I tried out a bunch, including Babbel, Busuu, Language Transfer, Mango, and Memrise. I didn’t like them for one reason or another. I finally landed on Lingodeer. It’s similar to Duolingo, but it is a paid app. (You can try level 1 of any language for free.)

The regular subscription price is definitely not worth it. It’s okay (not great, but not awful) when they do their sales. But I felt okay about paying human workers.

This kind of learning is a great start, but will only get you so far. If your local library has access to Kanopy, look for the Great Courses series on Spanish. I thought that was an excellent series after a little bit of Duolingo.

Duolingo got me enough vocabulary in Spanish to put the simplest sentences together, and then follow more robust lessons. I still think it was a good starting point, but I won’t use it anymore on principle.

A little over a year ago, a guy tried to ask me out and I’m the process said a few dumb things in an attempt to impress me. The dumbest of them all was that he was planning to buy a Cybertruck as his next vehicle. By the time he’d said this, I’d already long made up my mind about this guy. Mind, this was the period of time when Elon was just an asshole and hadn’t gone full Nazi yet, but even then, this dude’s choice of vehicle told me I’d made the right choice.

Theseadays I wonder if that guy ever got his idiot truck, and, whether he did or not, if he’s changed his mind about it.

I had to tell a bunch of librarians that LLMs are literally language models made to mimic language patterns, and are not made to be factually correct. They understood it when I put it that way, but librarians are supposed to be “information professionals”. If they, as a slightly better trained subset of the general public, don’t know that, the general public has no hope of knowing that.

I never really got into tea because I always found the flavour disappointing compared to its aroma. But I recently tried yerba maté, which isn’t a tea but definition, but is similar. It’s made from the leaves and stems of Holly and has a strong, bitter flavour that definitely does not disappoint. It’s enjoyed in places like Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil. Now I start my day with a mug of coffee, then sip on maté the rest of the day.

The best use, for me, is asking ChatGPT to give me five (or however many) scholarly, peer-reviewed articles on a topic. Then I search for said articles by title and author name on my school library database.

It saves me so much time compared to doing a keyword search on said same database and reading a ton of abstracts to find a few articles. I can get to actually reading them and working on my assignment way faster.

AI is a great tool for people who use it properly.

The problemo see with this construct is that it only benefits current actors. There won’t be space for a new generation of actors.

Trip was a complete gentleman… that time. He made no guarantees or warranties for future missions.

I got the Logitech Lift and found it didn’t do it for me. It’s certainly better than a traditional mouse, but it’s at an angle that’s still not neutral. I ended up getting an Evoluent and it was much more comfortable.

The thing that I can’t understand about this product is why they didn’t cover the function keys. They are literally functional.

I’ve found this to be true in general once I started working. I don’t feel kinda this was a thing when I was and was integrating with other students. I had to readjust my “responsible” self who actually would follow up (to people’s horror) and tell myself it’s a polite saying that people don’t mean. Like when people greet each other with “How are you?”, they generally actually do not want to know how the other person is doing. You’re expected to say “fine” or “good” and deviating from that is violating an unspoken social contract.

You can download Signal APK directly from their website.

In some different countries, WhatsApp is how people conduct business. I am anti WhatsApp in my regular life, but I used it with a VOIP number when I was traveling abroad.

It’s one thing to tell your friends and family you use Signal, you can’t tell literally every business. Well, you can, they just won’t to do business with you.

I miss flip phones for similar reasons. I loved flicking them open and snapping them shut.

One time I had to use a website where the email 2FA expired in 30 seconds! I usually keep my email client open while my computer is on, but, come on, that was ridiculous.

I went to a non-uniformed elementary school (which has since adopted a uniform), a uniformed high school, and then university which was obviously non-uniformed. I much preferred the uniformed years because I don’t care one whit about fashion I never had to think about what to wear.

Granted, my high school uniform had a lot of variety, considering. There were two cuts/styles for the long sleeved shirts, a short sleeve shirt, polo shirt, knit sweater, knit vest, knit cardigan, 1/4 zip sweatshirt, and blazer, which could be mixed and matched as you liked.

I don’t remember how the conversation came about, but in a previous office job, some discussion (among us low-level employees) came about regarding an office uniform. Most people were horrified by the idea, but I was totally for it.

Running Google Ads requires uploading your drivers license or passport. I’m a volunteer at a teeny non-profit. Why should I have to surrender that level of personal information for a business/non-profit account where I’m not even employed (no one is, it’s all volunteers)? I didn’t, and the account was suspended.

Refusing to use nail polish remover to clean off permanent marker because that’s “for women”. It’s acetone, my dude, acetone.

You need to check your reading comprehension. I never said there’s any such dichotomy about FOSS as a general concept. I specifically named Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus before and after that sentence. Just because a FOSS “alternative” exists, doesn’t mean it actually is an alternative, or at least an acceptable one. Each software has to be evaluated individually. In the case of Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus, they would not be acceptable in a professional creative space.

Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus were terrible to use after using Adobe for years. Get Affinity suite instead and save yourself the rage and frustration. It’s one-time payment license (not a subscription) and they have deals. I got the license for the three of them for $90. They are way closer to Adobe products and definitely worth the one-time cost.

I love the concept of open source, but you can only make so many compromises in quality and usability, especially if you’re likelihood depends on it. Gimp, etc just aren’t there.

(On the other end of the spectrum, Blender is so amazing I can still hardly believe it.)