#but possibly even 2-3 more months

[jazzzhd]

Rant in tags with suicide mention

[kirby-the-gorb]

[noodlstoppr]

my durges (vharris and neried) and their partners

boy they will not get along ☝

[rigelmejo]

Something that always annoys me is the idea only 1 language learning method works. Which is not true. While it may be possible that, for a particular individual, only a few out of many study methods may work well enough for That Individual to make progress and stay motivated... that doesn't mean all the other study methods won't work for anyone else out there, or that those few methods will work for every other given person.

Obviously if you've been studying a while, then you already figured out what kinds of things work for you and don't. If you're a beginner, just wading into studying?

I would suggest you simply look for study methods that: 1. Teach you new things regularly, 2. Review and practice things you've learned, 3. Include studying things you need for your particular goals (for example if your goal is to read X book then the study materials at some point should involve reading practice and some words the book contains, if your goal is to talk about Y then the study materials should include some information about pronunciation and words you'll need to be able to say).

As you can imagine, a TON of study materials will meet these requirements. And you can study a given skill in a LOT of ways.

(Reading is my focus lol so just for reading, a beginner might: do vocabulary study with lists or conversations with native speakers or watching shows and looking words up or listening to dialogues with a transcript like in a textbook or graded readers or a picture book with word labels in the target language or a video game with labelled objects in target language, all of those things as long as your vocabulary is improving or reading practice is happening would help you make progress). So to improve reading skill as a beginner: you could study with a textbook, a podcast with transcript, a classroom or tutor with words written down in target language (like TPRS), a video game, a TV show and a translate app on your phone, a friend you talk with (who either writes words down or you look up words you hear with a translate app), a friend you text with, srs flashcards like anki (provided there's text) etc. As long as there's new words, and/or you're practicing reading, the study method may work. If it works will come down to if you can stay motivated doing it regularly, and make sure you regularly learn some new things and review/practice things you've already studied.

So consider those things when you see people selling a study method as a product (especially when it's costing you money). Consider if it teaches you NEW things, and are those new things related to your goals, and how MUCH new stuff will it teach you before you finish it? Consider if it provides review or practice, or if you can use it's materials to review on your own making up your own method, or if you'll need to do separate review/practice.

So examples:

LingQ. Can it teach you many new words? Yes, thousands, since you can import any texts you want when you get done with their provided material (I have no idea how much their beginner material covers though in terms of words... I would hope 1000-3000 words but that can be researched). Is your goal reading? It's suited to reading, so you will practice and review often with it. Cost? I think it was $12 a month when I last had it, and the price may have increased. Is it worth it? Depends on a learner's needs. I found it was wasting my money, so I chose to use free tools like Pleco and Readibu apps - since those apps are suited for Chinese learners and have better translations, Pleco has better paid graded reader material if I was going to spend money, and both Pleco and Readibu let me import texts so I can learn thousands of new words just like LingQ but free. Now that I'm not a beginner, I often use Microsoft Edge to read chinese... since I can still click-translate words easily (all my web browsers have that tool free), and Edge's TTS voice is helpful for pronunciation and sounds quite good. I read webnovels online so Edge works well. But it's translations aren't as good as Pleco or Readibu, so if I still needed translations more I would use them. So... is LingQ a good study method? Its certainly a study method marketed to buy. Well... the method is suited to improving reading skill, at least. It costs money, which is a negative, but it does offer a lot. However: everything it does regarding reading can be done free with other apps or sites or web browsers on their own. So if paying money motivates you to read... sure. LingQ does have a few word tracking features a learner may find worth the money, keeping in mind the actual read-to-learn method can be done free without lingq. (Also... while LingQ is a valid option for improving reading, if the learners goal is speaking then it would be important to think of what study activities the learner will do OUTSIDE of LingQ to improve speaking... because I've seen how LingQ is marketed as "how to learn a language" but it's only focused on some skills. It has vocabulary and grammar in some sense, since you'll read a lot and encounter new words and structures. But it doesnt have speaking or writing practice at least last time I was on it. Those activities would need to be worked on, on your own).

You can do that kind of cost/benefit contemplating with any study method material you see being sold. Amother example: there's a beginner Mandarin course called Mandarin Blueprint. It teaches like 800 words. Thats all. It may be worthwhile for a beginner... who still needs to learn 800 common words. But if you already know a few hundred words, the benefit of the course is less, you'll need to find a new material to teach you more new stuff soon. And the price was like a few hundred for the course... which for me personally was too much to spend, when I had already learned 800 hanzi from a book that cost me 12 dollars and 2000 words from a free user made memrise deck. The course claimed to get a person speaking, competent, but anyone not a beginner would say speaking basically with 800 words is nowhere near the level of working in Chinese or just doing a lot of daily life stuff, or reading/listening to media. (Although for the motivated beginner if you're learning 800 words on your own like I was, its definitely close to the point of jumping to learn more words and start reading kids and teenager books, and watching easier shows if you're willing to look new words up). So to me... Mandarin Blueprint felt like overselling some basic beginner materials. (Again when I know several other things that teach beginner stuff either more in depth so HSK test prep classes, and college courses, or that teach beginner stuff to the same depth as Mandarin Blueprint but free).

Some study materials aren't going to act like they teach everything. I've seen chinese courses just for learning to speak tones better and general pronunciation - probably worthwhile if your goal is to improve speaking and a teacher could help improve the issues your having. But a learner needs to be aware for that course that they'll need to study vocabulary on their own, its JUST a pronunciation improvement course.

[johnslittlespoon]

GOOD AFTERNOON IT'S BIKERIDERS DAY OHOHH YEAH in 3 hrs i'm Sat

[sysig]

Guess who :3c (Patreon)

[oleander-comic]

gang… im so sorry… this shit is NOT getting done in june

[deadmomjokes]

Idk how me, a broad and chubby woman from a long line of broad and chubby women, and my husband, an average-height man from long lines of very tiny women and very average men, managed to produce a child so exceptionally tall, long, & lean that she can't wear store-bought clothes anymore without alteration. Yet here I am, dusting off a sewing machine I barely know how to operate....

[icewindandboringhorror]

Recent misc pictures

[sovaghoul]

Today was the day. I hope everything went according to plan. I wish I could have celebrated with you. Congratulations.

[thedreadvampy]

The hipsters are truly descending on Leith. I thought this flavour of waxed moustache striped shirt pocket watch and sunglasses Coolest Kids At The Warehouse Rave Mr B fucker died out in like 2012 but no they're everywhere. moustaches waxed up to the heavens tweed in 26° spring weather.

my going theory now is that this style of hipster is just an inevitable symptom of gentrification at any point in history. assume when Londinium was first becoming a metropolis it was beset by moustachioed men in pinstripe toga with pocket sundials. twats.

[mewhenifreakit]

curled up by the fire, tail waggin

[likedbyuarmyhope]

i love festa i’ve been waiting all year its my favorite thing ever and im so excited to see what they’ve been preparing for us... im in this bangtan sonyeondan shit for life

[thoughtvoid]

Now that my work schedule is drying up faster than a puddle in a desert, I have to say. Holiday retail is getting really weird now.

It might just be for the store I work for, because management is making some really weird decisions, but some part of it feels like the shoppers are just. Not doing things at the right time, too.

Like. My work has slashed hours to nothing, to the point that I wouldn't even say we have a skeleton crew 90% of the time. Unless we're a skeleton with a couple of missing limbs. But during holiday, we of course have seasonal workers. Possibly not as many as usual, but also enough to make things noticeably better for the months leading into the Big Sale time. And for the Big Sale time, we had all hands on deck on Friday and Sunday/Monday.

But, while we did have a lot of orders to deal with, the amount of people we had scheduled to work them were actually struggling to have a good consistent workload. There weren't enough orders to keep us all busy, and most of our work was from taking care of the orders made during the holiday when we were closed. But as far as dealing with what came in all day, it was just us juggling with taking whatever had come in during the past ten minutes. Orders started to build up a bit over the weekend, but nothing like what I've experienced in the past and came to expect. The 'peak' days were fine and manageable.

...The days after the Big Sale days were hell, though. Employees to process things slashed immediately back to one person per shift a day, two shifts total. The company advertised a pretty good coupon the day after the biggest online sale day of the year. One day use, so anyone interested would have to order that day. I wasn't originally scheduled for orders, we had freight coming in that I was scheduled to help with instead, but I wasn't at all surprised to get pulled off that to chip away at orders instead. We didn't get the numbers under control for a couple of weeks.

I blame most of the insane workload on our company. Us backroom people weren't given a single break, not one single day without a sale to let us catch up with the orders that the Sales left behind. And our hours for backroom were divvied out to other areas of the store. (Which, granted, the floor upkeep people are basically treated as so low of priority that most of the year we might have one person scheduled to keep up with the entire store. And during the holiday time, they might have been given a couple of extra people who were more expected to back up registers.)

However. The customers were also just making the most inane choices. There were so, so many orders coming in like crazy after the Big Sale days, up until a week before Christmas.

I get that the "Big Sales" are overhyped at this point and not always the real lowest price they ever get to. But I've been at this store long enough that the price they get to is pretty much the lowest things will be through the rest of the year. The sales can be lower, or the coupons higher, but they usually aren't as good or are only just as good as the Big Sale day price. During the year, the sales and coupons might match up to more savings, but during holiday season? Everything's getting roughly the same deals throughout the last month and a half. There's no real need to hold off during the days when stores are prepared for high workload. With all the cost cutting, the store only bolsters its workforce for those specific days. And immediately afterward, they leave all the workers to deal with the floods that came afterward, be it with pushing people to work harder, asking them to stay more hours, pulling people from other shifts, or ultimately calling in people who managed to get a day off.

When it's a one day 40% off one purchase, I get it. That's a company screwing us over problem, and they don't even tell us at the store level when they give those limited time deals. That's something we would prepare for, if the company gave a damn about us being prepared for it. But the one week 25% during subpar sales? I'm sorry, I will be calling everyone who ordered during that kind of sale stupid. There was no need to wait compared to the better sales and coupons earlier. There was no need to have the two people scheduled per day struggling to keep the order numbers under control. And the people ordering the week before Christmas to have things shipped to them? 1) I hope they weren't seriously ordering for Christmas, and were just ordering something for themselves because 2) I hope none of those packages got there in time. In previous years, the website used to have a countdown for when something ordered online would be guaranteed to arrive. They stopped doing that at some point, but the deadline used to be 14 or so days before Christmas. (And they may have stopped giving that countdown because they wanted people who don't plan things well to place more orders even if it might not arrive in time.) My patience is thin during holiday season, and I have no good vibes to send to people who didn't jump on the sales they should have and wait until functionally the last possible moment.

TLDR: Retail holiday season has gotten weird because the Sale days aren't a problem, but for various reasons, the time between those days up until Christmas were horrid.

[gutsfics]

i did another test w my drawing setup !!! im slowly figuring things out

tomorrow im gonna work on putting together a simple commission sheet so that should be up by tuesday or wednesday at the latest 👍 really excited to getting closer to doing those!!!!

[exerlin]

my life would be so much better with a 2nd non-bathroom room and a bunny rabbit