I mean, if you want to learn spanish, try dreaming spanish.

For Japanese - iirc, Tandem has a paid tier where it will show you people who are nearby you? So maybe try finding some Japanese speakers near you, and pitch crosstalk to them. Maybe one or two will become consistent language learning partners, and you’ll make friends in addition to learning Japanese.

Yeah - I think the reason is twofold.

First, this method doesnt really fit into the traditional classroom setting very well - people will learn the language over time using this method, but will learn different things at different speeds. You can’t test people on vocab and grammar if their assigned work is simply “listen to these people speak and try to understand the gist”. So you can find private instructors who use these methods (and in other countries, it is the default method for teaching english) - but in schools or government-sanctioned courses, it would never fly.

Second, people want to speak. Actually speaking the language and having a conversation in it is what they feel like progress should look like. So when you tell them that they won’t speak the language until they have consumed something like 1000 hours of content, they tend to write the method off. This is especially true if they have a deadline to meet - like they want to learn a language before a trip to another country. But really, in that case, you should simply get a traveller’s phrasebook and memorize a few phrases. You probably won’t make meaningful progress in learning a language in 4 weeks (or whatever) before your trip anyway.

Good.

I once had something like a 700 day streak on Duolingo Spanish. But I still didn’t feel like I was learning all that much.

So then I decided to try going to a local spanish language learning meetup group. My spanish was awful, but I figured that if I just kept showing up then eventually I’d learn something. And it was a good way to get out of the house and meet people. And the people in the group were great in that they had other suggestions on ways to learn. They recommended some youtube channels, and making flashcards, getting the book about spanish verbs, taking classes, or going on tailored spanish immersion trips to other countries - and this was all great!

But then a friend who had also been trying to learn spanish recommended something else to me. And I remembered it was something the spanish meetup group people had recommended too. So I went and looked this thing up, and read their philosophy, and it made so much sense.

The way that humans learn languages doesn’t change between infants and adults. So how do infants learn their native language?

First, they listen. A LOT. Adults speak to infants in a simplified language with context clues, and then the infant spends the rest of their time passively listening to the sounds others around them make. Over time, they learn that certain words are associated with certain actions or objects. And then after more time, they learn that words are associated with more abstract ideas, which can form complex and nuanced sentences.

After they have been listening to adults talk for literally years, they start speaking their first words. Their understanding of language grows as they see how others respond to their speech, and they adjust accordingly.

After a few years of practicing speaking, they learn how to read. And not long after that, they learn how to write.

There are a couple key concepts here.

First is that we want to learn to relate words in our target language directly to concepts - not to relate them to words in our native language. It is obviously much easier and more natural to understand that manzana is the concept of an apple, rather than translating spanish manzana to english apple to the concept of an apple.

Second is the concept of comprehensible input. Listening or reading the target language in a way that is understandable to you right now at the level you are at.

Third is that in order to understand native speakers, you must listen to native speakers. You will not understand Chilean spanish if you only ever listen to perfect textbook-approved spanish sentances.

Forth is that language learners should intentionally delay speaking, reading, or writing in their language learning progression for quite a while, because they will just pick up bad habits. Like if you are struggling to figure out how to say something and figure out how to say it in a really roundabout way, that weird phrasing may stick around long after you have learned a more natural way to say the same thing. Or if you learn a new word through reading, you will often mispronounce it, while listening to native speakers pronounce the word provides little ambiguity. And besides these setbacks, reading, writing, and speaking your target language before you have a firm grasp of listening will typically take the form of concept -> your native language word -> your target language word - which will not help you learn nearly as quickly as simply listening to more comprehensible input.

So how do you actually learn a language?.

The best method is cross talk. This is where you and a partner who speaks your target language natively spend time having conversations where you both speak your native language. Each person’s skill at their target language level doesn’t really matter, since each person can adjust sentence complexity and use gestures and props and other tools to communicate in a comprehensible way. But obviously, this method has a few pitfalls.

First, as a beginner it can be difficult to find a partner. More advanced speakers may want to find a match in their level, while other beginners may become easily frustrated. There are apps like Tandem which can pair you with other people around the world, but most of these people have not heard of crosstalk and won’t be interested in it - they will insist on wanting to speak their target language. And if you do find a partner on one of these apps who is interested in the crosstalk method, it is still sub-optimal, because beginner crosstalk benefits a lot from being in-person and being able to gesture, use props, and draw on pads of paper or whiteboards, while lag in your connection can make understanding them and keeping up with their screen difficult and frustrating.

So as a beginner, you could pay for a tutor to do crosstalk with you, or pay for a class where they will pair you up with another student, and an instructor can help the two of you work through frustrating communication barriers with encouragement and cleaver techniques. However, this can be quite expensive.

Finally, meeting up with someone to practice your chosen language is time consuming. It takes hundreds of hours of consuming comprehensible input to become just passable at listening to simple sentences. If you meet up with your crosstalk partner for 3 hours per day twice per week, you are still only learning at a snail’s pace.

The solution? Consume content that is designed for language learners at your level. Then you can watch 30 minutes of videos per day if that’s what fits in your schedule, or you can watch 3 hours of videos if you have a long train ride or something. Or if you are super dedicated to learning, you can watch 10 hours per day of content or more if your brain can handle it!

After doing this for about a year, I made more progress in learning spanish than I did for years using other methods. Enough that friends would point to me as “the gringo who knows spanish” when they needed a translator. I’m still only at the level of, like, a 5 year old - but holy shit! Something that actually works!

The service I used/use is called Dreaming Spanish. They regularly upload new videos for free to youtube, but they also have a website where you can make an account and track how much content you have consumed, so you have a decent idea of when you can level up. They also have a paid tier, which is (imo) reasonably priced, and gives you access to more videos (their sneaky trick is to make one video in a series free to get you hooked on the idea of the series, then paywall the rest of the series to entice you to pay). But while they obviously want you to pay them, they also often recommend other services and content creators who will help you learn just as well. From what I can tell, it is just some spanish guy who started making youtube videos, and then taught himself html, made a website, and hired a few people from other countries to make videos with him. And they also recently branched out, and started Dreaming French as well.

I know this sounds like an ad - but fuck it, I’ll totally schill for those guys! I actually fucking learned spanish, and it was fun and easy.

DreamingSpanish.com

I don’t think things like debt actually make people more conservative. I think that effect has to flow from things which actually impact peoples lives - so if the government takes on too much debt, and then cuts public services to manage that debt, which makes people feel more economically precarious, then people will statistically become more conservative. But if the debt isn’t impacting people directly, then it isn’t increasing conservatism. Instead, existing conservatives are predisposed to care about increasing public debt and see it (rightly or wrongly) as a threat to their way of life. But if conservatives constantly talk on the internet about how increasing debt is going to collapse the government, then more neutral people might feel threatened, and will start adopting more conservative stances.

As for what caused the shift towards Reaganomics - I’m sure we could come up with a just-so story. But I don’t know if I’m the one to do it

I feel like this is a good attempt at a description of what conservatism is, but I’d like to share my own - conservatism is the natural political philosophy of people living in danger and scarcity.

Hence -

• Valuing stability, order, and predictability. When the outside world is violent and chaotic, you want your home and society to be as non-chaotic as possible. So, strict gender roles, supporting police and military, sacrificing individual expression for social predictability.
• Deference to authority and strict heirarchy. In times of crisis, having an obvious chain of command makes it easier to get things done. So, patriarchal family structures, authoritarian governments.
• An emphasis on practical or traditional knowledge over theoretical knowledge. Anyone who has done hands-on work can tell you how often theory falls short of practice. So, distrust of academics and dislike of book-learning.
• Belief in a higher power. When you have no control over your life, you try to find that control by believing in god(s) and prayer.
• Distrust of outsiders. Your family and tribe can be trusted - outsiders should be kept at arms length until proven trustworthy. And along with this - hostility towards members of enemy tribes. So, racism, xenophobia
• Lack of empathy for outsiders or social “parasites”. When resources are limited, you must ration them, and giving away resources to people who give you nothing in return will hurt you and your tribe. So, hostility towards immigrants and the homeless.

And of course, the conservative response is driven by belief, not reality. So if someone believes that the world is dangerous and their way of life is precarious, they will quickly adopt conservative attitudes. So it doesn’t matter if you yourself are actually safe and your way of life is quite robust - if you get sucked into a fearmongering news cycle, you can become conservative.

I was talking to a Polish friend about Polish politics. He said in Poland, like in the US, they had both conservative and liberal parties - but that the topics for debate were different. In Poland, the conservatives agreed with the liberals on things like healthcare funding, supporting higher education, and funding transit projects. All these things were non-issues in Polish politics.

“Well,” says I, “Then I’m confused. If the conservatives and liberals agree on all those things, then what makes them different? What makes the conservatives, conservative?”

“Ah, you see,” he says, “They’re racist. That’s the whole thing - they’re just racist.”

Really, a chronic problem on lemmy. People are feminists or communists or bipoc or atheists or linux users, and so literally anything they don’t like, somehow, some way, is caused by the patriarcy/capitalists/racism/organized religion/Bill Gates. But when you start blaming Bill Gates for your stubbed toe, it becomes really obvious that what is actually happening is you are projecting your personal problems onto an external boogeyman as some kind of escapism.

All the people downvoting this need to come to grips with the fact that it is true, whether or not you like the political tone.

If you want to enact a wealth tax on billionaires, great, I’m not opposed. But do it because you want to reduce the power weilded by these people - not because you think that just by taking their money and spending it “better” you’ll solve all the world’s problems.

And yes, increasing costs of government programs are a problem. So let’s address the actual problem, by doing things like bringing down the cost of medicare through preventative care and better negotiating on medical supplies, rather than pretending like it doesn’t exist.

Not your car. Just your pussy

I dream of a world where everyone expects to hear a stump speach when they go to Wendy’s!

I mean, it definitely makes you warmer. In that it shunts your blood to the outer layer of your body, warming your skin and making you feel less cold. Problem is, this actually makes you lose heat more rapidly, and increases your susceptibility to hypothermia. But since you can experience “drink alcohol, feel warmer” yourself, the myth will probably persist indefinitely.

Cool, now how do I find those thingies?

That’s a bold move, Cotton, we’ll see if it pays off

Well it’s certainly imperfect, I’ll give it that.

But I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it was written by an LLM, fed a prompt like “write a short story to appeal to Lemmy about how LLMs are bad and human writers are good”. So it plays Lemmy’s greatest hits: “straight white people bad, gay black people good; LLMs bad; big tech bad; self hosting good.”, sprinkles in the “artist/human soul vs technology/corporate banality” trope, and then lays it on an uninspiring story arc. Doesn’t help that the excerpts of the supposedly “imperfect writing” sound like something that would be printed in the NYT or Atlantic culture section.

Which, I guess is all well and fine - but really the biggest thing that pulled me out of the story was the absurdity that anyone was actually so pro-ai, or that so many people are so anti-ai. Like, is this story written in the future, where LLMs are much better than they are today? Because LLM writing I’ve seen is, for the most part, quite bad. And actually has been getting worse lately. And most people dislike it. Having an actual job as a “prompt engineer” was a fever dream some tech bloggers had for about 20 minutes, and someone so brazenly championing wholesale LLM writing would be the laughingstock of any writing group in real life. Similarly, the idea that people are so sick of ai-generated content that they would join a writing group and attend an event specifically about being opposed to it, is equally absurd. People mostly use ai as (1) better google, (2) to do annoying boring things they don’t want to do, like homework or writing a cover letter, or (3) (by far most commonly) for porn. When not specifically seeking it out for these tasks, people tend to avoid it as much as is practical. People aren’t dumb, and neither are the people who make the content those people consume - so the content creators keep making non-ai content, and the people keep consuming it. Sure, if you put on a writers showcase at your gay bookstore, people will show up - but it will be because these are already the sort of people who go to writers’ showcases at gay bookstores, not because it is anti-ai.

lol. Took me a second

I had to do some digging to figure out what you were talking about, but it looks like you are talking about something like this

So, basically a blog without any real direction? Like, the og blogs which were basically just public online journals?

I mean, I’m sure there are still plenty out there… but no one (or few people) read them. Main reason being, there is far more interesting content to consume. I think the original appeal of these sorts of sites was that you had something in common with the writer - namely, that you were on the internet - exploring and creating a brave new world together. Now everyone is online, and being online is not a good signal that you might share a connection with someone.

So instead, you filter based on interests - hobbies or music or religion or politics or occupation or niche lifestyle. A blogger first needs to establish a connection with their potential readers, and then the readers are open to caring about them personally.

But once you clear that filter, there are still a ton of people doing this kind of content. Except they arent doing it on self hosted blogs. Instead, they are on substack, or instagram, or tiktok, or twitter, etc. I feel like the closest modern equivalent to what you are talking about is the Twitch streamer who talks about their day while playing video games.

Sites like reddit/lemmy, I feel, actively discourage these sorts of personal connections, since you follow subs or the “hot” algorithm, rather than certain people. With so much churn, it is difficult to remember people’s usernames, and therefore difficult to create a real picture of them as a complete human being. However, there are options here like AskLemmy or CasualConversation where you can talk about random shit if you want.

For the more traditional forum banal chatter, probably the best modern equivalent is small, niche discord servers. The ones with just a handful of members often have tightknit communities. But, by their nature, they are difficult to find and get invites to.

I mean, the issue is that you’re starting with the premise that some people need to be banned. And here’s the thing - the biggest turn off to potential good members to your organization is negativity. Starting with “no bigots allowed” tells your prospective members that bigots commonly want to join your organization. The only people you will attract will be people who believe they need official organizational policies to protect themselves from bigots - ie, people who are huge, pessimistic downers all the time. It will fill your organization with people who are constantly looking for ways that others are insulting, demeaning, or dismissing them - which results in an organization that is highly judgemental, high strung, and unwelcoming.

Instead, successful organizations don’t start with (much less advertise) “no bigots allowed”. They also almost never start with “all are welcome here”, since this implies the negative thought that anyone might not be welcome. Instead, they lead with the point of their organization. The Springfield Pickup Ultimate Frisbee Club doesn’t start their pitch with “No bigots allowed”. They start with “we play pickup ultimate frisbee in the park on Tuesdays at 6pm, it’s lots of fun!” Maybe with the addendum “all skill levels welcome!”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that bigots are welcome at the Springfield Pickup Ultimate Frisbee Club. It just means that when someone shows up and starts calling people the n word, they are politely but firmly asked to leave and not return, and then everyone else goes back to playing frisbee, and then talks about what a shithead that guy was and forgets about it.

That’s how successful, welcoming organizations function - everyone is welcome to show up, and everyone is assumed to be a nice person. But they have standards, and they remove people who don’t meet those standards.

This is actually a common misconception - you shouldn’t use oil to lubricate, but instead, a dry silicone-based lubricant

Oof, yeah, injuries can be tough.

I’d recommend finding both a good physio and a good personal trainer. In both cases, the guiding philosophy of both should be that injury should not end training, only modify it.

The physio should be able to give you a program to heal your injury and, importantly, a timeline for injury recovery, and program modifications if you aren’t steadily progressing back to full health at the expected rate. If you don’t feel yourself making progress each week, and your physio seems unconcerned, you need to tell them to eat a dick and find a different one. My physio works with professional athletes, and understands that training and competition cannot stop due to injury, and so all of my recovery programs start with “don’t stop training, but here are things to limit or avoid”.

Similarly with a personal trainer, they should know how to work around injuries to keep you on track to reach your goals. Remember that the main benefit of a personal trainer is simply being another person who can keep you accountable. Most good trainers are open to doing single sessions, where you can explain what you want - eg, program modifications to keep you on track to your goals, which will work around your injury. Then they can write up a modified program for you and send you on your way. A lot of people will say “I could figure that out myself, it’s a waste of money.” But like you experienced, it isn’t just about the knowledge, but the emotional component. When you suffer from an injury, a big part of the role of the personal trainer is to share the emotional load of believing that there is still some way to keep training while you recover.