#but i WILL LEARN IT

[ruhua-langblr]

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 the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"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)

#EDIT: Added a great resource for ESL and African languages that weren't found elsewhere #I do NOT recommend memrise and will talk about it another day but #langblr #duolingo #duo #language learning #language learning apps #mandarinblr #resource #reference

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned about Shiniuzhai, a convenience store hanging on a cliff in Hunan, that’s been nicknamed “most inconvenient convenience store” in China (x)

#today i learned #facts #truth #travel #explore

[monsoon-of-art]

#I'm serious stop doing it #theyre scraping fanfics and other authors writing #'oh but i wanna rp with my favs' then learn to write #studios wanna use ai to put writers AND artists out of business stop feeding the fucking machine!!!!

[doccywhomst]

#i’ve been thinking abt that cringe post #i think the latent feelings behind ‘cringe’ are shame and sometimes envy/bitterness #same vibes as when six year olds say ‘those toys are for babies’ if they’ve been shamed for their age by older kids #anyway. i think part of the healing process is realizing that shame puts you at war with yourself bc part of yourself is a social being! #and that part of you wants community and acceptance (maybe love). shame is the absence of acceptance #unlearning shame means learning self-love and gaining the confidence to find your people #jerma #cw jerma #(someone asked me to tag lol)

[ace-and-ranty]

I gotta say, one of the greatest achievements of my 20s was that I learned (mostly) to differentiate between:

"I truly do not want to go" and

"I'm just feeling the Demand Avoidance, and I will like it once I get there."

#I have learned in my 20s #sometimes I DO just gotta make myself go places even if I don't feel like it #I'll like it once I get there.

[corpish]

#these are from my notes app page of skills I’d like to learn someday #there are others that I’ve already learned #and some more instruments that I didn’t include here bc I already put the harp #poll #100 #1k #5k

[koddlet]

personal rules for winter ❄

#this was fun bc i didn't intend for it to be kind of cryptic #i just wanted to make some reminders for myself about winter cuz i never learn #especially the back cover which i guess isn't really a rule but still stands. i'm in a rural place so when it gets dark it's Dark #and its hard to want to do anything #zine #mini zine #illustration #nonfandom #analogue art

[mrtequilasunset]

Listen man, you guys can't be like "you guys need to be normal about asexuality" and then turn around and get weirdly judgemental when you find out someone doesn't have sex by choice. Like that's weird that some of you do that.

#like I love sex im glad we're hyping it up #but also genuinely some of you have got to learn how to be normal around people who dont want to have sex #even if you're not talking about asexuality when you say stuff like that you're still being a weirdass #im not ace myself but i keep seeing posts that come across like they're taking it personally that other people don't want to have sex #it sounds like theyre trying to prove something to someone

[cyborgrhodey]

THE BANANAS ARE GAY

THESE BANANAS

THE BANANAS IN PAJAMAS ARE GAY

BELATED HAPPY PRIDE MONTH EVERYONE

#somebody shut me up #this news is 4 years old but forgive me i only learned of it now #THE BANANAS IN PAJAMAS ARE GAY YALL thats my childhood

[nonebinary-leftbeef]

DEVASTATING the lyric you've been mishearing is better than the real one

#i've been listening to icarus by bastille #and for some reason my brain fills in 'this is how it feels to take a fall' as 'this is how it feels to take off all your skin' #and like fuck man #and I KNOW that’s technically not a misheard lyric but my post my rules cope #anyway my line now #also probably phrased this poorly but its ok #im allowed to be incomprehensible #as a treat #and then fuckin #from we sink by of monsters and men #the original line was 'please look away dont look at me' #and i kept hearing it as 'please learn a way to look at me' #anyway #shoving this post in the queue but please be aware that i am writing it very late at night #q

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

#original post #text post #500 #1k #2k #btw i know my definition of death of the author is loosey goosey here #it wasn't the main point so i went informal with it! as ppl in the tags have pointed out it isn't exact #and i do recommend reading the wikipedia article or similar (possibly even the essay itself if you're narsty) if you want to learn more! #wasn't expecting this to take off so my apologies to my barthes-heads out there #love you mwah #5k #10k #15k #20k

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned that there's a Japanese beetle that when eaten by a frog will haul ass through its digestive system and escape out the back end unscathed (x)

#today i learned #facts #truth #history #animals

[nemkero]

rewatching atla after like 10 years and zuko is so insanely pitiful

#i want to dunk him in water #and wring him out like a towel #zuko... zuko you are so lame... #zukooo.... zukoooooo.... #(he is so me) #get off of my SCREEN #will def draw more atla btw #learning how to draw the gaang rn #atla #avatar the last airbender #avatar #zuko #atla zuko #atla fanart #atla art

[nereb-and-dungalef]

Mongolian history class, 2022, start of the semester. We're having a discussion on animal slaughter, featuring the one Mongolian student in our school.

The student explains that he's slaughtered animals himself, and there are two ways of doing it that avoid the spilling of blood. For a small animal like a chicken, you reach up into the chest of the animal and sever the arteries. For a larger animal like a camel, there's a spot on the forehead that, when hit hard enough, causes the animal to die instantly.

While this discussion is going on, a couple of the students are sharing something back and forth on their phone

The professor calls this out, asking if what they're sharing is more interesting than Mongolian animal slaughter

The room is dead silent for a few seconds. The two students look at each other awkwardly.

Eventually, one of the students pipes up:

"Well, the queen of England just died."

And without missing a beat, another student:

"Did they hit her on the head like a camel?"

#genuinely i'm so glad this is how i learned the queen died #happy fucking (late) anniversary #felt i should share it it's just. perfect y'know #there is no queen of england

[evilsexy]

#screamm #i learned computer science but where is my 1000000 dollars i feel cheatedm

[kazieka]

hold up im reading more about the lionfish thing and this one island in Honduras has had such a huge problem with lionfish that the measures they have taken include

• getting special exemption from the Honduran government to allow divers access to harpoons and spears which are otherwise illegal in fishing

• public campaign to teach people how to prepare and eat lionfish (apparently they are very tasty once the poisonous spines are removed) (but watch out)

• holding lionfish combination hunting competition and cookout (reportedly they killed and cooked 1,700 in a day) (someone killed 60 of them with a rubber band spear gun???)

• most recently and apparently out of desperation, the divers in charge of culling the lionfish in the Roatan Marine Park just started. feeding the lionfish they killed to sharks. bc what else are you gonna do with it

• the sharks don’t seem to notice or be affected by the poison and begin hanging out with the divers

• the sharks then were seen hunting and killing the lionfish on their own

like this is nuts to me sorry. the sharks just had to be shown “hey this is food, did you know?? you can eat these!! here try one!!” we are possibly altering an entire foodchain bc we like feeding the big ocean wolves

#lindsey shut up #i love sharks so much hhhhhhh #like of course this is gonna take a few generations of learning to have any major impact on the lionfish epidemic #but they are learning! from us and from each other!! HHHHHHSHARKS