I’m not reading the article but instead trying to be amusing. If it breaks the reality, please put me in a new one with really good scotch, healthy knees, and a spirit of adventure!

I highly recommend you visit your local library and request/check-out a copy of the book Polarization by Nolan McCarty. Read that.

Month later update: This is the route I’ve gone down. I’ve used WSL to get Ollama and WebopenUI to work and started playing around with document analysis using Llama 3. I’m going to try a few other models and see what the same document outputs now. Prompting the model to chat with the documents is…a learning experience, but I’m at the point where I can get it to spit out quotes and provide evidence for it’s interpretation, at least in Llama3. Super fascinating stuff.

I really appreciate all the responses, but I’m overwhelmed by the amount of information and possible starting points. Could I ask you to explain or reference learning content that talks to me like I’m a curious five year old?

ELI 5?

I’m using Claude (subbed) to help me do qualitative coding and summarizing within a very niche academic framework. I was encouraged to try it by an LLM researcher and frankly I’m happy with the results. I am using it as a tool to assist my work, not replace it, and I’m trying to balance the bias and insights of the tool with my own position as a researcher.

On that note, if anyone has any insights or suggestions to improve prompts, tools, or check myself while I tinker, please, tell me.

I have this unsubstantiated theory but hear me out. I challenge an economist to look into this. Anyways, shareholder focus has replaced capitalism, even late stage capitalism, with something else. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s whatever this subscription milk every penny movement is now built to support. It’s like revenue maximization on steroids, like we must seek revenue maximization while remaining 100% efficient in revenue pursuit.

And it’s killing everything in the way. There’s no give.

Economist, get your nobel prize. What is this phenomena?

Wall-E. Well done.

Ok folks telling me to just get a Linux Distro.

PC Gaming - Enshrouded, Valheim, BG3, Dragon Age: Origins, and No Man’s Sky, generally Steam platform. Classics like Caesar III, TIE Fighter.

Work - Data Analysis, Lots of word documents, spreadsheets

Internet - Light browsing, podcast listening, music streaming

What distro and why?

I got it. “Alexa, you owe me rent for being in my home. Alexa, send me 1500 a month in local currency.”

Somewhere, a Jeff Bezos explodes.

“How much ya gunna pay for what you used to get for free…” Tom Petty, Last DJ. Underrated tune about the demise of free and independent radio and radio DJs.

Not an expert, but would our net neutrality rules that the supreme jerk Ajit Pai helped revoke have been a tool to combat this behavior?

In my role at a Uni, I teach. I learned early on that every class I offer should have a skills workshop. One of them are basic non-phone skills like copying and pasting. Yes. Our youngest generation of college students in non computer sciences struggles with how to understand file structures and keyboard commands like copy and paste because they’ve never seen them before. So let’s stop making technology usefulness a generational thing. It’s exposure and education, which applies to everyone.