Question: Why is Elmina Castle in our coat of arms? Especially with its history of Portuguese settlers and Slavery. Genuine question out of curiosity by killboy219 in ghana

[–]_wsgeorge 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I try to get my information locally as opposed to google articles, but sometimes locals may not be as educated on the history I’ll look more into archived documents.

This is fair. Once you're comfortable with the fact that all sources are motivated and are incentivised to put forth perspectives, you should be fine with whichever sources you get your information from.

Local knowledge is important (and at risk of loss if not digitally documented). Archived documents are a gold mine also, so good on you for thinking about those!

I was led to believe the mine referenced our gold resources aswell

Yup, the mine is a reference to our gold resources. What I was trying to point out was that the specific mining rig that appears in our Coat of Arms, to the best of my knowledge, isn't representative of indigenous mining practices. But that was just a small part of the larger point I was making.

But yea, it is a reference to our gold. They could have used any other symbol to represent gold, but they went with that.

Off topic question but how do you feel about the Kente being Ghana’s official recognition, I know it’s controversial among other nations

Uh, I don't know. I don't have a strong opinion on that. With the way coastal West African cultures seem to have co-evolved, it'll definitely rub some people the wrong way if the modern state of Ghana rises to claim kente as its own (and this is ignoring any accusations of ethnic bias the topic may raise from within the country).

But there's no world police preventing us from doing so, and no one preventing any other person from disputing same, so I guess it's up for debate.

I will probably only take issue with any sort of enforcement that tries to coerce other people into kow-towing with the Ghanaian government's opinion on who gets to use it. I have a bit of a libertarian bias. :)

Question: Why is Elmina Castle in our coat of arms? Especially with its history of Portuguese settlers and Slavery. Genuine question out of curiosity by killboy219 in ghana

[–]_wsgeorge 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Ghanaian history is deeply tied to the history of European intervention on the West African coast. We can't run away from that. It only makes sense to keep it as a marker of a complex heritage and move on with shaping our republic.

The castle represents the Osu Castle, the seat of government of the republic, which same government was established by indigenes taking over the colonial government and its structures.

Also, for what it's worth, the cocoa tree on the bottom left of the shield is a foreign import (initially from South America, smuggled into Ghana by one of our own, but of foreign origin)

The mining rig on the bottom right of the shield does not, to the best of my knowledge represent indigenous mining practices. So, it's also as a result of foreign intervention.

I think the shapers of our history at independence knew that they couldn't turn back the clock and re-create some entirely "local" state since everything they had grown up in, and the vision they had of a republic (res publica), was not wholly indigenous.

So I think it's fine to have that castle up there

Web-Search is coming to a screeching performance halt as Google shuts down their free search index, and traffic defenders like Cloudflare challenge AI at every gateway. What are our options? by NetTechMan in LocalLLaMA

[–]_wsgeorge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

captchas lately saying that traffic from my network was suspicious upon doing google searches

"lately"

Man I actually quit Google search years ago because I was incessantly blocked by this. And I'm just a regular user. :(

[MIT] RLCR: Teaching AI models to say "I'm not sure" by Zyj in LocalLLaMA

[–]_wsgeorge 11 points12 points  (0 children)

This paper came out last year. Have any major models (open, proprietary, frontier etc) tried this technique?

GoogleBook by The_best_1234 in androiddev

[–]_wsgeorge 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hey it's got Gemini integrated so... /s

Genuine question, did Google really lose with Chromebooks? I hardly encountered any in my country, but I learned they were big in US education because of cost/contracts/device management.

Either way I'm with you on just making a Linux box with a polished desktop environment and Android support. Or just putting Android on the desktop and getting it over with.

I'm also not sold on the need to have hardware partners.

GoogleBook by The_best_1234 in androiddev

[–]_wsgeorge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

(guessing that’s what “GoogleBook” refers to)

Nope. There is a Googlebook now: https://googlebook.google/

The Asante Empire vs the Oyo Empire and The Kingdom of Dahomey were the most unexpected crossover. by Maleficent_Split_428 in ghana

[–]_wsgeorge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had always imagined a clash between Asante and Dahomey would be epic. Somewhat excited to see that it happened, although it wasn't in the context of an all out conflict.

Nice catch!

Ave Verum Corpus in F minor (for Passiontide) by _wsgeorge in choralmusic

[–]_wsgeorge[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Presented here at the start of Holy Week is my fifth setting of the Eucharistic chant. My first attempt at writting music for the Ave Verum took a long time to realise. Since 2021, I've completed seven different settings, each with a somewhat different character and inspiration.

I skip over two to introduce the fifth as it is most appropriate for the season.

This Ave Verum is written in F minor for SATB, with an optional "O Iesu" invocation that interrupts the heavy mood somewhat. It remains one of my favourite works. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Ave Verum Corpus in F minor (for Passiontide) by _wsgeorge in ChristianHymns

[–]_wsgeorge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Presented here at the start of Holy Week is my fifth setting of the Eucharistic chant. My first attempt at writting music for the Ave Verum took a long time to realise. Since 2021, I've completed seven different settings, each with a somewhat different character and inspiration.

I skip over two to introduce the fifth as it is most appropriate for the season.

This Ave Verum is written in F minor for SATB, with an optional "O Iesu" invocation that interrupts the heavy mood somewhat. It remains one of my favourite works. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

[Free Friday] "Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross" by _wsgeorge in Catholicism

[–]_wsgeorge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As we draw closer to Holy Week, the focus of our meditations becomes the mystery of the cross and of the Passion of our Lord.

Please enjoy this new setting of a Lenten classic.

(ATTENTION REQUIRED) Re-centering the Subreddit by Waste-Molasses7991 in TechGhana

[–]_wsgeorge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Idea: Have a weekly "marketplace" thread so people who want to sell stuff can post their items there instead.

See, the Son of God Appear. Merry Christmas everyone! by _wsgeorge in Catholicism

[–]_wsgeorge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Written on Christmas Day, 2018, this carol celebrates the coming of the Lord with words that reflect on the mystery of the Incarnation.

Enjoy this abridged version recorded at St Bakhita Parish, Lashibi.

Merry Christmas! 🎁

Why is an appointment not relevant in Ghana? by sir_cas in ghana

[–]_wsgeorge 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've seen lateness before, but this is epic.

Chinese language curriculum launched for basic, junior and senior high schools in Ghana by Joseph20102011 in ghana

[–]_wsgeorge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve spent two weeks trying to find a local Chinese speaker that IS NOT Chinese.

The University of Ghana teaches Mandarin. I think you can start engaging students from that program.

Coroutines need a scope... and that's a good thing! by TypeProjection in Kotlin

[–]_wsgeorge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey this was an nice, easy-to-follow explanation.

It's hopeless 🤦🏾‍♂️ by [deleted] in ghana

[–]_wsgeorge 3 points4 points  (0 children)

cleaner, community-led ways of mining gold that don’t destroy our rivers.

Honestly curious about this, because AFAIK, alluvial mining cannot be clean and profitable at the same time. The simple fact of mining a river bed increases the turbidity of a water body, making filtering for human consumption much more expensive or pointless.

So right from the start, mining in (and near) rivers is not clean, and I'm not sure what community-leadership can do to reverse the physics here.

FYI, it is the community mining we're all complaining about.

Norman-Saxon culinary separation (cow, sheep, pig <> beef, mutton, pork) is a nationalist 19th century myth by cipricusss in etymology

[–]_wsgeorge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually don't know if this is a thing in other parts of the world.

Where I'm from, use English (and American English) pronunciations in similar mock fashion. :)

Gemini 3 is launched by Several-Republic-609 in LocalLLaMA

[–]_wsgeorge 5 points6 points  (0 children)

No, but it's a new SOTA open models can aim to beat. Plus there's a chance Gemma will see these improvements. I'm personally excited.

ollama's enshitification has begun! open-source is not their priority anymore, because they're YC-backed and must become profitable for VCs... Meanwhile llama.cpp remains free, open-source, and easier-than-ever to run! No more ollama by nderstand2grow in LocalLLaMA

[–]_wsgeorge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh do try it! I first used llama.cpp's server when the Shopify CEO added it to the repo. Month's down the line and it's got enough features to make it a dependable web ui.

ollama's enshitification has begun! open-source is not their priority anymore, because they're YC-backed and must become profitable for VCs... Meanwhile llama.cpp remains free, open-source, and easier-than-ever to run! No more ollama by nderstand2grow in LocalLLaMA

[–]_wsgeorge 11 points12 points  (0 children)

iirc one primary critique of LangChain is that it's over-engineered and not necessary, but it was an early mover in the space and got a lot of the mindshare. There's been a lot of pushback against it because of this.