Free Republic

In this installment I will use the ideas discussed in previous posts to make projections. A projection is different from a forecast (and, certainly, from a prophecy) in that it is not an attempt to predict what will happen. Rather, it is a description of what would happen given certain hypotheses and assumptions. Typically, we want to make several projections, using different assumptions. This gives us some idea of how different assumptions result in different possible future trajectories. A good rule of thumb is that we should start with the simplest possible model, but one that captures the most important...

Abstract GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 are the two most widely used large language model (LLM) services. However, when and how these models are updated over time is opaque. Here, we evaluate the March 2023 and June 2023 versions of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 on four diverse tasks: 1) solving math problems, 2) answering sensitive/dangerous questions, 3) generating code and 4) visual reasoning. We find that the performance and behavior of both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 can vary greatly over time. For example, GPT-4 (March 2023) was very good at identifying prime numbers (accuracy 97.6%) but GPT-4 (June 2023) was very poor on these...

The American Civil War decided the question of whether states have a right to secede from the American Union. The answer was no. That has long been settled. Yet today, more than a century and a half afterward, another kind of secession is playing out across America: individuals are seceding one by one from the national enterprise. Americans, to a surprising degree, are no longer proud of their country and do not trust their government, these misgiving being two crucial aspects of their disenchantment that portend troubling implications for America’s future. Public-opinion polls suggest that Americans are far less patriotic...

warning: profane language https://youtu.be/FB6y1vq7X_Y

The newly elected UK prime minister wants to “fix our economy, unite our Party and deliver for our country” Sunak previously asked the Royal Mint to create NFTs to demonstrate the country’s commitment to investing in cryptocurrency technology The United Kingdom’s incoming prime minister may be a bullish indicator for the country’s crypto prowess. Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is set to take the seat following the resignation of Liz Truss — who was in office for just 45 days. Handpicked by fellow Conservative Party members on Monday, Sunak, the son of Indian immigrants, will be the first...

That didn’t take long. Less than a week after Pfizer was hit with a lawsuit over a fellowship program that excludes whites and Asians, shareholders are demanding that the company scrap a spate of race-conscious policies that they say put it at risk of further litigation. The lawsuit, filed Sept. 15, argues that Pfizer is violating federal law by excluding white and Asian applicants from its prestigious "Breakthrough Fellowship." In an open letter to Pfizer executives last week, shareholders allege that the program is just one of several policies that invite a "pandora’s box" of civil rights complaints. Beyond the...

The Storm Is Here: An American Crucible Luke Mogelson. Penguin Press, $28 (368p) ISBN 978-0-593-48921-5 The clash of right and left during 2020 reveals America’s blighted soul in this vivid account. New Yorker writer Mogelson (These Heroic, Happy Dead) interviews rifle-toting militiamen protesting Michigan’s lockdown measures, documents violent demonstrations in Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., after the killing of George Floyd, and mingles with “Stop the Steal” protestors in Washington, D.C. The book’s climax is an impressionistic, firsthand account of the January 6 Capitol riot: “Each time the mob heaved, it lifted me off my feet. One of the people I...

The womb of the 20th century conceived a monstrous form of government called “liberal democracy”—called so inaccurately, for it is neither liberal nor democratic. It is a soft totalitarianism that, because it advances beneath the tattered banner of progress, claims the moral authority to declare all alternative political arrangements illegitimate. In the liberal democratic world system, every nation has the right to self-determination only so long as it is determined to become a liberal democracy. In this maximalist war footing against its ideological competitors, it is not unlike Bolshevism. “Communism and liberal democracy proved to be all-unifying entities compelling their...

resident Biden’s Sept. 1 speech in Philadelphia on “unity” is a poignant example of the confusion surrounding the concept of democracy. Mr. Biden declared that MAGA Republicans threaten “the very foundations of our republic.” The phrase a “threat to American democracy” is so commonplace these days that it hardly carries any meaning—except that it encapsulates the reigning ideology of our time, an ideology so pervasive that it almost goes unnoticed. It is like the air we breathe. I call it democratism. It is an imaginative and idealistic understanding of popular rule that disdains ordinary people and looks to a cadre...

Charlie Finch, a cantankerous columnist whose gossipy writings were widely read in the New York scene, has died at 68. Walter Robinson, a former editor of Artnet who hired Finch as a critic, announced Finch’s death on Instagram. Robinson said that Finch had died “by defenestration,” and that he had been battling cancer and other unspecified health issues. Finch’s writings, which regularly appeared on Artnet Magazine for the better part of two decades beginning in the late ’90s, were frequently met with allegations of sexism, takedowns on competing art blogs, and general chatter about the vicious hearsay he reported. Many...

Alexey Pertsev, accused of facilitating money laundering via the now-sanctioned Tornado Cash app, must stay in jail for at least a further 90 days, a judge in the Netherlands ruled Wednesday. Pertsev, 29, was arrested Aug. 10 on the orders of the Dutch authorities, just two days after the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the currency mixing service, which it linked to over $1 billion in illicit transactions and to North Korean hackers. The arrest has generated consternation from the Web3 community, which has warned it could have a chilling effect on those developing open-source software, and on those who have...

Leon Vitali, the “Barry Lyndon” actor who became one of Stanley Kubrick’s closest associates, has died. He was 74. Vitali died Friday in Los Angeles, his family told The Associated Press Sunday. He passed peacefully surrounded by loved ones including his three children, Masha, Max and Vera. SEE ALSO Leon Vitali and Stanley Kubrick This rising young actor gave up his career for Stanley Kubrick “Leon was a special and lovely man driven by his curiosity, who spread love and warmth wherever he went,” his children said in a statement provided by Masha Vitali. “He will be remembered with love...

Introduction to this well-researched book, now over 55 years old but still relevant: AS A very young college graduate, searching for literary employment in the New York City of the middle nineteen-twenties, the author of this book happened to discover a colony called Turtle Bay. It included about a dozen remodeled town houses on East Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Streets, arranged for gracious living before the phrase was current. One of the first modem restorations in the Forties and Fifties near the East River, it bloomed unexpectedly in a neighborhood of tenements and abandoned breweries. Evidently its builders were versed in...

Men who have sex with men should consider limiting the number of sexual partners they have to reduce their risk of contracting monkeypox, the director-general of the World Health Organization said Wednesday. In an apparent shift in WHO messaging about monkeypox, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the burgeoning outbreak can be stopped, but that people in the community where most transmission is occurring — gay and bisexual men, and other men who have sex with men — should take the risk seriously and take steps to help stop spread. “For men who have sex with men, this includes, for the...

In 17th Century Europe, you’d have swung for blaspheming against the dominant church of the day. In 2022, you can now be criminalised for professing the scripture of that same faith. A Bishop and a parliamentarian have been tried for ‘hate speech’ in Finland, in this case for merely quoting and affirming biblical views. In 2019 MP Päivi Räsänen, grandmother of seven, had sent a tweet, accompanied by a Bible verse, criticising her church for co-sponsoring the Helsinki Pride parade. Less than 280 characters triggered a life-changing police investigation. Räsänen was charged for the tweet, and also for backing biblical...

In his first public appearance after five years of semiofficial banishment, Curtis Yarvin began to cry. It was late February 2020 and Yarvin was the special guest at a live podcast in Los Angeles. A graphic promoting the event shows the computer engineer turned political philosopher, then 46 years old, wearing his black leather motorcycle jacket and wire-framed glasses and staring out with practiced intensity. Over Yarvin’s left shoulder floats a bust of the deceased rapper Lil Peep. The moody digital aesthetic is called vaporwave. Ma, Pa, have you heard of vaporwave? It is a very of-the-moment style that uses...

When Guy Reffitt became the first person to stand trial for storming the US Capitol, he had to face not only a judge and jury, but his own son on the witness stand. Those who know Reffitt say he is a big talker. So much so that his defence lawyer used it as his main argument for dismissing the case against Reffitt, who stood trial for bringing a handgun to the US Capitol during the 6 January riot. But it was the volume of evidence of this bragging - detailed in texts, videos and audio - that convinced jurors of...

A young Russian pianist who was set to perform with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra this week has been struck from the schedule after protest. However, the orchestra maintained its praise for 20-year-old Alexander Malofeev, who has been outspoken against the invasion of Ukraine, where he said he has some family members. "The OSM feels that it would be inappropriate to receive Mr. Malofeev this week," wrote a spokesperson for the orchestra, Pascale Ouimet, in a statement. "We continue, however, to believe in the importance of maintaining relationships with artists of all nationalities who embrace messages of peace and hope. We...

Join me as I LARP my way onto the Hollywood movie set we know as Ukraine. Will the matrix allow me to peak behind the curtains of a manufactured and manipulated world staged event? https://t.co/Qz8pVQ1lgm

For every Republican economist the system employs, it has more than 10 Democrats. President Biden’s nomination of two progressive economists to key positions at the Federal Reserve has triggered accusations from conservatives and Republicans that the president is trying to politicize the Fed. But it’s too late; the central bank is already deeply politicized. Congress mandates that the Federal Reserve promote price stability and full employment. Yet even as inflation rages, the Fed’s economists increasingly have been focused on issues such as climate change, race and sex discrimination, and economic inequality. Since 2020 the Fed’s regional banks and Board of...