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

The epilogue is actually pretty damn good. Highly recommended.

I’ve been playing Soulmask and enjoying it, but I need a break as the building in that game leaves a lot to be desired. So I’m returning to Baldur’s Gate 3. I can never bring myself to play Durge or evil aligned characters, but I’m going to try a class and character I’ve never considered and see how it goes.

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?

Manor Lords. Its got some annoying bugs in this EA version, but the developer should be really happy. Enjoying what is in front of me. Its beautiful, mind boggling at times, and fun.

So many story telling memories. ME is still a treasure to me despite its challenges and missteps. ME2 is among my favorite game of all time, right behind Dragon Age: Origins.

But ME3 has a scene that was so well executed that I don’t think anything has ever topped it, for me, in video gaming storytelling. From his decision to rectify what he now believes is a past wrong, do it alone, to his final remark about seashells.

It, to me, is extremely emotional and in the best way that a good story can be.

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.

Dragon Age: Origins

I suggest you go to your local library and check out, or request via inter library loan - William Connolly - Capitalism and Christianity American Style. It builds on Max Webers work on the early Puritan influence into economics (The Protestant Work Ethic). Connolly incorporates much of his contemporary philosophy to try and explain the bootstrap mentality, cruelty politics, and the modern religious nationalist movement. Plus the book cover is metal.

What a great game and great memories for me. I remember, as a kid, building this huge coastal city and putting signs down to buildings I thought my grandmother would like and showing her. She loved architecture so it was always a nice experience for me.

Enshrouded and Valheim.

I want to go on an OG RPG run with KOTOR, KOTOR 2(I admit, never played 2), then DA:Origins. But I need time to loose since I get too lost in the story.

Except the Fade in DA:O. Skip the Fade mod all day every day.

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 went to bed that night and checked my phone looking at the electoral map. I sad to my partner, “Hillary is going to loose…” The numbers and visuals all just right there, election night, telling a very different story of what polls (remember the NYT Prediction tracker? Clinton 96% chance or something crazy?) Indicated. Woke up and was like “The son of a bitch actually did it.”. I couldn’t even think or feel, it was so insane and such a deviation from the norm that I had no ground to stand on. It was en entirely brave new world.

Howdy. I am well aware of Klein, as her investigative journalism is what kept me motivated to keep asking questions about environmental justice and doing research. She, frankly, knows her shit and is one of the most well spoken and passionate people I’ve ever had the chance of reading and hearing.

And she’s absolutely right. Without a shadow of a doubt, “hoping” the DNC doesnt suffer from the self inflicted “no-bernie no-vote” mistake is not enough. It’s too close and too much is at risk for the people who do vote Democrat.

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.

The legal fine points, important of course, fail to consider the legitimacy problem here. If you don’t agree with your political opponents, you want to murder them. Conspiracy, violation of legal code, maybe not as some comments have pointed out.

Extremely dangerous in a system where you are supposed to peacefully transfer power? Thats the problem with his words, that people like him think that is ok AND have been shown to have the capacity and vision to walk towards action. Without so much as a meaningful consequence at that.

That train of though is dangerous in a democracy, for anyone. Even a flawed democracy like the US.