karl marx didnt predict the puppygirl so what does he know really
Why don't you take Spiro anymore? (You mentioned this in a recent post)
My T is sufficiently suppressed without it. Estrogen and Testosterone inhibit each other through indirect pathways- both signal the hypothalamus and pituitary, which in turn signal the testes/ovaries to produce more or less of their hormone. Unfortunately, T is a more potent suppressor of E than vice versa, so a blocker is needed to drop T levels at first (usually), which then lets E get high. Once E is high enough, then it can suppress T production on its own. For me specifically, I've never had a problem suppressing T, especially later into HRT when my E was getting somewhat higher. Even after quitting spiro, my T has never gotten above 20 ng/dL, and is mostly around 15 ng/dL, which is on the low side of normal even for cis women. AA in general are theoretically unnecessary once E is high enough to suppress T on their own, but this varies strongly dependent on the individual hormone metabolism from person to person. Fun fact, this is also why masculinizing hormone therapy is way simpler than feminizing hormone therapy- T is potent enough to inhibit E right off the bat without extra help.
Personal consideration to add here: I'm quickly learning that I'm a rapid metabolizer, along with about 20-30% of the human population. Essentially this means that most medication has shorter effect periods on me, and I believe it also has had an effect on how effectively my T got suppressed. My T levels were low almost immediately when I started HRT, and I started with spiro. But, the price I had to pay is that its taken forever for my E to go up. With that in mind, I realized that for me specifically, I didn't have to worry about my T going back up if my E wasn't high enough yet.
The above are about why I felt spiro was unnecessary, but why not take it just in case? Simple- side effects. I was having very noticeable diuretic side effects to the point where it interfered with my usual routines, so I tried to quit as soon as I could. Once I quit, a brain fog that I didn't even notice was there, lifted. I was having a lot of issues that I now realize were due to low sodium- my energetics were fucked, my vision was getting hazy when I stood up, and my heart pounded in situations it didn't need to. When I quit spiro, these stopped almost immediately, and I realized that these were side effects that I hadn't even registered as side effects.
These were considerations I made based on my own personal situation, but hopefully it helps. I haven't been on an AA since February or so. I actually just got a levels test back (spreadsheet update pending) and it confirms that my T has been within cis female ranges since early October, and on the low side of cis female ranges since early November.
In my personal opinion, AAs should be used more conservatively than it currently is, but are still necessary for HRT. My ideal HRT based on papers I've seen, personal experience, and conversations with my provider is essentially: brief period of E monotherapy-> E+AA until T is suppressed and E levels are high -> E monotherapy -> additional considerations (like prog). This is not coming from a medical perspective, though, just an anecdotal one.
they should let me enter a server room i would lose my fucking marbles
pleeeeeeaaaaaaasse pretty please let me in2 your server rooms i promise i wont fall in love with the machinery pleasepleasepleaaaaaase <-LYING
Mom, I know what I'll say at your funeral.
I'll tell them three good memories of you. One of you showing me moonflowers.
One of you accidentally admitting to smoking pot in college, blushing and running away. Denying it from then on.
My earliest memory, your finger running over the words of books as you read them.
Then I'll tell them how you put the rabbits outside in their hutch when I could see they were terrified of being in the hot open air. How I begged you not to again and again. Finding their stiff, still bodies when I came home. How you left them alone out there and their hearts couldn't take it.
I wonder what the one who died last thought. I wonder how many hours they were alone, baking, terrified.
I'll tell them about how I found two kittens next to an empty cloth sack in the river. How I never knew if the others had run or just washed away.
I cleaned them and fed them, they were old enough to eat. Old enough to fight and survive. Still so wobbly, so covered in dirt and fleas and their own shit. I gently washed both of them, pet them, showed them kindness.
You called every friend you had to get someone to take them. Eventually they left to be farm cats. I could have run and hid with them, stolen them food- you had already started calling me fat and hiding any food it was easy for a child to make themselves. I knew the taste of baking ingredients, I knew how to steal better. I could have stolen for them. I could have run and kept them. They could have been mine.
But I didn't even understand that I could have just run yet. And I realized how much better they would have it somewhere else, even if it was just as farm cats. I sent them away to live a better life than I could in that house.
I once saw my babysitter being beaten by her father, I was only 12 and she went away to college the next year. I didn't trust my mom enough to tell her, and who else was there to tell? I learned to hide and avoid problems from my Dad, and she was his anchor. Wrapped right around his neck.
If you're young and reading this, just survive. Just get away. College is one way, don't let them talk you into taking extra classes - then move to another county and never pay it back. It'll be cheaper.
Or just run. Find a group that will help you through the Internet and go.
Or sign up to work on a cargo ship the second you turn 18.
Just don't stay there. Don't be like those rabbits dying on the porch, trapped. You're a human. You can open the cage and run. Just keep going one direction. Be kind when you can, but be free first
when barbie ends up wanting to learn about manifolds
Eh all programming languages are good for certain use cases (aside from Java - Kotlin is better for android and Go is better for anything else).
Python is good at quick and dirty automation that just needs to get done. Itâs very friendly to use and wonât pout at you when you ask it do something. Also once you learn to navigate pandas+numpy combined with Jupyter Notebooks it gets wayyyy faster and easier to use for data wrangling.
For example, I recently used Python to scrape hundreds of thousands of tweets via snscrape without having to use twitterâs API. Once I downloaded all the tweets it took me about 30 minutes to then do some basic analysis/labeling/sorting on said tweets.
Yes pip is terrible. Yes Python has only a hint of types (typescript style type hinting arrived in 3.something). Yes pickle creates so many vulnerabilities. Yes performant Python is basically C in a trench coat.
All that said, thereâs a reason Python is many peopleâs first typed programming language and why I continue to use it whenever I have some data I have to fetch, transform, and analyze or whenever Iâm just starting to explore a new field of computer science.
Writing Python is basically like writing pseudo code so I love it for anything that I just need to code up and run once or twice for either a proof of concept before moving to a more âseriousâ language or just discard the program is for my one-time personal use only.
No one should ever have to maintain more than 1k lines of Python but I will still occasionally write that much Python simply because it lets me explore high level techniques without worrying about being perfectly precise.
Python is not for production but instead for messing around. Python is that goofy ahh language that everyone likes because it doesnât mind when you affectionately mess with it. Python is the adorable sidekick that makes programming fun again and for that I adore it
Java is a trash language that should burn in the parts of hell where hitler is
Rust on the other hand is a bratty lil language that should burn in the parts of hell where queers party
Not shaving and not wearing make up are literally nonbehaviors. Theyâre a complete lack of action. But doing nothing is considered masculine because women are not allowed to just be. this goes double for trans women.
All fancy smancy generative ai models know how to do is parrot what theyâve been exposed to.
A parrot can shout words that kind of make sense given context but a parrot doesnât really understand the gravity of what itâs saying. All the parrot knows is that when it says something in response to certain phrases it usually gets rewarded with attention/food.
What a parrot says is sometimes kinda sorta correct/sometimes fits the conversation of humans around it eerily well but the parrot doesnât always perfectly read the room and might curse around a child for instance if it usually curses around its adult owners without facing any punishment. Since the parrot doesnât understand the complexities of how we donât curse around young people due to societal norms, the parrot might mess that up/handle the situation of being around a child incorrectly.
Similarly AI lacks understanding of what itâs saying/creating. All it knows is that when it arranged pixels or words in a certain way after being given some input it usually gets rewarded/gets to survive and so continues to get the sequence of words/pixels following a prompt correct enough to imitate people convincingly (or that poorly performing version of itself gets replaced with another version of itself which is more convincing).
I argue that a key aspect of consciousness is understanding the gravity and context of what you are saying â having a reason that youâre saying or doing what you are doing more than âI get rewarded when I say/do this.â Yes AI can parrot an explanation of its thought process (eli5 prompting etc) but itâs just mimicking how people explain their thought process. Itâs surface level remixing of human expression without understanding the deeper context of what itâs doing.
I do have some untested ideas as to why its understanding is only surface level but this is pure hypothesis on my part. In essence I believe humans are really good at extrapolating across scales of knowledge. We can understand some topics in great depth while understanding others similarly on a surface level and go anywhere in between those extremes. I hypothesize we are good at that because our brains have fractal structure to them that allows us to have different levels of understanding and look at some stuff at a very microscopic level while still considering the bigger picture and while fitting that microscopic knowledge into our larger zoomed out understanding.
I know that neural networks arenât fractal (self-similar across various scales) and canât be by design of how they learn/how data is passed through them. I hypothesize that makes them only understand the scale at which they were trained. For LLMâs/GANâs of today that usually means a high level overview of a lot of various fields without really knowing the finer grain intricacies all that well (see how LLMâs make up believable sounding but completely fabricated quotes for long writing or how GANâs mess up hands and text once you zoom in a little bit.
There is definitely more research I want to do into understanding AI and more generally how networks which approximate fractals relate to intellegence/other stuff like quantum physics, sociology, astrophysics, psychology, neuroscience, how math breaks sometimes etc.
That fractal stuff aside, this mental model of generative AI being glorified parrots has helped me understand how AI can seem correct on first glance/zoomed out yet completely fumble on the details. My hope is that this can help others understand AIâs limits better and therefore avoid putting too much trust into to where AI starts to have the opportunity to mess up serious stuff.
Think of the parrot cursing around children without understanding what itâs doing or why itâs wrong to say those words around that particular audience.
In conclusion, I want us to awkwardly and endearingly laugh at the AIs which mimic the squaks of humans rather than take what it says as gospel or as truth.
Who says you canât have femboys and eat their cake too
20, They/ThemYes I have the socks and yes I often program in rust while wearing them. My main website: https://zephiris.me
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