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Month: September 2024

Local Portland/Oregon Fall festivals and events

Local Portland/Oregon Fall festivals and events

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Enjoy some fun fall festivals!

Sept 12-15 – Mt Angel Oktoberfest – Huge Oktoberfest. Be sure to also visit Mt Angel Monastery.

Sept 13-15 – Oregon Celtic Festival – At about $50/ticket, this is cool but dang expensive

Sept 14th – Mid-Autumn Festival – Experience a day filled with Asian cultural performances, delicious food, unique merchandise, and a beautiful lantern parade.

Sept 14-15 – Polish Festival – Enjoy some amazing delicious food, amazing perogies, and music

Sept 20-22 – Los Roast Green Chili Roasting – order a half or whole bushel or 1 peck of hand-delivered New Mexican green chilis.

2024 PDX Hot Sauce Festival

2024 PDX Hot Sauce Festival

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Every August is the PDX Hot Sauce Festival. It’s a celebration of all things hot and spicy. There are dozens of vendors from around both the local area as well as around the country. It’s interesting to see how many different kinds of hot stuff that people make.

But it’s not just all vendors, there’s a lot of things going on. The local Hammer Brothers WWF-style Wrestling does matches all weekend.

Then there is the contests. The stage of doom hosts actual Guinness World Record attempts to eat the most Carolina Reapers. Or maybe try your hand at bobbing for Reapers, Burning BBQ Pork challenge, or Spicy Tacos from hell.

The star of the show, in my opinion is Ed Curry and his creations. I always stop in because he usually brings a bunch of Carolina Reapers for sale. This year you could buy a bag of 10 reapers for $5

Also present, you can taste test all of his hot sauce creations. All the way up to pure Reaper puree (Reaper Squeezins) and his new Xperience made from the supposedly even hotter Pepper X. I didn’t even see those latter ones on his website yet.

New for this year, he even brought Pepper X Oil, and even Pepper X ‘sludge’ that’s the purest of the Pepper X extract. It comes in a simple printed bottle and is supposed to be the hottest thing in the world (literally and figuratively). I bought a bottle. Lets see how it goes.

Eating the world’s hottest peppers

Eating the world’s hottest peppers

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Ed Curry comes to the PDX Hot Sauce festival every year and brings along his latest creations. Good Mythical Morning sat down and ate ONE Carolina Reaper chili – and hilarity ensues.

My favorite quotes:

  • “It’s started”
  • “I’ve been here before, but never like this”
  • “I hate the world. I hate that we exist.”
  • “I can’t do it. Every breath out…is like time travel … into a stupid, stupid place”
  • “We’ve been told it peaks at 6 minutes”
  • <dry heaves>”Nothing came up. I wish something would have.”

I can confirm they are stupid hot. Honestly though, the Carolina Reaper sauce, when mixed with chili and other foods in proper amounts – actually has a great taste.

Even more interesting is that in 2024 he brought his Pepper X extract and sauce. It supposedly even more hot. I bought a bottle to test it out. Is it bad when there is just a simple typed label?

The professor that escaped a political cult

The professor that escaped a political cult

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Wired magazine interviewed Dr. Janja Lalich – a former left-wing political cult member turned sociologist. She escaped the radical Marxist-Leninist Democratic Workers Party cult in California – and now speaks about cult behavior as a sociologist.

If you want to see how easy it is to be pulled into a cult, she talks about how she finally recognized the group for what it was. She tells us that cult members are almost never mentally ill. In fact, cults want high functioning people with money/skills/connections.

They attract idealistic people that are looking to change the world or do something important but fall under the manipulation of a charismatic cult leader.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FghSUttp6Lc%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26fs%3D1%26hl%3Den-US%26autohide%3D2%26wmode%3Dtransparent
Your company’s Slack/Teams/Zoom IM’s may be being monitored by AI

Your company’s Slack/Teams/Zoom IM’s may be being monitored by AI

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Aware makes IT solutions that can monitor and identify security risks on internal corporate instant message systems like Slack, Teams, Zoom and other tools many companies use. But recent interviews and statements by the CEO indicate they’re being used for more than that.

Aware’s dozens of AI models, built to read text and process images, can also identify bullying, harassment, discrimination, noncompliance, pornography, nudity and other behaviors.

One of those other AI tools Aware makes can monitor IM comment sentiment. For example if there is a new policy rolled out, the tools could help them gauge which employees are having problems with it and who like it.

“It won’t have names of people, to protect the privacy,” said Aware CEO Jeff Schumann. Rather, he said, clients will see that “maybe the workforce over the age of 40 in this part of the United States is seeing the changes to [a] policy very negatively because of the cost, but everybody else outside of that age group and location sees it positively because it impacts them in a different way.”

Apparently Starbucks, T-Mobile, Chevron, Delta, and Walmart are just some of the companies said to be using these systems. Aware says it has analyzed more than 20 billion interactions across more than three million employees.

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Sugar Gel Triggers Robust Hair Regrowth

Sugar Gel Triggers Robust Hair Regrowth

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Scientists may have accidentally stumbled upon a potential new treatment for the most common form of baldness. It even works as well as commercial hair loss treatments.

It all started with research on deoxyribose sugar that naturally occurs in the body and helps form DNA.

While studying how these sugars heal the wounds of mice when applied topically, scientists at the University of Sheffield and COMSATS University in Pakistan noticed that the fur around the lesions was growing back faster than in untreated mice.

Together, the team designed a biodegradable, non-toxic gel made from deoxyribose, and applied the treatment to mouse models of male-pattern baldness.

Minoxidil was also tested on balding mouse models, and some of the animals received a dose of both sugar gel and minoxidil for good measure.

Compared to mice that received a gel without any medicine, those that received a gel with deoxyribose sugar began to sprout new hair follicles.

Both minoxidil and the sugar gel promoted 80 to 90 percent hair regrowth in mice with male pattern baldness. Combining the treatments, however, did not make much more of a difference.

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Oregon schools rank 45th out of 50

Oregon schools rank 45th out of 50

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How does Oregon schools stand up? A bastion of progressive leadership over the last 30 years and funding in which almost 50% of the entire state budget is spent on education.

Bluntly? Oregon has one of the worst school systems in America – getting an “F” grade on its report card in test scores and dropout rates, but scoring an “A” in high spending. Proof that spending alone isn’t sufficient to produce results.

In fact, Oregon ranks below every southern state besides Louisiana – who they beat by a scant 0.5. Maybe that’s why 20% of parents in Oregon have pulled their students out of public schools since the start of covid (2019 to 2022) and increasingly putting them in private schools.

Quality & Safety of Schools in Oregon (1=Best; 25=Avg.):

Overall Rank: 45th

  • 42nd – Math Test Scores
  • 43rd – Reading Test Scores
  • 44th – Pupil-Teacher Ratio
  • 20th – Median SAT Score
  • 23rd – Median ACT Score
  • 17th – % of Licensed/Certified Public K–12 Teachers
  • 44th – Dropout Rate
  • 33rd – Existence of Digital Learning Plan

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What you do in secret

What you do in secret

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When was the last time you did a completely unselfish act, or act of love? Hmmm. Maybe that was too easy a question.

When was the last time you did something and received no credit/recognition for it? Did you ever only do something because you knew you would get credit for it? Have you purposefully done something kind so that nobody even knew it was you? What if someone else even got the credit?

How did it feel to not get credit, not be recognized, or if someone else got credit?

Matthew 6:1-6

In Oregon, almost twice as many breweries close as open in 2023

In Oregon, almost twice as many breweries close as open in 2023

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The damage to Oregon’s reputation and economy hits even their most famous products: breweries.

Axios reported that in 2023 there were 22 brewery and brewpub closings in Oregon included well-known names like Ex Novo, Ecliptic, and Cascade Brewing. Only 12 breweries opened. Even worse, for those that stayed open, their sales overwhelmingly decreased.

The gotcha for Oregon is that it defied national trends showing more openings than closings. More evidence the luster has worn of Oregon breweries.

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