adespoton

I think you’ve got most of that right, except that Gen-X felt ignored and overlooked and so didn’t really have a rebellion. Gen-X was the “get stuff done in the background while others said you weren’t ready and gave the accolades to others” generation. There weren’t enough of us to make a difference with protests.

The only thing I get irked by is gen z mistaking us for boomers. Despite general world view etc. being so obviously different.

To me, it’s too late for NIST there. China is driving the agenda in AI now, because the US took too long to get organized.

No. Please no. Learn another instrument and some music theory before playing a shaker. People can totally murder a piece of music with a badly played shaker, throwing off all the other musicians.

It’s that last bit that’s a challenge. But it’s really easy to play passably.

As someone who’s been a drummer for over 30 years, let me say that drummers very much cover other drummers. Most of my drum practice has been practicing other drummers’ patterns and techniques.

But percussion is generally more rewarding than limiting yourself to an 8-piece drum kit or a cahone. Piano is a percussion instrument after all. But my favourite percussion instrument is the djembe — really versatile drum once you learn how to use it. Second favourite is kettle drums — but they’re rather niche.

Things I recommend a beginner percussionist avoid are tambourines and shakers. They’re easy to play badly, and you really need to master rhythm before you can make them sound good.

Why not harmonica? They’re likewise keyed instruments and can be taken anywhere.

I’d argue though that the easiest instrument to pick up is a stick.

The easiest to learn music theory from? Any keyboard based instrument (piano, concertina, accordion, harmonica (virtual keys), autoharp, etc.). Bells, glockenspiels, vibraphones and xylophones are pretty easy too, but you need the aforementioned sticks as well.

Second is the rise of AI-powered systems that depend on fast, reliable access to edge or cloud-based intelligence.

I’m sorry… what?

Is that just word salad? I’m not seeing “AI” as being anything but an excuse there. On the cloud side, AI involves server farms with physical interconnects. Same for endpoint AI, and edge server AI.

Are they saying that accessing these systems depends on fast, reliable access? Like, faster and more reliable than using Google from your web browser over the past 20 years?

The whole point of ML systems is that all the heavy compute and speed dependent stuff happens somewhere with dedicated bandwidth to handle it, and the interface can be slower and lossier because the service can take more steps without guidance.

I agree. Is that the case with this person?

I know a few ex-IDF soldiers. One served from 1967-69 in Records hunting down artwork stolen by the Nazis. Went on to become a professor who taught world literature. Left Israel in the 70s to live and work somewhere more multicultural. Still not someone I’d recommend for this position, but “ex-IDF” covers a lot of people, some of whom might be very qualified for the position.

Definitely. But everyone who is alive who has held Israeli citizenship is either an (ick) IDF soldier, or is (like this person) an ex-IDF soldier.

Although that makes me think: do those who have already started rabbinical training also need to do their 2 years?

That’s a different way of saying “TikTok appoints Israeli as its Hate Speech Manager.” IDF service is mandatory.

Home Hardware has mostly left my area. Thankfully, there’s Rona and a local Tim-Br-Mart that is mostly locally owned and operated, so that’s where I get most stuff.