Yup! I shouldn’t have posted my original comment! I knew it at the time, because every time I complain about so-called “AI” on the internet it leads to an absolutely infuriating conversation. Every time.

So you’re right about that, I should self-censor more, keep my thoughts about so-called “AI” to myself. And I, broadly speaking, do so. I was just particularly grumpy this morning skimming this shitty fucking post and decided to complain about it a little.

But don’t worry about me! I won’t be posting about my hatred of so-called “AI” for several more months or even years! You’ve successfully silenced me, well done, everyone!

You assume I haven’t used these things. That assumption is what pisses me off and what I was responding to.

Yes, I’ve used deepseek, and recently. I tried to get it to write a cover letter for a job for me. I didn’t use a single sentence that it suggested, not one!

Your “advice” amounts to “stay off the internet”, which, unfortunately, does seem to be the only way for me to never hear about “advances” in “AI”.

But you can understand, can’t you, that getting off the internet entirely sucks and is not something I want to do?

But maybe I should. There are so, so many books written before so-called “AI” started polluting writing, I would never run out, even if I replaced all of my scrolling with reading. Tempting!

“Just give it a shot!!! Please!! Clearly the only reason you could possibly hate these chat bots is if you haven’t tried to use one!! Come oonnnnn, just give it a shot!”

China has a five-year plan for AI. You could ask yourself what the communists that made & followed the plan see in AI that you don’t.

I’m happy to see what this comes to. I just don’t want to hear about it every 10 minutes. Wait until something cool happens (if something cool happens), then tell me about the cool thing!

Or you could use the “local” or “block” button so you don’t have to hear about it anymore… and ask yourself that question later.

Fucking hell I wish that worked! I wish there were literally anything I could do to block the absolute deluge of news about LLMs. If you have an actual suggestion that isn’t “just stop going on the internet” I’d love to hear it

I still don’t believe LLMs are this huge new technology that leads to a cyberpunk world. I just don’t buy that they’re anything more than toys in most contexts, and they certainly aren’t “intelligent”, nor will they ever be.

I wish I could avoid hearing about LLMs unless there were an actual breakthrough, an actual use-case, fucking anything that isn’t “just try it, please, you’ll love it if you try it for awhile, it’s getting exponentially better (sure it doesn’t feel any better to use, but trust us it’s exponentially better than it was 6 months ago), please just outsource your thinking to this machine that can’t think, come ooonnn, give it a go”. But no, I have to hear from fucking everywhere, including communists online that LLMs are going to single-handedly bring about Cyberpunk2077.

I fucking hate this shit.

I know you didn’t ask me, but I have a little experience, so I’ll answer:

A well-run Montessori classroom is great for most kids. A poorly-run Montessori classroom is a nightmare. So much of a child’s experience is a direct result of how good their guide (teacher) is at their job, because there are so many more moving pieces in a Montessori classroom compared to a traditional classroom. But in my direct experience, teenagers who have had a decent Montessori education have noticeably better executive function, interpersonal skills, and resilience than teenagers who went to a traditional school.

I couldn’t agree more, and here’s a little anecdote that I think speaks to your point.

I recently went on a camping trip with a bunch of teenagers, organized by one of them, let’s call him Elliott (his name is very much not Elliott). Now this kid is like 16 or something, and I have to say, if I were stuck in the woods in a survival situation, I’m doing everything Elliott tells me to do, I suspect he could live quite happily in the woods for months if he needed to. He clearly feels a great respect for nature and wild places and goes out of his way to learn about the plants and animals that live there, including diet, migration patterns, all the stuff I find dreadfully boring.

And yet, despite the deep love of nature that Elliott has, he clearly has a feeling of dominion towards the plants and animals living there. On our camping trip this showed up in several ways, the main one being that we were on a fishing trip. It was all catch and release (Elliott is a vegetarian), but that doesn’t actually make it a lot better; Elliott (and the rest of the teenagers) still traumatized multiple fish simply for the pleasure of doing so. Elliott also caught various small critters to show to the others, a water snake and a pregnant turtle are the ones I remember. These critters were returned, unharmed (well, physically, at least, who knows how much they suffered from being messed with and moved), and Elliott treated them with gentleness and care the whole time they were in his hands, but still, I don’t think picking up various critters to show them off to your friends is really an acceptable behavior!

In a better world, Elliott would enjoy nature no less than he currently does, but I do not believe he’d be catching fish and disturbing pregnant turtles

In general, as long as you’re eating enough calories and with enough variety (so, not a fruitarian or something), you’re getting enough protein.

Fun fact: per calorie, spinach has more protein than dead cow flesh. I haven’t compared spinach to real sources of protein (beans, tofu), because I usually use this fun fact when talking to carnists. But the point is: every food has protein. Focus on eating enough calories and the protein will follow automatically.

I see from one of your comments that you have a tendency to undereat, so I understand you need to track your food intake. That’s fine, but if I were you, I’d concentrate on getting enough calories and eating a variety of foods. I wouldn’t try to optimize protein ratios, because you simply don’t need to.

If you were, say, an Olympic level athlete, or in some other way operating close to the limits of the human body, then you should probably be optimizing protein/fat/carbohydrate ratios. But if you just want to build some muscle, don’t worry about it too much, just make sure you’re eating enough, with a decent variety of foods, and you’re good!

I started finasteride about a year ago and I’ve been feeling like crap for 1-3 months (I haven’t been doing well checking in with myself, so I really can’t day with more precision when I started feeling shitty). So maybe? I don’t know how long finasteride takes to start working, 9 months feels long though, right?

Is it just me or does this particular picture of Gunther look like Frankie Boyle?

Thanks! I’ll try to get a blood test through there, it does look cheaper than the other options I saw.

My T is from a pharmacy, and I’ve been feeling like this with T from at least 2 different vials, so I don’t think it’s a bad batch. So probably I just need to change my dose. Which is annoying because it’s been constant for years! Why did it change so suddenly?!

If medical care were easy and cheap, I wouldn’t be so worried/annoyed about this whole situation, but oh well, here we are!

Yeah, it’s probably worth mentioning to my doctor at the very least. I’m going to try to get a blood test sooner rather than later to check my levels too. I wish healthcare were easier (and cheaper!) to access than it is!

I haven’t gotten my levels checked yet, no. That’s definitely my next step, the problem being that with work and stuff, I can’t get to the doctor until the end of September. I think I’m going to try to do a walk-in at the local blood test place one evening after work. I’ll have to pay out of pocket and it’ll likely be annoyingly expensive, but I feel like that’s better than waiting almost a month for information, because I for sure feel like crap and would like to know sooner rather than later whether it’s because my hormones are out of whack!

Are you queer yourself? Because that question, “how do you know you’re right about your sexuality if you’ve never slept with [insert gender here]?”, is a very common queerphobic question that a lot of us get at one point or another, usually from well-meaning cishets who, like yourself, don’t understand that it’s actually a really shit question that is extremely invalidating.

Also, if I’m reading the situation right, you asked a bi man if maybe he is just gay, not bi. That’s a classic biphobic impulse. Bi men tend to be told “you’re probably gay and just pretending you like women”, while bi women are often told “you’re probably straight and just pretending to like women”.

So on two counts here your question was a bad question, and the people telling you this aren’t the people who need to be less sensitive, you are. You need to accept the criticism queer people are giving you and understand that you’re in the wrong here

I sure do love to get my analysis about European data safety from someone whose job title is “Senior Fellow for Content Innovation and Strategy at New Lines Institute [a Washington DC think tank]”!

Oh definitely! I’m getting to the point now where I can (mostly) reliably figure out which bits of yarn belong to which stitch, but it’s hard!

Also, you mention your biggest hook is 3.25mm. That’s small. You might have an easier time as a beginner with a larger hook and thicker yarn. (If you can get them cheaply and easily, which I understand might be an issue.)

I’m glad embroidery has instantly clicked for you though! That’s one I haven’t tried yet, but it looks fun as heck!

I think knitting is just straight up easier, at least on a stitch-to-stitch basis, at least for me.

A knit or a purl (did I spell that right? I haven’t knit in forever) is, like, three steps maximum: put the needle in the correct part of the stitch, grab a loop of working yarn, pull back through. But for crochet, even just a basic single crochet requires you to basically do a knit stitch, then grab some more working yarn and pull through again. And crochet stitches get way more complicated than a single crochet, whereas if you can knit and purl, you can basically do any knitting you need. (Cables are a little funky, but oh so very fun!)

It’s also easier (for me) to keep the right number of stitches per row when knitting rather than crocheting. With knitting as long as you don’t lose a stitch or accidentally stitch twice in the same one, you can’t really go wrong. But with crochet, it’s very, very easy for me to insert my hook in the wrong place and end up with the wrong number of stitches at the end of a row.

Crochet is hard! (But very fun, at least for me!)

I think so, yeah, I seem to remember the rant being delivered in a british accent. I could be wrong though!!