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Ashtear

@ Ashtear @piefed.social

Posts
11
Comments
162
Joined
5 mo. ago

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Got pretty busy this week so I slowed down a bit but I'm still keeping pace on my flashcards, which is the important thing.

    The reading in this chapter of Tobira was about Japanese-style paper and was far more interesting than I expected. I'm also starting to feel more comfortable parsing intermediate grammar and Japanese sentence structure in general. I swear it's like learning how to read backwards.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Nice, good work! What level?

  • What's an objectively terrible movie that you love anyway?

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  • TRON: Legacy, although "terrible" might be bit harsh on it. I first watched the movie when I had a fever of 103 and it was perfect for that.

    All-time great movie soundtrack, though.

  • What's an objectively terrible movie that you love anyway?

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  • "Twelve megabytes of RAM, 500 megabyte hard drive. Built-in spreadsheet capabilities and a modem that transmits at over 28,000 BPS."

  • Removed

    How Americans describe politician's views

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  • 74% describe Obama, someone that literally wrote a pro-deregulation op-ed in The Wall Street Journal while in office, as left wing.

    This is what people are talking about when they say there's no left-wing representation in America.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Yep, exactly, JLPT-prep. I'm going to grab Shin Kanzen Master, though I ultimately don't know if it'll be the right fit or not. My guess is once a student finishes Tobira (or Quartet now, I suppose), they pick a goal. N2 is the most common goal, I would imagine, so the student then figures out what part of the exam they need to focus on. For me, I know I'll be okay on vocab and kanji, I just need reading speed and I especially need listening comprehension work. Beyond that, it'll just be drills for the test format.

    I think if one's goal is just consuming native content, working in a job that needs Japanese, or just chatting with others, post-Tobira/Quartet is indeed when one starts a more self-tailored learning approach. I haven't even started the "easy" native stuff like よつばと！or からかい上手の高木さん but it sounds like I'd be in a good position to do so maybe even right now if I wanted.

  • /r/BuyFromEU: "Let's settle the Reddit alternative discussion: Lemmy doesn't need to “beat Reddit”, it needs to feel effortless"

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  • The good news is instance hopping is pretty easy. I've already done it twice now.

    The "It's like email" comparison is cliche for the Fediverse at this point, but it really is. Most people are gonna switch eventually for some reason or another.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Nice job on the card speed! I always start my day with my reviews and I feel my days go smoother when I get through them quick.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Big win yesterday: I have now gone through every card in my N3 vocab deck (about 3500 cards). Exciting. Feels a bit intimidating stepping into stuff labeled specifically as N2 content, but my retention rate as been great. I'm ready. It's the clearest sign yet that I'm more advanced with Japanese than I ever have been. Wrapping up the latest chapter of Tobira either today or tomorrow, too. Four more chapters to go.

  • I'm gonna chemically castrate myself, should I tell my parents? (I am 26)

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  • Seconding this on going without sex hormones, from first-hand experience: it's absolutely not a place for a depressive to be, to the point where I would consider a psychiatrist willing to okay it for a depressive patient to be dangerously ignorant, at best. I urge you to seek out a new mental health team for this and other reasons.

    Also, I'm surprised no one's mentioned this: sex with friends is a thing. I've had just as much sex with friends in my life as I have in committed relationships. It just requires good communication and boundaries.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Last week I had the worst week of study since I started my new structured study plan in June. The good news is the cause is not burnout. The bad news is it's related to bigger mental health stuff that's going to take me a while to work through. I'm not great at relaxation/recharging. I can do individual days well, but like, I try to vacation for a week and I'm a disaster by the end of it. Ugh.

    On the positive side, I finished a page of listening notes in my notebook and it felt really good to see:

    Here I'm jotting down timestamps for stuff I'm struggling with and then go back over it with the transcript after I finish the podcast episode. The tactile notebook and pen gives my brain something to fidget with while I'm listening, and that might have been the magic key for me. I feel pretty good about it now, and if I were testing for N4 in December I'd be in great shape, but alas, I'm aiming higher. There are another 100+ episodes in this series and I might do them all. The great thing is, once I go a step higher than this podcast, there will be tons of content available to flip through and the conversation will be more interesting.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Concentrating on everyday usage is a great thing and I really should do it more. Especially stuff as simple as taking a few minutes each day to describe something around you or a thought in the language.

  • Nothing gained from video games

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  • When one breaks something down to its components, nothing is new under the sun. I used to feel the same about games several years ago (albeit a little more about story rather than gameplay), but I eventually I reframed that into familiar systems and stories being comfort food. Now I actively seek those things out. That way, I'm generally assured of some enjoyment at worst, and at best I find some fun ways developers are putting twists on frequently-used concepts. Some of my all-time favorites are games I've played only in the past few years.

    I also felt that way about time wasting, but once I started being more intentional and structured about my daily goal setting and time boxing my day, that went away. Now when I'm done for the day, I'm done for the day and I give myself permission to have downtime. Tangentially, Adderall also helped with this by giving me a hard physical signal to tell me I'm probably not going to get much more done for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, these days now I'm often too tired during the week. 🤷🏻‍♀️

    That said, I also don't like achievements. It's something I would have loved 30 years ago back when there was way less to play, but there's too much choice now. I'd rather see what else is out there instead of spending time digging into something I've already seen most of. Feels like diminishing returns. Some people really get into it, though.

  • Starfleet Academy

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  • For DS9, yeah, they don't even introduce the main plot line of the series until the end of the second season. A lot of it early is continuation of the same threads from TNG, and it gets much better in the seasons where it finds its own identity after TNG went off the air.

    Honestly, Lower Decks is the best Trek we've had recently.

  • Disney deleted a Thread because people kept putting anti-fascist quotes from its movies in the replies

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  • Andor isn't nearly that straightforward about it. It's complicated and messy, with self-interested people juxtaposed against the idealists. Most of it is character-centered, soul-sucking spycraft tension like The Lives of Others or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but then also exasperating bureaucracy as in Chernobyl--and Stellan Skarsgard is equally phenomenal in Andor. Your toys aren't here either; no lightsabers, few scenes with the old droids, very little time in space. Most of the time you need the architecture and the stormtroopers and Imperial dress whites to recognize it as a Star Wars setting.

    It's completely different than any Star Wars screen production before it.

  • SOMA, off the backlog after nine years

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  • Safe mode is the better experience, unfortunately. Probably the most common criticism for the game, the stealth sections just don't do much for the game and take away from the experience at times.

  • What are your thoughts on the mass implementation of AI?

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  • Mass implementation is a mistake, and I suspect implementation in consumer goods is where the bubble's bursting will be the most devastating. Recent news tells us Dell has figured that out already, and I don't think it will be long before society decides it can't tolerate things like AI companions for young children.

    Ultimately, I don't think widespread implementation with any sort of value will be possible unless someone figures out how to make effective prompt creation so easy anyone can do it. Everyone seems to think AI is just a box you press a button on and it'll spit something out, but getting valuable output isn't like that. Good prompt engineering and tool selection is hard, and it'll have to be a trained skill for people working with the systems generative AI does stick around on.

    The really unfortunate thing is LLMs are the perfect snake oil for sociopathic executives. They can provide something approximating meaningful human interaction to these lonely, workaholic MBAs, and from there, it wasn't a hard sell to make them believe they could replace their pesky labor force, too. When you're that far outside the real world, sycophantic illusions are seductive.

  • What is Substack and why all the sudden do all the content creators seem to be on it?

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  • Forbes 2.0

  • QWERTY Phones Are Really Trying to Make a Comeback This Year

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  • Having to use something like Windows IME on a phone for Japanese is nightmare fuel