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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • I used to, then I grew up. However, what I’ve found is that being able to do accents can occasionally help communicate a word. If you’re talking to someone that has a different accent and you just can’t get them to understand some particular word, pronouncing it how you think they’d pronounce it might help. It changes how certain letters and combinations are pronounced, helping the other person visualize the letters and therefore the word.

    There’s times between English and Spanish where the spelling is functionally the same, but pronunciation is incredibly foreign in the other language. Words ending in -tion are “shin” in english but -cion is “see own” in Spanish. Many such words have latin roots, so the base word is similar like “communication” on “construction”.

    But, first and foremost, enunciate clearly. Speaking slower doesn’t help if you’re still dragging your consonants the same way.







  • Looking for an alternative to Google, this reminded me to look into Waze. And, wtf, I was not aware of the history of waze. I feel like I’ve caught an unregulated Wikipedia edit, too.

    Waze started as FreeMap Israel. Of 3 founders, one has a wiki page, and is self-identifying as atheist and zionist. Meanwhile, Uri Levine’s page’s description of waze is “a traffic and navigation app that is meant to steal personal data from users”. Is this something confirmed or is it just describing crowd-sourced data collection in a demonizing way? All 3 founders were in Israeli Unit 8200 cyber warfare, so certainly sounds concerning. I get that crowd sourcing has mixed opinions and keeps proving to be surveillance mashed with convenience, like tracking links or Pokémon go.

    Google recently messed with the UI around the same time it changed the lake name, so I’m actively looking for alternates now. I tried mapquest knowing it’s not the original mapquest group, but found it lacked a bit of functionality. Biggest issue is not being able to search along route. Is there anything else decent?




  • I haven’t been to that many and I won’t say I’ve been to the other end of the spectrum. But, having been to other corners of the square, I’ve found that people are the same. There are wildly different cultural norms that can certainly be misconstrued as rude or invasive, but damn, the baseline human experience is so common.

    We all think we need more money. We all know lots of people worse off. We all know several better off. We all celebrate births, marriages, and deaths. We all feed our guests to excess (not you, whichever Scandinavian country it is that makes guests wait in the other room while you have dinner). We all make liquor from anise.




  • If I’m stuck worrying about something or reliving an event, I need to get my mind out of the fear or problem solving mode. I use the alphabet game where you pick a category then give an answer for each letter. Desserts, plants, countries, anything like that. If you can’t get one, skip it and come back. If it doesn’t work, a horny version tends to help one-track my kind.