I really wish it were easier to fine-tune and run inference on GPT-J-6B as well… that was a gem of a base model for research purposes, and for a hot minute circa Dolly there were finally some signs it would become more feasible to run locally. But all the effort going into llama.cpp and GGUF kinda left GPT-J behind. GPT4All used to support it, I think, but last I checked the documentation had huge holes as to how exactly that’s done.

One of the reasons I love StarCoder, even for non-coding tasks. Trained only on Github means no “instruction finetuning” bullshit ChatGPT-speak.

oh great, so we can look forward to another horrifyingly mismanaged pandemic!

absolutely batshit crazy how nobody at all mentioned that not laid it at Trump’s doorstep during the campaign

The Internet in general, but especially social media, is a cesspool of AI slop, bots, algorithm manipulation, and less exotic/high-tech forms of disinformation. How about instead of telling our politicians to meet us there we get the fuck off of it and meet each other in the streets. They can join our party if they want but we’re starting it.

Walz losing the VP debate to Vance was the start of the Trump ticket comeback.

If you look at the election prediction history graph on Nate Silver’s substack, you see an upwards trajectory for Trump/Vance ever since the vice-presidential debate. That was also when the “Republicans are weird” narrative that was working so well for Harris/Walz abruptly left the discourse. And I believe that what happened was that Republicans who were embarrassed by Vance as well as Trump had a moment like you describe where he suddenly didn’t seem so unrelatable and that right there sunk the Dems… as much as it pains me to admit it, because I’d much rather have a party that wins on the issues and communicates clearly how insane and risky it was to vote for literal autocracy, the Harris campaign probably made the wrong choice with Walz and never should have stopped mocking Republicans for being “weird.”

The problem, I believe, is that most Democrats are institutionalists who will defend the rule of law even when it means handing the reigns over to a group who have openly declared hostility towards it. They are also afraid that using any kind of force to stop Trump and his cronies will trigger violent rebellion and they know who owns most of the guns in this country. They’re playing a trolley problem game but because they don’t really have progressive values they aren’t putting, say, Ukraine, Palestine and the entire fucking climate on the “peaceful transfer of power” track.

We need a party with higher values than just “defending institutions.”

I would go so far as to say that this has always ben the plan, at least this time around. I find it highly suspicious that Trump has been the target of assassination attempts by republicans twice (plus a foreign attempt on his life) already. We’re being prepared to accept this as expected when it finally happens, and it has to happen in order to give Vance the pretext to implement martial law and usher in the high-tech Handmaid’s Tale scenario his patrons want. Trump is their useful idiot; but useful only because he is populist and charismatic enough to get them in power via ordinary electoral process. Once they suspend that process entirely they no longer need him and in fact he becomes a liability; offing him kills two birds with one stone.