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meimae · 4 years ago

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Language Learning Through Immersion: One Year Japanese Update

11/03/2021

I did it, you guys! I’ve successfully reached my very first year of Japanese language immersion! I honestly thought that I would have given up by now, but this really has been a fun and ultimately rewarding endeavor.

Studying the language has been at the back of my mind for years since elementary school, I just never really knew how to go about it before, and I always thought that I could learn it in a classroom setting someday. That someday for me was in two elective courses in university, and while those were fun as well, it did not give me the same gains that I have achieved in this past year.

It’s probably easier to quantify learning a language in a classroom setting, especially when going through a program to earn a language degree. Learning through immersion, however, I had to really consider what my goals should be on my own. Eventually, I stumbled upon an article saying that for an English speaker, Japanese was exceptionally difficult to learn and that at least 2,200 hours must be spent with the language to reach a certain level of proficiency. So I said to myself, “well okay internet, if you say so!”, and set that as my long term goal going forward.

Spoiler Alert: I did not hit that goal in my first year. I am not crazy and will never listen to Japanese in my sleep regardless of what Khatzumoto (the creator of All Japanese All the Time) says.

I did, however, hit a total 1,226.65 active immersion hours in my first year, so I guess I’m still a bit nuts. That is 874.96 hours of active listening and 351.69 reading hours. I also did 270.59 hours of passive listening, also known as the time in the very beginning of my immersion where I was using Japanese subtitles (therefore not really concentrating on listening alone). That’s a cumulative 1,497.24 hours spent with Japanese. That’s more than halfway towards my goal!

To further break that down for curious animanga fans out there, that’s 973 episodes from 109 anime, 765 episodes from 33 dramas, 7 movies, and 967 chapters from 107 volumes of manga (21 series). Here’s my anilist and mydramalist to see what I’ve read/watched.

During all this, I was also doing my daily Anki reps and now I have a 530 day SRS streak (includes the time prior starting immersion and only doing RTK and some vocabulary cards) and a total 8,857 sentence cards. I’ve been averaging 406 cards daily (because I’m trying to cure my leeches) and I spend about an hour per day doing reps and learning new cards. I don’t really track my time on Anki, but I do have a set timer that goes off after 1-1:30 hours.

What I haven’t touched upon at all is output. I have not gone out of my way to find a tutor or a language partner. There’s still plenty of input out there to immerse in before I even consider outputting.

Graphs, stats, and more thoughts:

Here's my current card count in my main deck (minus the cards in my new/learning queue and leeches I've been relearning which are in separate decks):

That one day in 2019 where I did not do my cards because I was seriously doubting whether I can actually stick with language learning this time around will forever haunt and inspire me to keep going everyday.

Workflow and Tips

You might be wondering, how do I have a lot of time? I started this whole endeavor in the middle of a pandemic, which eliminated the option of me going to a language school, and a slew of other things I were considering doing last year became impossible (and if anything, very scary to do in a pandemic). All I can say is that, things work out eventually if it is His will, and if I can learn a skill before everything properly settles back down again, then why not?

I wake up at 5 in the morning everyday to either do my Anki reps or read until the time when I need to get up and I listen to compressed audio throughout the day. The biggest tip is to switch the time you spend watching/reading in your native language to your target language instead. Listen to a podcast during your commute, watch an episode during lunch break, read before going to bed, do your Anki reps in the bathroom if you have to.

But, if you’re feeling burnt out, there is no reason for you to not take a break! I have been watching a lot of Among Us streams before bed, and I chat with my friends from time to time. Language learning is not a race.

More Stats

Here are a couple of grids of the kanji characters that I have encountered at least once in my immersion and how well I have answered them in my vocabulary/sentence cards.

It's interesting that after almost 9000 words, I have yet to encounter every single character from the Remembering the Kanji 1 (RTK 1) book by James Heisig, which teaches you the most common use characters that are part of the 常用漢字. Which brings me to the question, was writing down every single character being taught in RTK worth it every time it came up in my reviews for the first 3-ish months I was reviewing them? Maybe, maybe not. It certainly removed my anxiety whenever looking at blocks of text in Japanese, but the longer I think about it, the more I feel I should have switched to Recognition RTK earlier. Still, being able to write in proper stroke order is cool I guess, and it also helps me when looking things up in the dictionary.

Here’s the same grid but in JLPT order:

I clearly need to grind those N2 and N1 level cards! Speaking of which, I have apparently almost covered every single character that could possibly appear in the JLPT (except for the N1 which I have only covered half of) in just a year's time. If the JLPT word frequency lists I’m using are accurate, I have about 2,000 words more to go to to cover most vocabulary that could appear in the test. This makes the "10,000 sentences/words to fluency" argument a reasonable milestone to aim for for Japanese learners if said aim is only to pass the test. That said, 10,000 words is just that, a milestone. It's more akin to a comfortable level of comprehension, but not my own concept of fluency which is being able to read with ease, speak articulately, and write comfortably.

READING IMMERSION GRAPHS

My biggest motivation for tracking my stats is for the purpose of seeing whether my reading speed is improving over time. Reading speed is also easier to measure than listening comprehension which is kind of subjective, so I had a lot of fun making these. What I found is that for the first volume or chapter of whatever it is I’m reading, I always take the time to get used to the writing style of the author. My speed really improves whenever I keep reading the same topic over and over again. On the other hand and quite obviously, looking up many new words in a row and trying to parse sentences slows me down.

Manga: Reading Speed Progression per Volume

I clearly love ちはやふる and I am not ashamed to admit it.

I need to start reading longer manga. When I do, I’ll probably split this graph into less than and greater than 20 volumes. Imagine if I start reading something ridiculously long as 名探偵コナン or ワンピース, these graphs will start breaching the bounds of time and space.

Novels: Time Spent Reading per Chapter

#neverforget the time I read chapter six of Norwegian Wood for 9 hours when it took me less than half that time in English RIP. Also, my interest in Kitchen plummeted LOL. Still planning to finish it don’t worry.

I also need to start branching away from manga and start reading more novels and light novels, too just so I can make more pretty graphs.

Visual Novels: Time Spent Reading and Daily Word Count

Also known as images that clearly show that I’ve already spent several days only reading the prologue of Island. I’m not sweating. 切那 needs to stop using words I don’t know in succession. More thoughts on this VN far into the future.

Thoughts on Immersion

I can’t really say anything else other that that it works for me, and needless to say if you’re considering this method, remember that the SRS is your friend but immersion should be your one true love.

Prior to all this, I couldn’t even read a sample paragraph from Genki without being confused to my very soul. Yes, I know, it’s embarrassing, but that’s the truth. I was way more scared of failing my Japanese classes than my actual thesis for my bachelors degree, I kid you not. I would quite literally spend all my free time in university trying to understand grammar, memorize vocabulary, and answer my workbook exercises with little to no success.

I tried so hard to get all the grammar “formulas” into my head for 1.5 years and it only brought me more confusion. I’m never going back to traditional classroom study for language learning, but I will still refer to grammar books when I need to, and not because I feel like I need to answer 4783342 different workbook exercises like my life depended on it.

I still can’t believe it, but with immersion this statement is actually true to a point, don’t try shadowing anime/or calling your boss anime language slurs, use your common sense:

study anime to understand Japanese > study Japanese to understand anime

Future Goals/Plans

2,200 immersion hours was my initial goal, but honestly I feel like that number could be much higher. There’s still a lot of stuff I don’t understand (news, politics, sciences, etc.), so I’ll make attempts to cover more of those things in my immersion.

I’ll continue reading more, because that’s a natural SRS in itself. Try to read longer manga, more novels, visual novels, and light novels, and maybe news articles.

I’ll try to mine as much “JLPT vocab” as I can before making any attempts at taking the JLPT. I noticed that a lot of the words I know don’t appear in the JLPT word lists as much, even though they appear a lot in media/daily conversation.

Continue mining all words I don’t know because all words are useful anyway. There is no such thing as useless words. I never really understood mining only “interesting words” or words that “pop up” in your immersion. As I said in my previous blog post, 美人局 is an interesting word and I certainly caught it being said in my immersion, but in the three languages I know, I wouldn’t know when I would be able to use such a word, as compared to something like ジャガ��モ which is a significantly less interesting word, but is certainly useful to know.

I have managed to talk up a storm, but if you have any questions regarding my process or recommendations for new immersion material, please feel free to send an ask/reply to this post. I love hearing about other people’s language learning/immersion journeys.

See you on my next post!

#language learning #japanese language #language acquisition #study blog #langblr #studyblr #graphs #language immersion #japanese #visual novels #manga #novels #anime #dramas #movies #youtube #podcasts

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zosonils · 3 years ago

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Crossover you say 👀

OKAY SO. SONIC COLOURS/MEGA MAN CROSSOVER

i don't have much in mind story wise, but i'm thinking it takes place under the same conditions as worlds collide, which i insist on believing also happened nearly identically offscreen in the game timeline because nobody can tell me otherwise. fairly basic setup of eggman and wily teaming up to cause problems on purpose and sonic and rock working together to stop them, and now there's wisps in the mix >:O i'm sure i could think up a fun excuse plot for why sonic colours happens twice and also mega man is here now, but mostly this was just an excuse to put the special interest in the hyperfixation and come up with some fun weapons for rock based on my first and favourite sonic game

each robot master is based on a wisp from either version of the original colours, which causes a little confusion given that you end up with two burst men and drill men but these ones have different EWN-XXX serial numbers and are entirely unrelated to their canon mega man counterparts. i haven't actually drawn the robot masters yet or thought up designs or personalities, just come up with their weapons and what stage they'd inhabit, but maybe i'll do that sometime. the robot masters are something like this

EWN-010 BURST MAN - weak to drill dash, gives bursting blaze, sweet mountain stage

EWN-011 ROCKET MAN - weak to cubic satellite, gives rocket jump, terminal velocity stage

EWN-012 DRILL MAN - weak to spike spin, gives drill dash, tropical resort stage

EWN-013 HOVER MAN - weak to rocket jump, gives hovering shockwave, starlight carnival stage

EWN-014 LASER MAN - weak to frenetic void, gives prism laser, aquarium park stage

EWN-015 CUBE MAN - weak to prism laser, gives cubic satellite, wii game land stage

EWN-016 VOID MAN - weak to bursting blaze, gives frenetic void, asteroid coaster stage

EWN-017 SPIKE MAN - weak to hovering shockwave, gives spike spin, planet wisp stage

i wrote up some really detailed information on how all the weapons work but i'll put that under a cut to prevent this post from getting too long! if you don't feel like reading massive paragraphs of game design ideas, here's the microsoft paint scribblings i did of all of them [sonic is there too]

BURSTING BLAZE

a chargeable attack that blasts out a sphere of fire to deal damage. charging it longer sends the fire out further and increases its damage output, but costs more weapon energy. without any charging it's a pretty standard low-range attack, but at maximum charge it functions as a screen nuke on par with the likes of rain flush, tornado blow, or astro crush. if rock takes damage while charging bursting blaze, he'll automatically release it at whatever charge level it was at when he got hit. in addition to the obvious usefulness of a fucking screen nuke, a less- or uncharged bursting blaze can be a handy way to quickly get some personal space in a tight situation.

cost: 1 unit when uncharged, 7 when fully charged [28 uses uncharged or 4 fully charged from a full gauge]. has five in-between charge levels costing 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 units from least to most powerful.

i came up with this name first because i wanted it to have blaze in it because i fucking love blaze the cat.

ROCKET JUMP

an explosion that launches rock much higher than a normal jump would take him, about the height of one screen. in addition to the explosion at the bottom dealing damage, rock's body deals contact damage until his upward momentum stops, which tears through enemies with low health or a weakness to rocket jump but doesn't protect him against bulkier foes or stage hazards. while he can still move left or right while rocketing upwards, the only way for rock to stop moving upwards is to either naturally run out of momentum, hit a ceiling, or take damage.

some platforms can only be reached by using rocket jump.

cost: 3 units per use [10 uses from a full gauge]

obviously a joke based on the rocket jump technique in a lot of video games, lmao. rock blows himself up and ragdolls so hard he clips out of the interstellar amusement park and sonic watches as he falls past every kill plane and into infinity forever

DRILL DASH

a dash attack slightly faster than the slide going straight down, sideways, or diagonally down-left or down-right, similar to the pile driver but shorter and without upwards reach. has fairly low attack power, equivalent to two mega buster shots, but pushes surviving enemies back, allowing them to be hit again and again with a chain of drill dashes. underwater, it moves significantly faster and further, and can be fired up as well as down, unlocking eight-directional dashing.

if rock hits a solid wall he'll bounce off of it, but if he hits certain types of dirt-like walls he'll drill into them, which can uncover helpful items like health and weapon refills and occasionally 1-ups or e-tanks [probably in scripted locations].

cost: 2 units per use [14 uses from a full gauge]

i've never played mighty no. 9 but i've seen footage of like the dash thingy he can do? because it probably looks kinda like that.

HOVERING SHOCKWAVE

fires a shockwave that doesn't hurt any more than a standard mega buster shot [unless the enemy in question is weak to it], but stuns most enemies and has a fairly decent range. if you fire it in midair and then hold down the attack button, rock's falling speed will decrease dramatically, and he'll continue to float until either he hits the ground, the attack button is released, or he takes damage. hovering will cost additional energy, and if hovering shockwave is used in midair it can't be used again until rock hits the ground at least once.

cost: 1.5 units per use [19 uses from a full gauge], plus an extra 3 units per second of hovering, for a total of a little under 9 seconds of hovering taking the initial shot into account.

this one's pretty directly lifted from the hover wispon in sonic forces.

PRISM LASER

a laser projectile that either bounces off or goes through anything it hits a set number of times, maybe three to five. if it destroys an enemy its movement is unchanged; if it hits a wall or an enemy that doesn't immediately die to it then it bounces instead. can be fired in all eight directions, but once fired its trajectory is out of the player's hands. basically imagine gemini laser, then imagine it being obscenely better in every conceivable way. best used in enclosed rooms where it can bounce around a lot and doesn't have much opportunity to get lost offscreen.

some rooms have prisms in them like the ones in colours that automatically redirect prism laser, guiding them to destroy enemies blocking paths and the like.

cost: 6 units per use [5 uses from a full gauge]

cyan laser was my favourite colour power when i was a little baby because haha bright colour funny sound go wheeee. prism laser is probably overpowered because of this bias lmao.

CUBIC SATELLITE

summons four [?] orbiting cubes that shield rock from one hit each. they deal damage to enemies they touch unless said enemy is immune to the power. standard shield weapon, blue cube is a lame overly situational gimmick and i couldn't think of anything better. rock can still fire and charge his mega buster while shielded, but obviously can't use any special weapons. every time a cube is destroyed, the remaining ones spin faster, looking something like the tubinaut badnik from sonic mania. that's just a visual effect i don't know what else to write here it's a shield weapon.

cost: 3.5 units per use [8 units from a full gauge]

i think i'd like shield weapons more if i knew how to use the attacking ones to actually attack. i used leaf shield about 3 times in mega man 2 and every time i flung it in the wrong direction and got hit anyway.

FRENETIC VOID

sucks in any enemies that rock is facing for as long as the attack button is held down, drawing them to a point just in front of him. when released, the blasters on his arms [which in this form morph to look like the purple frenzy mouth] crunch down in front of him, dealing slightly more damage than a charged mega buster shot to anything that's been pulled in close enough and knocking back anything that isn't destroyed. rock can't move while using frenetic void, and if anything hits him while he's vaccuuming he drops the move without the finishing bite or knockback. this move can also draw in most types of bullets, which are absorbed and disappear if they reach the void, or continue in whatever direction they were pulled in if the move ends before they get there.

cost: 3 units per use [10 units from a full gauge]

i thought it'd be cool to combine purple frenzy and violet void somehow. i used void for the robot master name because i believe in sonic colours ds port supremacy, but the decision was ultimately pretty arbitrary.

SPIKE SPIN

what top spin wishes it was. a close-range attack where spikes emerge from rock's body as he does a speen, giving him a somewhat bigger hitbox. when he hits an enemy, he bounces off of it in a manner similar to the way sonic bounces off of everything he hits. the move lasts as long as the attack button is held down, draining weapon energy over time, and rock can still walk and jump while speening. some projectiles will bounce off of spike spin [generally small bullets like those from mets or sniper joes will bounce off while anything stronger will still hurt], and holding the move makes rock immune to spikes, allowing him to walk over them safely until his weapon energy depletes.

some items may be tucked away in places that are difficult or impossible to reach without walking over spikes, requiring the use of spike spin to reach them.

cost: 4 units per second, for a total of 7 seconds of spinning from a full gauge. the first unit is depleted the moment the button is pressed so the move can't be scummed into lasting longer.

honestly now that i'm thinking about this i might change spike spin to act a little more like how pink spike spindashes, but i was overcome by a desire for justice for top man.

i don't know how to end this post lmao but i've been thinking about this crossover for days on end. i know damn well it's a pipe dream but right now i'm in just the right mode of hyperfixation that if sega and capcom announced a sonic/mega man crossover in a video game that isn't smash lmao i would ASCEND

#i had so much fun drawing those shitty microsoft paint mega men lmao #just fucking whatever #mega man #sonic the hedgehog #sonic colours #mega colours #that's what the .txt file i'm writing this all down in is called so that's what i'm tagging this crossover as in case i post about it again #i have a whole bunch of other miscellaneous ideas for how this'd go but the main thing was coming up with funni weapons #i could apologise for making such a long post but i am not going to i think. i used a readmore i have no excuse to feel bad about dash clog #can't wait for all the speedrunners to go for drill man first and spam drill dash for the entire game #sonic forces me to answer questions #aprofessionallurker

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doshmanziari · 3 years ago

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Architectural Criticism in 2021/2022 || Part 1.5

Before writing a fuller continuation of my previous essay on architectural criticism, I’m inserting a mini-essay that focuses on a particular piece of criticism. Let me be clear: I don’t see Kate Wagner, the person behind @mcmansionhell, as an enemy; I’m just using one of her articles as an example because I had, in my essay, already linked two articles of hers (more accurately, one article and an image from another), and I’d rather elaborate on what I mean when I write “...a vapid buildup to a politically convenient takeaway” than bring in an entirely different item. Wagner, in my view, represents a sort of destabilizing criticism that takes pleasure in tackling “dry” subject matter with breathless, Meme-heavy sarcasm. I find the tone off-putting, but I appreciate it as one attempt to invigorate and broaden the audiences of architectural appraisal. My issue is that by now the joke has overestimated its capacity for judgmental clarity. Really anything can be made fun of if you’re determined enough, and the more of an unquestioning audience you have the easier it is to believe everything you say is true or coherent.

The image was from this 2018 Vox article: “Betsy DeVos’ summer home deserves a special place in McMansion Hell” (a title likely devised by the editor; given the other residences Wagner has lambasted, I would be surprised if she truly believes this is among the worst). My observations won’t make sense unless anyone who is reading this reads her article as well, so please do that if you’d like to follow along. It should take only a couple of minutes.

What I’d first draw readers’ attention to is that Wagner spends the first four paragraphs on the United States’ beyond-vast inequality of wealth. Two of these paragraphs are the article’s largest, and the article is twelve-paragraphs-long, meaning that 1/3 of it is devoted to establishing a socio-economic context -- at least, that is the pretense. Once Wagner writes “...getting paid to make fun of DeVos’s tacky seaside decor is one of few ways to both feed myself and make myself feel better”, it is clear that her personal intent is a kind of vengeful mocking, and that her intent for readers is to prime them to associatively, knee-jerkingly despise anything which could come next with flat-affect “lmao”s. It’s hardly irrelevant to mention economic realities when examining luxury items (and what else is a mansion?), but Wagner’s subsequent analysis is not really architectural or even artistic: it is rather about looking at several photographs of a building, knowing who lives there and hating that person (and also imagining that they were responsible for all design decisions), and then mocking this-and-that in whatever ways one can devise. These grievances are understandable, but understandable grievances do not automatically lead to perceptive criticism.

Please look (perhaps again) at the first image. Note that only four, maybe, of the fourteen details Wagner chooses to focus on -- “no wry comment needed”, “these look like playdoh stamps”, “when you love consistency”, and “oh my god is this a shutter” -- approach anything vaguely resembling coherent criticism; and the other four images fare even worse (with the exception of the highlighting of an apparently absurd interior balcony). The rest are inane attempts at saying anything at all. Writing “hell portal” by an upper porch area may be funny for a moment, but what does it actually express? Well, nothing, except the author’s own irritation which will find whatever it can to announce its contemptuous sarcasm. Wagner’s captions will land only to the degree that the reader is humorously sympathetic.

The aforementioned remarks, excepting the one about the embedded chubby Tuscan columns’ Play-Doh-likeness, suggest that the worst thing a building can do is be formally heterogeneous. The implicative corollary here is that good architecture is eminently justifiable in all of its parts -- consistent, unified, rational. This is as fine a personal belief as anything else, but when it is wielded as dogma against architecture which has no interest in being a Petit Trianon it can only reveal its intellectual self-limitations. Wagner writes that “there is a difference between architectural complexity and a mess”, yet what that difference may be is hand-waved away. We just have to believe that thirteen different windows styles is too much. What’s the threshold? Does it depend on the size of the building? The types of styles used? Who knows.

Now of course bad architecture exists, and sometimes the failure indeed points to deficient editorial acumen; for architecture, like any other art, is as much about what’s included as what’s excluded. But in saying so little about the shingle style itself, Wagner seems to have given no thought to readers concluding that all shingle style houses are freakish -- more specifically, concluding that this freakishness is a damning transgression, and that no self-respecting, punching-up class-warrior would ever be caught dead sincerely enjoying their geometric, “exquisite corpse” escapades. In fact, the freakish tendencies of shingle style houses are just what make them such great fun to see, visit, or reside in. Wagner’s article, as far as I can tell, omits this possibility. When she writes, “Betsy likely went with this style because it is very popular in New England and in coastal enclaves of the rich and famous in general”, one is being pushed to presume that the only probable reason the shingle style exists or could be preferred over another style is to signal élite solidarity.

The photograph right above is of Kragsyde, a Massachusetts shingle style mansion, designed by the US-Northeast-oriented firm of Peabody & Stearns, completed in the 1880s. It was demolished almost a century ago, but the few exterior images of it which remain are, I think, fascinating -- maybe most of all for its enormous archway, possibly a porte-cochère, which has a thin, overextending keystone bizarrely driven into the top like a nail puncturing a petrified rainbow. I bring the building up because Wagner gives us no reason to consider why Kragsyde may have been a genuine architectonic accomplishment and not merely an oversized farce of contiguous pretensions. To the layperson hot off of the Vox piece, there may be no artistic difference between it and DeVos’ place, except that perhaps Kragsyde has a more consistent fenestrative application (would that make it better? if so, why?).

I appreciate that only so much can be said when you’re limited to less than a thousand words, especially when the issue is “complicated” (as the byline for Vox’s First-person series advertises). But the problem I keep coming back to is how DeVos’ mansion is treated as a stand-in for DeVos herself. This makes any architectural critique, no matter how pressed it is for size, flimsily presentist: its durability starts and ends with how alive the architecture’s resident(s) and political presence are. On some emotional level, this is pretty sensible: if we despise monarchical institution, we can find a sort of loophole to enjoying Versailles palace on the basis of it no longer being the residence of royalty. Our awe over its decadence and scope is intersectionally “admissible” on the basis of its having become a UNESCO World Heritage site. Similarly, one can imagine DeVos’ mansion being appreciated in a hundred years (should it still exist then) because the passage of time will have rendered DeVos’ person a historical fact, and perhaps more separable, and then tolerable, in that regard -- even if the building remains private.

But if architecture is, as a craft, critically whittled down to nothing more or less than inorganic expressions of social disparities, with every aesthetic decision a reflection of politically explicable taste, then we must assume that a great deal of the world’s most remarkable architecture is equally ridiculous and despicable, since so much of it was born out of great privilege and required specialized resources. I doubt Wagner actually believes this, because it would betray the entire premise of her McMansion Hell project, which is to demonstrate how so many modern day mansions are deeply unpleasant mounds of visual illiteracy, and cannot hold even a stump of a candle to the luminously learned and eclectic talents of prior great architects such as Mackintosh, Norman Shaw, Lutyens, or Ledoux. So what’s the takeaway here? As far as I can tell, it’s simply that if you hate Betsy DeVos, and if you care about class, you should hate her house too. And I do not think that that is architectural criticism.

#Architecture #architectural criticism #mcmansion #shingle style

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annakie · 4 years ago

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A Lot of Words about a Thing

This is a “I’m writing this out so next time someone asks I can just point them to this (or copy/paste) instead of having to type it again” thing.

I’ve been doing Hello Fresh for the last two or three months and I thought I’d talk about the ups and downs of it and if I’m going to keep doing it. This is not an endorsement (which will be clear when you get to the overall middling scoring), but I will put a link at the bottom so we can both get a deal if you want to try it.

---------------

So anyway, I had been thinking about doing a meal kit for a long time but pulled the trigger on it back in... like Mid-January, I guess?

the tl;dr of it all is that I like it and I’ll probably keep doing it for awhile, but it’s not for everyone, and is expensive for what it is, especially if you already know how to cook.

Before I started, I made myself sit down and write out a quick list of what I wanted to get out of trying a meal kit experience, so I’ll rate how successful or not each one of those things is.

First of all, I want to also say, I can already cook. I’m a pretty good cook. I can follow a recipe and improvise successfully when necessary usually. One reason why a lot of people do a meal kit is because they need to learn how to cook and that definitely wasn’t me.

Also, they offer a variety of number and portions on meals to try. I get three meals a week, with two portions a meal, which means I cook Hello Fresh for dinner one night, and usually the next night have the leftovers. Friday night is usually “Yay You Made It To The Weekend, You Get To Order Takeout” night. You can order for several more meals a week, and for up to four portions in each meal, if you want.

So on to the reasons why I decided to try HF, with a grading of how I feel about each one after trying.

Reason One: Try Something New

I was super excited at the beginning of the pandemic now working from home full time, because this was a great chance to really start trying some new recipes. I had fallen into a pretty bad rut for awhile of some of the same frozen type meals or just making super easy things for dinner and sandwiches for lunch pre-pandemic. Even though my commute was stupid easy I often felt too wiped at the end of the day to make like, real meals. So when the pandemic hit and I was Home All The Time, for the first couple of months I was buying interesting ingredients (what I could get my hands on at the time) and really digging into making new and interesting things. Even baking my own bread and bought some new kitchen gadgets like a pressure cooker to expand my repertoire.

By like... the end of summer... well the good news was that I was still cooking and hadn’t fallen back to a packaged-food routine most of the time (though still some frozen pizzas or bags of pre-made Asian or Italian food you cook on the stovetop mostly for lunch) but also I had more or less found The Ten Things I Make (like Spaghetti, a great chicken and rice dish that is so good and makes about 6 meals worth of leftovers) and I was real tired of like, recipe hunting. The most work I was then doing was finding new pressure cooker recipes and tbh almost all of what I was making was Chicken In Some Kind of Sauce Over Rice. I was burned out.

So Hello Fresh... has been great for that. I have only made the same thing a couple of times and those were only because i loved them so much the first time I wanted that thing again. For the most part, I have tried just a ton of new things, including some ingredients I’ve never worked with before or really thought I wouldn’t like! And I did! I feel like I am often trying something I have never made before.

Reason 1.5: Variety

OK this is hand-in-hand with Something New but also slightly different.

Try Something New would be rated like a 4.5 out of 5 stars.... but some stars are taken away though, because a lot of their recipes are very similar. For a protein, there’s like, chicken breasts, hamburger meat, pork chops, chicken sausage and pork sausage. Occasionally steak. Basically every meal will start with one of those things.... oh and I guess there’s like some fish choices, but I hate fish. There’s also vegetarian options, which I have only occasionally gotten. So within the variety, there’s a lot of similarities.

Also there are a lot of same ingredients in their recipes. I have grated a lot of lemons and limes. I have chopped up a lot of carrots, green onions, and potatoes (so many potatoes.) I have consumed more sour cream than I ever have. I have started looking for ways to add even a little more variety to the things that are often-repeats that they give you.

But part of that is my fault -- I am mostly selecting items that I know I will like, or can modify to how I like. There are a lot of veggie and fish-based choices I could pick up most weeks which I avoid.

And almost everything I’ve ever made... I’d make again. I save all the recipe cards so that someday when I don’t wanna do HF anymore, I will have all them all handy to make later. The HF Subreddit also has a lot of resources like how to do their custom spice mixes, very handy. There’s been maybe 3 things I’ve made which I’d say were Just Okay, but nothing I’d say that was bad. And some of the ideas in this paragraph I talk about more, further down.

But also on the topic of “Variety” -- since every meal I make has two portions (occasionally I will stretch something to three) -- points are given back because I’m not “Making a huge pot of spaghetti that I eat for five meals in a row.” So that’s good, even if it means more cooking overall.

So honestly, on Something New overall, I’ll give this like a 3.5 out of 5 stars, correcting up to 4 stars on a curve, since I strike entire categories of their offerings based on my own tastes. They offer a pretty good variety of meals to select, and part of the problem here is my fault for hating All Seafood and not being thrilled with the vegetarian options (I also don’t feel like I’m getting my money’s worth without a protein) so there are a lot of meals re-using similar ingredients. It slides back down to a 3.5 though when you factor in Reasons 3 & 4 below.

Reason Two: Kill Analysis Paralysis

A thing I found increasingly happening by the end of last year was analysis paralysis. Especially as I started a new job where I’m much, much busier (but happier) in October. I would find myself staring at the fact that I’d have to make the decision on What To Make For Dinner and dreading it more and more. It wasn’t really the cooking I hated, but the deciding what to cook, which got me into the lack of variety rut. More often than I’d like to admit I’d just make a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese or like... just... toast... for dinner because the decision-making part of my brain was tired... or out of spoons as the kids say these days.

This is maybe my favorite part of Hello Fresh overall. Once every week or two I log onto HF, pick what I’m going to eat like... 5 or 6 weeks in the future, which I can do at a time when I have that decision-making energy, and forget about it. Every Monday a box shows up on my doorstep, I see what nice things I picked out for myself several weeks ago, and the most I have to decide is which order I will make those things in.

So when it’s a “Make Dinner” day, I don’t have that “shit, I have to make a decision” feeling. I already know because I pre-planned it back when I wasn’t at the end of a long workday. It’s one of those small, dumb things that really really helps me mentally in an almost inexplicable way. And I can feel better about myself because I didn’t eat something dumb for dinner. And I still allow myself to make easy things for lunch, like a small frozen pizza, a sandwich and some chips, or hey, Kraft Dinner. And sometimes I do make a big pot of Spaghetti or something that I love and will just have that for lunch every day for a week, and so I don’t have to feel like I’m always cooking.

And on Eat HF Leftovers For Dinner nights, that’s even better, because I have a tasty meal and it just had to get reheated in the microwave or stovetop. Some meals are easy to half-prepare ahead of time on day one, and just do the last steps on leftover night the next night to have fresher dinner easily.

Just 5 out of 5 stars here. This is my favorite part.

Reason Three: Eat More Vegetables.

Uh, yeah, I’m terrible about eating veggies on my own. The best I can do usually is buy a bag of mixed greens and try to have a side salad with dinner, or buy bags of frozen foods and hope they come with veggies I’d eat.

So the good thing here, is that when HF sends me vegetables to make, if it’s a veggie I like, I’ll probably make it.

The big problem, though, is that there’s no substitutions. And I’m still not gonna eat brussell sprouts or, broccoli, or mushrooms. I was a sport and tried making them (except the mushrooms) the first time I got recipes that used them as sides. And nope... still cant.

But hey, I have done a lot better at eating more fresh green beans, and onions, and carrots, and peppers. Though sometimes I just snack on the bell pepper instead of cooking it. Still, I call it a win.

I really, really wish I could trade out the side-dish vegetables I know I won’t eat for like, a small side salad, an apple, or hey, even just... carrots! But nope, no substitutions. =\ I’d score this way better if we could do so.

Still, I’m doing better here, and overall, more vegetables are being eaten. So, 3 out of 5 stars.

Reason Four: Waste Less Food

The amount of fruit and vegetables I’ve ordered and thrown away over the last year make me cringe. I would order things with every intention of eating them and then just... not. Oh yeah I need two lemons, an orange and two limes in case I make ____ recipe! I need a new bag of baby carrots to snack on and make a side dish and cut into a salad!

And then I maybe... maybe use half of that before it goes bad.

Probably less. Because of the Analysis Paralysis and not trying new things. You run into that problem where you don’t have the ingredients on hand to make a new thing so you can’t make a new thing... but then you buy them but forgot (crucial thing) so the thing still doesn’t get made. Or you just... don’t plan when you’re gonna make the thing and by the time I’d be like “Oh yeah I should make something with those vegetables” they’d have already turned.

SO... I felt shitty throwing away so much produce, and loaves of bread, and other perishable food that got maybe half-eaten. So much, for so long. Yeah, I know I could do better with my meal planning, but it’s been one of those things I always vow to do, and then did not do that thing.

Doing HF has really made me re-evaluate what I buy as groceries, and I have cut way down on ordering unnecessary produce and perishables like bread. Because I don’t really have to worry about dinner and am allowing myself to do easy lunches that don’t require real “cooking.” So, overall I am definitely buying and tossing less food.

Also just as another quick note -- what also tends to get tossed out of my HF boxes is a “spicy ingredient” But in some ways, this works in HF’s favor. I don’t really like spicy foods. A small amount of spice is OK but I’d rather just do without it in most things, sorry I’m that white girl. Most “Spicy” HF meals get spicy by a spice blend, a packet of sriracha / hot sauce, or a jalapeno which they want you to cut up and include. So whenever I see something that looks good but listed as “spicy”, I can check the ingredient list first and see what makes it spicy, If I think the thing still sounds good without the spicy part, I can order it. So yeah, I’ll toss spicy ingredients, but that is 100% my choice and it makes things better because it gives me more variety to order those meals and still make it to my own taste.

Oh, and occasionally, the produce is just bad when you get it or not long after. I haven’t had this problem often, mostly with ginger and garlic. I do evaluate which meal has the most perishables when I get my box on Mondays and make those first. Apparently you can call customer service if this happens for a small credit, but I just use pre-diced garlic or powdered ginger when this has happened to me.

So, this would be a 4.5 out of 5 except for... as discussed above... I end up tossing out HF vegetables on occasion I know I hate and won’t eat, and they won’t let me make substitutions.

But also... cooking for myself... when I make a big batch of something that lasts 4 - 6 portions... more often than I’d like to admit, the last portion or two would never get eaten. Sometimes I’d TELL myself I’d eat them in a week or so and freeze them only to throw it all away months later.

So let’s call this a 4 out of 5. Overall, significantly less food waste with HF.

Reason Five: Save Time

I thought that doing HF would mean less prep-work and less time in the kitchen, especially with their easy-to-follow recipes and pre-measured ingredients.

So in that way, yes, time is saved, and it so again takes that mental load off in a lot of ways of not having to make all those pesky decisions. The materials you’re working with and what you need to do are all Right There for you. It’s really, nice.

As a side note, like I said I’m a good cook, and I haven’t had any problems following along anything I’ve made, but there were a few things I think are more of a moderate skill level and could be a little challenging for newcomers. But then, I see people on the HF subreddit all the time saying they learned to cook with no skill and they find the recipes easy so... we’re good there.

However, Saving Time loses points for two big reasons:

First, I’m only making two portions of each meal. Which, ok... this is my decision. I could order four portions per meal. But then... hey that’s taking big points away on the “variety” front.

The Vegetable Chopping / prep work on a lot of the recipes often takes 10 - 20 minutes, depending on the number of fruits and veggies. So yay for meeting Goal #3 (more veggies) even if it is balanced out by Goal #5.

And unfortunately, most meals end up taking up more dishes than I’d like to clean up (usually at least a pan and baking sheet, sometimes also a pot. Plus knife, cutting board, tongs, stirring spoon, maybe a zester, etc.) So no time is saved on cleanup, either.

Mostly where time is saved is having to pick out recipes and making sure you have/buy all the ingredients. Not much is saved in the actual cooking.

I do, however, enjoy the time I spent cooking and the knowledge that I’m gonna make something good, so we’ll give it a bit back, there.

As a time saver, I’d give HF a 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Reason Six: Save Money

Y’all, Hello Fresh is expensive. Honestly the #1 reason I re-evaluate whether I want to keep going with it every few weeks is the cost. Even though I can afford it.

For basically six meals a week, I’m paying $63 for the food, plus $9 for the shipping.

Which means I’m paying $12 a meal. For food I make myself.

Not cheap. A luxury.

Where I don’t feel quite so bad about it is the fact that... for the most part, I am wasting a lot less food. Except, as mentioned, when I can’t swap out vegetables I hate for something I’d actually eat.

So that makes it irk me even more when I am throwing out vegetables I really hate, because they’re expensive vegetables.

Also that price tag is motivation to make and eat every meal.

Overall, my grocery bills have gone down... honestly pretty significantly. Because I’m not overbuying food! Now, they haven’t gone down enough to even out the cost for Hello Fresh... I’m still probably spending about 50% more overall for each dinner now than I was before.

This isn’t a cost savings. It’s an expense, but one I can afford. And part of writing out this post is to remind myself to decide when the experience is no longer worth the expense.

1 out of 5 stars.

Reason Seven: Eat Better

I would like to challenge myself to define “Better” because that’s all I wrote down when I made the list.

Healthier? Eeeehhhhhh.... maybe? But not much.

Hello Fresh does offer lighter choices, and sometimes I pick those because they look good and are filled with things I will eat!

But I’m just as likely to pick the most calor-ific things on the menu.

HF also adds a lot of Sour Cream to their recipes, and encourage you to salt and butter your food liberally. I try to cut down on some of this where I think it’s too much. But sometimes there’s not much to cut out and still have the meal you ordered.

But also I’m not eating any worse calorie-wise than I was before, probably. And overall I’m eating a lot more “real food” instead of “packaged food” and fast food than I was.... especially pre-pandemic. And again, I AM eating a lot more vegetables, so.... that’s... better?

If I define better as Tastier, yeah, I’m doing pretty good in that regard, haha.

So Better as in healthier: 2.5 of 5 stars.

Better as in tastier: 4 out of 5 stars.

Overall Scoring & Tips

Okay, overall that comes out to a 3.18 out of 5, which I’d round up to a 3.5... which is a pretty good score for how I feel about HF overall. My current plan is to keep doing it until I go back to working in the office again, and re-evaluate. For now, it works for me.

IF YOU WANT TO TRY IT, this is my referral link, you’ll get $70 off over a month’s worth of meals (so like, $20 or something off 3 boxes and $10 off the last one, something like that.

I also have four “Free box” codes to give out, PM me if you want one of those. I don’t think those are compatible with the $70 off link, but it might be a box of completely free food for you? I don’t know how it works, but this may be the better deal? PM me.

If you decide to go for it, here’s a few tips:

Every week or two, go in and choose your meals, don’t let HF choose for you unless you really don’t care.

Read the ingredient list and make sure there’s not too much stuff you don’t like coming in a meal.

The extras are pretty expensive and not really worth it.

Plan on each meal taking about 45 minutes to cook from start to finish including chopping vegetables. Another 10 - 20 with cleanup depending if you have to handwash dishes or not.

Look for ways to make the meal healthier, especially if it encourages you to add more butter and salt near the end. You probably do NOT need to do so.

Buy a decent pepper. I love McCormick’s Peppercorn Medley pepper grinder. Also sea salt grinder is my personal salt preference.

Add some of your own seasonings. I buy a jar of pre-diced garlic (yes yes I know the criticisms of the stuff but it’s easy) and throw in a half tablespoon or so of that into a lot of recipes. Also there are a lot of potatoes that they want you to just cook with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw some garlic or onion salt on them, or some Lawry’s Seasoning Salt or steak salt of your choice for some variety.

Your basic 2 quart pot, 8 - 12″ frying pan and cookie sheet, plus a cutting board, decent veggie knife, and typical kitchen utensil set are all you need. However, a decent meat thermometer and a zester that collects the zest as you go are both highly recommended.

A sieve and very small rice cooker have also been a lifesaver for making good rice that doesn’t get overcooked.

#personal post tag thingy #hello fresh #food #meal kit #meal kits

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porta-decumana · 4 years ago

Text

Rules: Bold/color the things that you relate to and then tag some people to play.

tagged by: @frostmantle

I write: daily | most days | a few times a week | a few times a month | random

Lately I’ve been averaging at least 2k words a day but I’ve been in a huge writing mood. I would say on average, I tend to write more days than I don’t but it depends on what is going on. I try not to write if I’m feeling ill or if IRL is hectic. Additionally, if there’s FFXIV patch hype (particularly an even number patch), I’ll get distracted from writing because I’ll be busy playing FFXIV.

Typically I write whenever I feel inspired to. That used to be in the evenings but since I’ve been raiding, it’s usually more like early afternoon/night time.

If I sit down to write and I find the words aren’t coming out, I usually default to playing my Switch instead. So a typical day would have me write several thousand words. On a super productive day, I’ve written full 15 page chapters (Times New Roman, 12 font, 1.5 spacing, no spaces between paragraphs) in a single sitting. It really just depends on what I have going on and what the mood is.

I tend to write scenes: in chronological order with no skipping | mostly in order but with some filler/skipping | whatever scene I feel like | who knows what’s gonna come out????

I used to be hardcore “no scene skipping” as I wrote but I’ve changed my opinion in the last year on that. I used to treat the special scenes I was yearning to write as a reward for dealing with the scenes I didn’t want to write. Now, I write things mostly in order but occasionally I’ll draft out future scenes with the mentality that they will probably change if they end up not flowing well with the full fic. For example, I had written out a version of a flashback scene between Gaius and a young Livia a few weeks ago but I ended up changing it as I was doing research and as I got to the part where the scene would fit in. I don’t typically write scenes out of place that are too far ahead of the fic, however. A couple chapters at best.

Anything emotion or dialogue-driven is easiest for me. Emotion-driven stuff is probably my favorite to write. Or emotional-and-slightly-spooky. Fun fact: In my writing, I used to add a lot of notes about heart rate and I still do sometimes. But most of that stems from the fact that I lived a few years with heart palpitations and had no idea it was abnormal to constantly feel your heartbeat. So that’s fun. It’s all under control now.

I find that I struggle the most with action (namely fight sequences) but I’ve been told my action scenes are still enjoyable to read, so that’s good! It’s hard sometimes trying to put what I’m picturing into words without being too wordy. If the action scene gets too wordy, then it starts to feel like it’s dragging so... I just don’t wanna be too descriptive and wordy and take away from the action. Exposition can be tricky too. Same with transition sequences.

I have the benefit of having both a laptop and a PC to write on so I pretty much ditched writing with pen and paper years and years ago. My hand cramps so easily now, it’s embarrassing. I usually write in Google Docs or Microsoft Word.

When I take a break from writing, it usually: lasts a few days | a few weeks | a few months | it’s kind of random

I haven’t taken a break in some time, I would say. Probably a couple of months? I take them whenever I want for however long I want to prevent burn out. Usually not much longer than a few weeks but it can vary. I actually told myself I was going to take a break on all non-FFXIV writing this month then I worked on something non-FFXIV related anyways. So it’s just kinda on a whim when I decide to take a break.

I have this issue when I read something like a book or another fic, I immediately wanna go write. So I try to avoid reading too much because I want the break to be full of me not thinking about my WIPs and thinking about everything else. I usually recharge with video games or doing other things. I’m going to be DMing a DnD campaign soon so that’s one way I’ve worked on being creative but not on my writing projects. Another way is just sketching. I’m not good at art by any means but sometimes having a podcast and sketching is just good for the soul. Playing video games also helps a ton. Recently, I’ve been playing Minecraft, Bravely Default 2, and, of course, FFXIV.

I would say the frequency that I write is great but sometimes I worry that my style is too repetitive. I want to focus on reading more stuff because I feel that’s the way I improve the most. It’s impossible for me to read without analyzing how authors tell a story-- syntax, method, how they spin their narrative, etc. But again, the biggest problem I have with reading is that as soon as I’ve started, I just wanna go write. I gotta get that urge under control.

Whew that was fun! I don’t think I’ve ever really thought this hard on my writing habits before!

Tagging: Anyone who sees this because idk who’s been tagged yet lol

#ramblings //#writing #fic talk

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ultrahamilham · 4 years ago

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You tagged me in a thing and I had a stroke, bless you

I get all Pikachu meme whenever I see you in my dash and you've referred to me and acknowledged my existence because it is literally the best thing ever, I have a mini stroke every time

Three ships: Jamilton, Jamilams and Jamilmads (would've said lams but then it just sounds like I'm saying the same ship in three different ways lol)

Last song: Uhh, I don't listen to music much, but Ultimately by Khai dreams

Last movie: The Hunchback of Notre dame

Currently craving: Sushi, oddly enough (I haven't had it in about nine years but still, want)

Currently reading: The Da Vinci code, and about five different fanfictions

About a very late answer to your question (My family has COVID, which is shocking to hear, or so I'm told, but they're recovering and they fortunately had a mild case and no one has any history of disease so they're going to be okay! That's what the doctor said and I'm praying), Taco hell made me laugh really hard when I read it and really lifted my spirits because I remember being in not a great place when I started it but it made me smile which was like, a thing for me, and don't judge me but I think The three way was probably my favourite and I don't want to think about what that says about me but it was really because I love works that are that long (around 50k is always my sweet spot). I'm not sure if I'm remembering right and I'm so so sorry if I'm getting the title song wrong but that one Jamilton fic with uh, Gucci and fendi in the title was really fun to read ;-;

I also remeber the first work of yours I ever read was this comfort Whamilton around 1.5 or 2k where it starts raining and Alexander is on edge but George comforts him- Okay, I'm ranting now, apologies. ;-; (idk You're super cool and I want to talk to you like, normally, but you'll hateee me and I don't want that and so here)

I never really get a chance to respond as soon as I'd like, BUT I never get to and if you don't want to know/care about my life- please skip to the next paragraph thank you. So, I did end up watching Snowpiercer! I watched all ten episodes in one day which is iffy to say the least, but I'm still alive! I did love it. And I've been alright- a bit anxious with everything, but I've been giving my tests and uni and stuff. Yesterday, I was about to go to the vet when u realised about two minutes into the ride that I forgot my dog so that was embarrassing. Almost competing with the time I dropped my phone and then followed it, dropping to my knees and immediately bursting into tears (Nothing even happened to my phone!). So if you read this, thank you again.

I wanted to ask how you were doing too! If you don't mind xxx

And as for the fanfic writer asks, would you mind answering 50 ;-;

Wgjfvqkcwkh also I heard about you and Henni getting married so CONGRATULATIONS that is the most amazing, sweetest thing and in honestly so f*cking happy for both of you. I audibly awwed when I saw that post and I can't believe I just remembered.

I'm so sorry this got out of hand with how long it is, I didn't mean for it to be ;-;

-shy anon, sincerely apologising for possibly ruining your day by oversharing and/or overstepping (also with love and congratulations for you and her)

I get the surprised pikachu face whenever you show up in my ask box ;-; It always makes me happy!!!

Okay but sushi is always good. The craving comes randomly for me as well. I didn’t crave it at all when I used to make it for a living, because I got so tired of it, but now I crave it every once in a while lol it’s really good ;-;

I really hope everyone is doing okay! COVID is scary and it’s no joke. Having it before was horrible for me and I would never wish it on anyone. I hope everyone including you is okay ;-;

I’m glad Taco Hell did what I was meaning for it to do! It’s meant to be lighthearted and make people laugh. It’s based off of my life and it’s actual situations I end up in all the time. It’s quite amusing lol

I would never judge you. The Three Way is literally the one fic I am most proud of. I could never judge you. I literally go back and read it every once in a while and go like “I made that... Holy fuck...”

Oh! Gucci Not Fendi is the title. I’m glad you liked it!!!

Rant all you want! I adore that Whamilton fic ;-;

Seriously, my dear, I can promise you that I won’t hate you at all. Believe me, I really won’t. I’m probably the most awkward and annoying person anyone will ever know and I overshare like everything. People know more about me than they really should.. Lol

I care about your life, I was the one that asked you to tell me! But honestly, snowpiercer was soooo good... Like I tried to binge it all in one day but I was trying to write as well and it didn’t go over well lmao, snowpiercer ended up winning! I’m really glad you watched it!!!

That whole forgetting your dog thing is a mood. Today I forgot to turn on the food heaters and I realized it right before it was too late. Almost lost $200 worth of meat... Oops... Lmao

I do that with my phone if I drop it even if it’s okay. I just freak the fuck out and cry before I know if there really is an issue

Also I’m doing good! I decided to just lay back and relax tonight so I’m having a few drinks and I’m gonna watch random shit lol I was up for 33 hours the night before last and slept for 15 hours after. I can’t recommend doing that, especially not when you’re like 24. I’m too old for that shit.

Hell yeah I can do 50! I will give you a sneak peak at the 3rd part of the three way... .-. It will be posted on Oct 19th!!!

Here it is. This is seriously NSFW lol:

Alexander looked down at Thomas and ran the fingers of his free hand through Thomas' hair. He licked his lips as he watched Thomas work his tongue expertly inside George. "You're such a good boy Thomas, you're already wrecking him." He purred.

Thomas let out a low moan and kept up the work, getting a little more aggressive. Alexander could feel himself getting hard in his pants at the sight coupled with George's shameless moans. Alexander looked back at George's face and grinned a bit. "Are you proud of us, Daddy?" He asked.

George pressed his forehead against the headrest and panted as Thomas wrecked him. He tried to push back against Thomas to no avail. "Fuck… Y-yes… Yes you two did so good… Please… Please do as you wish… Whatever you choose, do it… I will take whatever you give me, you de-deserve it…" George bit out desperately.

Alexander grinned in delight at that. He looked at Thomas who looked just as excited from what George just said. He then touched Thomas' shoulder. "Alright, that's enough babe. I'm going to stretch him, then we can give him a good spanking. Why don't you undress for me? I have a little treat for you." He purred. -END of the preview.

Thank you so much! We are so freaking happy that it’s happening. We were planning it more today! It’s so amazing ugh.

I appreciate it all the same! It’s not too long for me at all!! Don’t you worry my dear <3 you didn’t overstep at all!

#shy anon #sweet bean

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mindthump · 4 years ago

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Language supermodel: How GPT-3 is quietly ushering in the A.I. revolution https://ift.tt/3mAgOO1

OpenAI

OpenAI’s GPT-2 text-generating algorithm was once considered too dangerous to release. Then it got released — and the world kept on turning.

In retrospect, the comparatively small GPT-2 language model (a puny 1.5 billion parameters) looks paltry next to its sequel, GPT-3, which boasts a massive 175 billion parameters, was trained on 45 TB of text data, and cost a reported $12 million (at least) to build.

“Our perspective, and our take back then, was to have a staged release, which was like, initially, you release the smaller model and you wait and see what happens,” Sandhini Agarwal, an A.I. policy researcher for OpenAI told Digital Trends. “If things look good, then you release the next size of model. The reason we took that approach is because this is, honestly, [not just uncharted waters for us, but it’s also] uncharted waters for the entire world.”

Jump forward to the present day, nine months after GPT-3’s release last summer, and it’s powering upward of 300 applications while generating a massive 4.5 billion words per day. Seeded with only the first few sentences of a document, it’s able to generate seemingly endless more text in the same style — even including fictitious quotes.

Is it going to destroy the world? Based on past history, almost certainly not. But it is making some game-changing applications of A.I. possible, all while posing some very profound questions along the way.

What is it good for? Absolutely everything

Recently, Francis Jervis, the founder of a startup called Augrented, used GPT-3 to help people struggling with their rent to write letters negotiating rent discounts. “I’d describe the use case here as ‘style transfer,'” Jervis told Digital Trends. “[It takes in] bullet points, which don’t even have to be in perfect English, and [outputs] two to three sentences in formal language.”

Powered by this ultra-powerful language model, Jervis’s tool allows renters to describe their situation and the reason they need a discounted settlement. “Just enter a couple of words about why you lost income, and in a few seconds you’ll get a suggested persuasive, formal paragraph to add to your letter,” the company claims.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. When Aditya Joshi, a machine learning scientist and former Amazon Web Services engineer, first came across GPT-3, he was so blown away by what he saw that he set up a website, www.gpt3examples.com, to keep track of the best ones.

“Shortly after OpenAI announced their API, developers started tweeting impressive demos of applications built using GPT-3,” he told Digital Trends. “They were astonishingly good. I built [my website] to make it easy for the community to find these examples and discover creative ways of using GPT-3 to solve problems in their own domain.”

Fully interactive synthetic personas with GPT-3 and https://t.co/ZPdnEqR0Hn ????

They know who they are, where they worked, who their boss is, and so much more. This is not your father's bot… pic.twitter.com/kt4AtgYHZL

— Tyler Lastovich (@tylerlastovich) August 18, 2020

Joshi points to several demos that really made an impact on him. One, a layout generator, renders a functional layout by generating JavaScript code from a simple text description. Want a button that says “subscribe” in the shape of a watermelon? Fancy some banner text with a series of buttons the colors of the rainbow? Just explain them in basic text, and Sharif Shameem’s layout generator will write the code for you. Another, a GPT-3 based search engine created by Paras Chopra, can turn any written query into an answer and a URL link for providing more information. Another, the inverse of Francis Jervis’ by Michael Tefula, translates legal documents into plain English. Yet another, by Raphaël Millière, writes philosophical essays. And one other, by Gwern Branwen, can generate creative fiction.

“I did not expect a single language model to perform so well on such a diverse range of tasks, from language translation and generation to text summarization and entity extraction,” Joshi said. “In one of my own experiments, I used GPT-3 to predict chemical combustion reactions, and it did so surprisingly well.”

More where that came from

The transformative uses of GPT-3 don’t end there, either. Computer scientist Tyler Lastovich has used GPT-3 to create fake people, including backstory, who can then be interacted with via text. Meanwhile, Andrew Mayne has shown that GPT-3 can be used to turn movie titles into emojis. Nick Walton, chief technology officer of Latitude, the studio behind GPT-generated text adventure game AI Dungeon recently did the same to see if it could turn longer strings of text description into emoji. And Copy.ai, a startup that builds copywriting tools with GPT-3, is tapping the model for all it’s worth, with a monthly recurring revenue of $67,000 as of March — and a recent $2.9 million funding round.

“Definitely, there was surprise and a lot of awe in terms of the creativity people have used GPT-3 for,” Sandhini Agarwal, an A.I. policy researcher for OpenAI told Digital Trends. “So many use cases are just so creative, and in domains that even I had not foreseen, it would have much knowledge about. That’s interesting to see. But that being said, GPT-3 — and this whole direction of research that OpenAI pursued — was very much with the hope that this would give us an A.I. model that was more general-purpose. The whole point of a general-purpose A.I. model is [that it would be] one model that could like do all these different A.I. tasks.”

Many of the projects highlight one of the big value-adds of GPT-3: The lack of training it requires. Machine learning has been transformative in all sorts of ways over the past couple of decades. But machine learning requires a large number of training examples to be able to output correct answers. GPT-3, on the other hand, has a “few shot ability” that allows it to be taught to do something with only a small handful of examples.

Plausible bull***t

GPT-3 is highly impressive. But it poses challenges too. Some of these relate to cost: For high-volume services like chatbots, which could benefit from GPT-3’s magic, the tool might be too pricey to use. (A single message could cost 6 cents which, while not exactly bank-breaking, certainly adds up.)

Others relate to its widespread availability, meaning that it’s likely going to be tough to build a startup exclusively around since fierce competition will likely drive down margins.

Christina Morillo/Pexels

Another is the lack of memory; its context window runs a little under 2,000 words at a time before, like Guy Pierce’s character in the movie Memento, its memory is reset. “This significantly limits the length of text it can generate, roughly to a short paragraph per request,” Lastovich said. “Practically speaking, this means that it is unable to generate long documents while still remembering what happened at the beginning.”

Perhaps the most notable challenge, however, also relates to its biggest strength: Its confabulation abilities. Confabulation is a term frequently used by doctors to describe the way in which some people with memory issues are able to fabricate information that appears initially convincing, but which doesn’t necessarily stand up to scrutiny upon closer inspection. GPT-3’s ability to confabulate is, depending upon the context, a strength and a weakness. For creative projects, it can be great, allowing it to riff on themes without concern for anything as mundane as truth. For other projects, it can be trickier.

Francis Jervis of Augrented refers to GPT-3’s ability to “generate plausible bullshit.” Nick Walton of AI Dungeon said: “GPT-3 is very good at writing creative text that seems like it could have been written by a human … One of its weaknesses, though, is that it can often write like it’s very confident — even if it has no idea what the answer to a question is.”

Back in the Chinese Room

In this regard, GPT-3 returns us to the familiar ground of John Searle’s Chinese Room. In 1980, Searle, a philosopher, published one of the best-known A.I. thought experiments, focused on the topic of “understanding.” The Chinese Room asks us to imagine a person locked in a room with a mass of writing in a language that they do not understand. All they recognize are abstract symbols. The room also contains a set of rules that show how one set of symbols corresponds with another. Given a series of questions to answer, the room’s occupant must match question symbols with answer symbols. After repeating this task many times, they become adept at performing it — even though they have no clue what either set of symbols means, merely that one corresponds to the other.

GPT-3 is a world away from the kinds of linguistic A.I. that existed at the time Searle was writing. However, the question of understanding is as thorny as ever.

“This is a very controversial domain of questioning, as I’m sure you’re aware, because there’s so many differing opinions on whether, in general, language models … would ever have [true] understanding,” said OpenAI’s Sandhini Agarwal. “If you ask me about GPT-3 right now, it performs very well sometimes, but not very well at other times. There is this randomness in a way about how meaningful the output might seem to you. Sometimes you might be wowed by the output, and sometimes the output will just be nonsensical. Given that, right now in my opinion … GPT-3 doesn’t appear to have understanding.”

An added twist on the Chinese Room experiment today is that GPT-3 is not programmed at every step by a small team of researchers. It’s a massive model that’s been trained on an enormous dataset consisting of, well, the internet. This means that it can pick up inferences and biases that might be encoded into text found online. You’ve heard the expression that you’re an average of the five people you surround yourself with? Well, GPT-3 was trained on almost unfathomable amounts of text data from multiple sources, including books, Wikipedia, and other articles. From this, it learns to predict the next word in any sequence by scouring its training data to see word combinations used before. This can have unintended consequences.

Feeding the stochastic parrots

This challenge with large language models was first highlighted in a groundbreaking paper on the subject of so-called stochastic parrots. A stochastic parrot — a term coined by the authors, who included among their ranks the former co-lead of Google’s ethical A.I. team, Timnit Gebru — refers to a large language model that “haphazardly [stitches] together sequences of linguistic forms it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning.”

“Having been trained on a big portion of the internet, it’s important to acknowledge that it will carry some of its biases,” Albert Gozzi, another GPT-3 user, told Digital Trends. “I know the OpenAI team is working hard on mitigating this in a few different ways, but I’d expect this to be an issue for [some] time to come.”

OpenAI’s countermeasures to defend against bias include a toxicity filter, which filters out certain language or topics. OpenAI is also working on ways to integrate human feedback in order to be able to specify which areas not to stray into. In addition, the team controls access to the tool so that certain negative uses of the tool will not be granted access.

“One of the reasons perhaps you haven’t seen like too many of these malicious users is because we do have an intensive review process internally,” Agarwal said. “The way we work is that every time you want to use GPT-3 in a product that would actually be deployed, you have to go through a process where a team — like, a team of humans — actually reviews how you want to use it. … Then, based on making sure that it is not something malicious, you will be granted access.”

Some of this is challenging, however — not least because bias isn’t always a clear-cut case of using certain words. Jervis notes that, at times, his GPT-3 rent messages can “tend towards stereotypical gender [or] class assumptions.” Left unattended, it might assume the subject’s gender identity on a rent letter, based on their family role or job. This may not be the most grievous example of A.I. bias, but it highlights what happens when large amounts of data are ingested and then probabilistically reassembled in a language model.

“Bias and the potential for explicit returns absolutely exist and require effort from developers to avoid,” Tyler Lastovich said. “OpenAI does flag potentially toxic results, but ultimately it does add a liability customers have to think hard about before putting the model into production. A specifically difficult edge case to develop around is the model’s propensity to lie — as it has no concept of true or false information.”

Language models and the future of A.I.

Nine months after its debut, GPT-3 is certainly living up to its billing as a game changer. What once was purely potential has shown itself to be potential realized. The number of intriguing use cases for GPT-3 highlights how a text-generating A.I. is a whole lot more versatile than that description might suggest.

Not that it’s the new kid on the block these days. Earlier this year, GPT-3 was overtaken as the biggest language model. Google Brain debuted a new language model with some 1.6 trillion parameters, making it nine times the size of OpenAI’s offering. Nor is this likely to be the end of the road for language models. These are extremely powerful tools — with the potential to be transformative to society, potentially for better and for worse.

Challenges certainly exist with these technologies, and they’re ones that companies like OpenAI, independent researchers, and others, must continue to address. But taken as a whole, it’s hard to argue that language models are not turning to be one of the most interesting and important frontiers of artificial intelligence research.

Who would’ve thought text generators could be so profoundly important? Welcome to the future of artificial intelligence.

#IFTTT #Feedly #good to know #tech #hmmm #TIL #science #future

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poemsforpersephone · 5 years ago

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Over the course of the past year I’ve read over 70 books. Some haven’t quite lived up to expectations but the 10 below stuck in my mind for long enough to make it onto this list. I’ve written a few details about each to explain why they stuck with me and why I think you should give them a shot.

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

Rating: 4.5/5

Brief Synopsis: In 1859, ex-East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall after sustaining an injury that almost cost him his leg and something is wrong; a statue moves, his grandfather’s pines explode, and his brother accuses him of madness. When the India Office recruits Merrick for an expedition to fetch quinine—essential for the treatment of malaria—from deep within Peru, he knows it’s a terrible idea. Nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who’s made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is desperate to escape everything at home, so he sets off, against his better judgment, for a tiny mission colony on the edge of the Amazon where a salt line on the ground separates town from forest.

Favourite Quote: “There are things you wouldn’t do, if you had a motherless child waiting at home. Or with you. Places where you would turn back.”

Why This Book: I’m not usually a fan of historical books, but I absolutely loved this one. The way the world is written, the characters, the unfolding of the plot. Everything just worked together so well. Not sure if it’s canon queer or not but there is strong m/m relationship vibes from two of the characters, like in my eyes they romantically loved each other, im just not sure if it was intended that way by the author or not.

The Wicked King and The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black

Rating: 5

Brief Synopsis: (of the first book in the series, for context) Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

Favourite Quote: ““If he thought I was bad, I would be worse. If he thought I was cruel, I would be horrifying.”

Why These Books: The entire series is just pure gold. The audibooks are fantastic, but more than anything it’s the story, and the voice of the main character, and of her family and enemies. I love books which work along fey story lines and worlds, so this was perfect for me. f/f secondary character relationship.

The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed

Rating: 5

Brief Synopsis: Three misfits come together to avenge the rape of a fellow classmate and in the process trigger a change in the misogynist culture at their high school transforming the lives of everyone around them in this searing and timely story.

Favourite Quote: “One small kindness in a sea of cruelty, one word of truth among lies, these are the seeds that can change the world.”

Why This Book: Jesus christ this BOOK. Girls protecting girls is literally my most favourite thing in the entire world. Coming together, standing together, fighting together. And diversity too! If you add girls protecting girls and queer girls into the same book you officially have my heart. I have goosebumps covering my arms and my heart is aching just thinking about this book.

The Last Sun and The Hanged Man by K.D. Edwards

Rating: 5 (who am I kidding, it’s a clear cut 10/5. I can’t put into words how much i love this series).

Brief Synopsis: Rune Saint John, last child of the fallen Sun Court, is hired to search for Lady Judgment's missing son, Addam, on New Atlantis, the island city where the Atlanteans moved after ordinary humans destroyed their original home.

Favourite Quote: uhhh can i like, list the entire contents of two whole books here? no? huh. alright. ““Didn’t you know what his father was like—what kind of ability Rune has inherited? Those aren’t just shoes to fill, it’s the whole fucking shoe factory. Don’t you ever doubt whether he can do what he says.”

Why These Books: They hit every single trope I love, the writing is fantastic and witty, and characters jump from the page and the plot keeps you ensnared and engrossed. The world is alive, and to top it off, the author is super nice and interacts with the fandom, which is always nice to see. m/m.

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Rating: 5

Brief Synopsis: What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?

Favourite Quote: “That's the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.”

Why This Book: Where do I even start? How do I sum up everything I feel for this book in one single paragraph? I cannot write down the noises of joy I made throughout reading it. I can't draw either of the two times i actually hugged it. This book. God. This book. Just go read it, okay? m/m.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Rating: 5

Brief Synopsis: A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens.

Favourite Quote: “All the world is a cage in a young girl's eyes.”

Why This Book: It’s massive, an actual tomb that could damage someone if you hit them with it, and from start to finish it ensnared me with its rich world and realistic characters and AND!!! The diversity!!!! The women in this book!!! I wanna marry them all!!!!!!!! I’ll be their loving wife as long as they’ll have me!!!!!!!! like legit the definition of "i would let that woman step on me" im so gay for them ALL. f/f.

Salt Magic Skin Magic by Lee Welch

Rating: 4

Brief Synopsis: Lord Thornby has been trapped on his father’s isolated Yorkshire estate for a year. There are no bars or chains; he simply can’t leave. His sanity is starting to fray. When industrial magician John Blake arrives to investigate a case of witchcraft, he finds the peculiar, arrogant Thornby as alarming as he is attractive. John soon finds himself caught up in a dark fairytale, where all the rules of magic—and love—are changed.

Why This Book: I absolutely devoured this book. I listened to the audio book version on 1.5 speed most of the way through and even popped into 1.75 and 2 speed because I needed to know what happened so badly. I had my suspicions and they were proved correct and it was so beautiful and lovely. m/m and absolutely wonderful.

The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargave

Rating: 4/5

Brief Synopsis: On the eve of her divining, the day she'll discover her fate, seventeen-year-old Lil and her twin sister Kizzy are captured and enslaved by the cruel Boyar Valcar, taken far away from their beloved traveller community.

Favourite Quote: “I could see the roots of the trees below me seeking water, and the leaves above me seeking sun.”

Why This Book: Beautifully crafted, effortlessly enthralling and dark like vampire stories should be. I’m torn about the ending but the lead up? The characters? The plot? All so well put together. The bond between the two sisters was strong, well written and beautiful. It’s f/f also, which is awesome.

#2019 book rec list #book recs #lgbt book recs #lgbt books

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ascension-soliloquy · 5 years ago

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Mistborn first read - book 2 - The Well of Ascension part 1.5 chapters 6-11

[Spoilers for the chapters covered, and all previous chapters]

Predictions (in addition to the ones previously listed):

•Who is the mystery Watcher who helped Vin? Maybe the Inquisitor in the first book was lying, and it is Vin’s brother Reen. I guess I’m holding out hope that he turns up alive, because all we have seen of him so far is in Vin’s memories. On some level I think I sort of relate to him, because I’m the older brother of two sisters, although my relationship with them is considerably better than Reen’s, and, unlike Vin’s sister, both of them are still alive.

•What does the new alloy do? Since aluminum strips away the other metals an Allomancer has ingested, maybe this one makes them last longer. Either that, or perhaps it’s the key to using Allomancy and Feruchemy together.

Part 1.5: Heir of the Survivor (chapters 6-11)

Chapter 6

Vin and Ham spar. Elend, Clubs, and Spook watch. Spook apparently sneaks around in disguise. Spook says someone is spreading rumors about atium being kept in Luthadel, probably to make opposing kingdoms attack the city. Vin beats Ham. Afterwards he tells the other men, “Vin’s a thin little thing, but when she burns pewter, she grows several times stronger... She packs all that strength into a small body, and doesn’t have to bother with the weight of massive muscles. She’s like...an insect. Far stronger than her mass...would indicate. So, when she jumps, she can jump.”

Elend thinks about how the group that had followed Kelsier is able to laugh and seem to have a good time even in dire situations. “They still faced an army several times larger than their own... Yet, if anyone could survive such a situation, it would be Kelsier’s crew.”

OreSeur can still speak, even with a dog mouth. He finds the new body offensive and degrading. Vin thinks he’s being forward and belligerent. She still thinks of him as Renoux. “Anyone can claim loyalty, Vin thought. If someone has a ‘Contract’ to ensure their honor, then all the better. That makes the surprise more poignant when they do turn on you.” Vin agrees to spend more time with OreSeur, even if she’s not sure that’s what she wants.

All this hinting at a betrayal makes it almost certain in my mind that there will be one at some point in this story, but the idea that it will be the kandra could be a red herring to throw us off the trail of the actual betrayer. Earlier in the chapter, Elend sees a look of jealousy cross Spook’s face. Maybe he’ll be the betrayer.

I looked up pictures of wolfhounds online. Man, those things are huge! If Vin is small as described, it’s comical thinking of her carrying an unconscious one over her shoulder.

Chapter 7

Sazed tries to teach skaa how to write, but they have no real desire for learning. “The Lord Ruler was dead, but the story did not seem finished. Was there something he had overlooked? Something larger...than the Lord Ruler? Something so large...that it was effectively invisible?” You mean something like the Deepness? Nah, couldn’t be.

“He knew that Vin and the others saw him as docile, but compared with other Keepers he was a wild man.” *sigh...I’m trying so hard to resist...but not really. If you have read the Wheel of Time, you probably know which character I’m thinking of right now, so I’m not even going to say it.

Creepy McNightmare Marsh shows up to scare the bejeezus out of the villagers, and tell Sazed to come with him to the Conventical of Seran, a Ministry stronghold. Sazed thinks about what knowledge he may find there.

[The next paragraph contains spoilers for Wheel of Time book #2 The Great Hunt, Star Trek The Next Generation season 3 and 4, and Doctor Who season 8 (12th Doctor)]

“...my brethren...” Clues of betrayal, or just a new idiosyncrasy? Wait...don’t tell me...they’re not going to turn Sazed into an Inquisitor, are they? F*** it, I can’t resist the WOT comparisons. Until I find out otherwise, that’s just my point of reference at the moment. This just feels like [WOT book #2 spoiler] Liandrin leading the girls away to Toman Head. I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough if I’m right or wrong. I suppose other references I could make would be the [Star Trek TNG] Borg capturing Picard, or [Doctor Who season 8] Danny Pink and the Cybermen. That is if what I think is happening actually does happen. Of course, both of those characters still ended up being turned back to the good side, but then again they didn’t have spikes driven through their f***in’ eye sockets!

Anyway, I overthink things way too much, and this chapter has me on edge. I’m as paranoid as Vin right now. I’m sure you can tell I don’t trust Marsh. I haven’t ever since he got the Obligator tattoos in book one (I shudder to think of what Marsh was doing that impressed the Obligators and Inquisitors so much), and this chapter just magnified that distrust exponentially.

Chapter 8

Vin tests OreSeur’s abilities as a dog. He’s faster and has sharper senses than he ever did in human form. He keeps up with her easily. The Watcher turns up and Vin decides to go after him. Attack someone who has already helped you in a fight; alienate potential allies; great idea Vin! They fight a little, and then chase each other. The Watcher finds a hiding spot, and Vin figures out where it is by burning bronze. She burns duralumin while burning other metals to see what it does. She feels what seems like a massive explosion, but after a moment of shock realizes that the alloy had amplified the other metals she was burning, made their effects overwhelmingly intense, and depleted them quickly.

OreSeur catches up with her as she sits there stunned. He gives her the belt that has more vials of metal in it so she can replenish what she just burned away. As she looks to the room where the Watcher had been hiding, he drops down close to her. They have a cryptic conversation, trying to figure each other out.

“Who are you?”...

“An enemy...”

“Why, then, did you help me fight those assassins?”

“Because...I’m also insane.”

After the Watcher leaves, OreSeur shows Vin that he can store her vials of metal in his flesh. Ew...helpful, but ew.

Chapter 9

Sazed thinks about how Marsh has changed. Marsh’s nickname according to Spook had been Ironeyes, which now seems prescient. Marsh seems to be concerned about Sazed wasting time in the countryside and thinks he should be helping his friends in Luthadel. Hmm...maybe I have been quick to judge Marsh, but still, I’m wary. I’ll reserve judgement until we see how the trip to Seran plays out. Maybe this conversation is meant to lull us into a false sense of safety before the trap is sprung.

I have noticed in my copy of the book that the map has different spellings than in the rest of the book. For example: Seran is spelled Searan on the map. In chapter 3 when Ham talks about the assassins that fought Vin he mentioned a place called Fadrex City, but on the map it says Fadex City. Is this a typo, or is it intentional?

Chapter 10

Elend is holding an assembly. Vin and Ham, among others, serve as security guards. Ham pats Vin affectionately on the shoulder and makes her uncomfortable. “Ham’s innocent gesture made her want to squirm. It seemed to her that people shouldn’t be so casual with the way that they touched others.” Vin and Ham have a discussion about politics. Vin is concerned about Elend giving away too much of his power to too many other people.

Elend gives a speech about their freedom as a nation, and how that freedom was in danger with the foreign army attacking. Elend asks for time to meet with Straff. The assembly degenerates into arguments. Elend keeps trying to get everyone to vote. Lord Penrod says they all know what kind of man Elend’s father is, and that if he wants the city, he will take it. He supports Elend’s proposal saying it may help them to not give up too much control when Straff takes over. They put it to a vote, and the proposal passes. Vin gets paranoid about potential assassins. Soldiers come to say a second army has arrived outside the city.

To be honest, this chapter was difficult to recap, as I wasn’t sure what was important to include and how to word it, so I did the best I could. Politics aren’t my strong suit. I’m sure there are political maneuverings going on behind the scenes with the characters involved in the assembly, but until it’s revealed, I can’t really comment on it.

Chapter 11

Ooo boy...this chapter is a doozy. I’ll see if I can even do it justice. Time to ramp up the paranoia like there wasn’t enough already!

The new army flies Cett’s banner, so it’s most likely hostile since the assassins Vin fought were traced back to Cett. Vin sees Breeze being chased and decides to go help him. She uses duralumin, this time effectively, to amplify pewter and steel to reach Breeze in time to fight off his pursuers. It didn’t take her long to gain control of this new alloy, did it? Masterful performance, I dare say.

When they get back to the city Breeze admits to spreading the rumors about atium in order to lure Cett’s army to come to Luthadel. He says he did this to cause a standoff between Cett’s and Straff’s armies. Neither will attack the city if either thinks the other will ally with Luthadel. This gives Luthadel time to negotiate with the armies.

Vin, Elend, and OreSeur are riding in a carriage. A guard comes to tell Elend that a body has been found in Vin’s room. This turns out to be the skeleton from the body that OreSeur discarded when he switched to the dog. Elend tells the guard that they know about the body, and asks him to dispose of it for them.

“He probably assumes I ate the person or something...Sucked the flesh right off his bones.” I laughed so hard at this part!

Then the guard asks what to do about the other body, they’re like, wait, what other body? He tells them they found another skeleton when they brought dogs in to sniff around to see if they could find the killer. They tell the guard to show them. When he brings them to it, Elend dismisses the guard. They figure out that it’s from another kandra, and that kandra is probably now impersonating someone close to them; someone from Kelsier’s crew.

Yeah...I can’t do that last part justice. Just reread that part of the chapter for yourself. Wow. So which of our friends got eaten by a body snatcher, and is now an impostor? Welp...I’m struggling to put together a coherent thought, so time for a cliffhanger.

(To be continued)

#brandon sanderson #mistborn #the well of ascension #fantasy #cosmere #vin #sazed #elend venture #mistborn liveblog

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epic-summaries · 5 years ago

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Classic Fiction Review: Finnegans Wake

Omg I had this saved in a google doc for months and forgot to post it.

Anyway to the review:

Let me tell you why I started reading this.

So, audible has daily deals and on St Patrick’s day they were selling this. I look at it and go oh I’ve heard of this book and I liked the one James Joyce short story I read (it was The Dead btw). I buy it. It was 3 dollars, how could I not?

Problem, I forgot from where I heard of this book.

Now, it’s on my reading list and it’s its turn to be listened too. It’s 6 in the morning and I’m sleep deprived, I start my car, drive and I start listening. And I��m like wtf?! This is when I remember from where I heard this book. It was a sparknotes article listing the hardest books your English teacher would make you read and this was number 1. As quoted in the article, if your English teacher gives you this, this means they hate you. Okay. https://www.sparknotes.com/blog/classic-novels-ranked-in-order-of-how-easy-they-are-to-study/

I usually don’t go in blind when reading something. Usually, I go on the Wikipedia page and read the intro paragraph, this way I know what I’m getting into. This is not the one book you go in blind! But I’m in it. I bought it and I started. I’m going to finish it. Man was it a ride and a half.

Now that I bought it and read both it in print and listened the an audiobook version (as well as had some time to process this), I’m writing this. I've been thinking about this book way too much.

Plot

Hahahahahahahahaha. What plot?! I think there’s a plot. Maybe? Sorta? It’s there? Hidden I think?

After I decided to buy this online I went to Amazon and Indigo (Canadian book retailer), and when you search Finnegan’s Wake, there was more books explaining the book then there are versions of this book. As well as their summary of the book are all different. I know academics like arguing about everything. But usually it’s about the interpretation of the plot or the interpretation of the characters, not what the bare bones plot is! So if academics can’t agree with what the fuck the plot is, I’m not going to be any help.

I’m also convinced that the plot doesn’t matter.

The Characters

There are characters in here. My favourite is the Jute and the Irishman’s conversation. Yeah. That’s not because of the characters but because of the dialogue.

There’s a character list but if you asked me to name them I would the Jute, the Irishman, I’m pretty sure there was a game show host (seriously I’m not sure if I hallucinated it but the book then becomes a game show at one point.) Someone says Humphrey Chimpden Earwick is the main character.

Tone and Style

This is why I liked this book so much. Which honestly it doesn’t feel right calling this a book. The best comparison I have is that is like one of those mordern paintings. You know the ones. The one with a dot on a white canvas and it represents something like the loneliness we feel because of the crushing weight of capitalism or something. That painting. (Think Kamilah’s art in the Good Place.)

This is what I’m comparing this book too.

So, I have a spreadsheet of all the books I own on audible and I include genre. I called this Experimental. Might be an understatement. (If you haven’t noticed this is the first book I have read in this genre. Start with Virginia Woolf? Naw. Fyodor Dostoyevsky? Nope. Crime and Punishment? No. Ulysse would have probably been better. No, I just jumped into the deep end.)

Guys this piece of art starts in the middle of a sentence! That’s not a typo! It literally starts in the middle of a sentence! Then, want to know how it ends? Which the beginning of this sentence. It’s a never ending loop of surrealism!

These are the ramblings of a madman. A man so high on his own hubris he never stopped to think if he should write this? Or maybe Carl Jung was right and he was really schizophrenic? I highly doubt it because you don’t diagnose people through their writings.

And I loved it. I never enjoyed feeling stupid more then engaging in this book. Am I masochist?

I finally found a book harder to recommend then Les Misérables! Seriously, I have no idea if I recommend reading this book.

The audible version which btw is abridged kind of, there are many copies out there. I usually listen to books at 1.25 or 1.5. This I suggest keeping it at normal speed.

The physical copy I own. Look at that cover, I’m not the only one comparing it to Mordern Art.

#classic books #book review #seriously i still think about this book #basically i review books whoch break my brain #this and the golden ass #literature is messed up sometimes

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rigelmejo · 4 years ago

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literally reading hanshe feels like reading one of those graded readers now. past self u would be so happy. like actually. that’s not an exageration. nearly all ‘unknown’ words now are words I know but still look up because I forgot the tones (mo, wo, zuan 攥 means squeeze by the way the writer likes to write ‘squeezed his phone’ like i’d write ‘clutched’ and i always look it up to remember how its pronounced). or its the words ‘suspicious’ or ‘uncertain’ - whenever i see THOSE two words specifically i am not quite sure which word means which until i click the definition. the entire experience right now is a LOT like when i read Mandarin Companion Sherlock and a few chapters in new most of the words vaguely but needed confirmation/clarification.

Also present self me is a freaking coward lol ToT. now that its easier my brain is like ‘oh man Guardian oh man Silent Reading oh man Qi Ye idk if we’re ready for that’

when like. 8 months into learning i picked up those books and tried to read with no dictionary and followed the plot. yes it was exhausting and idk how the hell i managed it. but it was something that Could be done. So of COURSE now that I know more words and literally know a chapter takes 15-30 minutes to read (compared to 1-1.5 hours when I started reading Tian Ya Ke at first), i’m too lazy.

back then, i know what i was thinking. i was thinking ‘if i read a priest novel in a dictionary Reader app i’ll have to click a ton of words and i’m lazy’ so ‘its easier to just read a page with NO dictionary and guess some stuff from context and slide past the rest.’ Which... no it was not easier. Yes it took less physical movement on the part of my hands lol and opening/closing a definition pop up. But reading without a dictionary reference was extremely mentally draining. Hence i eventually made myself go read with the dictionary Reader anyway lol.

now my brain is like ‘well look how easy reading is on the Reader - i know nearly all words and just click at a glance for anything that might take effort to guess and bam its figured out.’ versus ‘oh god if i pick up a print book i will just have to feel mentally drained as i try to puzzle this out.’ even though... i read print Guardian like... 3 weeks ago without a dictionary just fine. i’m just lazy. it wasn’t even that draining if i read the english translation chapter first. that gave me enough context to just relax and read. the Only effort i had to put in was seeing new hanzi and trying to remember them based on radicals/guess their vague pronunciation (since with my digital Reader app i just click at a glance for that). and i know... if i tried to do ‘guardian on reader app versus print guardian’ i would pick print guardian in a heartbeat. 1 because its STILL easier in my brain then having to click many words lol (truly just pausing my reading annoys me lol even if only for a moment), and 2 my print copy has scenes ONLY in the print edition of the novel and i want to know what they are. I read 3 print chapters so far and EACH of them had a few paragraphs to a few PAGES of scenes not in the webnovel version.

anyway i’m just. going to keep reading hanshe for now. 1. because its getting very easy, and extensive reading (when you actually KNOW most words - not the ‘extensive’ reading i do where i just brute force it even tho i only comprehend like 80%) is supposed to be one of the easiest ways to improve vocab and reading skill. 2. because this baby is 155 chapters and im on chapter 41 and i want to FINISH it. desperately. 3. 155 chapters is a LOT of reading practice. the fact its now something i can read easier just means it will be less draining/more enjoyable practice. and the more practice the easier future reading things will be. better hanshe then to switch to a new story i know less of the author’s vocab for, and whats worse not getting to finish hanshe cause i’ve distracted myself ;-;. because i just love to jump stories but then i finish none that i want to finish since i read chinese so slow T-T. let me finish this oneeee.

4. hanshe is ridiculously compelling? this writer GETS me. they know just what to write to keep me hooked. its like the perfectly paced mystery/supernatural situation with romance and found family and i ;-;. this writer is great <3. also i love original plots when done well and the many case arcs with their own morals and intensely memorable characters make me feel like im reading a really good mystery writer. 5. you have no idea how much i wanna go back and finish tamen de gushi - that was only 40 chapters i’d have had it done lol. BUT its not written this fast paced/want to know whats next like hanshe the mysteries fic, and i probably would start slow again due to author change of style and word choice. and hanshe has a happy ending whereas tamen de gushi may anihilate me. also i would. literally just restart hanshe Again if i left it ToT i dont wanna do 40 chapters again.

when will i suck it up and just read guardian? when will i accept i can’t be a perfectionist cause i’ll never understand it perfectly, so i should just read? when will i have the courage i apparently fucking possessed in month 8 knowing barely anything but am now too lazy for lol.

on a serious note though. i’m really happy with my reading progress right now. hanshe is really enjoyable to read, and i can’t believe i read 40 chapters in a month.

甭 fun hanzi i learned recently from hanshe. this one is ‘beng’ and is bu-yong contracted. its literally ‘bu’ hanzi on top of ‘yong’. saves space. saves how many words u gotta say. like ‘don’t’. ‘bu yong - beng’ 甭 i love that visually its also a contraction since its just the usual hanzi only as a single one instead of 2.

#rant #march progress #yes i realize all my self-notes are just??? whatever ???? whatever is going on in this brain #its a mess i am Aware lol #i find it Beyond funny ToT #that i know i KNOW i could read guardian right now but i wont. because i dont want to be done with guardian completely ;-; and once i read #the book theres no more content. same with silent reading i love mo du thats probably most of why i wont finish it #even though i now have the audiobook FULLY and ive HAD the print books for a year now #cause its so good i just. dont want it to end #and THIS is why i always skip between different things and finish so few #hanshe is genuinely so good though and im so glad its an au because all the characterizations are Perfect #but the details are a surprise. the plot is a suprise and its full of suspense since its supernatural murders #the themes are always a new surprise each case. the relationships develop unique to the au.#the author writes almost like a speaker. if that makes sense. so like over time i read dialogues #that i couldnt even explain to u why i can follow but i can follow them just in a glancing blur #i ran a few spoken lines thru deepl just to double check ive been understanding them right #i have. i guess ive just been surprised i have. since they word things sometimes in a broken up way. or slang way. like actual speakers #or like my own stories dialogues. so when i read i just 'get' it #unrelated but u know what else is fun my googles been in french for years #so whenever i use google translate and put in chinese i get french results and go ?????#half the time. or it expects me to put in french to chinese then i put in english and the translatior goes ??? that. is not french my dude

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racingtoaredlight · 4 years ago

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RTARL’s 2020 NFL Season Week 7 Extravapalooza

With the way the COVID-19 situation in America (and lots of other places around the world) is rapidly heading in the wrong direction, I’m beginning to genuinely wonder if the NFL is going to have to pause the season for a few weeks as some states potentially decide that the gatherings that come with staging a football game are less than necessary.

Once the league decided to start the season as scheduled, I figured there was no way they’d stop the train once it began lurching forward, even if some unlucky teams were forced to start someone like Brian Hoyer at QB instead of their normal guy. Ahem. But, I also didn’t think things would deteriorate virus-spread wise quite to this degree. I was really giving us as a society way too much credit, it would appear. Given the resistance to the first round of shutdown measures, I think there’s a real possibility that shit could hit the fan in a way few of us have seen before if another batch were implemented, but it seems like the only option going forward for some places if they don’t get their shit together. Our choices in the very near future appear to be: court massive civil unrest spurred on by the very worst among us, or do nothing and let many of those same people carry disease to every corner of the country as hospitals become overwhelmed and people die alone and miserable. Hooray for letting the dumbest assholes dictate the courses of everyone else’s lives.

Now for some football picks!!!

My picks are in BOLD, and the lines come to us courtesy of our friends at Vegas Insider. I use the “VI Consensus” line, which is the line that occurs most frequently across Vegas Insider’s list of sportsbooks. Your sportsbook of choice may offer a different number, and if you’d like my opinion on said number A) you are insane, and B) leave a comment below and I’ll try to answer at some point before things kickoff today.

EARLY GAMES

Detroit Lions at Atlanta Falcons (-2)

Ah, a team who recently fired their terrible head coach against a team who desperately needs to. I’m glad it finally appears to be dawning on Detroit’s offensive braintrust that D’Andre Swift is the best RB on the team and thus should get the bulk of the touches. You could even say he deserves the LION’S SHARE. Sorry.

I was ready to declare Matt Ryan officially washed heading into last week’s games, but then he went out and threw for 371 and 4 TDs against the (admittedly trash-ass) Vikings defense, and now I just don’t know. Does having Julio Jones in the lineup really make that much of a difference for him? Maybe! This game should be enjoyable slop and I don’t have any strong leanings one way or another. I’ll pick the Falcons just because a Lions loss gets them one step closer to freedom from their dipshit Goomba-from-Mario-Bros-lookin’ motherfucker of a head coach.

Cleveland Browns (-3.5) at Cincinnati Bengals

I like to make fun of the Browns just like everyone else, but I’d prefer to see less digital ink spilled on QB Baker Mayfield’s crappy play and more celebration of DE Myles Garrett instead. Garrett is AWESOME. Through 6 games he has 7 sacks (2nd in the NFL) and 3 forced fumbles (also 2nd in the league), and those numbers don’t fully capture how disruptive and nightmarish he is for opposing offenses most weeks. Sure, he maybe tried to kill a guy with his helmet last year, but c’mon. That was just a harmless little goof. No reason to hold it against him, in my opinion. Like, have you seen what Mason Rudolph looks like? He had it coming.

I feel bad every time I pick against Joe Burrow because I want he and I to be friends, but *points to previous paragraph about how Myles Garrett swallows planets whole*.

Pittsburgh Steelers at Tennessee Titans (-1.5)

Last week I wrote a whole big thing (with stats to back it up!) in the Titans blurb about how Derrick Henry wasn’t playing well and was potentially wearing down, and then he proceeded to rush for over 200 yards and 2 TDs, including an unreal 94-yarder. I concede that I may have been misguided, and that attempting to use research is for lameass nerds. That said, I HIGHLY doubt he’ll have a huge day against the Steelers defense, but the combo of Henry and the Ryan Tannehill-led passing game should be able to put up enough points to win.

These teams are both very good and very evenly matched, but I don’t want to pick Pittsburgh because I actively dislike them. You won’t find that kind of analysis on Football Outsiders, friends.

Carolina Panthers at New Orleans Saints (-7)

New Orleans will be without WRs Michael Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders for this one, and I think QB Drew Brees is too far over-the-hill to make chicken salad out of the chicken shit that remains in their group of pass catchers. RB Alvin Kamara is great, but he can’t do it by himself. Oh, and speaking of Michael Thomas, a report came out yesterday that the Saints are open to dealing him. This report came from Mike Florio, so grain of salt and all, but it did lead to me reading a rumor that Thomas’ teammates hate him and secretly call him “Can’t Stand Mike,” a play on his “Can’t Guard Mike” Twitter handle. I found this hilarious and very much want it to be true.

Let’s raise a glass to Panthers backup RB and fantasy football savior Mike Davis, as his gravy train likely comes to a halt after today with the impending return of Christian McCaffery. The New Orleans rush defense is very good, so I don’t see him going out in a blaze of glory, but his out-of-nowhere statistical bonanza deserves to be celebrated.

Buffalo Bills (-10) at New York Jets

LOL Jets Head Coach Adam Gase still hasn’t been fired despite losing 24-0 to Miami last week. What’s it gonna take, I wonder? A second consecutive shutout may do it, but the Bills defense has been terrible, so it’ll take a real commitment to ineptitude for the Jets to put up their second squadoosh in a row. NY QB Sam Darnold is returning to the lineup, but he’s going to be without his best weapon, WR Jamison Crowder. I honestly feel terrible for poor Sam, as he was drafted into the worst situation I can remember. At least David Carr was hit enough that he likely doesn’t remember ALL of the bad stuff.

Nearly all of the Bills’ TEs are in the COVID-19 protocol, so I’m not sure how they’re gonna address that. BRING BACK JAY RIEMERSMA!

Dallas Cowboys at Washington Football Team (-1)

The Cowboys being underdogs against Washington is hilarious, even more so because it’s justified. I thought QB Andy Dalton would do a decent job leading the Cowboys offense last week against Arizona, and I was very, very wrong. I still think he can get his shit together somewhat, but the ceiling for this team has been lowered to “Darren Sproles might have to duck a bit” height. I can only condone watching this game for schadenfreude purposes, but even that’s stretching it. Any more than a quarter is just straight-up masochism.

Green Bay Packers (-3.5) at Houston Texans

I’m simultaneously excited to watch this game and struggling to come up with anything novel to say about it. I’m interested to see how Green Bay deploys their awesome CB Jaire Alexander, as whichever Texans WR avoids him is likely to be peppered with targets. Shoutout to Will Fuller’s hamstrings for holding up so far and allowing him to kick ass.

As of right now it looks like Green Bay will be without studly RB Aaron Jones and sexy touchdown beast TE Robert Tonyan, which isn’t great. But, if there’s one opponent where you should still be ok using a backup RB, it’s the Houston Texans and their atrocious rush defense. Wait, why am I picking Houston? Whatever, fuck it, the heart wants what the heart wants.

LATE GAMES

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-5) at Las Vegas Raiders

A couple of days ago, it looked like the entire Las Vegas offensive line might miss this game due to being placed on the COVID-19/Reserve list. As of this writing, all those beefy boys are cleared to play, which is good news since they’re going against Tampa Bay’s top-shelf defense (ranked #1 in defensive DVOA). Even with their full compliment of offensive personnel, I still predict many hilarious angry and frustrated faces from Jon Gruden.

Tampa Bay has decided to sign WR Antonio Brown, despite already having two Pro Bowl-caliber receivers in Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. It’s pretty clear this signing was done entirely because QB Tom Brady wanted it, as Brady has been pushing for his team to sign Brown going back to last year in New England. It’s so weird, Tom Brady doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would advocate for an emotionally unstable and supremely narcissistic accused rapist who’s left multiple organizations in disarray upon his unceremonious departure.

Kansas City Chiefs (-7.5) at Denver Broncos

Fuck yeah, our first potential snow game of the year! The gametime forecast as of right now calls for 5-degree windchill temps with a 35-40 percent chance of flakes throughout. That sounds horrible to play in, but glorious to watch. If we don’t get at least one shot of steam rising off of an offensive lineman’s head I’m gonna be pissed. I’m curious to see what Kansas City does with newly acquired RB Le’Veon Bell in this game. He’s definitely played in more winter-weather games than my boy Clyde Edwards-Helaire, so do they give him more carries this week than they would normally? I hope not, but I can definitely see the argument for it.

San Francisco 49ers at New England Patriots (-3)

I’m a little shaken (relatively, I’m not a complete lunatic) by how shitty New England, and Cam Newton in particular, looked against Denver last week. The lack of practice time due to multiple COVID-related outbreaks is a valid reason for it, but still. I think the Niners are the much better team when healthy, but they’re gonna be missing their best RB Raheem Mostert for this game (and the next few), which does impede their power-run game somewhat. Backup Jerick McKinnon is still very good, he just has a different, less-demoralizing style. Handsome Jimmy will have to make some plays, and I think he can do just enough. The overall talent gap will be too much for NE to overcome, I fear.

Jacksonville Jaguars at Los Angeles Chargers (-7.5)

The Jags have lost five straight games coming into this one, while the Chargers have dropped four in a row. Something’s gotta give! I will say that the Jacksonville losses seem more depressing (3 of them were by double-digits), while even though L.A. is losing, they at least feel exciting. A shiny rookie QB who looks decent will do that, I guess. Still, I’m riding with my man Minshew to cover one last time here. If he fails, well, I think it’ll be time for us to go our separate ways. “Separate Ways” by Journey is also what plays in Gardiner Minshew’s helmet speaker instead of play calls, coincidentally.

SNF: Seattle Seahawks (-3.5) at Arizona Cardinals

Seattle’s already abysmal secondary is going to be down Pro Bowl safety Jamal Adams for this one, so Cards QB Kyler Murray should be able to sling it around with relative ease. His best weapon, WR Deandre Hopkins is Questionable with a lingering ankle injury, but he’s been playing through it so far and it hasn’t seemed to slow him much. I think this is the week the magic runs out for the Seahawks, and they take their first L of the season. Russell Wilson can’t bail them out EVERY time. Probably. This game is likely to be the stylistic opposite of the Monday nighter, because...

MNF: Chicago Bears at Los Angeles Rams (-6)

...all signs point to this being a butt-ugly game. I like good defense, don’t get me wrong, but nobody should purposely watch Nick Foles and Jared Goff play QB against competent defenses. I suppose I can see some entertainment value in getting to see both Aaron Donald and Khalil Mack torment quarterbacks in the same game, but I think I’m gonna pass for the same reason that I don’t really like to watch animals get eaten in nature shows. I get that it’s the way things are meant to happen, but damn. I’m a real wimp, by the way.

Last Week’s Record: 7-7

Season Record: 44-38-4

#Sports!#Football #NFL #Gambling

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howtolengthenanessay708 · 4 years ago

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essayonmanpope718 · 4 years ago

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