smiletolerantly

They are still being being painted by hand. On a graphics tablet, for example.

Drop if-let

Over my cold dead body. if-let-else is such a fantastic pattern. Makes everything an order of magnitude more readable. Works so nicely for unwrapping opts/errs.

True! There's even some of the first lessons for some languages on youtube, in their old, CD form.

Do note though, they updated some courses in the past couple of years to be more "modern" in the language used and taught.

Thanks for reading my rant lol :D

Yeah, it's really nice to get up and running with a language you know nothing about yet. It's probably not really helpful though if you already know it a small to moderate amount.

While I'm paying for their subscription, I do need to point out that, should you be inclined to sail the high seas, bounty is easily found; after all, it's really just some audiobooks.

Love Death Robots

I'm currently re-reading Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, and something struck me. If this had been made into an HBO/... show, like, 8 years ago, it could have been a genre- and generation defining TV event akin to Game of Thrones.

But if it was to be produced today? It would be a cringe, plastic-feeling knock-off akin to Netflix' Last Airbender.

Sauerkraut and mashed potatoes were my absolutely favorite dish as a kid.

Am German though, so...

Thanks! :) Yes, definitely not dropping it :)

Pimsleur is actually a rather "old" program, originally devised just as a kind of audiobook, but now they also do have an app. It's 30min/day and basically only teaches you to speak. They do not make any claims about getting you to a point where you are fluent, can read, write, reason about grammar, or anything the like; but they do, very very quickly, get you to actually talk and to understand other people talking.

I initially started learning with them, 20 days before a vacation to a notoriously non-English-speaking country, and it was actually great to, at that early point, already be able to get across what you needed to say and to understand what was being communicated to you in 95% of situations, AND not be hampered by the usual shyness to speak in a foreign language, because I was already so used to actually speaking out loud in it.

I've since added a more traditional grammar/vocab curriculum, but continued Pimsleur precisely because I'd be lacking speaking exercise otherwise. So, yeah, no, I'll probably continue on with it.

What I actually dislike about it is

1. they do not teach you any systematic grammar (which is OK!), but then also think that therefore, you cannot pick up on patterns. The consequence of this is that ~90 lessons in, if a new verb is introduced as vocabulary, then I can be certain that the vocab section for that lesson will contain that verb, that verb as a question, that verb in the past tense, and that verb negated, even if those forms are 100% regular. Which would not be a problem, EXCEPT they put a stupid 10-vocab-cards-per-lesson limit upon themselves, so now whenever a new, actually difficult form or concept is introduced, it is never in the vocab and I have no way of revisiting things I did not understand. (The same, btw, is true for numbers. Literally every number from 1 to 100, and basically every multiple of 100 up to 10.000 is in the vocab at some point, despite it being crystal clear how to form numbers once you have seen 1-20, 100, and 200. Yesterday - again, 90 lessons in!! - my vocab included the word for "twelve".)
2. their "spaced repetition" is a joke, because a) its "spaces" are way, way too big and b) obviously do not adapt to your skill/gaps.

So, yeah: really nice to get talking quickly and to help with pronunciation and getting used to speaking; really bad for everything else.

That's a pretty apt description, I'd say! Getting everything you ever wanted and still feeling like you don't belong and cannot be happy.

IDK if you've seen the show, but if not: that's definitely still a big theme there, but while it is never dropped completely, it is alleviated somewhat because the characters grow closer as a group than they did in the books. Can highly recommend both.

Meh... Lacking motivation this week. Also starting to feel like Pimsleur is a bit pointless.

It is, and I read them. The series creators were very faithful to the general feeling and atmosphere of the books, but most of the plotlines and character beats are show-only. Makes for two very different (but both good!) stories.

The Magicians (2016): It often gets pitched as "Hogwarts for adults" because it features a magic college/university, but honestly that is just the initial backdrop and a massive undersell.

It is the rare show where the creators were seemingly handed a blank cheque to be as creative as they want to be, and they make full use of that in more ways than I can list here (but which definitely includes both the magic system itself, and the hilarious nonchalance towards the consequences of magic being a reality); yet all the while, they stay true and fiercely loyal to their characters, who are all deeply flawed, but which you can't help but want to see succeed; plus they managed to write genuinely great humor.

The best summary of the show comes from one of the characters themselves: "Magic doesn't come from talent. It comes from pain."

Be warned: the first few episodes, and possibly the first season, are the weakest and roughest of the bunch, which probably really hampered viewership. They do still manage to find their own tone, but it's nothing compared to seasons 3-5.