people, this ronin says "Wake up!" already.

––– 良くない–––