Forem: Lumir S Vinod

The Em Dash Trap: How a Tiny Symbol Can Outsmart Your AI Cover | Lumir S Vinod

Lumir S Vinod — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:55:15 +0000

Are you someone who uses ChatGPT or any other AI for content creation on any platform? If so, you need to understand the theory of the em dash and the problems it may cause for you in the near future, or, for your authenticity, it may lead others to label your content as AI-generated.

Why is this happening?
It is often auto-inserted by AI models because:

Stylistic defaults: Many AI models are trained on formal articles, blogs, and books where the em dash is commonly used.

Text normalization: During training, publishers and writers often prefer em dashes instead of the regular hyphen — or en dash –.

Unicode handling: The em dash is a separate Unicode character (U+2014). AI models tend to output it when trying to mimic natural, professional writing.

The main reason may question your humanity in content:
A hyphen (-) is on every keyboard. An em dash ( — ) is not; you usually have to insert it via Alt codes, special characters, or copy-paste.

Because most people don’t bother with that in everyday typing, when readers see an em dash in casual posts, it can feel like it didn’t come from a human.

Conclusion
Try to avoid the em dash. Even if you don’t create the whole content using AI and only use it for grammar correction, use a prompt like “only grammar correct,” then remove the em dash and replace it with commas or anything more common. Do you want an example? It’s the content you’re reading! Just kidding.

The Loominthal Effect: Why Top Students in India Struggle to Chase Their Dreams | Lumir S Vinod

Lumir S Vinod — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:50:13 +0000

Introduction to The Loominthal Effect

You are good at studies and got a top rank, or you are an average student who always passes all the exams conducted in school or college. Your dream is to become a successful cricketer, but you can't chase your dream because there is a government or private job you want to pursue.

I have a friend whose dream is to study meteorology and do a B.Sc. in Meteorology. She was a topper, an excellent student, but she couldn't pursue a B.Sc. in Meteorology. Now she's doing another degree in physics, dreaming she can do a master's in her favorite subject.
There are many such stories around you, or you may be one of the characters in those stories.

I have another friend who was very weak in studies. His parents just wanted him to earn some money to live, no big dreams. He was weak at everything, with no focus or interest in learning business either. He stopped studying after plus two, joined German classes, and failed there. But later, he became the first one in our circle to earn a high business profit. Now he travels to different states by flight.
Why does this happen? It's because he had the freedom to do anything, to try anything. Since he didn't have strong academic skills, his parents had no big dreams for him; they just wanted him to live a decent life. He teamed up with another friend who had a good business mindset, and together they solved the gaps others had. They started an institution for German studies and other German-linked businesses, which turned out to be a great success.

If you are a topper or an average student, society will judge you if you choose the commerce or humanities stream.
If you score high in commerce or humanities, they will say, "It's commerce," or "It's humanities, not science, too easy."
But that's not our current topic. Our current topic is: why do educationally successful students have a harder time chasing their dreams, or why can't most of them do it?

The answer is simple. If your parents or the people around you have higher expectations of you, you end up having more people to satisfy. It becomes harder to go after your dreams when they keep putting their own expectations and preferences on you.

How to get out of this trap?

There are three main options:

Defy those around you and go after your dream. Sometimes you have to take the hard road and prove through action that your dream matters more than their expectations.
Break their expectations or avoid creating them. Don't let your achievements become reasons for them to control your future. If needed, illustrate yourself as a failure in their eyes so they can't pressure you with their own dreams or goals. Once that pressure is gone, you can freely follow your path.
Communicate with them. If they are understanding, talk it out. Help them see your vision and why it matters to you. This is the best and healthiest option for anyone.

The third option is the most ideal. If it doesn't work, follow one of the other options or find an alternative approach.

This phenomenon is what I call the Loominthal Effect, which applies strongly to Indian parents: if you reduce their expectations by any method, or avoid creating them in the first place, you gain more freedom, and it becomes much easier to follow your own dreams without external pressure. So, expectation is inversely proportional to your freedom to pursue personal dreams.

In short, the Loominthal Effect is the relationship between the expectations placed on you by the people around you and your personal dreams or goals.

But if the expectation is too low and the person doesn't have high motivation, then it's nothing more than freedom. However, if the person has high motivation or self-esteem, then low expectations are the best for them. But through the Loominthal Effect, I am talking about the relationship between freedom and expectation, not the success rate.

The Psychology Behind Loominthal Effect:

External Locus of Control
Top students feel their life is dictated by others' expectations: parents, teachers, or society, rather than by their own choices. This reduces initiative and makes pursuing personal dreams harder.
Fear of Failure
High achievers fear disappointing others. The thought of failing outside the "approved" path triggers anxiety, which blocks risk-taking needed to chase unconventional dreams.
Internalization of Expectations
Students absorb others' goals as their own. Over time, it becomes hard to separate what they truly want from what is expected, creating a mental trap.
Reduced Autonomy
Constant pressure limits freedom to experiment, explore, or fail safely. Lack of autonomy stifles creativity and motivation to follow personal aspirations.
Social Comparison and Conformity
Being constantly compared to peers reinforces following the "safe" path. Social approval becomes more important than personal fulfillment.
Cognitive Overload and Decision Paralysis
Balancing high expectations with personal desires creates stress. This overload makes it difficult to make bold choices, often leading students to stick with conventional paths.
Perfectionism and Self-Criticism
Top students often develop perfectionist tendencies. They avoid paths where they might not excel immediately, limiting opportunities to pursue their true dreams.

Conclusion
Understanding the Loominthal Effect will help you get out of the trap or recognize it quickly. I know a few people who realized it by talking to those around them, which led me to this concept. Mostly, it holds true, though there are exceptions, but remember, exceptions are not examples.

Why Your Python Class Variables Aren’t Behaving the Way You Think | Lumir S Vinod

Lumir S Vinod — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 09:18:27 +0000

If you're a beginner in the world of object-oriented programming, you've probably faced the same doubt I did: class variables vs instance variables. Wait, wait, don't stop reading! I'm not here to dump theory like the big websites do or overload you with definitions. I want to clarify one specific concept about class and instance variables that has also confused me.
A class variable is a variable defined in the class but outside the constructor or any methods. Every object shares the same memory for this variable, so its value remains the same for all objects.
An instance variable, on the other hand, is an attribute defined inside methods or the constructor. Each object gets its own copy of it.
Take a look at the little program I wrote:

class Car: base_price = 2000 def __init__(self, brand, model, year): self.brand = brand self.model = model self.year = year car1 = Car("apple", "icar, 2025) print(car1) print(car1.brand) print(Car.base_price) car1.base_price = 20000 print(Car.base_price) print(car1.base_price)

Here's what I expected: when we print Car.base_price, it should show 2000. Then, when I changed base_price from 2000 to 20000, since class variables share memory space, I assumed the change would apply to all objects, even when accessed through the class name.

But that's not what happened. print(Car.base_price) still showed 2000, while print(car1.base_price) showed 20000. What the heck is going on?
Here's what's really happening: when we access a class variable using an object, Python first checks whether that object already has an instance variable with the same name. If it doesn't, it looks up to the class and uses the class variable.
But when we assign a value to that variable through the object, Python doesn't modify the class variable.

Instead, it quietly creates a new instance variable inside that object and stores the new value there. The original class variable remains unchanged.
That's why car1.base_price shows 20000 (it's now using the instance variable), while Car.base_price still shows 2000 (the class variable stayed the same). So the confusion comes from Python creating a new instance variable on that object without changing the class variable. When you assign through the object. It looks like you're changing the class variable, but you're actually just creating a brand-new variable that belongs only to that object.

If you want to change the value of a class variable, use the ClassName.classvariable syntax.