Recent comments

Kalchaya wrote

Reply to comment by Rambler in I want a Computer that I Own by HMTg927

I have not been all that reliable at keeping abreast on the subject, but last time I checked, your ISP will not know you are using TOR if you go in via a VPN, as the trail deadends there. As for Musk, he's too busy playing Star Trek, and imagining himself Zefram Cochrane, than focus on anything more practical:

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/14/tim-berners-lee-reinvent-internet-created-promote-innovation/

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Wahaha OP wrote

There's no shortage of apps, but I can't stay motivated. Worse, if I learn these without context, it's less effective. I'd need to play a game that doesn't have too much Japanese and then look up things as I go, but alas, looking up Kanji is a pain in the butt.

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awdrifter wrote

Reply to comment by Wahaha in The Worst Alphabet Book Ever™ by Wahaha

I feel like watching anime with dual language sub helps (though that's hard to come by). I have forgotten a lot of the Japanese grammar rules now, due to not using it for many years. If only I had tried to go to Japan right after graduating college and live there for a year or 2, that probably would've improved my Japanese and cemented the skills.

For learning kanji, I think the only way is to be exposed to it constantly, which is not easy if you don't live in Japan. Maybe there are some language learning apps that helps? Writing it out (even on a touch screen) should help with memorization.

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Wahaha OP wrote

Yeah, I also had this during formal education. It's just that I never paid attention. At least not in the languages. Was more of a math guy. That half a year I learned English privately was still during my schooldays, so my English teachers were somewhat surprised.

The only way I learned Japanese was by watching anime with subtitles. That has been enough to get at least 60-80% of movies watching them RAW. Still can't write or read, though. If only there was a way to look up Kanji within half a second, while being deprived of the copy/paste ability.

Then I'd just switch to Japanese subtitles, give it another half a year and would be fluent in Japanese, too. Well, maybe not fluent, but it would be enough.

I tried buying Kanji cards to memorize them, but this type of learning doesn't work for me. If there's no immediate use like understanding a movie, I won't bother to keep up the effort.

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awdrifter wrote

Reply to comment by Wahaha in The Worst Alphabet Book Ever™ by Wahaha

At least initially, I learned English by teachers of my native language, so I would get the grammar explained in my native language. Now that I've been living in the US for so long, I'm used to just think in English without translation, but during the time when I was learning, I had to memorize all these irregular rules.

I also learned Japanese, I took some Japanese courses in college (also for the love of ACG and Vocaloid), so it was also taught (at least the 100 and 200 level courses) in English and the textbooks are in English. I felt that the Rosetta Stone style of just learning the language doesn't work with me.

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Wahaha OP wrote

Not in my case. I didn't learn the language by translating what I would want to say in my first language, so I never noticed these irregularities while learning. I'd just read books and watch movies and translate English words I didn't know to my first language, which at first were all words.

So, I've got zero grammar knowledge in English. But it's fine. I've got zero grammar knowledge in my first language, too. I'm of the opinion that grammar will impede language learning. It took me about three months to half a year to learn English my way out of school, since I wanted to watch anime that happened to only have English subs. I'd have learned Japanese, but looking up Kanji is a major pain in the ass.

What I've instead got is a feel for the language, so even if I can't tell you the grammar rule, I'll notice mistakes. Like when someone uses shined instead of shone. Both words are correct, but used in different contexts. I couldn't tell you what the exact difference is, but if I see it wrongly used in a sentence, it just hurts my language feeling. Funnily enough, that doesn't happen when someone uses "of" instead of "have". I'll subconsciously read it correctly and don't notice that mistake at all.

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awdrifter wrote

Reply to comment by Wahaha in The Worst Alphabet Book Ever™ by Wahaha

English is my second language, as I was learning it I noticed there are a lot of irregular words and rules you just have to remember. Like why I would need to say "Are you ok?" instead of "Is you ok?" when I'm referring to a singular person. Also why is persons a word and yet we use people to refer to multiple humans? This is the kind of stuff that comes naturally to a native speaker that a second language learner will have to learn and remember.

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Imperator wrote (edited )

Have an upvote, I like respectful comments such as yours. Disclaimer: am not from the US, can't comment on the finer details of US policy and internal politics.

I agree with you in principle that nobody should be forced to be vaccinated against their will - right to bodily integrity and all that. Having that said, in my country, even during waves of peak corona infections, the percentage of people with natural immunity is in the one-digit. Plus, apparently there is no scientific consensus about how long natural antibodies remain active. There have been many counts of people having been infected a year ago and being re-infected now. So, by all estimates, relying purely on natural immunity would be a very, very slow process. Rapid vaccination is really the only way for the lockdown(s) to end and life to be restored to normal without incurring significant casualties in risk-groups. Yes, for normal people the fatality rate is quite low. But I've also spoken to a number of perfectly healthy people who became extraordinary ill for weeks due to corona. So, it's not definitely not a black death, but to say that "it's just a flu" is also not entirely correct.

I'm no fan of Big Pharma but all their work on the covid-vaccines have been under a huge magnifying glass. I have a lot of confidence in the medical and scientific agencies of my country and I trust them if their professional opinion is that the long-term risks of the approved vaccines are negligible. Another point of concern in my country is that due to anti-vaxxers, the regular vaccination rate has dropped to 92-something%, down from around 98% ten years ago. Due to this, diseases such as the measles have popped up again in certain neighborhoods. And I'm very upset about people concretely endangering the wider public through this because of some vague unscientific notion that the government wants to insert nanoprobes made by the Gates Foundation.

Anyway, I digress. Point is that people should be encouraged to get vaccinated, and one of the ways to do that is to loosen restrictions for those who have become certifiably immune.

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Elbmar wrote

Reply to comment by smartypants in Commercialized Penis Envy by Wahaha

Lol, that is quite a list you have compiled. Is this... a problem for you or something? Yes, popular products are often copied by other companies.

Like Rambler said, these are used for camping, hiking etc. I do think there are some wacky things being pushed related to gender norms, gender identity and such, but this is not an example of that.

The alternative to this product is that women would always have to pull their pants down and squat in the woods, and there is some risk being seen doing that, especially in an area where trees and bushes are more sparse. This is helpful for modest women who are nervous about being seen. With this, they only need to face away from the trail and do not need to pull down their pants.

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Imperator wrote

I don't think Reddit is broken by design, something which is apparent from the existence of [RAMBLE] (which uses basically the same general structure). I think the main issue is the general commercialization of the internet and the existence of the attention economy. Good article.

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Elbmar OP wrote

Yeah, supporting this is a good way to ensure that many fellow working class people are made into second class citizens, including many blacks since they are aware of Tuskegee Syphilis experiments and other historical experiments on blacks. Maybe blacks will be exempt from requirements for this reason, but that would probably just increase racial divisions since people of all races have been subjected to unethical medical experiments. Everyone has a right to be suspicious of the government and big pharma and make choices about their own body.

No one knows the long term effects of mRNA vaccines in humans. Not enough time has passed. Anyone who says that they know people will not experience complications from this new type of vaccine five years down the line is lying because it is impossible to know at this point. And the Johnson & Johnson/Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines are not mRNA but they are produced by the same company that knew Asbestos was in their baby powder for decades.

You have only presented choices where freedom is limited as if they are the only choices. How about people who want the vaccine choose to take it, people who don't want it don't take it, and herd immunity is achieved through a combination of vaccinations and infections? Maybe it will make some nervous, but they are free to take extra precautions. They can even wear a gas mask if they like.

This virus is worse than the flu, but relatively speaking, it's not that bad. Many people just get some minor symptoms or no symptoms and that's it. If this was something really serious like the black death, there would not be such a big effort to convince or coerce people to take vaccines. Nearly everyone would be desperate for them.

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Wahaha OP wrote

Reply to comment by Rambler in The Worst Alphabet Book Ever™ by Wahaha

It's actually not too bad. English is my second language and I'd say it's fairly easy to learn. You don't learn languages by memorization anyway, so these kinds of quirks actually do not impede language learning in any way whatsoever.

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Elbmar OP wrote

At first I thought this was sarcasm and you dropped the /s but after reading Imperator agree with you, now I am not sure. Do you actually think it is possible for something to be a fair trade in exchange for the return of your freedom?

I can see the argument that it's in a companies right to discriminate against people for their personal health choices because it's THEIR company, though by that same "my company, my rules" logic, discrimination for other reasons should be fine too. I'm not really concerned with this.

But if the government starts encouraging or even requiring companies to do this, that is crossing a line into state coercion, and many state and city governments have already crossed a line with lockdown orders.

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Rambler wrote

This is one of the reasons why I don't give anyone learning English a hard time. It's a difficult language.

There is a YouTube channel that I can't recall the name of now. A Russian couple learning English and they vlog only in English as a means of practice. Pretty interesting, they just share what their life is like in Russia. Show the supermarkets, talk about prices and cost of living, etc.

I think it's a neat way to learn a new language, and they're pretty fluent right now but lack confidence and words like those shown in the book would definitely cause their brain to short circuit, lol.

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