Retired and not shy. Christian, conservative, AI/tech geek with a GPU lab. Florida Gator. Testing in public if a retiree can make $1k/mo on X.
Marshall County, Alabama
Joined March 2008
- Tweets6.7K
- Following1.6K
- Followers2.4K
- Likes5.9K
People are saying school choice is emptying out Alabama's public schools. Here's the real story.
Alabama public schools lost nearly 12,000 students this fall, from about 714,000 down to 702,000, per State Superintendent Eric Mackey. That's more than double last year's drop, which was already the biggest in at least 40 years.
The CHOOSE Act gets the blame, but the numbers don't back it up. Per state revenue data, 8,963 public school students applied this year, 4,096 got awards, and about 2,655 have activated them. Mackey himself said CHOOSE doesn't come close to explaining it.
The biggest drop was kindergarten, roughly 2,700 to 2,800 fewer kids. Fewer babies being born, families moving, and more parents going private or homeschooling on their own dime are the reasons state officials point to. State law doesn't even let the education department count homeschoolers statewide.
My take: parents are voting with their feet. The system ought to be asking why instead of who to blame.
And there's an amendment on Tuesday's ballot that would let county school boards combine their systems. Read it before you vote.
Yes, there really are surface-to-air missiles at Mar-a-Lago. NORAD and the Secret Service both confirmed it.
People forget there's been one of these Avenger launchers on a rooftop near the White House since 9/11. What's changed is drones. A cheap hobby drone can get closer to a target than any plane, and it's hard to spot.
So alongside the Stingers, which have been upgraded to take down drones, they brought in counter-drone kits with radar and cameras to spot and track them.
That's not overkill. It's the world we live in now. Keep him safe.
nitter.gq/GuntherEagleman/status…
🚨 There are now SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILES guarding President Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
NORAD confirms it deployed ground-based air defense in and around Mar-a-Lago at the Secret Service's request.
Avenger batteries with Stinger missiles are also sitting near the Palm Beach airport.
The Secret Service says it's operating in a "HEIGHTENED threat environment."
Keep President Trump safe! Whatever it takes
People are saying an AI company "put its chatbot through seminary." Here's the real story.
Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, says it has met with scholars, clergy, philosophers and ethicists from more than 15 religious and cross-cultural groups. AP reported on it this weekend. One session this spring brought about 20 religious scholars to their San Francisco headquarters for two days.
In their own words, they're after "how good character actually forms." They also say plainly it isn't about aligning their AI with any one tradition's worldview.
So no, nobody baptized a chatbot.
But here's what struck me as a Christian and a tech guy with a GPU lab: some of the smartest engineers alive built a machine that writes code and solves math problems, and when the question turned to right and wrong, they went looking for the folks who've been answering it for thousands of years.
Character doesn't come from a spec sheet. It gets handed down. That's true for our kids, and it turns out it's true for computers too.
I tested the same 27B AI model on all three cards in my home lab, one card at a time.
RTX 5090 (32GB): 121 tokens a second
RTX 5080 (16GB): 28 tokens a second
RTX 5060 Ti (16GB): 22 tokens a second
The 5090 was more than 4x faster than the 5080. The reason is simple: the model is about 17GB. It fits entirely on the 5090. On the 16GB cards, almost a quarter of it spills over into regular system RAM, and the CPU becomes the bottleneck.
That's also why the 5080 only beat the 5060 Ti by about 28%. They both get stuck waiting on the same thing.
Bonus: even pulling 413 watts, the 5090 did the most work per watt of the three.
Lesson for anyone building a local AI box: VRAM matters more than the GPU's name. Make sure the model fits on the card.
@OwnYourCompute @FitMyModel, what should I run next?
nitter.gq/KevinRich/status/21162…
Retired geek confession: I've got an RTX 5090 (32GB), a 5080 (16GB), and a 5060 (16GB) sitting in my home lab, and this weekend I'm putting them to work.
The plan is to run the same local AI models on all three cards and report back in plain English. How fast is each one, what actually fits in memory, and is the expensive card worth it for a regular person who wants private AI at home that Big Tech can't read?
What should I test first? Give me a model, a question, or a task and I'll run the best ones.
People are saying an AI company "put its chatbot through seminary." Here's the real story.
Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, says it has met with scholars, clergy, philosophers and ethicists from more than 15 religious and cross-cultural groups. AP reported on it this weekend. One session this spring brought about 20 religious scholars to their San Francisco headquarters for two days.
In their own words, they're after "how good character actually forms." They also say plainly it isn't about aligning their AI with any one tradition's worldview.
So no, nobody baptized a chatbot.
But here's what struck me as a Christian and a tech guy with a GPU lab: some of the smartest engineers alive built a machine that writes code and solves math problems, and when the question turned to right and wrong, they went looking for the folks who've been answering it for thousands of years.
Character doesn't come from a spec sheet. It gets handed down. That's true for our kids, and it turns out it's true for computers too.
An Alabama man's GPS kept sending him the wrong way home. He tried to change it two or three times. It kept pointing him back.
Casey Sparks, 37, from Jefferson County, Alabama, was driving home from a softball tournament in Dalton, Georgia with his 13-year-old son on the night of October 17. The GPS routed them through Lyerly, Georgia, a road they'd never taken.
They saw a house on fire. Casey told his boy to stay in the truck and call 911, and he ran inside.
James Burke was asleep in his recliner. His wife Larita and the children in their care were asleep in their beds. Casey woke James up, carried out their blind 10-year-old granddaughter, and kept going back in until everybody was out. 14 people in all.
The house collapsed. All three of their vehicles burned. Not one person was hurt.
The Burkes have fostered more than 500 children over 15 years. Larita said five more minutes and "we wouldn't have made it."
Asked how he ended up on that road, Casey didn't hesitate: "It was God. That's it."
Sometimes the wrong turn is the right road. And when you see smoke, don't drive by.
A family out in California put a sign on their front door Halloween night: "Jesus loves you. No candy, but we have prayer. Ring the doorbell."
A group of teenagers in costumes walked up. One boy took his mask off and rang that bell while his buddies laughed and said it was time for candy. When the lady asked if they wanted prayer, he told her yes. Then he waved his friends back, and the whole group held hands on that porch while she prayed over them. They thanked her and went on their way.
It's easy to follow the crowd. It takes a real man to stand there while his friends laugh and do the right thing anyway. Dads, show your boys this one.
Here's the doorbell video if you want to watch it for yourself. Worth watching:
nitter.gq/KoryYeshua/status/2116…
Update on the Haley Stevens story.
Well over half of her congressional staff quit today, per the Detroit Free Press. That includes her chief of staff of eight years.
Whatever you think of her endorsing Mike Rogers, this is what it looks like when a decision actually costs you something.
Michigan votes Tuesday.
nitter.gq/nannburke/status/21169…
New: Statement from Haley Stevens’ chief of staff Justin German confirms many of her team have resigned & they back Abdul El-Sayed for #MISen
“We are shocked and heartbroken by Congresswoman Stevens’ decision to support Mike Rogers.”
Some good news you might have missed.
A rescue dog in Marietta, Georgia went in to get spayed. Turned out she was pregnant.
The vets figured five or six pups.
It was 15.
Emergency C-section, and only a handful of staff on hand. So they called the local fire station.
Three firefighters from Cobb County Station 21 showed up with lights and sirens.
Here's the part I love. One week earlier, that same vet clinic had taught those firefighters pet CPR.
They got to use it right away. Clearing airways. Warming up newborns. Getting them into incubators.
The fire department says without them, many of those puppies wouldn't have made it.
Neighbors helping neighbors, and it came right back around.
That's still how it works in this country. God bless 'em.
Source for anyone who wants the full story:
fox5atlanta.com/news/cobb-co…
About an hour after a Democrat congresswoman said she won't stand with hate, her own state party chair showed her the door.
She says she's still a proud Democrat. Michigan's Democratic Party says not anymore.
If that's how they treat their own over one vote of conscience, Michigan voters ought to take note Tuesday. nitter.gq/CurtisHertelJr/status/…
Senator Chris Murphy had a stroke Saturday at his son's hockey game. He's at Johns Hopkins, awake and alert, and his doctors are optimistic about a full recovery.
I've disagreed with him on just about every issue, and I'll keep doing it. But today he's a dad who got sick watching his boy play hockey, and that's bigger than any vote.
Two days before an election, let's remember we're neighbors first. Praying for the Murphy family.
From AP News: apnews.com/article/chris-mur…
A Democrat congresswoman just endorsed the Republican for Senate in Michigan, two days before the election.
Haley Stevens went to church in Detroit this morning with Mike Rogers. Her own party's nominee had told her she wasn't welcome in his campaign after she called out antisemitism around it. So she said he was right, and endorsed Rogers.
I don't agree with Stevens on much. But standing up for what's right when it costs you with your own people? That's the kind of courage we tell our sons about.
Michigan, Tuesday is yours.
Update: President Trump weighed in this afternoon. "Haley Stevens endorsing Mike Rogers was the smart thing to do."
nitter.gq/clashreport/status/211…
Here's her endorsement in her own words:
nitter.gq/HaleyforMI/status/2116…
Red Baron update, part 3. This time Walt spoke for himself.
He posted a note on his GoFundMe yesterday. "There's no big announcement," he said. He just wanted folks to know he and his wife have been reading the comments, and some of y'all had them "laughing until we can barely breathe."
He thanked the people he works alongside at CJ Schwan's. And when folks asked him for a video, here's what he said:
"My wife and I are also trying to keep everyday life steady for our kids. They didn't sign up for an audience, and being their dad comes first."
More than 20,000 people have given him over $737,000, and that man's first worry is keeping things normal for his kids.
And Luke, the homeless veteran who started it all from his car, is at $49,400 of his $50,000 goal for a place to live and a reliable car. He's less than $600 away. Let's get him over the line.
Young men, take note. When the whole country is watching you, go home and be Dad.
nitter.gq/KevinRich/status/21165…
Update on the Red Baron guy, and it gets better.
The man who started that GoFundMe, Luke Oakenshield, is a military veteran who's been homeless and sleeping in his car. A friend had to loan him $20 a few days ago just so he could move it. He still tracked Walt down and made sure the money went straight to him. Why? In his words, "because I know struggle."
Walt's fund is past $650,000 now. And once folks learned Luke's story, they started one for him too. It's already past $30,000.
A tired working man stood up to a prankster. A homeless vet stood up for him. Regular Americans stood up for both. That's the country I know.
nitter.gq/KevinRich/status/21162…
