realityfragments

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"Welcome To The Colonies"

Yesterday was Independence Day in Trinidad and Tobago, complete with parades and traffic schedules that go along with it. There wasn’t the usual amount of national colors, but when I got my eyes tested near the parade route, there were plenty of young men dressed as trees with automatic weapons stationed on corners. I even saw a truck filled with them, as if the Ministry of Agriculture had some…

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Keep Your Secrets.

Some people I trusted lied to me recently, knowing full well that I would find out within a matter of days. I, of course, found out earlier because of the relationships I have built over time, and so it came back to me almost immediately that I had been lied to. Clearly, I’m not going to trust those two people as much again, but I suspected them not telling me the truth because of their…

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How Democracy Died.

Half watching the world’s rhetoric spinning against it’s axis, I ended up in a conversation with a supporter of the opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. We both agreed that the present leadership of the opposition party, the UNC, should step down, and the argument presented was that ‘we need to support her because…” It’s a bad argument, albeit pragmatic. It’s like saying you’re going to have…

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Of Spheres And Shapes

There’s a lot to consider these days regarding intelligence and consciousness. I’ve developed my own thoughts over time, as we all have to some degree, but few of us it seems have the time or inclination to really sit and think about such things. What separates us from other forms of life on the planet? Only we have excised ourselves from the rest of life on the planet as far as we know, and…

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Views From The Cave.

It’s been an interesting week researching and, for some time, beginning to interact with some select people that give me a break from the flat screens within my cave. Most of it has been spent reading and listening to the latest theories on life, evolution, and the thing being marketed as artificial intelligence. Interspersed in the writing, you’ll find some things I felt like pointing out that…

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Absorbing Silence.

I had some dalliances with the outside world, some with interesting people, but mostly not. The community I live in is remarkably ignorant and petty. Someone dropped an egg on the stairs and the janitors had not gotten to it, so that was a point of discussion. A security guard had laid on a couch was another, which became a matter of pettiness as well – the guard was unwell, it ended up. The…

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A Day In The Life.

I read the news today, oh boy “A Day In The Life”, The Beatles (John Lennon/Paul McCartney), 1967 Oh, the news. There was a time when I thought mankind as a species had lost it’s way, but longer observation has allowed me to realize that we never had a clear way from the start. We go in circles, in cycles. That’s how we infested this planet. We don’t like each other and we go our separate…

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Blink.

There’s been so much going on in the world that is disturbing that I disconnected for a while – not out of disdain, but out of the acknowledgement that there’s not much I can do about things I wish I could do something about. The Internet can be like that scene from Clockwork Orange, where eyelids seem taped open to get us to react to some things in more ‘approved of’ ways1. I closed myself off…

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The LLM Copilot is More of a Companion.

I almost forgot to write something here today. I’ve been knocking out scenes and finding the limitations of the LLM as I go along, which is great. The particular LLM I’m working with is llama3 which I’ve tweaked and saved as I’ve worked with it. It’s fun because it sucks. It can handle about 500-1000 words easy to analyze at a time – figure a scene at a time. Meanwhile, it forgets all the…

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Linux Ain't Hard. Just Different. Come Play.

Microsoft Recall has been making waves in privacy circles. Some are calling it a privacy nightmare, some others are calling it a privacy nightmare, and privacy experts are sounding the alarm about it1. As usual, when Microsoft does a stupid – and in my eyes, this is a pretty big stupid – people talk about migrating to Linux. Of course, people still think that people who use Linux wear funny hats…

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Writing With a LLM Co-Pilot

I wouldn’t characterize myself as an advocate for AI. I’m largely skeptical and remain so. Still, with generative AI all over and clogging up self-publishing with it’s slop, it’s impossible to ignore. I’ve embarked on a quest to see whether generative AI that is available can help me in various ways. One of these ways is with writing, not in generating text but helping me write. Since I don’t…

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SLMs vs LLMs: A Great Question.

@knowprose.com who run a LLM on your computer while a SLM does almost the same but needs less performance? Stefan Stranger Installing Your Own LLM On Your Computer With Ollama. This was a great question, and I want to flesh it out some more because Small Language Models (SLMs) are less processor and memory intensive than Large Language Models (LLMs). Small isn’t always bad, large isn’t always…

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Experimenting With LLM.

I’ve installed AIs locally so I can do my own experimentation without signaling to tech bros what I’m doing. I’m trying to get away from the subscription models that they’re selling. I’m auditioning various models to find strengths and weaknesses, mainly to help me with infoglut. So much of what is written on the internet is just a new rendition of the same crap, particularly with AI these days,…

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Installing Your Own LLM On Your Computer With Ollama.

As I wrote in the last post, there are some good reasons to install your own LLM on your computer. It’s all really simple using Ollama, which allows you to run various models of LLM on your computer. A GPU is nice, but not required. Apple and Linux Users can simply go right over to Ollama and just follow the instructions. For Apple it’s a download, for Linux it’s simply copying and pasting a…

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Why I Installed AIs (LLMs) On My Local Systems.

The last few days I’ve been doing some actual experimentation, initially begun because of Daniel Miessler’s Fabric, an Open Source Framework for using artificial intelligence to augment we lowly humans instead of the self-lauding tech bros whose business model falls to, “move fast and break things“. It’s hard to trust people with that sort of business model when you understand your life is…

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Remembering Robin.

It’s a funny thing. Because of the last post I was thinking of people who were strategists in my life, people who thought ahead a distance beyond most, anticipating things, ready for things… You can read about people, but knowing people is a very different thing. There are a few in my life that I’ve known well that were strategists. One was my Uncle Robin, my father’s brother. He was a thinker…

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Decreased Interest in Strategy Games: Why?

Games in general are powerful tools for humanity because just like any other version of play in the animal kingdom, there’s value. Kittens learn to hunt by sinking their razor sharp claws and teeth into things. It’s preparation. Mankind isn’t too different. We try to make education ‘fun’ for the same reason, with very mixed results, but one thing is constant in humanity: Play, and as our…