> At least do something for the people by, say, pardoning a whole bunch of low level drug offenders and decriminalize cannabis at the Federal level
In 2022 he pardoned ~6500 people with federal convictions for simple possession of marijuana. That didn't actually release anyone from jail because it turned out everyone in jail with a simple possession conviction was also in there for other crimes but for those for whom it was their only drug offense (both currently in prison or not) it wiped it off their record which would restore eligibility for various things that drug offenders are barred from.
Near the end of his term he commuted the sentences of around 2500 non-violent drug offenders.
If "wit" meant two people, I wondered if halfwit could be related. Turns out it isn't. "Wit" the pronoun and "wit" the noun referring to mental ability are unrelated homonyms, and halfwit comes from the latter.
> Well, the answer to this is simple. The only nation with the ability and the demonstrated willingness to risk life, limb and treasure is the US. The rest of the American continent cannot and has never taken this role.
Canada would like a word.
US deaths in WW2: 420k
US population in 1940: 132000k
US death rate from WW2: 318/100k
Canada deaths in WW2: 43k
Canada population in 1940: 11300k
Canada death rate from WW2: 380/100k
US deaths in WW1: 117k
US population in 1918: 103000k
US death rate from WW2: 114/100k
Canada deaths in WW2: 66k
Canada population in 1918: 8100k
Canada death rate from WW2: 814/100k
More recently, in Afghanistan, Canada sent its military and incurred 0.5 deaths/100k population. The US military incurred deaths of 0.8 deaths/100k. US contractors took a hit of 1.2 deaths/100k.
The military death rates per 100k military members sent were 390/100k for Canada and 290/100k for the US.
> I have no love for Hamas, but let's be real: most of what Hamas puts out is meaningless chest-thumping by an irrelevant power that wants to feel powerful within an apartheid state.
The October 7 attack on the other hand killed 12 Israelis per 100k population, which is a little over an order of magnitude more than the kill rate of the 9/11 attack on the US.
I don't think there is any country on Earth that would not respond to a 9/11 magnitude attack, let alone an attack that is 10x bigger per capita, with overwhelming force if they have the resources.
Not really, since it would be irrelevant to the point I was addressing which was the assertion that Hama are mostly just irrelevant chest thumpers that want to feel powerful.
What horrors others have inflicted on Gaza deserves plenty of discussion, but in a thread branch where it is relevant.
Fair point. But even then, having to retreat to relative calculations is not exactly the best argument. In absolute terms, Hamas was at no point able to destroy anytime outside of the Gaza envelope. The attack was horrible enough, but there was never a possibility that it would annihilate Israel, as much as Hamas would want that.
Roughly 3,000 Americans died September eleventh. Similar numbers of Americans die every month from the automobile, with enough deaths annually for a bonus thirteenth month
I've seen America declare a war on Terror, but I'm still waiting for the war on oversized cars and poor urban design
In other words, let me know when 3,000 deaths mean something to America as a whole
This was quite a bit more convenient when we were getting our music on CDs, because many CD players included an A-B repeat function. This let you designate two points in a track ("A" and "B") and it would endlessly repeat the segment between those points.
I believe some MP3 players also had this.
As far as I know none of the top streaming music services support it in their official interfaces. I believe it can be added via third party tools, but it would be nice if the services would build it in.
The number Lxgr gave, 1-2 TWh/year, is simply completely wrong. Germany's annual electricity use alone is around 500 TWh/year. 1-2 THw/year would be the electricity use of 300-600k average German houses.
I wonder how well it would work to use AI as a front end to Band-in-a-Box?
Band-in-a-Box is a commercial program that has been around since 1990. What it did then was let you specify a chord progression, style, tempo, and instruments and it would make a generate a MIDI track. I think it might have also been able to take a melody and come up with a chord progression for it in a style/genre of your choosing.
The target market was musicians. Instrumentalists used it generate tracks to improvise or solo with for example, and songwriters found it useful to essentially have a full band at their beck and call while composing.
Over the years they added more features, and switched to sounds from recordings of real instruments played by real musicians. They have very good stretching and pitch transposition so you can use these at a range of tempos and keys and they still sound good.
It is still aimed at musicians, and can be overwhelming to others. This I've read is made worse because as it has grown in features and capabilities in the 25+ years it has been available the interface has become kind of disjoint.
It is not something the kind of person who just wants to describe what they want to hear and have a song produced would enjoy. But if an AI could operate it for them, maybe that would work and the result would be something with much better sounding instruments than the AI song makers (and without the risk of including unlicensed copyrighted material).
BIAB is still best in class (even if the UI is practically Soviet era) simply because of the sheer number of RealTracks, which are actual performances by musicians that dynamically adapt to your chord progression.
I’ve actually taken some of my own compositions and run them through Suno using the “Cover” option, and it’s pretty nuts what it can do.
What would be really cool is the concept of combining a physical arranger keyboard (like a Yamaha PSR-SX) with real-time orchestration produced by a backing generative model.
> This I've read is made worse because as it has grown in features and capabilities in the 25+ years it has been available the interface has become kind of disjoint.
It's impossible to exaggerate how true this is. I often say "BiaB is the best worst software - or should that be 'worst best software'? - I've ever used." A toolbar that crams dozens of tiny icons, almost no visual hierarchy, dated visual style, waaaay too many dialogs (dialogs within dialogs!), zero discoverability, inconsistent labeling, basic features missing...I could go on. To add insult to injury, I'm using the Mac version and it looks/feels like a port, not a native app.
I like the direction Apple is taking with their digital audio workstation, Logic Pro X. While not overtly AI, they've been introducing intelligent musical features starting with their Drummer feature several years before AI became commonplace.
These days I'm programming drums on dedicated hardware but Logic Pro's Drummer feature had been immensely helpful for me as a guitarist who hadn't done much drum programming but wanted to play along with interesting drum beats while arranging a song. Just a few options but that's what makes it so approachable. It's helped me keep the song "mine" without the hassle of sourcing loops/samples manually, even if only temporarily.
I remember watching a youtube video that was kind of a Star Wars fan fic. It had a great soundtrack, that was a cross between John Williams and Michael Giacchino. The YouTuber was using some commercial program that included samples of all the orchestral instruments and you could use it to compose lush scores. I never used it since it was expensive, but I always dreamed of tools like that, like GarageBand on steroids for orchestras. Now I wonder how quickly I could vibe code something like that...
The code is only a (very important) part of this type of program. The samples are critical and (for the time being anyway) can't be generated by AI.
Especially important if you want orchestral instruments that sound realistic. Just think of the many ways that a single note can be played by a professional player and multiply that by the range of the instrument.
Edited to add: not orchestral instruments, and also not samples, but this gives an idea of the complexities of capturing the characteristics of an amplifier so that it can be modeled faithfully: https://neuraldsp.com/quad-cortex-updates/introducing-tina (I'm not related and I'm actually a Line6 customer, but I saw this at work in an interview by Rick Beato and though it was super interesting)
Agree 100%. The multivariate ways a note can be expressed is almost unlimited. For example, I first heard Bach's Cello Suite #1 played by some random cellist. Fell in love with it and listened to it endlessly. Then I heard Yo-Yo Ma play it and it was a completely different piece.
IIRC the samples in this program were actual performances, so I'm curious how they captured all the variations...
There is a whole world of expensive virtual samples instruments that can very convincingly replicate an orchestral performance in a DAW. See Spitfire Audio, EastWest, Cinesamples, etc.
> I wonder how well it would work to use AI as a front end to Band-in-a-Box?
Wow, I haven't heard that name since... well, since the software was relatively new.
I do like the idea of an AI music tool that lets you have that kind of workflow, choosing a level of granularity (and, presumably, being able to edit the intermediate results etc.).
Personally I would feel ripped off if I'd bought music that would be generated by AI but there was no notification that this was done. Any group that would do so I would permanently disregard for any further consumption or attention from me.
> Any group that would do so I would permanently disregard for any further consumption or attention from me.
Much like saying "I will no longer buy from Brand X on Amazon." I guarantee you that ten "other" companies sell the exact same thing, and they all come from China (or AI, in this case).
Brand reputation is fairly meaningless in a market like that. I mean, sure, Levi's still protects their brand, and Bruce Springsteen won't be putting out any AI musical slop, but if it's ShurFit pants or music by Jest Happening... who knows?
this is an overcorrection not understanding the extent to which music is the product of shared rules that are more an act of mechanical execution than creativity. the creativity is there it's just much smaller than many realize. machine generated music has existed for a long time
Doctors in the US receive an average of under 20 hours of training in nutrition over four years of medical school. What little they do receive is often focused on nutrient deficiencies rather than on meal planning for health and chronic disease prevention. Less than 15% of residency programs include anything on nutrition.
To become a registered dietician requires at least a Master's degree in dietetics or nutrition or a related field, and at least 1000 hours of supervised internships.
PS: before any Europeans hold this up as an example of the poor US health care system, doctors in Europe average 24 hours of nutrition training.
In 2022 he pardoned ~6500 people with federal convictions for simple possession of marijuana. That didn't actually release anyone from jail because it turned out everyone in jail with a simple possession conviction was also in there for other crimes but for those for whom it was their only drug offense (both currently in prison or not) it wiped it off their record which would restore eligibility for various things that drug offenders are barred from.
Near the end of his term he commuted the sentences of around 2500 non-violent drug offenders.
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