My father, born 1920, lived to 2014, remarked late in life that Sinatra’s later work was designed to make you, the listener, think you’d had the experience.

One of his albums, “Songs for Swingin’ Lovers”…. How many of us have been swingin’ lovers? Dating’s tough enough, and then you get married. But, listen to the songs….

I was 46 before first computer (’91/’92)—a Dell Viper that ran over $4,000. Built a UserBenchmark UFO last year for $1665.60 (used an old favorite case). Big difference in performance & price over just a 32-year period. Have done some simple coding for a blog recently, even used AI for one app/widget, but that was time-consuming and difficult.

Go there if you prefer to read.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/eric-weinstein-i-dont-know-whether-trump-will-be-allowed-become-president

Eric Weinstein Explains Our Insane Election, the People vs The Deep State Without Ever Using The Term (but does use “The Blob”). Please listen to 1-13m

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYRYXhU4kxM&t=11580s

At the outset, he raises the question of whether or not Trump will be permitted to take the office US President? And his answer is that with the International Rules Based Order reigning since the close of World War Two, the DC blob fears the collapse of its hegemony, descending into a more costly multi-polar world. Trump as the genuine voice of American democracy would very likely tip these institutions towards that end.

Will Trump be permitted to gain Presidential power at all? This is the real question. It explains why this year is “the most insane election year by an order of magnitude,” concludes Eric Weinstein.

For example, who is running the White Hose? It isn’t Biden. We don’t really know who is in power.… Powerfully put.

Which is why Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” used very young children to discover how to fight the adversarial extra-terrestrial attackers.

https://archive.is/HC1Dv
RTWT for a very interesting view of Karp, whose co-founder is Peter Thiel: a progressive and a conservative who get along well enough to create things like Palantir.
His political views are bipolar: donated to Biden and Harris, doesn’t like Trump, but the values he claims to support, and seems to actually do so with the company, are megaMAGA.

Regarding Unit 8200 and the age range of 18-21…

I was a good computer hacker in my late ’20s* to mid-30s. Very good. (And always an ethical hacker, never did anything malicious.) I even headed up a practice doing cybersecurity (although we didn’t call it that back then) for one of the big, international consulting firms. In my current job I’m sort-of tangential to that world and now it’s hard for me to relate to that former me.

But I think that is due to the age range you suggest. It takes a certain mindset to develop the skill and that will most often be found in young men. A lot of it for me was sport and to show off to my colleagues. Solving fun, difficult puzzles, and doing it before anyone else did, or in a way no one else ever thought of. It requires single-minded focus and isolation for long stretches. And creativity. One has to spend a lot of time alone, studying huge amounts of code, systems and processes just to develop the foundation and toolset necessary to find the holes.

I do know some people who have stayed in the game for their entire careers, but that’s rare. And one rarely hears of an older computer security expert finding a new hack. Forensically figuring out what another hacker did, sure, but creating new hacks, finding new holes is almost always a young man’s game. I imagine it’s similar to being a Chess Master, also a young man’s game.

*I didn’t really have access to a computer until I was around 24.

I remember seeing Pat Monahan on Greg Gutfeld’s old show, “Red Eye.” He just may be a conservative…

BJ:

And the guy who played the father in “Dirty Dancing” and “Kiss of Death” — both films I’ve watched more than twice. 🙂