#CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG HELP

[beeholyshit]

i see you rbing mr kreiburg ☝️ what do you think of him bee huuuhhh :3

"He gazes intently, heart attuned to the melodies woven within the undulating ripples as if only he can decipher them." (<- the image description)

I'M GONNA BE HONEST, I didn't pay much attention to his costume before but today I got curious and IT IS SO PRETTYYYYY

I like his costume and Naib's one but WAOW I NEVER NOTICED LIKE. THE JELLYFISH AND EVERYTHING. ALSO THE HAIR LOOKS SO COOL AND THE COLORS WOOOW I LOVE IT

I just got a little curious about him hehe :3

[carionto]

We fail alone, we excel together

Formations are a staple of effective drills, training, and practice in every military across the Galaxy. They are a showcase of unity, leadership, trust, and loyalty. And fancy outfits. Gotta go for a style victory when actual wars are quite uncommon.

Humans are pretty good at this sort of thing. Not the best, as there is always some inconsistency, somebody doing their own thing, or improvising a solution to a fumble. Honestly, theirs are one of the more interesting to watch. It takes a lot of effort for some to conform to a herd style behavior, and it shows.

One time, a soldier tripped and was about to drop their knife, but thinking quickly, they began to juggle it, along with an ammo magazine and a sidearm they quickly pulled out. Aside from surprising everyone with their juggling skills, the surrounding soldiers noticed immediately, and, without a word, began to juggle with the same items as well.

But it wasn't chaotic - first, once the first loop was done, the soldiers in front, behind and to the sides of the first one started juggling in sync, and with each completed loop it spread the same way, creating this beautiful expanding diamond effect.

Not everyone was equally skilled, of course, and some ripples started to appear. However, since they all knew how long until the current parade music ended, the soldier in the center of the formation, not the original one, stopped juggling, and with each loop the inner layers also stopped. When the final corner soldiers put all the items in their place, the song also came to an end and a new one took its place.

Afterwards, we heard the colonel of that battalion issued an official reprimand for not following the rehearsed performance. Unofficially he praised them, as he himself had been approached by a general about this "surprise addition" and admired his "unorthodox thinking" and "proactive decision making". The colonel obviously lied and gleefully (well, as gleeful as a gritty military veteran with lofty ambitions can get) accepted the praise and promised to deliver other surprises in the future when they would prove most effective.

Big nonsense exchange of words that simply meant the soldiers doing all the actual doings would now have to actually prepare some kind of new and impressive feat. If there is one thing you can rely on, is higher ups turning everything you do into more work...

[bruwudershaft]

...Poor children...

[thelaurenshippen]

open ai made a little post about how they chose their chatbot voices and two things stood out to me:

a) I am genuinely pleased and surprised that the voices come from specific real people that they hired and paid, rather than being built off of all of the data open ai has scraped. the voice for siri did one job for one company 20 years ago and now she is literally everywhere without ever being compensated by apple or even acknowledged as the voice. there's simply no way she was paid enough in that original job. whereas, open ai says "each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products." this could mean literally anything (what market rate are we going above? does continue mean they get residuals or get paid for doing more sessions?) but, christ, at least the actors are doing it with full knowledge of what their voices are being used for and can decide for themselves if the compensation is enough

b) the post talks about working with "award-winning casting directors" to get the voices. first of all, yay for paying casting directors! we love to see it. but they also say the CDs received over 400 submissions in a week and they state that like a big number and it's just...not at all. and look, without knowing the intricacies of the casting process, it's hard to know what approach the CDs took - it's very possible they were selective from the jump and 400 is a lot from the pool they were tapping. 400 would be a lot if you were going to the agencies directly and asking for names, but there's just no way in hell open ai went after big stars for this. so it would've been a pool of unknowns. in which case, 400 is laughably small. even if you're not using the big casting sites like actorsaccess, I've worked on projects with CDs and their own internal systems where we've gotten over 100 submissions for a single role. I've posted roles on casting sites and received literally thousands of submissions in just a few days

look, I have a very limited perspective on this - I am not a casting director (imo, one of the most important and undervalued jobs in hollywood) and I, in fact, hate the process of casting with a passion. but 400 just seemed like such a tiny pool to pull from and, idk, it heartens me! it's heartening to think that there's very little interest from actors and agents to be doing this kind of stuff. and absolutely no shade to the actors who did--I want actors to get their bag however they want as long as it's, like, safe sane and consensual, you know? but there's something encouraging about thinking that open ai hired some big casting agency to get their foot into the voice acting door and people didn't come running

[gideonisms]

Does a podcast ever release a take you disagree with so strongly it makes you question everything you heard on it up to that point

[lesbianwyllravengard]

Wyll calling Astarion ugly for eating a tadpole

[multicolour-ink]

Ok hold on, does anyone else see this?

Does Sonic seem to have eyebags here? ^ He looks pretty pissed and tired.

This is also the "What did you do?!" line in the trailer.

[adhd-merlin]

0:43 "firsht" 😭😭😭

[spirithunter-deathmark]

I've understandably seen a lot of confusion and concern about the changed released date of death mark chapter 7, and that's totally fine! I've been cautiously optimistic as well since the dlc was announced but here's some things to hopefully put things into perspective

-We can never know for sure when the start time of chapter 7 actually was, but death mark 2 released in Japan in December of 2022 even if development didn't start right away for chapter 7 that's still give or take 2 years of dev time for a roughly 3 hour game sequence using assets and an engine familiar with them since its running off the first game

-Being a crowdfunded game aside, death mark 2 had a lot of delays before it finally got released so I believe if the dlc really was in a bad or rushed state EXP wouldn't release it I would hope. I mean the fact that this dlc is also on the switch means they're not divinding attention away from chapter 7 to work on a different version of it so that's something

-Again I can't say what went on behind the scenes or what numbers they were projecting to achieve with death mark 2, but sale numbers for it were...pretty low. And from what I remember at time of release Japanese Death Mark fans were pretty let down by it lol so not to sound cynical by why make more content for the series if the last project within it didn't produce results? Plus to coincide with chapter 7 death mark 1 is going on sale for extremely cheap, and it that's not a way to get some goodwill from fans I'm not sure what is and if it was rushed it would defeat the purpose of all of it

[fireheartwraith]

Red winning a second day in a row proves that they've made a comeback from day 1 and that day 2 wasn't fluke, so I hope green goes after blood 🩷

[kikizoshi]

youre learning Russian, right? I've also started learning with borrowed textbooks, and the consensus I've seen online is that its not enough, and that a course is necessary. if you don't mind I'd be really appreciative to know how you got where you are and if you think that's true.

Спасибо за помощь (ღゝ◡╹)ノ♡

Unfortunately, I don't really know what I'm doing either. Just kinda stumbling through, and "where I am" isn't all that far. I can only ever be an authority on what helps me learn Russian; in my experience, there's never been a one-to-one, "follow these steps I took to become fluent" method. Everyone has to figure out their own quirks. (And if this isn't true for someone then I'm very jealous of that person.)

I've seen about as many different opinions as there are ways to learn. Some think you need courses. Some think courses are useless. Some like textbooks; others hate them. The one consistent thing seems to be input--everyone agrees you need a lot of comprehensible input (meaning, you understand some of what you're consuming). But is a course necessary? I don't think so. Whether it could be vastly beneficial or a waste of time and money is something that depends entirely on the person's learning style. A resource I've linked further down may help you determine whether it'd help you. I've never taken a course, so I don't have any experience there.

Also: I have ADHD, so everything here is working around that. Motivation is a massive issue for me, and I've generally found that forcing my way through something droll for long periods of time just... isn't something I can make myself do. It burns me out. I try to make everything something I want to do, or at least not very painful. But my methods are also slower and less effective than something more structured.

Comprehensible Input

How I got to it being helpful:

People go on about comprehensible input all the time, and I can see why; it's extremely important. It's what finally moved me from mid-A1 to late-A2. But actually getting to a place where input even can be comprehensible was so horrifically painful for me that for a long while I felt completely inept. So, here's the things I did, in order, that I think helped:

A0-A1 (not helpful yet)

Duolingo + Twitter: Don't get me wrong--I hate Duolingo. And non-fanart Twitter. But it was a great combination for learning Cyrillic. I used Duolingo's earliest levels to get familiar with Cyrillic and some very basic words. Concurrently, I followed some Russian fanartists on Twitter who also posted text posts frequently, and turned notifs on for them. That made it so that 3-5 times a day, I would get a notification for a post in Russian, and I would practise reading/sounding out Cyrillic. I wasn't too focused on understanding what the post was saying, just getting a familiarity with the alphabet.

Memrise + Anki: Pain. God, so much pain. This was the worst. Necessary and effective, but the absolute, God-forsaken worst. Once I felt comfortable enough with Cyrillic, I started working through two decks: a. Memrise: vlarya's 10k most common Russian words deck. It goes in order of most to least common, has audio, and has typing practise. This replaces Duolingo. (When Memrise inevitably removes community courses altogether, feel free to ask for a backup of this deck. If I'm still on here by then, I should be able to give my backup that works with Anki.) I don't recommend Memrise's official courses. b. Anki: Neri's Russian Sentences (blog link) deck is great for practising the simple words you're learning with Memrise, getting common phrases down, and starting to see how Russian as a language comes together. It'll take a bit to click. c. keybr: I also started practising a little with keybr, mainly because having to type in Russian on Memrise sucks with the on-screen keyboard. keybr is the best site I've found to learn to touch type different keyboards. It's extremely effective. If you're already a touch-typer, a few hours should be enough to type well enough for Memrise.

YouTube: Russian With Max's 'For Beginners' Playlist was really helpful and motivating, at this point. He speaks slowly, simply, and clearly enough that I could understand him, where I couldn't understand anyone else yet.

I... God, I hate the A0-A1 stage so much. You can't do anything. At least now, I can watch TikToks, read comments, enjoy memes, and understand enough of those to enjoy myself. The stage where you understand nothing is by far the most awful to me. I wish I had anything to make it more bearable, but it's really just the worst. Hopefully you're either past this already, or close to past it. The small mercy is that it doesn't take too long to claw your way out of.

A1-A2 (helpful now)

[Active Immersion] Memrise + Reading/Watching (comp input): keep working through vlarya's 10k deck. My routine is: speed review due cards; finish the 10 cards I started learning yesterday; start learning 10 new words today. That's my reps and warmup. Then, depending on my mood, I'll either read at least 30 mins of 'Дом, в котором...' (with or without audiobook, again depending on mood), or watch at least 30 mins of Max's intermediate vids w/ Russian subtitles. Sometimes in my free time I'll watch Russian lit or ДВК TikToks.

[Passive Immersion] Music/Audiobooks/Let's Plays: pretty self-explanatory. My passive input isn't as comprehensible rn, but I focus on things I enjoy. A let's play to fall asleep to, an audiobook while I'm doing something that requires on-and-off focus. The goal here is just to understand snatches of whatever I can, not so much the whole thing. Eventually, those snatches become more frequent.

I'm sure more dedicated study would help me a lot right now, but I don't really have the time or motivation to, so I don't try to force it.

Regarding Russian language learning YouTube channels, and why I only recommend Max:

I've found that most popular Russian learning YouTube channels feel... well, like school. They're not very interesting, they don't feel very organic. It doesn't feel like I'd be watching their videos for any other reason than learning Russian, which is bad for me, because I need to make Russian part of my life to have any motivation to do it.

So, the reason I like Max's channel so much is that he talks about things that're actually interesting and relevant to me. This video is a personal favourite, but he has a lot of videos about all sorts of topics--some of which I'm genuinely interested in. And his demeanour is more vlogger, less teacher. I like him as a person. (Protip: in this stage, don't be afraid to start his intermediate videos early, even if you don't feel you're there yet. It can still be very helpful to pick out the words you do know, and most of his videos have Russian and English subtitles if you're confused.)

Regarding how to find a good Russian book to read:

I... don't know. Reading ДВК with the audiobook really, really helped with my reading ability, and continues to. I can't state enough how important it was for me. But how to find a book that you can read over and over again... I don't know. I just know that Harry Potter would be absolute torture.

I've seen people say that you should start reading simple things, like children's stories. I personally haven't done much of that, because children's stories bore me out of my mind, but if you like them then I'd give that a shot. I've also heard that Chekhov's stories are good for beginners (I've heard that about Pushkin too, but I'm not sure how easy poetry would be to understand). Read-alongs on YouTube could be good too. Russian With Max has some old livestream read-alongs, and there are plenty of Russian read-alongs on YouTube.

Aside - if you're curious about 'Дом, в котором...', this fan-made trailer is the entire reason I picked up ДВК; the vibes captivated me and I had to know what it was about. So for anyone interested: if the trailer looks cool to you, you may like the book. The English translation is called 'The Gray House'. ДВК is fairly long, and different POV characters have differing levels of complexity with the language. The early chapters are the simpler ones, conveniently, so starting from the beginning should be fine. It's a slice-of-life type story, so easy to pick up and put down. I recommend the Князев audiobook, which is almost certainly the one you'll find if you search 'дом в котором аудиокнига' (it's a fan-made audiobook, so I don't think you can buy it, but like LOTR the fan version is by far the best).

Resources

r/languagelearning's resources page is a good place to skim through, see if anything sticks out. I recommend reading through their 'How to Teach Yourself a Foreign Language'. It's good for giving you an idea of how different people learn, different learning methods, how those methods work for others, and what might work for you.

Refold's Roadmap is very helpful for me to understand where I'm currently at, and what sort of activities it would be beneficial for me to be working on. I use their definition of levels (i.e. A1), so if I wasn't clear what I meant by A1 vs A2, reading through this could be helpful.

SRS:

Anki's for decks I have to create myself, or if I need a more specialised deck. I prefer Memrise for vocab, mainly for typing practise and the better UI. If you want to use Anki for vocab: Refold's ru15k deck is good for A2+. There are plenty of simple word decks to pick from for A0-A1. If you want to word mine to create your own Anki decks, see FLTR below.

Grammar:

New Penguin Russian Course is supposed to be good for grammar. I looked through it, and it does look good. If you understand grammar. I don't, but putting it here for those who do.

Reading:

u/La_Nuit_Americaine's post about reading helps me with motivation, and gave me some pointers about how to do it.

FLTR (Foreign Language Text Reader) is a good Windows program alternative to LingQ, if you can't or don't want to pay for LingQ's subscription. You have to input the word definitions yourself. I used Reverso and Yandex Translate together for this. Your word list can be exported to Anki.

ReadLang is supposed to be a good web-based alternative to LingQ (its free level is still usable, unlike LingQ's). I've not used it much, but it seems pretty good. My preference is using some translation extension that will let you click on a word and automatically translate it and move on quickly. Simple Translate on Firefox is what I use.

Video Media:

Language Reactor is a subtitle extension for YouTube, Netflix, etc. that has a bunch of cool features. I hardly use it because it's not on Firefox, but if you use Chrome, Opera, etc., it's really handy. For YouTube, it will translate the auto-generated subs for videos, so if you have a Russian video that only has Russian auto-generated subtitles, you can use Language Reactor to get English subtitles.

Other ADHD Accommodations:

Being kind to myself is very important. I can't make myself study by thinking "why can't you just" or "it's not that hard, what's wrong with you". I can't make myself study with positive words either, but using positive language helps my morale so that I have more motivation to study more often.

I use a different browser (Opera) solely for learning Russian. I chose Opera because Language Reactor works on it (would've used Chrome but Chrome is set up for work), but the general idea is having a separate space for Russian. I put Opera's language in Russian, and I keep all my Russian-learning tabs open there, so that when I'm ready to study it's as simple as opening Opera. Having it separated like that also helps my brain see active study as a task that can be opened and closed, rather than combined with everything else (Firefox).

I try to give myself enough options of things to do for immersion that it's always a choice. My brain has so many different states: motivated; unmotivated; foggy; clear; distracted; focused. Each one will want--or even need--something different. If it's a foggy day, I may be able to read along ДВК with an audiobook, but not able to read words without that help. If I'm distracted, TikToks may help more than reading; if I'm focused, reading may help more than TikToks. Or if I'm completely unmotivated, watching one of Max's vids is more passive than reading, therefore less painful.

I love Russian. Not much to this one. I don't think I could stick to learning a language I didn't love for the sake of the language itself.

I wasted time and motivation watching things I wasn't interested in, trying to find media in Russian that appealed to me. I don't recommend that. I don't know the alternative, but I always felt horrible about myself after. It's important to have media you like, but forcing it won't work. Russian movies don't interest me. Everyone else's favourite Russian YouTubers don't appeal to me at all. TikTok is much better for me in that regard, because I can search for specific fandoms that interest me. Luck seems to be the only thing that works for finding good YouTubers.

Textbooks are my kryptonite. I can't use them. They drain motivation so fast. If they work for you, that's great. If they don't, I don't know that forcing it is the solution. It wasn't for me.

I scroll language learning subreddits sometimes for motivation. It's not productive, generally. But it's fun. And I do get some ideas sometimes.

I've mostly accepted that my progress is going to be slower than others. I'm trying not to compare myself. I'm enjoying it now, mostly, learning slowly but learning, and each time I reaffirm that that's okay, it becomes truer.

[that-cheer-up-anon]

I really need my brain to shut the hell up. I need to sleep, but this triggering conversation I had w my brother 2 days ago keeps plaguing me and I haven't been able to sleep well bc of it.

I'm not mad at him, but I'm mad that I was either unable to articulate my points correctly for him to understand, or our personalities/perspectives are just so different he's unable to understand my point of view, and feeling misunderstood (especially when I'm trying to explain) makes me very upset.

I also hate RSD and just feeling incredibly deeply and easily is so inconvenient, bc I just end up sobbing and they're just chilling on the couch on their phone, and the disparity between our emotional levels makes it feel like an uneven ground for us to be arguing our points. Like it doesn't feel fair to me to discuss topics that are specifically triggering for me, that he's just blase about. Like how come he gets to come at it in a sort of 'intellectually speaking/ hypothetical experiment perspective' and I feel like I'm fighting for my life and losing anyway? Not that a discussion is an argument w a winner or loser, but not feeling heard or understood makes me feel upset.

Yeah it was about the LDS cult.

[sisi-learns-languages]

Basic Phrase Vocabulary: Russian

Question Words

Кто — Who → Кто она?

Что — What → Что это?

Где — Where → Где собака?

Когда — When → Когда обед?

Как — How → Как дела?

Other Useful Words

Этот — This (masculine) → Этот студент

Эта — This (feminine) → Эта студентка

Эти — These (plural) → Эти собаки

Это — This (neuter), This/that is…, These are… → Это море, Это дом., Это собаки.

(Please feel free to comment anything that you think would be useful for beginners when building basic phrases!)

[mountain-lion-gremlin]

Stop overthinking it.

You, yes you reality shifters.

Are you currently asking constwnt questions on what to do? Wanting exact and specific details on how everything works?

Well, I'm here to quickly tell you that you are overthinking shifting. There is no right way, there is no "final push" that has been solidified as the only way to shift, there is no answer that someone can give you that is tailored perfectly to you.

LISTEN.

You are giving away your own power to others when you are constantly asking questions. Your Journey and how you explore it is now in someone else's hands when you are asking how to specifically shift and such.

You are overthinking it, bring yourself back.

Seriously. I asked, "what happens to your earbuds when you shift?" And I was overthinking it really hard. I didn't realize that my body is staying in the CR and my consciousness was leaving for my DR. Obviously my earbuds will stay in my CR because I'm not focusing on it anymore.

We tend to believe that when we are shifting we have to be aware,everywhere, all at once, when we are shifting. You have to realize though that all you are doing is leaving, becoming aware of your DR self. It's as simple as just forgetting that your CR even exists in the moment. That is literally how you let go - you just stop caring about your CR and forget about it because you are busy shifting instead.

Nothing you do in the CR matters to your shifting, NOTHING. You can shift in your sleep, standing up, literally anywhere doing anything because you aren't focusing on your CR to shift - you are focusing on your DR. You are tricking your brain into believing that nothing else exists outside of your DR, and it becomes true. If you twitch a toe, if your heart is beating really fast, if you feel like you are floating - It don't matter, that's all CR stuff. Focus completely on your DR, let it become completely truth and fact to your awareness, and you will shift.

Some affirmations for those positive vibes ♡♡♡

I am in my DR

I am nothing more than awareness

No matter what i do in my CR i will shift

No matter what doubt i have i will shift

I am confident in myself

I trust my subconsiousness, I trust the universe to shift me

Shifting is easy

I am pure awareness

My awareness is not tethered to any reality

All realities are equal

I only need to intend and it becomes truth

All of my affirmations are fact

I am a master shifter

I am so glad to be a master shifter

In so happy shifting is so easy

I'm so amazed that I found shifting

I am safe

I am loved

I am free

I am.

[r0semultiverse]

Before we start not reading, not researching, & jumping to conclusions via reblogs & things with the speed per capital society we live in, where is it sourced specifically (that isn't a tumblr post or a tiktok without citations) that the Trevor Project is in support of KOSA?

We have sources for GLAAD, GLSEN, and PFLAG (August 24, 2023), but I wanna know where the rest of this info comes from. Pretty convenient to say that an organization known for helping trans youth is in support of a shitty bill amidst all the ongoing chaos, especially when we live in an age of misinformation.

If anyone could link it to me, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Update: Okay so yeah this is kinda suspect, The Trevor Project in July 25, 2022 is all for KOSA here.

[blujayonthewing]

one thing that must be said for growing up with Very Sarcastic Parents is that I'm baseline equipped to recognize that sometimes people are doing a bit