That’s because the word “first” in first() uses one-based indexing. In true programmer fashion it would have been called zeroth() but that is wholly unintuitive to most humans.

I maintain that the element with the lowest index is called the “zeroth” element in zero-based indexing and “first” in one-based indexing. The element with index N is the Nth element.

Bullshit.

Every programmer knows that 'A' in ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D'] would be the 0th item; the first item is 'B'

Rulers measure cardinal quantities and not ordinal ones. There is no cardinal numbering scheme that starts at 1, all of them “start” at 0. For ordinal numbering schemes, the symbols are arbitrary anyway and you can start with whatever you want. It’s equally valid to start with 1, 0, -1, A, or “aardvark”. The only benefit to picking 1 as the start is to make it easier to count with your fingers while picking 0 lets you easily convert an ordinal quantity to a cardinal one.

Probably. I didn’t consider that, but everything is AI generated nowadays

But this is legitimately impressive

I think you’re right in terms of the American spectrum. Do you have a link to the bot calling the Ayn Rand institute centre-right? I did some more digging into it.

I will happily retract my comment if you can.

Just in curiosity, what is an example of a centre-right (by American standards) source for you? I make no comment about the Ayn Rand Institute as I know nothing about it

That’s correct. It’s intended for a US audience.

If it were based on the European Overton window and you were American then there’s a good chance you would complain about its centre being centre-left for you.

It’s not wrong; you’re just not in the intended audience.

It’s not really possible to give internationally correct ratings. What an American considers centre-left is different from what a Frenchman considers centre-left, which is different from what a Pole considers centre-left. You can only report one, and the other two will then complain about it being wrong from their perspective.

Someone just told me that it “labels everything short of fascism as ‘left-leaning’” and “tries to shift the Overton window” even further right than it already is in the US.

And I suppose that is correct if your idea of the spectrum of normal political opinions is restricted to what you see on Lemmy, especially if your instance hasn’t defederated from Hexbear yet.