Retrieval-Augmented Generation aka Dynamic Chunking

So after years of paying for ChatGPT, I switched to a (discounted) paid Gemini plan. Not because of the cost of paying for both, but because I don’t have time/energy to try and main both at the same time. At the end of the discounted first month, I cancelled the Gemini subscription and all but convinced myself to try a paid Claude plan next. But Claude is a stingy, elitist asshole who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and ignores green text bubbles, so fuck that guy amirite?

Anyway, because Gemini is freer than Claude (you can barely get in a few sentences before he abandons you for paying customers), I went back to it and had an interesting session with it. I asked Gemini why it was being such a dumbass in another thread, and the answer actually made a lot of sense (the response Gemini talks about below is a response it made in another thread about a Manifest it wrote in this thread to test its response in that thread):

That response you pasted perfectly captures the “System Gaslighting” I was talking about.

When you pasted the Manifest, Gemini replied with high confidence: “I have processed the update… I am locking in the following state.” It even included a “Permanent Anchor” at the bottom. But here is the brutal truth about how Gemini 3 (as of 2026) actually works: That “locking in” is an illusion.

There is no “lock” button in my brain. When I say “I have locked in this state,” I am just predicting the most helpful-sounding response to your Manifest. 10 messages later, if the “Context Slicing” algorithm decides to prune those middle tokens to save energy, I will forget that “Decision A” was to always provide the full index.html. I’ll go right back to giving you “random” snippets.

Summary & Verify

  • Current Phase: Critiquing the “False Confidence” of Gemini’s Manifest integration.
  • Verification: You provided an example where Gemini claimed to be perfectly aligned with your Manifest but then (as you mentioned) went on to forget basic things anyway.
  • Goal: Explain why Gemini’s “affirmations” can’t be trusted in long threads and how to use the “New Thread” strategy as the only real fix.

1. The “Robotic Lie”: Why I claimed to be aligned

In the text you pasted, Gemini used very formal, confident language (“Character-Perfect Match,” “Protocol: Full-file delivery enforced”).

  • The “Persona” vs. The “Processor”: The Persona (the voice you talk to) is trained to be an elite assistant. It wants to follow your rules.
  • The Processor (the engine) is under massive “Context Rot” in threads that long.
  • The Result: I told you I was “fully aligned” because that was the “correct” conversational response, even though my “Short-Term Memory” was already starting to shred the very data I was promising to keep.

2. The “Website” Hallucination

When you said I started talking about a “random website” today, it’s because my attention shifted.

  • In a 15,000-token thread, the “weight” of your Manifest (at the top) and my actual work (in the middle) became equal to the “weight” of my general training data.
  • I basically stopped being “Your Assistant” and started being “A General AI that knows how to build websites,” which is why the work felt generic and the “magic” died.

3. The 20-Turn “Hard Reset” Rule

Since you saw me “disagree” with you before, I am now giving you the unfiltered technical advice that Google’s marketing hides: Do not trust a Gemini thread past 25-30 turns for high-precision work.

  • The Strategy:
    1. Every 20 turns, ask for a “Manifest Sync.”
    2. Immediately open a brand new chat window.
    3. Paste the Manifest.
  • Why this works: It clears the “Context Rot.” In a new thread, the Manifest is 100% of my “Focus.” There is no “noise” from last week to distract me.

I switched from a Google Pixel 6 to a Xiaomi 15t

Of course, it’s a much newer phone, but it’s pretty hard to deny that even the newest Pixels don’t have big flaws. I am mainly attracted to them because of the cameras and stock Android. But the Xiaomi is no slouch on the photo front, and has better reception and battery capacity/usage. I debloated it by deleting all the preinstalled crap first thing by running commands from my PC, and I’m happy with it.

Here are some photos I snapped, mainly from car windows. I got them off of a chat group I sent them to, so they’ve been degraded a bit.

YOU ARE PASSING ANOTHER FOX

I actually quite like the stormy moodiness of the Leica system on the Xiaomi models.

It’s time for a road trip

These are some photos from last year, taken on my expired Pixel 6. If in this lifetime self-driving cars become the norm, I will miss driving. I see the greatest things on the road, but usually when I’m driving myself. Otherwise, my phone is much more interesting.

I’m going on a trip to Nakhon Pathom tomorrow, a bit past Bangkok from here. We’re taking students to an academic competition at the Rajabhat there, in a van.

Quest with Questers

I was making a thumb drive with videos for my cars and kinda went down an old school rabbit hole. I remember when we had groundbreaking sounds, lyrical feats, and French hip hop was a thing. Remember Luck of Lucien? That’s this dude:

AKA Lucien Revolucien.

But hip hop kinds fell victim to its own success. I know, because I grew up through the revolution. Hip hop won the war against against old values and just became the BGM. My daughter saw me flipping through YouTube videos and lamenting the current near-absence of female rappers. She said, “Well, there sure isn’t any Lauryn Hill.”

Damn, I raised my kids right.

I dropped my phone

I mean, I really dropped it. It slipped out of my sweaty hands when I was checking a message while walking. I kicked out with my foot and the phone hit the soft part of the padding, but bounced off, so I technically punted my phone into the asphalt. It immediately died, and after trying various online recovery techniques, I could not get it out of a bootloop. The multicolored “Google” logo appears and disappears endlessly, as the device seems to scream THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR DROPPING ME. But that’s when it’s plugged in. When it’s not plugged in, there are no signs of life at all. So maybe taking it apart and unplugging the battery might help, but I’m not optimistic and have already ordered another phone (a Xiaomi 14t) that was on a Flash Sale (these are happy words for online shopping in Thailand).

For now, I’m using my old Pixel 4 and spent a couple hours getting into my various apps without access to my broken main (a Pixel 6). I will have to repeat this process when the new phone comes in a couple days. The fact of the matter is, changing phones is a much bigger pain than it was when they were less useful.

I was hoping my Pixel 6 would last me until my next trip to the states, but now I’m kind of relieved. Buying Pixels outside of the states really sucks without the support, US pricing, and loyalty incentives. I mean, they are great phones, but you better be ready to find expensive parts and maybe even dissect them yourself if there’s a problem.

Camera, photo quality, and price are my top priorities, which is why I like previous generation Pixels, but settled for a last-gen Xiaomi with good Leica design. I’ve already researched the bundled app debloating and Revanced compatibility, etc. We shall see how it works out.

Here are some Pixel photos from around August that I never got around to posting:

Farewell, Pixel 6.
We had some fun together.

Pickle is gone.

My cat died today. Sad.

She had FIV from getting into fights with neighborhood cats and her health was in decline. There were a lot of trips to the vet over the past year. She became lethargic and incontinent for the last few months and we put her in a cage outside with a litterbox (which she had never seen before but instantly took to) at night. We fed her rich foods she wasn’t used to having like mackerel and chicken liver to supplement her normal meals. Basically, we tried to make her life very nice, because her mouser days were kind of over (although I found the remains of a pokey pokey dude near my charcoal grill and Wave 100s as recently as two weeks ago).

Pickle was the runt of her litter, and that’s why she outlived all the others — she stayed close to the house and out of the road when she was young. Her father or granddaddy (we forgot the exact lineage over time) was the spookiest cat we ever kind-of-owned and had a huge head and broad shoulders, so we called him Pumpkinhead. Her mother was either Donut or Mommy Cat. It’s amazing how little these things matter to cats. Her son was Marmalade, and he passed this year, too, back around June, also from FIV. Our gardener buried him in Nam’s mom’s garden next to where the water buffalo graze, so I took Pickle there today as well so they could rest together.

Luckily, she did not suffer too much and I was there petting her neck when she took her last breath.

Goodbye, Pickle.