Every proponent of evolutionary psychology comes across like that guy who believes every person has a foot fetish
Just really intent on justifying their own weird behaviours as being genetic and universal
There's an acronym you'll come across sometimes in conlang circles: ANADEW. It stands for "A Natlang Already Did it, Except Worse" (or "Even Worse").
If Japanese were a conlang I would say the writing system is hot garbage. Why did you do this? Why did you do any of this? Four writing systems for one language? Inconsistent rules between all of them? I'm skeptical that any person would put up with this, it would definitely get simplified and reduced -- except that there is an entire culture that does in fact put up with it
Working my way through the Pimsleur tapes, but it's rough. I can't do anything else while I'm listening to it or my retention drops considerably, but I am really, really bad at just sitting and listening to something. Even mindless fidget-type games take up too much focus for my HoH APD ass to be able to pay attention to the tapes at the same time.
Every day I try to review yesterday's lesson and then do the next lesson, and that's working out alright for me. I do am having a lot of trouble internalising the meanings of what I'm learning and not just translating it in my head, but I'm not sure how to avoid that. The Pimsleur method just kind of, is that way. I have, just today, started copying down all the phrases in the lessons so far into an anki flashcard deck, so hopefully that helps some.
Still working my way through the hiragana and katakana lessons on duolingo and in other anki decks. I don't want to move on to actual duolingo lessons until I'm through the writing lessons, I was having too much trouble with the actual lessons otherwise.
I remembered that dot Hack has the option to switch to the japanese audio while keeping all the text in english, so I did that. Obviously I'm not skilled enough to be able to understand any of the voice lines, though I've picked out a few words and was able to understand a simple sentence at one point, which was neat. But the idea is to just acclimate more to the sounds of the language. Doing my best to listen to the full voice line before reading the text, so I'm not just not paying attention to it.
I am very far in the game! I think I might be farther than I've ever gotten before, but I'm not sure. If so I'm just up to the farthest I've gotten. I'm excited to get to move on to the next game for the first time.
I love fake MMOs and dot Hack is a really good fake MMO. It's also just the right level of grindy for me. The story I'm a little bit whatever on, like I don't dislike it or anything and it's entertaining enough, but I'm not hooked on the plot. But the gameplay I really like.
On friday, Lee and I took the train over to old sac to just wander around and look at stuff together. It was fun! We left a little later than we'd planned, but old sac still wasn't super crowded like we worried it might be. It did start to get a little packed by the time we left, but not overly so.
We went up and down the streets, went into the costume store that's down there, wandered around a little more, and then started heading into the city to catch the train back. We did run into some trouble with the first station we tried to stop at, in that all the payment kiosks were shut down and boarded over. There was a train that stopped there (though not a train that would take us home), but we opted to try to find a different station rather than stay there. It was weird.
On our way to the next station we found a little museum/park that we want to go back and actually look at some time. And then at that station we had no issues getting on a train and getting home.
All told we were out for three-ish hours, so two-ish hours on our feet walking around. Naturally when we got home we were both pretty beat, so Lee ordered us some takeout and I laid down in bed for a while.
I've started using habitica again, I'm hopeful that combining it with the pomodoro game has good results. So far it's promising, we'll see if I can keep it up.
The season is officially changing and it's hitting me as hard as it always does
My Pimsleur loan is going to expire in a couple of days, and other people have it on hold so I can't renew it. Obviously I'm not done using it, yet, and I also don't want to wait to continue the lessons because that'll set back my learning.
Libby downloads books/audiobooks to your device, which means there's definitely a way to access those files in storage. So the question is, how do they stop people from copying the books over to a different device and keeping them forever?
The answer, it turns out, is they store the files in pieces in dozens of folders with names like "B6", each with one or two junk files with nothing on them, and give all the files names like "5d82c04a-6dcc-4165-831c-3f41281f93eb". So it's a pain in the ass to figure out which folders contain real files, which files are real files, and what order the files are supposed to go in. Which is to say, they keep people from pirating books by making doing so really god-damn annoying.
Anyway, I went through the whole thing and found the files I need, and gave them sensible names, so I have a copy I can use while I wait for my loan to renew
Awful migraine today
Got an email from the person running the UU choir checking in on me, as I've previously expressed interest in participating.
Hello again, Michael. Hope you are well. Looking forward to perhaps having you check out the choir soon!
Hi Anthony,
I'm really sorry, but with the board relaxing COVID precautions, I'm not comfortable participating in indoor groups. I hope I'll be able to join if the decision is reversed or COVID cases drop. Thank you very much for getting in touch
Understandable. At the moment, I’m trying to figure out what all of that means for choir, as I, like you take it very seriously.
I'm glad to hear that, and hope you can keep it going safely. The choir I used to go to had to end their last season early because COVID spread through the members, luckily I had stopped attending by that point and to my knowledge everyone ended up okay.
Be well, I hope to see you around as it's safe to meet
Continued bummer, but I'm glad he took my retraction of interest (as it were) well and also glad he's 'taking it seriously'. I hope he's not just saying it
Speaking of that previous choir, there hasn't been any communication since the email saying the director was leaving and we needed to meet up to determine the future of the group, but the organizer for the meetup page stepped down without saying anything and now the group is going to automatically shut down if no one takes it over in... apparently it's stopped giving a deadline, but the page has a big orange banner on it warning that it's going to happen. So it kind of seems like it's just, going to quietly die? Which sucks, what a way for it to end.
Maybe I'll get more emails at some point, maybe someone will pick it up and keep it going. I totally get the decision to let the meetup page die, it wasn't getting very much activity for a few seasons and it costs money to maintain it, but not saying anything about it is a little bit off. Not saying anything a month after being like 'I'll get back to everyone next week with plans for a state-of-the-group meeting' is off.
I hope everyone is okay, but I don't have much optimism for the group getting back together, at this point.
By god you've got to care about something outside your self
There's not a lot of things the US objectively gets right compared to other countries, but window screens is definitely one of them
Use Celsius to describe 'too cold' temperatures and Fahrenheit to describe 'too hot' temperatures