• 14 Posts
  • 176 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • For me, open tabs and bookmarks are different levels of the same thing. I’ll open a bunch of tabs researching some task I want to do, and leave them open because I want to come back to that. Bookmarks do the same thing, but with lower visibility and higher permanence.

    Tab groups let me group a handful of things to reduce the clutter. Similar to the way that folders are useful within the bookmarks manager.

    To use them, just drag one tab on top of another, it’ll make a new group. Give it a name, and you can now expand/collapse. So 10 tabs all related to one task can stay in-sight to remind you, but only take up 1 tab’s worth of space in the bar.


  • Imo, once you’re at about the intermediate/upper intermediate, the best thing to do is probably try to find content you can consume. Anki and the like are incredibly useful, but the goal with those is to help you reach the point of decoding real messages in context.

    It’s hard because everything is difficult to understand. But I think reading is pretty approachable. In Spanish, I found a book of short horror stories aimed at probably 3-5 grade level, and it was pretty fun to read through, along with a couple other youth-targeted books.

    For Japanese, I highly recommend starting with the free children’s books at https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/ - they might be too easy, but they probably won’t be too tough. They extend down to a nicely low level and have fun, cute illustrated stories. Satori Reader is a great app that has a bunch of short stories that you can read or listen to (paid sub, but you can read enough on free). There’s also the NHK easy news page to try and read (or listen to).

    For listening, there are of course a lot of great audio resources through Youtube or podcast feeds. I’ll give one example for Japanese that I found especially approachable: these comprehensible input playlists from いろいろな日本語: Beginner, Intermediate.

    But if you do want apps in particular, I think Renshuu and jpdb are pretty good. Both have Anki-ish spaced-repetition-system stuff as core components. Renshuu has lessons and games to checkout. jpdb integrates its SRS with a database of various media to help target your learning. There’s also bunpro for grammar (paid sub for features though).

    For something not Japanese specific, I think Memrise seems pretty cool lately. Now seems to have more videos and other content in there. I don’t use it as much though, since it wants to play a lot of ads.








  • I had bats a couple years ago too. Was near mating season when we realized, so had to move fast. Found out because we’d hear them flying around inside the walls upstairs.

    We had to get one way doors installed as well, though ours were temporary and they just did their best to seal up the roof areas where they got in. Came back a while later to make sure all the bats were gone and clean out guano.



  • Japanese. I’m still trying to just attach a general meaning to each (common) Kanji, so when I see it I think “oh, there’s the character for [whatever]”. It’s only a start - still then have to learn actual words and pronunciations and all, but I feel like it’s a step worth taking.

    Each time the card comes up with the keyword, I write down the charcter. Being able to write from memory really helps me with recognition. Since I’ve been out with no pen or pad, I’ve just been tracing the characters with my finger on my other hand or leg - gotta stay flexible!

    Mainly focused on those flashcards (in Kanji Kohii web app), but I also have Anki decks and cards in jpdb with vocab.

    For all the tough parts of Japanese, at least I don’t have to worry about declension




  • Far from perfect, but I think it’s good to have a layer that very visibly shows ‘yes, this is the account you want’.

    Domains are a worthwhile addition, but they run into almost the same problem as usernames and handles. Can be made misleading easily - sure, I could often go to the web address and verify it (if they don’t put up a convincing fake site), but that’s much lower visibilty.

    Eg, you can probably register nintendo@nintendoamerico.com or similar and get it by some folks just as easily as registering the Twitter handle. There’s a payment step to get the domain, but that’s about it.

    The centralization problem you mention is a good point though. It was a fine system, if you felt like you could trust Twitter as a verifier. Today obviously, one could not. But Bsky seems to at least theoretically have a ‘choose your verification provider’ idea in mind, which would (again theoretically) resolve a lot of that issue.