I’m not saying someone should kill that man. I’m not saying that, necessarily. And I’m not saying that killing a president will do anything, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not going on record to say that killing a cult leader will very likely fracture the cult into sub groups that are easier to kick down. Because I’m not going to go on the record to say that.
However,
Do you know what wouldn’t be really funny. All the senators and representatives have a very interesting opportunity on the fifteenth. It will not be even remotely appropriate.
If anyone was wondering, Duolingo just got even worse.
Duolingo was already on a downward spiral for years. I discovered it in 2015 and it was an incredible tool and I used it for a few years but then I started to notice a decline. It got worse and worse in a lot of ways.
I actually ended up having a surreal and jarring one-on-one conversation with Luis von Ahn, the founder and CEO, who reached out to me after a scathing critique I posted on Reddit started to get significant traction.
Talking to him was like talking to someone who had been brainwashed by a cult. I told him how I and others in my life had found Duolingo so useful and efficient for language learning, and that its usefulness was evidenced by me noticing a real-world improvement in ability to listen to, understand, and speak the languages I had been practicing, but that recent changes had made it dramatically less useful to where I needed to put much more time in to get the same amount out.
His response was like “But all our metrics are up, our data shows that our changes are working.” It was so frustrating. The metrics were all about engagement. He was showing people were spending more time practicing languages, not that they were getting more real-world ability to converse in those languages. Practice time was going up but actual language ability was going down. I tried explaining that to him but he seemed completely unable and/or unwilling to understand my point.
It was like talking to a wall.
I left the conversation with any remaining faith in the Duolingo leadership completely shattered, and I completely withdrew from using the site.
I now use Clozemaster to learn languages in place of Duolingo, and I think it is far superior it terms of efficiency, especially when combined with listening to material produced by native speakers.
If you’re looking for alternatives to Duolingo, here are some options that I’m aware of (and none of them are Babbel. Don’t use Babbel):
Busuu - Busuu is what I used while studying Chinese and Japanese, and the app is comparable to Duolingo.
MangoLanguages - Many library systems are offering access to this to free! Make sure to check to see if your library card gives you access to this resource.
Great Courses Plus - They also have a ton of language material, and are often offered through libraries!
Linkedin Learning - Multiple language (and other!) options, also available through many public libraries.
Anki - Gives you access to thousands of flashcards and the ability to make your own.
Pimsleur - Pimsleur is one of the most highly recommended language programs, especially if you’re working for a conversational level.
Other alternatives to consider are Youtube, often a great place for smaller schools and creators to post content. I supplement my classes with Easy German, and I used to be pretty reliant on EveryDay Chinese to practice my tones. If you’re looking to learn it, there’s bound to be a channel out there that is tailored toward your language learning.
A second resource to look into is textbooks with app learning. MaGraw Hill, for example, has a free app with practice material for the books you purchase. My German textbook is published by Hueber, and they also have an app. When you’re looking to self study, it’s definitely worth seeing if there’s a textbook to work out of that has built-in app support.
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I lived and worked in a lighthouse at a previous job. There was a thick line painted in a circle around the shack where the fog signal was kept. The line represented how close you could get to the fog signal without experiencing physical harm in the form of eardrums shattering or worse.
Even in the house it was LOUD. Probably the loudest thing I have ever experienced but at a normal, predictable interval. You would begin to time your sentences with little pauses with the rest of the lighthouse crew so you would talk like this while making your………..HORN…………. tea and then carry on talking because you knew when it would go off. It rattled the walls and the dishes in our cabinet.
At least one girl had died there. They kept photos of her everywhere “in honor of her sacrifice” because she had decided to take the winter watch alone and died in a storm where bounders the size of mini vans had been lifted out of the ocean and left scattered across the island, to say nothing of the ice chunks. People weren’t allowed to be alone on the watch after that.
One day a dead moose washed up on shore and it took my entire crew all day but we managed to rig up a line to hang it up to dry because we thought having a moose skeleton in the house would really spice the living room up a bit. It did. Weird shit happens when six of you are left alone, like ALONE ALONE, no cell reception, no wifi, just a radio to contact the real world and not a lot of reason to do that. People don’t go on lighthouse jobs if they want to stay connected, I’ve found.
That said Id do it all again, I really do treasure those days
you know you could’ve just said “no they don’t have wifi” and that would’ve answered the question
