Strange, this does seem to work with python3.8 on ubuntu 20.04 (the site-packages shows up in sys.path), but for me in a virtualenv bin/python is a symlink to the system python, so how does python 'know' what path to use? Is there logic baked into the interpreter?

I seem to recall that with python2.7 that calling bin/python in a virtualenv without activating the virtualenv did not used to "work" (i.e. it would use the system packages). Did this change at some point or is my memory just wrong?