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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Yeah, I didn’t find it particularly bizarre. Both are very natural ways to process verbal information. Anyone who’s ever tried to do arithmetic in a new language knows that we don’t just abstractly do math, a big part is that we know that seven plus eight is fifteen. That’s why they used to teach multiplication tables by rote. It would be lot more bizarre if an llm had independently devised a reliable mathematical algorithm.



  • Based on when I was young, I basically thought of anything from before I was born as “old”. Not consciously, just that everything from “my” decade seemed modern, and everything else was old.

    Even now, movies from 20+ years ago look old, even though I remember them being super new when they came out. The Matrix had aged pretty well, but it defintely looks old. I thought LOTR was timeless, but I rewatched it recently and did start to feel it was showing it’s age (but none the worse for it!).




  • They’re both useful, a cricle’s circumference as τr is lovely but πr2 is certainly more elegant for area. The real pity is that they didn’t use the symbols the other way round - if τ = 3.1… and π =6.2… you have a natural π =τ+τ which makes sense (visually, conventionally mathematically it’s nonsense!)




  • I think “according to the law” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. That is the part that really makes it an oath to the ‘constitution’ of the UK. You are pledging alligence to the figurehead of the government, to obey them/the government, as long as they/the government are acting legally. If the government does something illegal, or asks you to do something illegal, you should not obey them.

    I’m British, and not a fan of the monarchy (especially Charles) but I think that we can see the advantages of having a head of state who has very little power to fuck things up, and that isn’t a position that outside forces billionaires can buy their way into, but has the power to remove a Prime Minister if they tried to do something unconstitutional.

    The idea of checks and balances in the US didn’t seem to plan for a bad president being elected with enough support in the house and Senate that he becomes pretty much untouchable (especially after a first term stacking the SC).


  • I’m defintely not a fan of cops, but in Scotland I never thought of them as evil/lazy/incompetent. They’re still the arm of state control, and have been used to break strikes and stuff, but there is at least a vibe of policing by consent. There are plenty of cases of individual cops who were psychos, and the institution defintely defaults to ‘protecting it’s own’ which is a fucking terrible attitude and in my mind makes all cops culpable for the crimes of the “bad apples”. So I’m still acab overall.

    But most of my interactions with the police have been pretty decent, and that includes being questioned as a suspect (for something that I may not have been innocent of…) They don’t ‘solve’ many petty crimes like burglary that actual effect normal people but they are generally university educated and properly trained.

    I now live in France, where the police are none of those things. I’ve only heard bad things about them ranging from patronising and incompetent to raping student protesters in the back of the police van. I would never ask a French cop for help, but unless I was high or carrying something illegal, i wouldn’t be worried about talking to a Scottish policeman.


  • Echoing other lemmings, there’s basically no difference. There js a certain niche who seem to think that pansexual is more trans inclusive, but that attitude doesn’t align with almost all bisexuals opinions on the matter, or with the history of how the bisexual community has been accepting and collaborating with the trans community since pretty much the birth of both communities.

    The delightful verilybitchie, who is both bisexual and trans, has a bunch of good video on the history of bisexuality, trans stuff, and biphobia*. They are defintely worth watching!

    /* it’s pretty hard to hear ‘bisexuals exclude trans people’ and not feel like that’s an example of biphobia.




  • If drinking less isn’t actually your priority at the moment, it shouldnt be the focus of your therapy sessions. And if your therapist doesn’t follow your lead, then you should get a different one.

    If you find opening up and admitting shit in therapy hard, then make that your new focus in sessions. As someone who’s seen my fair share of therapists, most of them are very thankful if you start with “I almost didn’t come to therapy, because I kinda don’t belive it works” (but maybe it’s also that I feel hopeless about changing my life in general) or “I often lie in therapy because I want you to like me” (does that pattern appear in other parts of your life?)

    Start with first obstacle, not the biggest or even the most harmful. Then you can work on those things first, rather than waste time, money and frustration pretending to be doing something else.


  • I agree with most of the other comments that labels aren’t really important. But if you do want to think about and describe your sexuality for whatever purpose, go for it. And as a lifelong bisexual, self doubt is a common enough trope in bi/pansexual communities to get it’s own label, ‘bi imposter syndrome’. Some bi (or pan, I see the difference as mostly stylistic) people are equally attracted to all genders, some have a significant tendency one way or another, and some think they have a preference and then it switches, and sometimes switches back again and again. I’ve been in a relationship with the same guy for so long now, I sometimes wonder ‘am I really bi? Am I just pretending? Maybe I just didn’t know what I wanted when I was young, and now I can admit I’m just gay’. But then I speak to some girl, or see a hottie on TV, and realise I’m defitnely sexually attracted to them.

    If bi is so broad to include anyone who has ever had, or could have, sexual attraction to anyone who wasn’t their traditional hetero gender, is there any point in the label? Isn’t almost everyone bi? Sure! I kinda think everyone is kinda bi on some level. But it’s also about what purpose a label serves. If someone described themselves as ‘pan’, I would assume they woukd open-minded and nonjudgemental about people of different sexualites and genders. I wouldn’t assume they’d automatically be attracted to everyone they met, even straight men aren’t attracted to every woman. I use to avoid calling myself gay, because I’m bi, but I realised that insisting on that was sometimes kinda homophobic, and as someone married to another man, I have a lot in common with lots of gay folks. But I also sometimes refer to myself as a “straight white man” when talking about privilege, because most acquaintances don’t think of me as gay so I’ve never experienced much discrimination on that front, and don’t feel I can claim to speak as a ‘minority’.



  • I’m not sure about your visual interpretation, but I completely agree that the two scales don’t translate directly, and that if something is rated 7/10 I’d assume it’s better than something rated 3.5 stars / 5.

    As to the reason? I wonder if the scales five different senses of the middle value? In a five star system, 3/5 film is the middle value, and not especially good nor bad, but I’d probably give the same “totally average, not good not bad” film 5/10. Similarly, it seems weird to translate “Awful, 1/5” into “Awful, 2/10”. So maybe the difference comes from a lack of clarity about half stars, it’s okay to give 0.5 / 5? But not 0? Or 5.5?

    And that doesn’t even start to address the modern “if it’s rated less than 4.6* it’s probably awful” issue…