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Stop Fine-Tuning Models You Don’t Need
Fine-tuning sounds like the answer until you factor in the cost, the data pipeline, and the six months before a bigger model makes yours obsolete. Most of the time, prompt engineering or better context gets you there. But sometimes it doesn't — and that's where things get interesting.
In this free night session, Aaron Gallant covers the real tradeoffs behind fine-tuning LLMs, from synthesizing training data with frontier models to running PEFT and QLoRA on constrained hardware. You'll learn when smaller, specialized models actually beat throwing money at a bigger one — and why data curation is the work nobody wants to talk about. Built for engineers who want to make the right call, not just the cool one.
Live and remote. Wednesday, June 3 at 5 PM CT. Register now.
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—— ON THIS DAY ——
JUNE 14, 1777
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
248 years ago
The Star-Spangled Banner flag — the 15-star, 15-stripe flag that flew over Fort McHenry in 1814 and inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the national anthem, now on permanent display at the Smithsonian.
On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress, then meeting in Philadelphia, passed a resolution establishing the design of the flag of the new United States: 'Resolved, that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.' No specification was given for the arrangement of the stars or the proportions of the flag. The resolution said nothing about who designed it.
The familiar story — that Betsy Ross of Philadelphia made the first flag based on a design shown to her by George Washington — first appeared in 1870, nearly a hundred years after the event, when Ross's grandson testified to it before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. There is no contemporary documentation supporting the story. It may be true; it may not be. The flag's original designer is unknown. What is certain is that on June 14, 1777, a flag was authorized — and that the flag that flies over American buildings today is its twenty-seventh version, last changed in 1960 when Hawaii was admitted as the fiftieth state.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945 — Joe Rosenthal's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi, one of the most reproduced photographs in American history.
The Flag Act of 1777 was a practical solution to a practical problem: the new nation needed a symbol that could be recognized by its own ships, armies, and allies. The thirteen stars and thirteen stripes represented the thirteen original colonies that had declared independence the previous year. As new states joined the union, the question of what to do with the flag became complicated. The Flag Act of 1794 added two stars and two stripes for Vermont and Kentucky — producing the fifteen-star, fifteen-stripe flag that Francis Scott Key saw flying over Fort McHenry in 1814 and that inspired 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' But adding a stripe for every new state would eventually produce a flag of absurd proportions.
The Flag Act of 1818 fixed the stripes at thirteen, to represent the original states, and provided that a new star would be added for each new state admitted to the union. The executive order specifying the exact placement of the stars has been issued by presidents as each new state joined. The current fifty-star flag was designed by Robert G. Heft, a seventeen-year-old high school student in Lancaster, Ohio, who submitted it as a class project in 1958 — anticipating Hawaii's statehood — and received a B-minus grade. When the design was officially adopted in 1960, his teacher changed the grade to an A.
Flag Day — June 14 — was informally observed from the late nineteenth century but was not declared a national observance until 1949, when President Truman signed legislation establishing it. Unlike most national holidays, it is not a federal public holiday; government offices and banks remain open. The flag's prominence in American national identity — its appearance at sporting events, on lapel pins, and as the most common image in political advertising — has made it one of the most symbolically loaded objects in American culture.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
The American flag has been changed more than any other national flag in history, reflecting a unique relationship between the flag and the concept of an expanding nation. Most national flags are fixed symbols of a nation as it was constituted at a particular historical moment. The American flag changes as the nation changes — a design principle that made the flag a living symbol of expansion and inclusion rather than a fixed historical artifact.
The 'Star-Spangled Banner' flag and the poem it inspired are among the most powerful examples of how a physical object becomes a national symbol through a specific event. Key's poem, written while he was detained on a British ship during the bombardment of Fort McHenry, described a single flag visible through a night of bombardment. The emotional force of a symbol's survival through an attack — the flag was still there in the morning — is the foundation of the national anthem's meaning.
The flag's legal status — what is permitted in flag-related expression — has been the subject of some of the most important First Amendment cases in American history. Texas v. Johnson (1989), which protected flag-burning as constitutionally protected speech, remains one of the most controversial First Amendment decisions and is regularly revisited in debates about free expression, patriotism, and the limits of symbolic speech.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On June 14, 1777, Congress resolved that the flag of the United States would have thirteen stripes and thirteen stars. It has been changed twenty-seven times since, most recently in 1960. A seventeen-year-old designed the current version for a class project and received a B-minus. His teacher changed the grade when the flag was adopted.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
"The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history."
— President Woodrow Wilson, June 14, 1917, the first official Flag Day observance
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the Flag Resolution of 1777, the history of the flag's changes, the real story behind Betsy Ross, the 'Star-Spangled Banner' flag, and the seventeen-year-old who designed the current fifty-star version?
