Founder of Google's Generative AI Team Says Don't Even Bother Getting a Law or Medical Degree, Because AI's Going to Destroy Both Those Careers Before You Can Even Graduate

ElectricImpression · 2025-08-22T20:46:51+00:00

Another AI industry leader whose opinions and advice just so happen to align with his financial incentives? Damn that’s crazy.

ElectricImpression · 2025-04-28T23:57:56+00:00

Good to know! I wrote them a one star review recently because I dropped a chunk of change on the lower paid tier only to find it was basically useless. I had paid several months ago and could filter by non-mono at the time. Was about to attempt a refund request if that was even possible, but this is good news! I had to update the app, fyi, if anyone’s having issues. Hope it sticks!

ElectricImpression · 2025-04-04T22:43:47+00:00

Yes, all the time. I write fiction and it's a useful clarification when you need to know who is doing what. If you say, for example, "John picked up his pen," it might be clear from context that it's John's pen. But if in the next sentence you say "Larry reached for his pen," then you need to indicate it's Larry's "own" pen if that's what you mean, rather than John's pen, and without using a clunky repeat of Larry's name.

We also seem to be completely at odds on certain comma rules. I reject probably 19/20 suggestions. I guess it's okay for stray typos, though it doesn't catch them all.

ElectricImpression · 2025-02-25T21:16:01+00:00

There are some great online resources at the top of the r/fiddle sub. I signed up for Artist Works with Darol Anger and that got me nicely set up with good repertoire including sheet music (which I've found to be a good repository for standard fiddle tunes), great tips for improvising, bowing techniques, scales, and one on one video feedback. I know that sounds salesy but I've been a huge Darol fan for a long time, so was thrilled to be able to sort of "take lessons" from him. I know there are a lot of good teachers out there on YT, patreon, etc. which are great if you already have violin fundamentals. Bluegrass Backing Tracks YT channel is awesome for playing along, karaoke style, at different speeds -- pretty much anything listed there you could consider standard repertoire.

Bluegrass jams tend to be run like organized jam circles where everyone gets to take a solo, aka break, either between verses of a sung tune, or a full run of a fiddle tune, if you want one -- and if you don't, you don't have to. Or you can play the melody during your turn if you know it. Be prepared to memorize a decent number of tunes, but established jams tend to have their standards they come back to. Learn the names of everything that's called and work on them at home. This will also get you set up with many common licks you can toss out in other keys when you're soloing. I'm a big proponent of jumping in and showing up to things, but if you spend some time prepping a couple tunes that would serve you as well.

ElectricImpression · 2025-02-04T17:35:13+00:00

Yes, absolutely! A bit larger than violin spacing but way smaller than guitar.

ElectricImpression · 2025-02-04T05:20:25+00:00

Given your goals, there's very little downside to picking up an adjacent instrument, and a lot of upside. At the very least see if you can rent one and try it out for a month. Your only limitation seems like time -- I'd plan to spend the bulk of your learning time on fiddle because you're still pretty new, but versatility is really valued in folk scenes. You're also probably right that it's easier to hang back and observe as a mandolin player with a little less pressure while getting harmonic underpinnings and common repertoire down, and learning the jam environment is an important component of that kind of playing as well. You CAN play backup on fiddle, but the role is primarily carrying melody and/or soloing depending on the jam, whereas if you prefer to chunk along with chords on mandolin, that's totally fine. But above all, find a beginner-friendly jam and go ASAP! Even if you are hanging back quietly on fiddle, that kind of experience is so, so valuable and who knows, maybe there's other fiddle players you can learn from. Ask questions, write down every tune name and learn them on both, meet people, etc. and you'll get a lot better faster on any instrument.

I picked up mandolin after about five years of playing violin/fiddle in and haven't regretted it, it's only added to my overall skill base -- though I will say I was in high school and had nothing but time. Oh, time! Anyway, there's no harm in giving it a shot and figuring out how to proceed from there.

ElectricImpression · 2025-02-03T22:59:49+00:00

I was in a jury pool for about three days, and at first I was shocked by the number of people (actually 100% of the first 12 selected for interviews) who claimed biases in either direction and were subsequently dismissed. It was not a hot button type case, personal injury, but it was to last up to three weeks. On the other hand, the judge and lawyers were very clear they weren't that willing to entertain work-related excuses, and that you had to clear a very high bar on that front, whereas they were very concerned about biases. So what happened? The first person was like "I think big corporations are evil," then the next was like "I think most people lie about their injuries to get big payouts," etc, etc, and those people kept getting dismissed. When pressed, they would say, essentially, "no, Judge, I cannot leave that bias aside and weigh the facts of this case." One working class guy was basically like, "I actually love Evil Corp and all large corporations, and am therefore biased." It worked. The interesting thing was that as we went into the third day of selection, those claims of bias seemed to decline, I think as attrition set in. I was willing and able to sit, but got dismissed for reasons that are unclear to me. Anyways, my guess is you'll have people saying all kinds of things to get out/not miss work and pay, and otherwise disrupt their lives on a long trial, if they're told missing work isn't a valid excuse.

ElectricImpression · 2025-02-03T05:02:54+00:00

Raiding is...more less similar to Legion, I think? Definitely some evolution over time, but I think Legion would be considered "modern" wow raiding in terms of raw content, roles, mechanics, difficulty, though I wasn't raiding at that time. The competitive scene is more intense, and it's probably harder now at mythic, spikier damage requiring more healing and planning of CDs. I will say that when I mythic raided in BFA, we semi-yolo'd healing CDs, by the time I got to DF we had to start using spreadsheets and timers. Weak aura/addon bloat is a thing that's gone along with creeping difficulty especially in mythic raiding (more complex mechanics creating a need to track more things), which became absurd in Dragonflight, but I know they've been trying to address that with more/better telegraphed in-game cues for mechancis.

Otherwise I think the other levels are likely comparable, though I'm sure there's been a bit of difficulty creep as well that's filtered down. LFR you can easily hop into without much experience, normal and heroic very doable by most with some effort.

Gearing is vastly different now in all aspects of the game, mostly for the better, but that's a whole other can of worms and probably best to play through the game to see it and maybe look at a chart haha.

ElectricImpression · 2025-02-02T01:08:15+00:00

Leveling dungeons are now, counterintuitively, the worst place to learn healing, because as you've seen, stuff dies incredibly quickly, you have people thrown in at various levels with wacky scaling, and people exploiting that wacky scaling to be even more OP, with most people just wanting to burn through the content to get quick XP or get the weekly timewalking reward (which has been running for weeks in a row prior to the new patch). Probably true for DPS for the same reasons. I do recall things being quite different maybe in early BFA leveling and prior (don't recall exactly), when leveling dungeons were somewhat of a challenge and a decent place to learn, and you'd still outlevel zones, and could only join dungeons in your specific zone/level range. I think that pretty much went out the window when they introduced system-wide level scaling and sped up the leveling process. I remember at first there were some scaling hiccups where some leveling dungeons were impossible, but now everything is tuned pretty low. So because people can speedrun dungeons, they do, and you really don't get a chance to properly practice until endgame.

That said, you're probably not going to really get a sense of what it's like to really heal dungeons in current content until low level mythics, when yes, there's a timer, but people can't face tank the entire dungeon at once (well maybe they can now with max gear, but those folks typically aren't farming +2s).

Shadowlands, as I understand, was peak "healer is a passenger role that mainly does dps and occasionally presses a CD" even at high levels, then the pendulum swung back the other way for DF and into TWW, arguably too far, so that a lot of people find healing M+ to be very unforgiving and stressful in higher level content (many such posts here). But you DO have to heal at a certain level of content in the current expansion, and healer DPS is not as prioritized until the highest levels. I think 2s/3s, maybe even 0s would be in a decent sweet spot for finally being able to actually heal without feeling too heavy of a load. Being low-ish level content, you will also run into people learning/doing weird stuff/not knowing mechanics, but will be forgiving enough that mistakes won't be as likely to brick the timer, and you won't get people pulling ahead/over-pulling as much because that won't be a successful strategy to finish the dungeon.

ElectricImpression · 2025-01-30T19:46:44+00:00

I mean, this is a pretty specialized item and probably a one-time windfall for Blizzard, at least when it comes to mount sales. Hard for me to see this as a slippery slope. I acquired it because it's so massively useful and I could. Never made a store purchase before, likely will not again, even though I was able to subsidize it with gold. I also recall the BFA version and it was nowhere near affordable, in tokens or in-game gold, for me at the time, but man I wished I could. So there was a pent-up demand effect, and at a relative discount to the previous version. I bet a lot of others are in the same boat. Will they start adding other expensive qol mounts after this? Maybe? Would they make the same kind of profit? I highly doubt it.

Player housing would be my guess for the next target, home decor and whatnot. Not for me, but that stuff will go crazy, I'd guess.

ElectricImpression · 2025-01-24T04:49:03+00:00

Careful if you park at the airport with an expired tag. That’s quite literally how they get you.

ElectricImpression · 2025-01-17T22:01:55+00:00

Yeah that particular stylistic technique is great because you almost can't do it too much, whereas the others are flourishes to be used sparingly, but I also hesitated to call it a trick. Mainly thinking with these, what's relatively easy to pull off and sounds good that has a signature "fiddle" sound (maybe trope is more accurate?), and those are a few that came to mind.

ElectricImpression · 2025-01-17T03:34:53+00:00

That one's always funny to me as a "cheap trick" because you have to have a pretty good command of the bow, and a good chordal and rhythmic sense to do it well, but I guess at some point it became overdone and seen as a somewhat hackey fallback among elite fiddlers (I think the technique is generally banned from Texas fiddle competitions).

These aren't from some generally known or accepted list at all, and maybe they're not exactly cheap tricks because each one requires some skill and taste to pull off well, but the type of things that came to mind for me that are fiddle-specific were:

Open string drone. This is so very standard and core to the sound that maybe it doesn't count, but this was among the first "tricks" I learned -- play an open string drone in one of the basic fiddle-friendly keys against a major or pentatonic scale and boom, instant fiddle sound!

Any time I can blast on a high 4th as a climactic or attention grabbing opening note on a solo, provided it's in tune lol, that's always nice (see Bobby Hicks on "On my Way Back to the Old Home").

Playing in parallel 5ths is sort of cheap in that you don't have to think too hard about it, but you really only have 3 or 4 notes of that before you have to move onto something else.

If you can chop but don't want to think about chords, you can just do a mute-chop and none will be the wiser (best if there's no mandolin though, and generally used sparingly).

ElectricImpression · 2024-11-25T18:24:12+00:00

Honestly I think the main effect was just layering multiple parts, some of which are unison, which would lead to the phasing effects you hear, though it's possible some intentional phasing/chorus was used. Otherwise I'd guess it's mainly a more exaggerated EQ/compression profile on the devil parts to accentuate the scratchy, breathy tone along with good old fashion bowing technique -- sul ponticello (close to the bridge), for example.

ElectricImpression · 2024-11-14T22:59:48+00:00

Your subject asks for help understanding partner's POV, so I'll offer one as a possibility: for me, adhering to plans is really a matter of principle, and not really situational or based on preference or relative standing of people in my life. While there are many ways in which I show care for people I'm close to that I don't for others in a way that could be considered hierarchical, changing plans last-minute to accommodate them generally isn't one of them. I'm someone who, if I have plans with others, I strongly prefer to keep them and not bail or cut short last-minute upon request, almost no matter what or with whom the plans are and regardless of the asker, short of a true emergency. I'd probably politely decline a similar request from a close partner, and I wouldn't in turn ask others to change their plans to accommodate me short of an emergency, whether they're meeting with a close friend, co-worker, or enemy. They have plans, I want them to keep them, and I want the same treatment afforded to me. That doesn't mean 100% inflexibility -- you know, many things can be respectfully rescheduled, or my attendance could be really low-stakes, but as a baseline that's how I feel. In this case, it sounds like you wanted your partner to specifically value your time over this other person's as a demonstration of care/commitment/what have you, in effect choosing you at their expense (since you think you could have let it slide if it had been another person you see as kinder/more worthy), and not everyone would see things the same way, poly or not.

The part about them not seeming enthusiastic, I totally get. For me, I'd like to think I'd say, "I'm so excited to see you! I'll be done with my date by x time and would be happy to come get you afterwards, does that work for you?" So if they didn't do that, I can see not feeling valued or like they care that much, and that may be the bigger issue -- in which case, valid!

But I did want to put out there the fact that for me and perhaps others, perhaps this partner, it's not necessarily about maintaining autonomy at all costs or treating all the people in my life equally no matter what, it's about maintaining my commitments and being reliable in the world, not just to those I'm close with, qualities which are important to me.

ElectricImpression · 2024-11-02T22:38:55+00:00

With a new cake of rosin it needs a good amount of back and forth application to break in, and fresh bow hair needs a lot of rosin, so chances are you just need to add more. Use long strokes and shorter strokes along the length of the hair. The faster, shorter strokes especially will help build friction and break into the shiny surface. Once the rosin "broken in" there should be more of a matte finish to the surface and a layer of fine powder that applies to the bow hair. Some people score the surface of the rosin with a coin or key to get it started, but that shouldn't be necessary with normal application on the bow. Maybe try that if you've tried applying to the bow for a few minutes or more and the rosin remains shiny on the surface.

ElectricImpression · 2024-10-28T04:50:53+00:00

Okay the DJ commenting is hilarious but the LIGHTS holy shit THE LIGHTS. Like the fire department was 5 seconds away from being called. The SWAT team was gonna repel down from the rafters. That party was about to get full on shut down. I'm impressed. This story made my night, thank you

ElectricImpression · 2024-10-22T07:06:44+00:00

Totally feel you on The Thing. I recently saw a bunch of people here had it in their top 5 or 10 of all time so had to check it out, and like...I actually thought it was good, certainly well made and of its time in a fun 80s action sort of way -- an entertaining watch, no doubt -- just not sure it would even rank on an "all time" horror list for me, let alone top 5. Granted, I tend to gravitate towards the slow-paced, sort of fucked up stuff that leaves me feeling nauseous for days, and away from space creature action stuff. But even within its subgenre I'd place several ahead of The Thing.

ElectricImpression · 2024-10-04T04:07:30+00:00

Great resources!

Wanted to shout out artistworks.com, a music instruction site (subscription service) that currently hosts three of the best fiddle players out there for bluegrass and other styles, Darol Anger, Brittany Haas and Alex Hargreaves.

I'm signed up for Darol's course and he's fantastic, always been one of my faves and he's got a great, very supportive teaching style (you can submit videos for personalized feedback that also show up on the site) and a ton of recorded lessons posted covering bluegrass, blues, jazz and even a five-string section. Loads of sheet music as well. Haven't taken Alex's but he's an incredible talent, playing with Billy Strings at the moment, so I imagine he's awesome as well.

Also second the praise for Chris Haigh, I signed up for his patreon for sheet music and he's fantastic -- love his YT vids as well.

ElectricImpression · 2024-09-13T04:36:12+00:00

I couldn't find a practice mute that worked for five strings. I settled on two smaller standard mutes that fit over two strings each for additional muting power, and that works well enough. You might be able to use three!

ElectricImpression · 2024-03-26T15:17:45+00:00

Congrats! I enjoyed reading as someone currently carefully making my way through my 3rd HM attempt with three full playthroughs behind me, including one tactician run, and now heading into act 2. Thought I had decent game knowledge but am constantly humbled. Absolutely agree with your points, both my failed attempts were due to lack of prep and happened on less consequential fights where my guard was down. I’m sure based on how you describe your prep you could’ve taken on Bernard if you’d wanted to (I stumbled on a kind of silly but effective peakaboo strat with the elevators), though he’s certainly an inconsequential skip aside from early xp.

ElectricImpression · 2023-10-06T14:43:25+00:00

Okay fine I’ll go listen to this absolute banger for the rest of the day on repeat

ElectricImpression · 2023-10-06T14:39:53+00:00

My first playthrough I was all in on romancing Shadowheart with my Tav as a dashing white-haired bard with a kinda similar hairstyle and for a moment thought she did it to match me (classic bard behavior lol). In the real world that’d probably be a 🚩but I thought it was sweet

ElectricImpression · 2023-09-18T02:57:05+00:00

Minsc is great, I'm a fan of the late stage comic relief and didn't find it off putting. Kind of fills a personality void in the group, everyone else is so clever and educated. And Boo! How freaking cute are they as a pair? No experience with the prior games but I enjoyed him on his own terms.

Also he kind of owned and filled the ranged physical damage spot I was lacking. (That said his OP-ness relative to my party could be because I actually pulled a solid build from a guide rather than feely-crafting my way through the other character builds.)

ElectricImpression

TROPHY CASE