That's an excerpt the CoT from an actual discussion about doing serious monospace typography in a way that translates to OLED displays in a way that some of the better monospace foundry fonts don't (e.g. the Berekley Mono I love and am running now). You have to dig for the part where it says "such and such sophisticated question", that's not a standard part of the interaction and I can see that my message would be better received without the non sequitur about stupid restaurants that I wish I had never wasted time and money at and certainly don't care if you do.

I'm not trying to establish my credentials in typography to you, or any other reader, I'm demonstrating that the models have an internal dialog where they will write `for (const auto int& i : idxs)` because they know it's expected of them, an knocking them out of that mode is how you get the next tier of results.

There is almost certainly engagement drift in the alignment, there is a robust faction of my former colleagues from e.g. FB/IG who only know how to "number go up" one way, and they seem to be winning the political battle around "alignment".

But if my primary motivation was to be flattered instead of hounded endlessly by people with thin skins and unremarkable takes, I wouldn't be here for 18 years now, would I?