Interesting. . . I’d say Gemma 2B wasn’t actually wrong - it just didn’t answer the question you asked! I wonder if they have this problem with other letters - like maybe it’s something to do with how we say w as double-you . . . But maybe not, because they seem to be underestimating rather and overestimating. But yeah, I guess the fuckers just can’t count. You’d think a question using the phrase ‘How many . . .’ would be a giveaway that they might need to count something rather than rely on knowledge base.

Hillary Clinton being picked up and thrown in a car by one of her bodyguards when she seemed a little faint. Much of the internet concurred “The shoe come off - she dead.”

Haven’t seen any shoes coming off yet, there’s still time though.

Yeah, I’ve been avoiding this stuff the past few months by only letting my laptop online for quick essentials things. It’s windows, I can’t replace it with a mac so it’s gotta be linux. Most online stuff I can do on my phone. But I can’t put it off forever; I’m going to have to try the linux dual boot thing sooner or later. I’ve been putting it off because I’ve not used linux since the 90s and I really don’t have time to re-learn. Gotta be done tho.

Edit - your semicolon inspired me to try one of my own!

TBH it might continue like this until the rest of the world legalises cocaine and it can be produced by businesses instead. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

TBF I know only one militant vegan and she’s been outspoken about it for years. I eat meat, I either just tell her to fuck off or ask if all her cocaine is ethically sourced. She’s used to it.

But yeah, all the other vegans I’ve known are really chill.

historically humans aren’t usually burning down libraries on purpose.

Sometimes they are, Baghdad springs to mind, I’m sure there are other examples. And this library is online so there’s less chance of getting caught with a can of petrol and a box of matches.

Then there’s every authoritarian regime that tries to ban or burn specific types of books. What we’re seeing here could be more like that - an attempt to muddy the waters or introduce misinformation on certain topics.

Yeah that’s happened to me too.

Isn’t there no soil there now?

Right, this story about a woman being drugged and raped repeatedly by strangers for years - and people are taking issue with the fuckin semantics on one sign in a crowd photo? Yeah, that’s the problem, right there.

I didn’t even look at the thumbnail. I’m a man btw. If I had to rewrite that sign it might say ‘NOT ALL MEN - JUST TOO MANY’. Or, I dunno, something like that.

I kinda feel like, for blokes there are two important things we can do. Aside from stop having arguments about who’s the bigger victim (it’s women). First is just don’t do that shit. Just don’t. It’s actually easy and rewarding to not be a bad person. Second is don’t let any other guys get away with even talking like that. Even if they’re mates, step the fuck up and let them know that talk is not okay. Let’s be honest, many of us have heard our mates talk about women in a way we weren’t quite comfy with and afterwards thought we should have said something. Say something.

Yeah Western Europe culturally not looking too clever these days re right wing shit. Not that America is doing any better mind.

Why? Cos I’m pretty sure it’s going to be lower than the number committed by men.

Cheers, yeah I’ve kinda grown into my own shit. It’s caused me a lot of problems over the years, but I’m getting old now and I’m okay with stuff.

I’m just saying that anyone can get hurt like that, but it’s mostly women getting hurt and it’s mostly men doing the hurting. We’ve got to fuckin stop doing that because it is profoundly wrong.

Yeah exactly. I’m a man who was assaulted as a kid by a woman. Shit happens. But looking at what shit happens most often - it’s sexual violence perpetrated by men against women.

I don’t know how we change that. Maybe by continuing to level up the power dynamic between men and women, I feel like we’ve been making some progress with that over the past century. Finally. But it’s more than that, there are too many idiot arseholes who think they can have anything their fists can beat down. Almost all of them are men.

Pretty much every girlfriend and female friend I’ve ever had has had bad experiences with men. Women I have cared about over the years have had experiences across the spectrum from cat calling and comments back when they were kids in school uniforms all the way through to stranger rape. Domestic violence isn’t uncommon either.

I dunno, I wish I had a solution. It fuckin breaks my heart - when a close friend or a partner opens up about what happened to her and there’s nothing you can do, it’s years too late, you have these thoughts like if I’d been there I could have stopped it- but it happened years ago and you are fuckin helpless to do anything except maybe hug her if she’s comfortable with that, or if not try to tell her it’s over, she’s safe and stronger now, whatever you think might help.

You don’t realise how harmful sexual assault is until you’ve been unable to help someone you love. The key word isn’t ‘sexual’, it’s ‘assault’.

Shit like that makes me fuckin ashamed to be a bloke. I don’t know how we fix this, but I’ve got two suggestions for a good start - firstly, we don’t do that shit. Never, there’s never an excuse. Secondly, we fuckin shut down other guys, even if they’re our mates, if they start with that sort of talk.

Yeah, there’s wrong uns in whatever gender. But in terms of atrocity it’s us men well in the lead. We gotta change that. I think we can at least fuckin try.

I think before then he had a good PR team. That was the moment when he thought ‘What am I paying these guys for, I could do this just fine myself.’

Tbh I feel like trump counts in your list. The trumps may not be a wealthy political dynasty but trump managed to manipulate the media for decades and that works too.

It’s not true that anyone can get elected president, but anyone with enough money and recognition has a good chance.

Yeah I get that. I don’t like foreign code on my machine. Trouble is, I dropped the ball with coding over twenty years ago and I kinda feel like the whole of windows is foreign code. I trust Linux more, but I don’t really understand it. I tend to assume that when I’m online my device is sending something I don’t want sent to some fucker I never even heard of. Insert shrug emoji

Yeah, I remember the days when you’d get computer magazines for the Sinclair spectrum (I had the 48k) or the BBC b (now that’s was a great machine, basic interpreter and assembly compiler). When you bought games back then they were on a cassette tape. Sometimes the magazines would have those cheats - like you said, a code or sequence of keys for more lives n stuff. Back when I was playing vice city on the PS2 I remember finding a cheat that would drop a tank. Loved that shit. I am just getting back into gaming after a long gap (just finished bioshock, wow!) and I’ve not really done any online stuff. I probably won’t for a while, I’m way too old and shit, I’d get slaughtered by kids! Last time I played stuff against other humans was unreal tournament on a kinda LAN thing we set up in a squat way back. But I dunno, I think if I was playing that shit and getting slaughtered by kiddies a quarter of my age - I’d just play something else. Anything we do in life, there’s always people who are gonna be better at it. I’m thinking the way to deal with that is to put the work in and get good or accept that we’re not, or just do something else. I hear there are cheats for call of duty type things that people pay subscriptions for. I don’t get it.

But I’m not pissing on anyone else’s choices, plus like I say I’m way out of the loop on this. Thanks for sharing your experiences mate.

Hmm thanks for the reply. Actually mate I kinda see your point. Like I said, I’m just getting into gaming after maybe a twenty year gap and I’ve not played much online stuff. Yeah I can see it would be frustrating to have all the cool shit behind a grind wall.

I guess when I heard cheating I was thinking of people who gain an unfair advantage and ruin the game for others. That’s the sort of cheating I don’t understand.

Back in the day, there were cheats in computer magazines, a sequence of key presses that would give you loads of lives or money or bullets or whatever. I used those an loved em.