its_me_xiphos

As I am out of academia now I find the spare time I have rather overwhelming. I have 8 days left before rejoining my partner in Canada. I have an ereader and all my books are packed. I have an urge to read to offset the doom scroll tendency that rises now. I want to support good work and good writing; high quality journalism, and essays. Politics, History, Foreign Affairs, Urban Planing, Activism all interest me. But having been in pure read for work mode for...8 years? 10? Was it that long?...I don't know where to start.

I just want to read, any format, as I have plenty of video and podcast formats already. A format that was more white noise for working than anything else.

What do you recommend?

I'm a burned out academic leaving the field. I'd like to learn something new as a means of recovery and healing from the trauma (edit: narcissm, lack of human connection, intense funding cuts resulting in competition, less focus on students in recent years and instead on metrics). So, what should I learn (edit: that might help recovery from the aforementioned) What do you recommend and where could I start? I'm not looking for career advice, just crowdsourcing new things to learn and experience.

That's it. That's my ask.

Edit: Added some context.

I'm using Boostcamp at the moment: free version, not open source, and its bothering the hell out of me. Limited. Bloated. Paywalls. I love the detailed programs and routines, and have not found a similar replacement. Any recommendations that include:

Routine creating

Custom exercises

Access to existing database of workouts (most important).

Hey all,

I'm on the last few months of my contract, in higher ed. While I try to find work that's more permanent, I do count myself lucky to be in a better position to offer help with little worry of reprucussions. In brief, I am trying to do whatever I can to support my LGBTQ+ students who are terrified. I'm a tough person, like I've seen some shit (war) but its breaking my soul feeling powerless here in the States.

Any suggestions, organizations, or other ideas I could have at the ready if a student needs help? I just want to be the best ally and empathetic human I can from my position, while I can.

I'm also being cautious since its getting harder to know who and what to trust, but ideas on exercising greater caution when offering help are welcome too. Sad I have to even convey that...

Been having too much fun using LLMs hosted locally, but can't seem to get Ollama's chat with documents to work well. Lots of "what are you talking about? There are no documents here" issues. Does anyone have any recommendations to either a) figure out what's going wrong or b) Alternative locally hosted options that chat with documents works well with (GPT4all or something?)

I was very excited to learn about this project...only to discover it's neither free nor open source. Does anyone know of any true open source and accessible tools for Syllabus sharing/curating/researching?

I'm new to the field of large language models (LLMs) and I'm really interested in learning how to train and use my own models for qualitative analysis. However, I'm not sure where to start or what resources would be most helpful for a complete beginner. Could anyone provide some guidance and advice on the best way to get started with LLM training and usage? Specifically, I'd appreciate insights on learning resources or tutorials, tips on preparing datasets, common pitfalls or challenges, and any other general advice or words of wisdom for someone just embarking on this journey.

Thanks!