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Inktober 20: Glass king

Based on this!

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and all endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

Passport Photo Series London-based visual artist Max Siedentopf recruited a cast of friends and strangers to sit for passport photos. Above the shoulders the participants are straight-faced and rigid, yet below they are balancing full wine glasses along their arms, taped to a wall, or even on fire.

Crime Scene Science: The Modern Methods for Solving Crimes

(via themostgirlishotakuever)

hobbies masterpost!

a really excellent way to reduce anxiety is to pick up a new hobby. find something you’re interested in, learn it, then use it as a healthy and productive way to cope.

learn to play guitar

learn how to make interactive stories with the free program Twine

learn how to make pixel art

learn another language

learn how to build a ship in a bottle

learn how to develop your own film

learn how to embroider

learn how to make chiptunes (8-bit music)

learn how to make origami (the art of paper folding)

learn how to make tumblr themes

learn how to make jewelry 

learn how to make candy

learn how to make terrariums

learn how to make your own perfume

learn how to make your own tea

learn how to build birdhouses

learn how to read tarot cards

learn how to make zines

learn how to code

learn how to whittle (wood carving)

learn how to make candles

learn how to make clay figurines

learn how to knit scarves

learn how to become an amateur astronomer

learn some yoyo tricks

learn how to start a collection

learn how to start body building

learn how to edit wikipedia articles

learn how to decorate iphone cases

learn how to do freelance writing

learn how to make your own cards and

learn how to make your own envelopes

learn how to play the ukulele 

learn how to make gifs

learn how to play chess

learn how to juggle

learn how to guerrilla garden

learn how to chart your family history

learn how to keep chickens

learn how to do yoga

learn how to do magic tricks

learn how to raise and breed butterflies

learn how to play dungeons & dragons

learn how to skateboard

learn how to do parkour

learn how to surf

learn how to arrange flowers

learn how to make stuffed animals

25% of the people have a 4th cone and see colors as they are

Given the sudden interest for the color of dresses and vision, here some of the fascinating findings we did recently.

The color nuances we see depend on the number and distribution of cones (=color receptors) in our eye. You can check this rainbow: how many color nuances do you count?

You see less than 20 color nuances: you are a dichromats, like dogs, which means you have 2 types of cones only. You are likely to wear black, beige, and blue. 25% of the population is dichromat.

You see between 20 and 32 color nuances: you are a trichromat, you have 3 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green and red area). You enjoy different colors as you can appreciate them. 50% of the population is trichromat.

You see between 33 and 39 colors: you are a tetrachromat, like bees, and have 4 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green, red plus yellow area). You are irritated by yellow, so this color will be nowhere to be found in your wardrobe. 25% of the population is tetrachromat.

You see more than 39 color nuances: come on, you are making up things! there are only 39 different colors in the test and probably only 35 are properly translated by your computer screen anyway :)

It is highly probable that people who have an additional 4th cone do not get tricked by blue/black or white/gold dresses, no matter the background light ;)

(x)

« Several layers of nostalgia are at play with these images [old Polaroids]: not just for the 1980s style on display—the gelled hair, the jean jackets, the oversize T-shirts—but for a time before the internet and phones, before everyone could carry a camera and instantly distribute the images. Sometimes this manifests directly in the images’ content, when someone is talking on a corded phone or listening to a boombox or sitting in a bedroom whose walls are covered with pictures cut out of magazines. You can see how everyday life was saturated with analog media, which makes the relative absence of screens palpable.

But pre-digitality also comes across as a nostalgia for the technology of print photography itself. Its limitations now read as stylistic choices, particularly since they have become filter options for us in contemporary camera apps. In the old photos, the fading colors, the flashbulb glare, the imperfect focus, the chemical blotches and anomalies from the developing process can seem at once both accidental and deliberate, or as accomplishing the deliberate capture of the incidental.

Looking at images like these—a kid sleeping in the back of a Ford Escort; a woman in a bathing suit sitting on a lawn chair in the driveway smoking a cigarette, a guy with a mullet in an apartment complex living room crouched beside a tower of Carling Black Label cans—I’m tempted to romanticize that mystery as a kind of grace that enchants the people in them, who don’t know yet that they are living in the before. None of the images are selfies, which feels strange in itself. The subjects usually know that they are being watched, […] but they can’t imagine, even in theory, that it could be everyone watching. They can’t even frame that as an aspiration, which, to me looking back on them now, seems to animate their behavior with a guileless innocence, an indifference, an aura they’re unaware of, an absence of self-consciousness that I could trace in their faces, though I am certainly projecting it.

An illusion arises that in these snapshots people are somehow more present, more themselves, as though the camera were capturing something more elemental about them because they had less wherewithal to stage the image or manipulate it after the fact. It is as though who they were in general was more fixed and objective, less fluid and discursive. Though they are anonymous, they register more concretely as specific people, unpatterned by the grammar of gestures and looks that posting images to networks seems to impose. [N]ot every image of them will be taken to define them or will be seen as expressing something they were trying to say. The photos appear not as assertions of reality but reality as it was. This is all tantamount to a nostalgia for denotation, for a time when images were less rhetorical, less overtly intentional […].

A photographer once could make an occurrence into an occasion by recording it. Accordingly, one can be nostalgic for the way film cameras could sanctify mundane experience, rather than making experience seem mundane. Cameras are ubiquitous now; they can no longer be added deliberately to a situation. All of [the above] has been displaced by the ability to send things to the network. No longer is it magic to represent and preserve, but to circulate, to influence and tally up the proof of it. Photos that document “reality” as it was are necessarily trapped in a drawer somewhere or in an album buried in an attic. Photos that document intentionality are everywhere and nowhere, disappearing into the way we see everything. »

— Rob Horning, “Found images: On the nostalgia for image scarcity”

Learning about plants has made my biopunk novel much more complicated like damn now I have to think about all the species and stuff

You’ve probably wondered what the title of this blog means. I probably should’ve gotten around to explaining it to you a while ago.   

“Avere grill per la testa” literally translates to “to have a head full of crickets” in Italian. 

Sometime in the late spring of 2017, I was in a gift shop somewhere. I found a small, rectangular book called “The Illustrated Book of Sayings: Curious Expressions from around the World.” It was published by Ella Frances Sanders, in 2016. I really wanted this book, because it was around this time I was developing a passion for linguistics, words, and the all-around coolness of language. Either way, the book was charming, and I borrowed some money from my dad. 

“Avere grilli per la testa.” To have a head full of crickets. 

What struck me about this phrase, when I stumbled upon its entry, was it’s compelling word choice. Apparently, whoever came up with it didn’t think it was enough to say that someone is dreamy, or has a short attention span. Nope - there are jumpy insects inside their head, and that’s what makes them so imaginative. Welcome to Italy, m-effers.   

This describes me perfectly: dreamy, distracted, creative, semi-ADD. I’m prone to flights of fancy, so much that I struggle to cool down or get myself organized. There’s a whole lot of fluff and bulls*t in my head (f you’ll pardon my French); my thoughts jump all over the place. Maybe that explains the boxes of filled notebooks in my closet. Good traits, since I strive to be a good writer; bad traits, since I have a mother.   

In another way, it captures the content on this blog - my endless thoughts, opinions, and ideas, all thrown together in one place. My varied interests and passions, channeled into the mini-essays you see here. There are many things I’d like to talk and write about, to organize in a constructive way. After all, if there’s that much going on up here, why not share it with all of you?   

Also, it’s linguistic trivia. I love me some linguistic trivia.

Lioness: a poem

A lioness is cool, watchful for her cubs. She is responsible, open; she cares for the orphans and works with the others. She is a fighter for the ties that bind her pack together,  the ties that keep them safe.

She holds the savannah in her clean paws - or, at least, paws that are clean only when she steps in a puddle. Smart, collected; she knows her high-up place as one who belongs. She belongs because her job is to control her own fate. She does it well.

The lioness is part of the power, demos, and one of the people, kratos.  The lioness is fair, free, and roars as she pleases, because all are protected, all are loved, in her savannah home.

Or at least, that's what she strives for. 

Here’s the thing fam-

You have to decide if you want to be one of the best, or the best. 

The fact is, there’s gonna be a lot of people in you’re life who will get the same grades and credit and praise and points, but who aren’t the best people. They can be rude, vapid, inconsiderate, myopic, or just not very nice; plenty of people like that will get the credit you deserve. But they’re not the best - you are. You are a person with a big, beautiful heart. You’re hardworking, talented, conscientious, and kind; it’s people like you who should get the best in life. But you’re the only one who can make that happen. You, for the sake of everyone, need to commit to being one tough cookie: don’t let them get the best of you, get the best of yourself. Be the best version of yourself that you can be. Make sure that you get everything other people get, that you do everything other people do, and more. Don’t cheat yourself.  

And the people I mentioned above? The one’s who don’t hold a candle to you? The goal isn’t to stop them; it’s to not let them stop you.

Snake: a poem

A snake is coiled, lying in wait.  He is buying his time with the coins he stole from dead men's pockets. A snake is vicious, his little fangs biting off what he can chew only with a spoonful of shamelessness.  He has learned to be soft and secret until the time is ripe to speak his bloated mind.

A snake has thick skin - until someone flips him belly up, and he wails like a child, and sends out his fangs like a thing gone wild.

Pablo Neruda said, "Hatred grows scale on scale..." And the snake has scales as sharp as slate. He rattles his tail, but by then it's too late.

Madness rules, and the snake is free. 

The Industrial Revolution of the 1800s saw a boom in manufacturing and technological achievement. Products as diverse as car parts to cleaning supplies were being assembled, built, woven, or otherwise created on a scale never before seen. But this renaissance required workers - lots of them. In capitalist countries in the West, business tycoons made profit off of the cheap labor of thousands of men, women and children. Most of them worked up to 16 hours a day, in insanely dangerous conditions. But where there is oppression there is resistance, and in the 1880s, worker’s unions across the United States began to fight for their rights.   

Many members of the movement at this time were communists and anarchists, who believed that the capitalist system exploited members of the working class. They demonstrated for an 8-hour day, as well as better wages and working conditions. 

In 1886, in the first days of May, thousands of Chicago’s working class went on strike.  In Haymarket Square, a meeting of up to 3,000 radicals gathered to protest the conditions they worked in. When the Chicago police came to disperse the demonstrators, someone threw a bomb. At least 8 people died, and more than a hundred were wounded. 

Three years later, in commemoration of what was called the Haymarket affair, the International Socialist Conference declared May first an international holiday for the world’s workers. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (now know as the American Federation of Labor) declared that “eight hours shall now constitute a legal day’s labor.” 

But the US no longer celebrates Labor Day on May first, or May Day. During the Cold War, May first became associated with the socialist and communist movements that it had been born from. President Eisenhower signed a resolution renaming May Day as ‘Loyalty Day’, a holiday dedicated to American patriotism. We now celebrate Labor Day on September second.   

But hey, in recognition of global celebrations and the industrious working class, here’s a shout out to May Day. Equality and vacation days for all! 

Let me talk about how it's so interesting that John seems to have great people skills yet talks a lot about failed romantic relationships. And his fixation on romantic relationships themselves.

Now bear with me here. And this does mildly pertain to an episode that's not fully out yet, so there's vague allusions to that, so just beware I suppose.

I think it's very interesting that he has good people skills, but to strangers. He can talk a stranger down from violence. He can somewhat charm strangers. He's a very good stranger person, not necessarily a very good people person.

We see a pattern in a lot of his close relationships that we're told about (excluding his mum of course) where he seems to try really hard with people he's close to. In the latest mailbag he talks about having a partner who broke up with him on his birthday during quarantine, which then led him to re-enlist in the army (if I remember correctly, he enlisted at first to prove to her that he was a serious person, which also just break my heart because he deserves to be his silly self).

We've (me and a few friends) speculated that the reason for his quarantine relationship failing might've been because he suffocated his partner with affection while still somehow missing something there, maybe it was that the relationship felt forced because he was trying so hard.

I do think it's very tragic how he can connect with strangers so quickly, but he seems to not know what to do once those strangers become, well, more than strangers to him. He's very good at quick connections. He doesn't know what to do with a long term connection, or a connection that gets picked back up (we see this with Hayter in REIG, he feels immensely jealous of this person whose life he saved).

Which puts a lot of pressure on him (from himself) to do Sherlock and Mari right. Because they've stuck together for seven months now? This is another long relationship ride, and I feel like especially with the PTSD, and the general war veteran pain, he would feel the need to prove to them (and by extension himself) that he can get this relationship right, that he can keep these people close to him.

Which then loops back around to his abysmal self esteem which if I start talking about I will never stop so I'm shutting up here. And if you have things to add please do because it makes me very happy when people affirm my rants.