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Portland’s ballot measures have resulted in the second highest tax rates in the country as of this year – a tax rate only second to New York City:
Starting in 2017, Multnomah County voters passed several tax measures aimed at improving life in their burgeoning city. After Metro and the county levied taxes to combat homelessness and provide preschool for all, Portland now has the second-highest total state and local income tax rate in the nation—14.69%—exceeded only by New York City at 14.78%, according to a report from Ernst & Young commissioned by Oregon Business & Industry.
https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/02/01/they-left-portland-is-losing-some-of-its-biggest-fans/
That’s the top marginal tax rate, meaning you pay it only on income above $125,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples filing together. By comparison, the only New Yorkers paying the top rate there are those making $25 million or more, single or married. That means plenty of nonplutocrat Oregonians are paying taxes rivaled only by those levied on Gotham millionaires.”
We also have had an over-zealous city sending tax penalties and threats of IRS actions to anyone that wasn’t paying – even though thousands of taxpayers and their companies didn’t know how to file payments for the new taxes.
Another option is to get out of Portland, Multnomah county, and the Metro area. Before you move, you need to make sure you’re really out. Portland, Multnomah, and Metro have continually gerrymandered their boundaries to absorb as much of the tax base as possible. This is important because the most recent tactic is to levee taxes against residents of the county and ever-expanding metro area to even further spread the boundaries.
How do you know if you’re in those jurisdictions? There’s a tool for that from the tax notices they sent out:
Sever Part Deals is a website that offers high quality, manufacture refurbished, and warrantied enterprise hard drives. Many of them come with 2 year warranties and come in gigantic capacities from 10-20TB.
While I would never trust a refurbished single drive with my critical data, I run a RAID 5 system with redundancy and find these drives to have been very good in such a setup. If one dies, I can hot swap a spare in and keep going.
I recently did this with some 8TB drives, and they have been working great for the last 3 years without a single hiccup, heat issue, or SMART error. You want to make sure you’re buying reliable drives to begin with (cough cough: massive and long-standing history of high failure rates with Seagate) – but baring that – my HGST’s have been amazing.
Histoplasma is one of the three main species of soil fungi that cause lung infections in the U.S. Historically, Histoplasma was found in the Midwest and parts of the East, Coccidioides in the Southwest, and Blastomyces in the Midwest and the South. But a growing number of case reports and anecdotes suggest that all three have expanded out of their traditional ranges in recent decades.
“Fungal infections are much more common than people realize, and they’re spreading,” Spec said. “The scientific community has underinvested in studying and developing treatments for fungal infections. I think that’s beginning to change, but slowly. It’s important for the medical community to realize these fungi are essentially everywhere these days and that we need to take them seriously and include them in considering diagnoses.”
People develop fungal lung infections after breathing in spores from fungi in the soil. The spores become airborne when the ground is disturbed by farming, landscaping, construction or even just by people walking around in fungi-rich environments such as caves. Most healthy adults and children can fight off a fungal infection handily, but infants, older adults and people with compromised immune systems may develop fever, cough, fatigue and other symptoms. Fungal lung infections easily can be mistaken for bacterial or viral lung infections such as COVID-19, bacterial pneumonia and tuberculosis.
“People with fungal lung infection often spend weeks trying to get the right diagnosis and appropriate treatment, and the whole time they’re feeling terrible,” said lead author Patrick B. Mazi, MD, a clinical fellow in infectious diseases. “They usually have multiple health-care visits with multiple opportunities for testing and diagnosis, but the doctor just doesn’t consider a fungal infection until they’ve exhausted all other possibilities.”
Lung Granulomas and bacterial infections
Granulomas are small lumps of immune cells that form in your body in areas where there is infection or inflammation. They’re most commonly found in your lungs, but they can also be in other areas of your head and body. Doctors believe that they block the spread of organisms such as bacteria and fungi through your body.
Granulomas themselves don’t usually have noticeable symptoms. But the conditions that cause them, such as sarcoidosis, tuberculosis, histoplasmosis, and others, may create symptoms. Some of these include:
In some cases, you may have lung granulomas that show no abnormal signs. They don’t usually need treatment or other testing.
Granulomas are usually accidently found through X-rays or other tests when doctors look for other health issues. At first, they may look dangerous on imaging tests, but they’re usually noncancerous
Histoplasmosis caused granulomas: Granulomas will form to stop the spread of the fungus. If you have histoplasmosis, you may never have symptoms. But for people with weak immune systems, it can be serious. In rare cases, a granuloma doesn’t heal and the lung tissue around it can scar (pulmonary fibrosis). Or the air tubes in your lungs (bronchi) can form pockets and get infected. When this happens, there isn’t a cure, but there are treatments that can ease your symptoms.
Granulomas on your lungs usually heal themselves and go away. The best way to control lung granulomas is to care for the health issues that cause them.
Links:
Nothing, Forever is a 24 hour a day Twitch stream with an amazing premise. It runs 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year and delivers new content every minute. Everything you see, hear, or experience (with the exception of the artwork and laugh track) is always brand new content, continually generated via machine learning and AI algorithms. It never repeats (except when the AI generates the same content).
It was launched by Mismatch Media, a media lab focused on creating experimental forms of television shows, video games, and more, using generative and other machine learning technologies.
Give it a watch and be amazed. Sadly, it’s probably better than probably 50% of current TV shows.
Interviewing seems to be changing. Besides the usual technical and behavioral interviews, I’m hearing of more interesting two-hand kind of tests in which recruiters ask you to basically perform some tasks as if you were going to be doing the job.
It’s already a good idea to have a personal elevator pitch, but I found this experience by Smok Code to be really instructive:
teamLabs does some amazing work – and this is no exception. I was floored when I went to their exhibition in Tokyo and they don’t seem to be missing a beat even during Covid.
M R James wrote some great old time ghost stories. Robert Powell did some fantastic narrations on his DVD called Classic Ghost Stories – M.R. James, but it appears this is the only video segment left online:
It looks like the Internet Archive still has the audio recordings though – wonderful if you want some good Christmas Ghost Stories:
Ariodante of France has been offering a Murder Mystery train ride on the fabulous and famous Blue Train. While traveling from Paris to the French Riviera, you will try to solve a murder mystery – but do so while dressed in authentic period clothes and environment.
Unfortunately, by 2022, it looks like the train ride has been converted to into a cruise. Maybe it will come back as a train experience in 2023? Here was a 2019 review of the train version.
The entire experience for 2 comprises a 4-day trip to Paris to create your 1920s wardrobe and the entire 4-day cruise on the Mediterranean in a regular cabin. Included in your package: 6 nights in a luxury hotel (suite), your wardrobe for the game, as well as all your meals and bespoke cocktails during the cruise.
The murder mystery was written by an award-winning author and inspired by Agatha Christie. In this new murder mystery, you will never really know when the mystery starts, who is real, or how each of your fellow travelers is involved. All you’ll know is time is of the essence because anyone on board could be the next victim or … the murderer(s).
The adventure begins months before the cruise starts when you will receive your invitation with the date and place of departure. Then, after an incredible 4-day-long Costumes Experience in Paris to create your whole 1920s wardrobe for the cruise, your adventure will start a few months later, in September or October 2023… or is it 1923?
Travel back in time a hundred years back to enjoy an extraordinary private visit to one of Italy’s most famous ancient archaeological sites, taste the 1920s-inspired creations of 3 different famous 3 Michelin-starred chefs, dance during a Charleston party on board the steamship and so much more. But be aware that this idyllic and lavish cruise hides many untold secrets and covert riddles as nothing is what it seems.
The price tag? An eye watering £350,000 for 2.
If that’s a little steep, maybe try the Blue Train inspired rooftop restaurant at Bloomingdale’s in New York.
One of the critical arguments during the purchase of Twitter was how many accounts were bots. Bots are probably much more rampant in social media and games than people think – or would like to think. With things like ChatGPT, people are quickly realizing how easy it has been for bad actors to flood social media (from reddit to Facebook) to disrupt our elections and foment rebellions (and protests) in countries to destabilize governments (include in the US).
Smarter Every Day did an entire series on how easy it is to manipulate everything from Facebook to Youtube to Reddit. Reddit even has whole forums that are just bots talking to each other. Go read through it – it’ll shock you how easily bots create and control conversations on these platforms.
How easy is it to get followers and spread misinformation? What if I told you that you could get 1000 followers for $20? If you have a modest sized advertising budget (or part of a country’s defense/espionage budget), you could spend $5,000 and get 250,000 followers or only $20,000 and get a MILLION followers. This is true for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and just about any other platform. Don’t believe me? Here’s just one example from BoosterGod:
So, maybe being an ‘influencer’ with a million subscribers isn’t quite as impressive as you’d think. That isn’t even a blip on most corporate advertising budgets – and nothing to a foreign power.
It might be worth an experiment if you have the cash. An influencer with 1 million subscribers can usually get advertising sponsorships and product advertising deals that far exceed $20,000 – so it might even pay for itself…