#presumably universal translators catch equivalencies

[ladybelowdeck]

acceptable ways to address Scotty

Mister Scott/Miss Scott

‘Mister’ is, in fact, acceptable for female officers both in canon and in the navy in real life, however ‘Miss’ can be used based on preference. presumably if you don’t know the gender of the person you’re speaking to, use mister over any alternative. Scotty isn’t especially fond of miss as it comes off almost diminutive, but may or may not correct it.

Sir/Ma’am

again, pretty straightforward. ‘Sir’ is acceptable for women, both in ST canon and the real life navy. ma’am is more specific. again, presumably ‘sir’ is the one that should be defaulted to if gender is unknown or has no term. Scotty has a very strong preference for ‘sir’ in this regard and generally corrects it.

Lieutenant Commander/Lieutenant Commander Scott

this is pretty obviously okay. I should note, though, that insisting on calling someone by the full Lieutenant Commander can be offensive, though it is not automatically so, by way of emphasizing that they aren’t a ‘real’ Commander. It can be used derogatorily especially if the Ltcdr in question is in a position (the XO or similar) usually held by someone of Commander or higher, and someone is trying to say that the Ltcdr is not qualified without outright saying so or being overtly disrespectful. it’s like refering to an lt jg as lt jg instead of just lt. you’re deliberately drawing attention to the fact that they aren’t a ‘full’ lt. in casual conversations that do not require full rank you can also use--

Commander/Commander Scott

this is the acceptable way to shorten the rank ‘Lieutenant Commander’ in an on-duty situation/while speaking about them, etc. the line between ltcdr and cdr is not so wide that the difference is important. lieutenant commander is a bit of a mouthful when just trying to talk and is can be very unwieldy if you’re trying to quickly relay info, hence, commander is an easy stand-in. one cannot use ‘lieutenant’ as referring to someone by a lesser rank is incredibly offensive. don’t do it.

Engineer/Engineer Scott

this is typically for superior officers only, if at all. kirk has canonically done so but I haven’t been able to figure out if it’s the same thing as calling bones ‘Dr. Mccoy’ instead of his rank or if it could be dismissive when used. Certainly for lt and ensign ranks ‘engineer lastname’ is acceptable, so, presumably it works for her as well. Scotty doesn’t really mind this, as being an engineer is, truthfully, all she wants.

other notes:

don’t use her first name at all ever while on duty. or any officer’s. the moments where crew use jim’s name are meant to be surprising and are also almost never in front of other crew members.

even if you have a personal relationship with scotty, platonic or otherwise, you don’t get to start refusing orders or addressing her in a personal manner while on duty. don’t fucking do it.

I’ll admit that gets fuzzy with characters such as bones who really doesn’t give a shit when it comes to formality versus letting you know you need to get your life together, but remember that mccoy gets a lot of leeway for being CMO and on top of that he can literally overrule the captain if it comes to it. he’s earned his leeway. a random ensign has not. that’s the distinction i’m going for, here.

remember that ‘Scotty’ is actually a nickname and is, thus, informal and lower ranking officers generally SHOULD NOT use informalities on duty, though Scotty’s liberal with her tolerance of it (eg. have half an ounce of respect in your tone and she doesn’t care if you call her scotty instead of sir/her rank.)

using ‘Scotty’ is perfectly acceptable off duty for pretty much everyone

‘boss’ is considered an acceptable and respectful way to address a superior, especially when revealing chain of command isn’t a good idea.

‘Captain’ is a position as well as a rank so anyone in that position is due that title, regardless of rank. If Spock, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, or Ensign Joe Blow have the conn and are in charge, they can be addressed as ‘Acting Captain’ or just ‘Captain’, regardless. The exception to this might be admirals/commodores/etc. When in doubt, use the higher rank of address.

other positions/billets factor into who is in charge of who on board. scotty automatically outranks anyone else on board the enterprise short of kirk and spock because of her position as second officer! period! the duties of a second officer are separate from the other duties she performs! the only exception to the rank rule would be the chief medical officer acting in a medical capacity, as usual.

department heads also outrank those in their department; even if scotty were an ensign and not lt cmdr or second officer, she would outrank everyone in the engineering department by her status as chief engineering officer; this is why someone with a department head status is typically lt cdr or above, to avoid rank/rate/billet/position issues.

senior staff, at least on star trek/on the enterprise herself, seem to treat each other as relative equals without regards to rank. it should not be assumed this will hold true for every other crew member and certainly not for those that are not stationed on the enterprise. the main crew all know each other and where they stand in relation to each other, they don’t need to establish positions and boundaries with each other, they’ve already got them.

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, MHA 233, Replies Part 1

1) “Aaaaand we’re back to Twice,”- Ok, so Horikoshi actually made a major blunder at the beginning here on the initial publication, Namely, that he had Twice state that he’s never taken her measurement before, which kinda fits given Toga’s own issues with her sense of self and identity in a society that oppresses her existence, so she’d be adverse to letting there be another version of herself running around when her whole reason is to exist as the ‘real’ toga, free and unrestrained.

But as we all know…

That’s something that was directly contradicted back in the hassaki arc- and it’s not a misprint or mistranslation either, horikoshi legit forgot he’d had twice make a toga clone and even issued an official apology on his twitter page to the fans.

2) “I don’t think a blood transfusion will save her when 80% of her internal organs were turned to mush.”-Who knows, perhaps Toga’s upgraded quirk ‘can’ actually heal her body by transforming her damaged tissues into undamaged ones, but only if she’s got a steady supply of blood to work with and power the quirk- Curious’s statement was about how Toga’s quirk was prior to the reveal she can copy powers as well as appearances, so there’s nothing that says the quirk also allows he to now change her insides as well- and if she’s got a supply of her own blood to work with, perhaps she can transform herself into a healthier version of toga- I think? Not exactly sure if her quirk would run into a divide by zero error if she used it with her own blood.

3) “And it’s really good to see that Twice, even if not 100% in sync with his clones, is still able to focus on what’s important to save others. Not to say he has both of his arms broken and is still trying to measure Toga to save her.”- So, if Twice can create healthy version of himself, each of whom has copies of his tape-measures strapped to them, and who can also use their ‘turn’ to create a healthy toga… why is he putting himself through the extra hassle and pain of doing it himself with his own broken arms and teeth?

4) “Still a bit salty they aren’t going the clone & replace route, Hori doesn’t have the courage to axe a character like that it seems.”-Well, Twice is doing exactly that- it’s just that he’s doing the ‘replace’ part of that with the clone Toga, who is presumably going to have her bodily fluids drained to a fatal point to support the real toga who’s tethering on the brink- Twice, more than anyone, is aware that clones are people too, so either way, he’s having to watch a version of Toga die in front of his eyes- it’s just that he’s choosing to do so under controlled conditions to make certain the original, at least, can survive. As an addendum, this again shows how useful Twice’s powers would have been from a medical standpoint, as he’s basically just materialised a fresh supply of compatible Blood-type from thin air. However, that’s likely the extent of what he can do with translating the clone’s internals into the original. If the clone goopifies after suffering damage equivalent to a broken bone, then they can’t be sued as organ donors for the originals or to replace missing body parts- not to mentions the existential nightmare of creating a healthy clone only to butcher them for spare parts.

5) “And now I’m wondering what would happen if Twice did copy someone that was already almost dying or dead. Would the clone immediately dissolve? Would he be unable to create a clone?”- Most likely you’d create an almost-dead person that wouldn’t last more than a few minutes, forcing you and their loved ones to relive the painful experience of them expiring all over again, or you’d create a fresh cadaver- if Twice can copy objects like clothing, then a dead body would fall into that category after the person piloting the body had left the building.

6) “Good lord, the universe really hates Twice, doesn’t it? The man can’t catch a break, no matter what.”- At least now he’s capable of breaking stuff right back in the universe’s face now he has all the spare hands he needs to get the job done.

7) “Oh look at the poor idiot, thinking that his puny army of puppets can rival the parade, oh how I laugh at this hubris, just about to be crushed under the heels of a true villain…”- Yeah, maybe he can create a whole army of extra-durable puppets to dance to his tune, but there’s no way Skeptic can actually keep up with Twice’s sheer speed in duplicating himself- and unlike Twice, since he alone creates the puppets, all it needs is for one clone to incapacitate him and they can’t replenish their numbers- not to mention how the puppets, lacking autonomy, likely won’t move unless Sketic orders them to- or they’ll just mindlessly keep repeating the last orders he gave them until they’re taken down, regardless of how the situation develops

8) “Nope, nevermind then, it looks like we’re actually focusing on Spinner, and that’s even better, since he mentioned he was about to do something, and I was left curious about what trick he has up his sleeve…”- Take out the No:2 leader, likely Re-Destro’s right-hand man, and if not, force Trumpet to prioritise him rather than Tomura as a target. Since Hanabata is the only MLA top brass actually making use of their low-ranked members currently, organising and directing them to block Tomura’s path and buffing them up as needed to gain an advantage, forcing him to switch Targets to Spinner prevents him from keeping up the pressure on Tomura, and since the twice Clones have more or less cleared the way to the tower by that point, His ability to buff their disposable mooks presents to only possible trump card the MLA could bring to bear on taking down Tomura with a lucky shot- something he doesn’t need with all his accumulated exhaustion, so Spinner basically forces him to focus on preserving his own life rather than Prioritising Taking Tomura down from afar, leaving it up to Tomura and the Twice Clone Calvary to make their way to the tower, again showing the faith that The league share in each other’s abilities.

9) “Alright, now what were you planning Lizzy, tell me what sort of special skill you are planning to use against your foes.”- Nothing but his brains, self-taught fighting skills, and limited ability to direct the twice Clones in combat against Hanabata’s own forces. Spinner’s aware that he’s not that exceptional or outstanding compared to the other league members, and that he lacks the kind of stand-out abilities they possess, but he has a firm grasp on his own weakness and capabilities, and he can tell what the most optimum moves he can make are in this chaotic situation. In Gamer terms, trumpet himself isn’t much more than a mini-boss compared to the likes of the rest of the top brass, but at the same time, Spinner’s aware enough of his own capability that he can lead the Twice clones and direct them in combat against Trumpet’s own forces like a match-up between two field commanders in a top-down strategy game. 

Spinner’s lack of power means he knows best what he can and can’t do, and because of that he can tell that Trump himself isn’t that outstanding either, but he’s making effective use of his resources to slow down their advance. Therefore, the best tactic to take him down is to fight fire with fire, and tie up his troops by directing and leading the clones into battle against him as a showdown between mid-tier weaklings.

10) “Spinner ever mentioned how if you have a buffing role you should stay away from the front line, lest you want to be targeted first.”- At the same time, the fact that Hanabata is on or near the front lines tells Spinner that the MLA are getting desperate, and are lacking trump card or available members of their own to stop the league’s advance. Therefore, since their entire command structure priorities those at the top, at the expense of the lower-ranked members lives if necessary, Spinner’s been able to ascertain that Hanabata is likely the only MLA member currently active and able to command their forces against them efficiently, hence taking him down cuts the chain of command and frees up Tomura to take on Re-Destro one-on-one.

 Even if he fails to kill him, so long as Spinner can force Hanabata to focus on him, it means there’s less grunts getting in Tomura’s way, especially with the twice clones there to watch him and clear the path. This is something spinner’s thought about and deduced all in the span of a few seconds breathing room and taking in all the information he’s witnessed about the MLA and how they operate to formulate the best plan of attack for the league overall to succeed, even if he himself loses his own personal battle. Even without outstanding fighting skills, or a flashy quirk, spinner has some real talent as a field commander and strategist.

11) “But anyway, talky-man at least acknowledges that Spinner knows what he’s doing, which means that he’s not being smug, he actually has a plan to keep himself alive here, besides the army of red shirts that is.”- Secret Plan: Boost their fighting ability through maximum application of the same strategy I’ve been using throughout this fight non-stop, of which my opponent has had plenty of opportunities to witness how it works. 

Pros: fighting potential of my pawns will be boosted to above what they were at before, potentially allowing them to defeat my opponent before the boost wears off. Cones: the opponent already has a rough idea of what this does and has enough of his own disposable red Shirts to potentially soak up the damages before my effect runs out, not to mention It may render the pawns weakened and useless from overclocking their bodies so much, potentially leaving me defenceless if time runs out. 

Overall Conclusion: I’m desperately bluffing and/or overconfident and am, in fact, potentially deeper in the shit than I am letting on.

@thelreads​

[learnjapanesebod]

「Learn Japanese」 Can You Learn Japanese from Watching Anime?

So, you want to know if you can learn Japanese from watching anime. With almost all answers from me, the response is it depends. Yes and no.

We’re in for a long read here, so just to start off, I’m going to shoot out a bunch of yes no answers real quick:

No, you can’t learn Japanese JUST from watching anime (unless you’re some kind of genius).

Yes, you can IMPROVE your Japanese from watching anime

No, you should not speak Japanese like how anime characters do

No, this doesn’t mean you can’t learn other things from anime such as vocabulary terms and grammar patterns

Yes, You can spend years studying Japanese formally at university or any other kind of institution, and still learn things from watching anime, even if it’s just a new vocabulary or common phrase here and there.  

Yes, there are certain types or genres of anime much more suited to learning from (romantic comedies set in a school campus are much more friendly than science fiction mecha series with an overload of technical jargon).

Yes anime is cool as hell, no matter how old you become.

And lastly, but most relevantly now: No, watching anime is nowhere near the most efficient way to learn Japanese.

This is where my personal advice comes in:

If you intend to start studying Japanese seriously, as in you have a set goal to be this level within this amount of time or are going to be moving to Japan or anything like that, do not put hard time and effort into trying to learn Japanese from anime. Instead, put that time and effort into studying more educational resources, and the ability to understand the Japanese in anime will naturally come along with that.

This approach that we’re going to talk about should only really apply to people who love anime, watch a lot of it, and want to turn that enjoyable experience into the seeds of an educational opportunity too , even if just super casually at first. For example,  maybe you’re in high school right now and plan to take Japanese classes and study it seriously in college, but have a couple of years and a lot of anime you’ll be wanting to watch until then. For example, maybe you’re not invested in learning the language enough to study kanji 2 hours every single day or are too shy to practice speaking to a stranger online for practice. But what you do do is watch an episode of anime every day while eating dinner or something. Even with something as simple as that, that’s 2.333 hours of being exposed to Japanese speech a week. If you been a fan of anime for even just a year, that’s roughly 120 hours total. The idea here is to take advantage of that decent amount of exposure and turn it from Japanese just sounding like an alien language to Japanese being something you’re able to at least make a bit of sense of and in turn have an opportunity to learn some new-say a new word, or phrase, or grammar pattern, from each line of dialogue you hear.

So basically, what you want to do is introduce yourself to the absolute basics of the language and reach a bare minimum level.

And the good news is that if you watch enough anime, it’s already very likely that you’ve done this, just to a lesser degree. Lots of anime fans will know and are likely to never forget the definitions of words like (Ready? Anime word recognition test in 3,2,1…) kanojo, kokoro, suki, baka, kawaii, senpai, tsundere, bakemono, chikara, daijoubu, ganbaru, jigoku, kareshi, mochiron, sasuga, sugoi, tomodachi, etc. despite never having learned hiragana (the Japanese characters) or what sounds the Japanese language even uses. Why? Simply because those words are among the most commonly used words in anime and after you’ve heard them so many times, they’ve become ingrained in your memory. We’re going by the same principle here. We just have to establish the foundation for it to happen for a wider range of words-and even further, for grammar.

And so, the approach that we’re going to recommend for people interested in accomplishing this is to:

Spend a good week or two at least learning the absolute basics of the Japanese language:

The letters, or more correctly termed, characters it uses. While there are three different writing systems for the Japanese language, they all use the same pronunciation, so you theoretically could get by with just learning the first of the three, hiragana, in the beginning. (1-4 days)

After that, you learn the basic sentence structure to Japanese sentences. (1 day)

Then get introduced to word types, adjectives, nouns, verbs, particles, etc. and get an idea of how to distinguish a given word as one of those types. (1-5 days)

So now you might be going, whoa, whoa, whoa, 1-2 weeks to learn all that information? Just because you’re calling it the basics, doesn’t mean it takes that little time to learn.

Well, let’s see if we can boost your confidence a bit by doing a condensed, proportional example version right now and get a glimpse of the process. First, we’ll try to introduce you to the utmost introductory information about each of those subjects, then we’ll jump into an example line from an anime and break it down with just that information.

-We are going to skip hiragana/katakana/kanji because that simply cannot be taught in the span of a few minutes-

Basic Japanese Sentence Structure (loosely the opposite order of English sentence structure):

In English: “I ate a hamburger.” (SUBJECT > VERB > OBJECT)

In Japanese: “Watashi wa hamburger o tabemashita.” 私はハンバーガーを食べました。 (Literal English translation: “I hamburger ate.”) (SUBJECT > OBJECT > VERB) *plus particles after NOUN words to mark them as such, e.g. topic/subject marker particle wa after the noun watashi to mark it as the subject/topic and direct object marker o after the noun hamburger to mark it as the direct object

Japanese Word Types:

Adjectives: 2 Types. What we call i-adjectives (い) and na-adjectives (な). i-adjectives are called that because they end in the i-sound. On the other hand, na adjectives can end in anything and are called that because the character na appears after them when they modify nouns.

Nouns: The most vast word group, these words can end in essentially any character/sound.

Verbs: Also a very vast word group. Has the most forms of conjugation, which take a lot of time to learn but become easier to distinguish once done (e.g. words ending in (ました, ませんでした, etc. are obvious verb words). Generally divided into two sub-groups, ru-verbs and u-verbs, because they end in ru (る) and u (う) respectively. However, this only applies when they are in what is called the Dictionary Form, which is the superficial equivalent of the present/future tense in English.

です (desu) and だ (da): A copula, a word used to link subject and predicate. Usually marks the end of a clause or sentence.

Now, a short and simple line from one of my favorite anime series, One Piece.

ルフィは海賊王になる男だ！ “Luffy wa kaizokuou ni naru otoko da!” (Literal translation: “Luffy is Pirate King become man!”) (Proper translation: “Luffy is the man who will become Pirate King!”)

Of course, the English translation of the line right there is going to be something you’ll be given if you’re watching the show with subtitles. The Japanese line we have provided and written out is something you’d have to pick up yourself by ear. It goes without saying that this is why learning at least hiragana would be important.

Now for the analysis. How many of these words in this Japanese line, of the seven, do we recognize with our current knowledge?

(Luffy/ルフィ) = name of character = noun (also appears before subject/topic marker wa, which means it is a subject/topic/noun)

(wa/は) = particle/topic marker

(kaizokuou/海賊王) - one of the words we’re likely to not know as a complete beginner

(ni/に) = particle

(naru/なる) = another word we’re likely to not know as complete beginners, but from what we just learned, we could assume it’s a verb because the ru ending

(otoko/男) = the last of three words here that we’re likely to not know, but we might be able to presume that it’s maybe a noun based on the spelling

(da/だ) = copula to end the sentence.

So, four out of seven. Not bad. This gives us:

“Luffy is [UNKNOWN NOUN] [UNKNOWN VERB] [UNKNOWN NOUN].”

The only verb in the English translation we have available is “become”, so then we now have:

“Luffy is [UNKNOWN NOUN] become [UNKNOWN NOUN].”

We know from Japanese sentence structure that object type words such as direct objects, indirect objects, etc. are positioned before the verb action unlike in English where they appear after the verb.

So this means the word positioned before our verb, naru/なる, is connected to the action. We refer to the English translation and see that that word is “pirate king”. So then we confirm that kaizokuou/海賊王 means “pirate king.”

“Luffy is Pirate King become [UNKNOWN NOUN].”

Which leaves the last unknown word to become the last word left in our English translations, “man.” Thus, otoko/男 means “man.”  

“Luffy is Pirate King become man.”

While this is our definitive answer when it comes to meaning, but we do need to naturalize it to make it sounds like proper English.

”Luffy is the man who will become Pirate King.”

In the end, if we didn’t take the time to learn about Japanese sentence structure, verb words, noun words, adjectives, particles, etc. we would not have had any means to engage in this process of elimination and potentially learn 3 new words from one line of dialogue: kaizokuou/海賊王 means “pirate king,” naru/なる means “to become,” otoko/男 means “man.”

Even if you’re not catching the Japanese lines by ear perfectly and are barely only making sense of two of the seven words-say you only heard the “ni naru” part of that sentence, that can still be good for you because it’s reaffirming for you various nuances about the language such as the fact that you use the particle ni with naru to make the grammar pattern that is “to become.” Admittedly, ni naru is perhaps an overly simple example, but there are in fact a lot of verbs out there wherein it’s hard to remember whether to use them with the particle ni/に or some other particle like o/を.

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[anewhope4change-blog]

Mental Health

Mental health, it’s something that surely someone we know deals with. By definition, it’s, “the state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of the disease” (Rafique). There are also many examples of mental health problems such as depression, dementia etc., In fact, “5 percent of adults (18 or older) experience a mental illness in any one year, equivalent to 43.8 million people” (Kapil). However, there are ways in which this can be a source of inspiration in terms of writing. Such examples include “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath or “Blue with Collapse” by Thomas lux. Another such poet is Naomi Shihab Nye whose works are, “Known for poetry that lends a fresh perspective to ordinary events, people, and objects” (Poetry Foundation). One such example includes, “The Rider” by Naomi Shihab Nye in which she talks about a boy who believes he can escape his loneliness, “A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn't catch up to him” (Nye, lines 1-3).  This would inspire her to follow suit, “What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory” (Nye, lines 6-9). In this poem, Nye is using one form of mental health, loneliness and is flipping it on its head by not only using it as a positive, but also as a source of overcoming an obstacle. For example, “To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell” (Nye, lines 9-12). What she means by this is, to leave your trouble behind while you enjoy the success of overcoming your troubles with the success being the “Cloud of sudden azaleas” (Nye, line 7), and the success has never had to deal with trouble given it that success is the opposite of trouble. Now that mental health is finally being brought into the light with thing such as mental health awareness week occurring recently, there are finally steps being taken to address this problem such as social workers. According to the United States department of labor, social workers, “help people solve and cope with problems in their everyday lives” ("Social Workers: Occupational Outlook Handbook: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics”). In that same source, they also mention that, “Social workers work in a variety of settings, including mental health clinics” ("Social Workers: Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics"). ). However, it’s not just regular people who have mental troubles but also college students.

In a study done by the American Psychological Association, “Anxiety is the top presenting concern among college students (41.6 percent), followed by depression (36.4 percent) and relationship problems (35.8 percent)” (American Psychological Association) and that is if you’re just a regular student what about if you’re an athlete as well? Having to deal with (According to the NCAA), “Daily practices, competitions that may involve travel (some across time zones), a full academic course load, strength and conditioning programs, and sports medicine/rehab appointments” (NCAA) that is a lot on one plate. There is however hope for those who are involved with such activities as those. One great example is the Clemson University’s football team, the Tigers. You may know who they are given that they have won two of the last three national championships but in a recent video by The Athletic, head coach Dabo Swinney discussed about how he addresses mental health with Armen Keteyian. When asked regarding where mental health ranks among the other activities such as recruiting, academics, etc., Swinney said, “It’s as important as strength and conditioning  Young People don’t have coping mechanisms Even though they look like they’re these big, strong, good looking, athletic guys, on the inside, they’re kids” (Olian and Keteyian). Some of the various ways that Clemson approaches mental health include, “a psychologist on staff, a slide, bowling alley, and most important Swinney says, a place to take a nap” (Olian and Keteyian). One story that Swinney mentioned was, “In our old building, sometimes I would walk into the old team room and they’re just grabbing a nap and I was like, let’s build them a place for them to sleep” (Olian and Keteyian). These efforts to address mental health might have been the result from a prior experience that Swinney had with one of his own players when, “Jay Guillermo, a stud center from Tennessee joined the team” (Olian and Keteyian). It was during his “Sophomore year, Guillermo broke his foot” (Olian and Keteyian) and gradually things got so bad, “He decided to go home” (Olian and Keteyian). However, after recuperating at home, Guillermo recovered and returned, “To the school and the game he loved” (Olian and Keteyian).

This example of beating mental health brings me back to “The Rider”. In some ways Guillermo is like the boy who told (I presume Nye) that, “If he roller-skated fast enough, his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him” (Nye, lines 1-3) but instead of roller skating, it was playing football well enough for Guillermo and he was able to assist Clemson when they defeated the University of Alabama Crimson Tide in the 2016 National Championship game 35-31 which like the poem was , “A victory” not only for Guillermo but Clemson as well. In a similar fashion to “The Rider” it helped out Dabo Swinney. For example, when Nye says, “What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles” (Nye, lines 6-9), it means in Swinney’s case, can the impact that he made with Guillermo not only help others but to also win? That was the case when last year, Clemson would win it’s second National Championship by defeating Alabama again 44-16 in addition to providing options to other players coping with mental health.

Mental health is a major topic and not just in the overall culture that we live in. Many great authors or poets have used mental health as a topic in their writing. Examples include “The Soul has Bandaged moments” by Emily Dickinson or “Fear” by Ciaran Carson and countless others and even songs such as “Lithium” by Nirvana (which is one of their more popular songs), addresses the subject mental health. Gradually, mental health has become a huge topic and even though it’s taking some time, steps are being taken.

Works Cited

American Psychological Association. "College students’ mental health is a growing concern, survey finds." Monitor on Psychology, vol. 44, no. 6, June 2013, p. 13, www.apa.org/monitor/2013/06/college-students.

Kapil, Rubina. "5 Surprising Mental Health Statistics." Mental Health First Aid, 6 Feb. 2019, www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/2019/02/5-surprising-mental-health-statistics/#targetText=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20almost,equivalent%20to%2043.8%20million%20people.

NCAA. "Mind, Body and Sport: The Psychologist Perspective." NCAA.org - The Official Site of the NCAA, 18 July 2017, www.ncaa.org/sport-science-institute/mind-body-and-sport-psychologist-perspective.

Nye, Naomi S. "The Rider." Poets.org | Academy of American Poets, 1998, poets.org/poem/rider.

Olian, Cathy, and Armen Keteyian. "Over the Edge: College Sports' Mental Health Crisis (Act 1)." YouTube, The Athletic, 9 Sept. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3O1qCuK1OU.

Poetry Foundation. "Naomi Shihab Nye." Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/naomi-shihab-nye.

Rafique, Ibrar. "Mental Health." Pakistan Journal of Medical Research, vol. 52, no. 4, 1 Oct. 2013, pp. 95-96, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College. web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=db3c30ca-84a8-46a6-b265-08a01c89d059%40sessionmgr4008&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=102095999&db=a9h.  

Social Workers : Occupational Outlook Handbook: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. United States Department of Labor, 4 Sept. 2019. www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/social-workers.htm.

[nihil-a-nusquam]

Universal diagnostics.

Last night whilst meditating ive stumbled upon a chamber which i'm certain my young enough eyes weren't supposed to have access to. Then again, i am Syre, so. Anyway, i was engaging in an activity with volitile consequences and a large percentage of my observational awareness momentarily dropped when i realized how dangerous my perdiciment was. Fearless as usual i shrugged in the face of death, who reminded me of the infinite possibilities in which my soul can journey. Death must have shown me to this chamber. Life is like a book, kind of sort of, but there is no beginning or end, we all sort of just get dropped into the awareness of it when we're born but the circumstances behind our existence will never be revealed. I can tell you with confidence however, that it is directly linked to our blood, hence the importance overall in society, of blood. The map acts like a film, only instead of a scroll, the film fans into a sphere. And in the center is your soul which is a pool created from the runoff of the source of the universe, the thing feeble minded beings call "god". In this map, time is definitive. And dimensions and parallels are endless. I'm working on how the map interacts with others, but they described it as a web long ago, similar to a spiders. The map must have balance or the revival energies of the soul will be restricted and the individual will die. This is okay, however, because reality to what we understand it in this plane is actually an illusion more akin to the moddern understanding of a simulation. Art imitates life. Imgine your map as a flat plane of existence. An entire realm specific set to your perameters. In this plane we experience reality out of infinite possibilities. Our perception of reality is dwindled down to the most probable reality, but this doesnt imply that other realities arent tangent. Free will is commonly boasted about in religion but they leave out specific key points that prevent you from comprehending what this actually means or what its relevance is. For one, you cannot sell your soul. Only dedicate it through choice to anothers purpose, and even then there are infinite possibilities where you have the ability to choose your actions. The only thing you can be a slave to is yourself. Your addictions and dependancies. And these are all very earthly reality designated traits of a being. Love exists. Hate is a fallacy. There needs to be no balance between the two because love does not coexist with a balance, love is indefinite because in its true form, love is pure. Our reality forces us to percieve this as a balance. Unlike want. Want, desire, all such things have a balance. With wanting comes do not wanting. We have likes and dislikes and that is directly relatable to the equivalent yet opposing. Wrath is an emotion, there is no balancing emotion because there is no score to be kept, only the fact that by doing so you are causing damage to your timeline, as with wrath you are focused on a path of destruction which leads to life events unfolding and tributaries to the life force signature river draining out and drying up. These fates are not dead. Fate and destiny are other interesting yet irrelevant earthly concepts when we break it down to what matters. We can percieve the map as a timeline and tap into the possible realities or future realities based on the strongest lead we have on what our destiny is. But. We can only percieve the events as they unfold unadulterated by interaction from others. This is a very complex and complicated form of perception that we take for granted because like our grandparents before our parents, we only understand what we are capable of perceiving. And existing in a corporeal realm we have difficulty percieving anything than what we are redily exposed to, in addition to that, we are commanded and tricked into behavioral condemnation that forces us to act a specific way for the benefit of those who either have figured out the map, or, have convinced the remainder that they have figured it out. As time grew on, we inherit the behaviors and information from our genetic memories. The memory gospel, if you would. And this deals in its entirety with your personal experiences and what you take from them and what you biologically pass on to your children. Not every facet of existence will be passed on, but, personality wise and aptitude you will inherit some things custom tailored to the reflection of your soul's position in the universe. This is relative to a compiliation of all the experiences your soul and other souls have collected and which house under what they see fit to be governed. There is a heirchy to this, but, that is irrelevant on our level. Factoring in everything from divination to the memory gospel, to our imagination and thoughts we are beings of true marvel. However our importance to the universe lands pale in comparison to what we consider the gods and higher beings. We as humans on this reality plane, obey rules made up by other humans who testify that they have been a witness to the divine plan. This, is absurd, especially because they cannot prove it. However, there is a connection to the other planes of existence that this carrries over and holds importance to. Without purpose we would be murdering eachother and stealing our neighbors car then joyriding it off a cliff. There must be order to our behavior for us to progress. And as we are growing our purpose is to grow stronger and ascend to the next level of comprehension. We are not alone in this, as there are guides but they must disguise themselves because if they are found and the truth came out humans would do what they do best and try to manipulate and exploit that weakness in the universe for corporeal gain, and in turn that would bring the entire structure crashing down. So we must remain clueless to truth. It is difficult finding truth when truth is forbidden. Effectively, this blog stays alive with my thoughts for the rare probability that someone will stumble upon it. The universe has a design and does not pick by random to display events, so under that theory if your eyes are witnessing this writing, it was meant to be as i refuse to broadcast my very off the wall perspective in a collective setting. Just as important as the memory gospel is the power of will, willpower. We see this necessary to understand the law of attraction, which is a quantified example of how the universe works if one has ever implimented its resources to their benefit. I have, but my intent was a love of which i was forsaken, so, no matter how hard the attempt to succeed was it is clear that there are fixed points in the timeline. Which brings me to children. It could be as simple as my blood must flow through anothers veins, or, i must die alone as to not continue my pace. I am a rabbit in the chinese zodiac which is the last stage of travel for that designated soul. So it would make sense that my personal genetics would not be welcomed transfered into another being. Or. It is possible i have not fulfilled the memory gospel to accuracy therefor cannot pass my seed to another to grow off of incomplete knowledge. But as we want and move forward with life we are welcomed to the idea of infinite possibilities which our actions can lead to. This is accurate and related directly to the purpose, you will not experince or even concieve a reality which your soul was not meant for. No matter how many lottery tickets you purchase. Sorry. Whilst divination, through tarot or through other mediums, we can only rely on the seer to translate the most probable outcome. Or if we are percieving this ourselves. And as we are perpetually changing and growing and the actions of others around us effect us, it is presumed that it is impossible to narrow down a fixed life event to its accurate place in the continuum. As it is a map it is also a puzzle. Anyway, whilst my dangerous activitiy was commencing i witnessed a blink of the spark fade and then rengenerate as the realization of the danger came to my sights. This makes me feel like the whole map is vibrating which means there is flexibility in the map. A range if you will. There are no exact fixed points only a collection of the possibilities. In many of the realities i witnessed my head was blown off. In some, the damage was minimal and only effected me, in others the damage was severe and not only led to my death but created a ripple effect which led to the deaths of others. The apartment catching on fire, the overwhelming sadness of my loss of life leading to suicides. And in other realities, i changed my mind and the event ceased to exist. I was existing as a projector of my own infinite realities where the most powerful realities cooperated to give me the experience i was in tune with. Other strange instances occured while i was observing this experience in the chamber within my meditation. As it seemed, the realities where death was selected allowed me a level of permit to explore the depths of that reality. I believe these fragmentes exist to us and are displayed as dreams as the thickness of the veil of reality is compromised and imagination is allowed to take access. The reality isnt laid to waste in that circumstance, instead it is used to build another softer stimulation that we experience when we are in dreamstate. Which makes Astral travel and projection excruciatingly difficult. You must be grounded to one reality for this to occur in its pure form which is the only way you memorize and recall the experience. A broken person or a person not in touch with themselves and their soul would be incapable of experiencing this, and thus the concept would be foreign to them. Other strange things i noticed were the impact emotions had on our realities. In the one reality where i chose to die the ripple effect penetrated the emotional threshold of everyone ive ever met that had heard of the news. In a way i was still alive through their memories and i was able to ride along their journey as a temporary guest. This only applied in potency to those which i held the most importance. Life events unfold and it is up to us to create a balance in our souls, or hearts if youd prefer to not cosign to the existence of the spirit. The less certain realities there are the stronger your position on the board becomes. Im not saying that a pawn can become a king. But i am not ruling that out either. To comprehend this map, you must be the only contingency on it. Your decisions must be difinitive, your emotions in check. And your sense of imagination and wonder must be so dialed in that you are able to detach imagination from willpower influenced reality. We do exist in a realm of laws and rules in which whether or not we want to we must abide. The boundaries are unmovable. In conculsion of this, whatever it is, i would like to mention that this is strictly speculation of an observed reality during an elevated state. This by no means contributes to the actual reality we experience, instead is more food for thought and wonder. I enjoy these sessions because i feel although i might not be correct, the thought exercize in figuring these things out leads me to a healthier whole, as is my choice to be led by my own intuition to the source of the universe and not by the hand of a older person claiming age gives them permission to my body. Dream on tumblrs.

[learnjapanesebod]

「Learn Japanese」 Can You Learn Japanese from Watching Anime?

「Learn Japanese」 Can You Learn Japanese from Watching Anime? 

So, you want to know if you can learn Japanese from watching anime. With almost all answers from me, the response is it depends. Yes and no.

We’re in for a long read here, so just to start off, I’m going to shoot out a bunch of yes no answers real quick:

No, you can’t learn Japanese JUST from watching anime (unless you’re some kind of genius).

Yes, you can IMPROVE your Japanese from watching anime

No, you should not speak Japanese like how anime characters do

No, this doesn’t mean you can’t learn other things from anime such as vocabulary terms and grammar patterns

Yes, You can spend years studying Japanese formally at university or any other kind of institution, and still learn things from watching anime, even if it’s just a new vocabulary or common phrase here and there.  

Yes, there are certain types or genres of anime much more suited to learning from (romantic comedies set in a school campus are much more friendly than science fiction mecha series with an overload of technical jargon).

Yes anime is cool as hell, no matter how old you become.

And lastly, but most relevantly now: No, watching anime is nowhere near the most efficient way to learn Japanese.

This is where my personal advice comes in:

If you intend to start studying Japanese seriously, as in you have a set goal to be this level within this amount of time or are going to be moving to Japan or anything like that, do not put hard time and effort into trying to learn Japanese from anime. Instead, put that time and effort into studying more educational resources, and the ability to understand the Japanese in anime will naturally come along with that.

This approach that we’re going to talk about should only really apply to people who love anime, watch a lot of it, and want to turn that enjoyable experience into the seeds of an educational opportunity too , even if just super casually at first. For example,  maybe you’re in high school right now and plan to take Japanese classes and study it seriously in college, but have a couple of years and a lot of anime you’ll be wanting to watch until then. For example, maybe you’re not invested in learning the language enough to study kanji 2 hours every single day or are too shy to practice speaking to a stranger online for practice. But what you do do is watch an episode of anime every day while eating dinner or something. Even with something as simple as that, that’s 2.333 hours of being exposed to Japanese speech a week. If you been a fan of anime for even just a year, that’s roughly 120 hours total. The idea here is to take advantage of that decent amount of exposure and turn it from Japanese just sounding like an alien language to Japanese being something you’re able to at least make a bit of sense of and in turn have an opportunity to learn some new-say a new word, or phrase, or grammar pattern, from each line of dialogue you hear.

So basically, what you want to do is introduce yourself to the absolute basics of the language and reach a bare minimum level.

And the good news is that if you watch enough anime, it’s already very likely that you’ve done this, just to a lesser degree. Lots of anime fans will know and are likely to never forget the definitions of words like (Ready? Anime word recognition test in 3,2,1…) kanojo, kokoro, suki, baka, kawaii, senpai, tsundere, bakemono, chikara, daijoubu, ganbaru, jigoku, kareshi, mochiron, sasuga, sugoi, tomodachi, etc. despite never having learned hiragana (the Japanese characters) or what sounds the Japanese language even uses. Why? Simply because those words are among the most commonly used words in anime and after you’ve heard them so many times, they’ve become ingrained in your memory. We’re going by the same principle here. We just have to establish the foundation for it to happen for a wider range of words-and even further, for grammar.

And so, the approach that we’re going to recommend for people interested in accomplishing this is to:

Spend a good week or two at least learning the absolute basics of the Japanese language:

The letters, or more correctly termed, characters it uses. While there are three different writing systems for the Japanese language, they all use the same pronunciation, so you theoretically could get by with just learning the first of the three, hiragana, in the beginning. (1-4 days)

After that, you learn the basic sentence structure to Japanese sentences. (1 day)

Then get introduced to word types, adjectives, nouns, verbs, particles, etc. and get an idea of how to distinguish a given word as one of those types. (1-5 days)

So now you might be going, whoa, whoa, whoa, 1-2 weeks to learn all that information? Just because you’re calling it the basics, doesn’t mean it takes that little time to learn.

Well, let’s see if we can boost your confidence a bit by doing a condensed, proportional example version right now and get a glimpse of the process. First, we’ll try to introduce you to the utmost introductory information about each of those subjects, then we’ll jump into an example line from an anime and break it down with just that information.

-We are going to skip hiragana/katakana/kanji because that simply cannot be taught in the span of a few minutes-

Basic Japanese Sentence Structure (loosely the opposite order of English sentence structure):

In English: “I ate a hamburger.” (SUBJECT > VERB > OBJECT)

In Japanese: “Watashi wa hamburger o tabemashita.” 私はハンバーガーを食べました。 (Literal English translation: “I hamburger ate.”) (SUBJECT > OBJECT > VERB) *plus particles after NOUN words to mark them as such, e.g. topic/subject marker particle wa after the noun watashi to mark it as the subject/topic and direct object marker o after the noun hamburger to mark it as the direct object

Japanese Word Types:

Adjectives: 2 Types. What we call i-adjectives (い) and na-adjectives (な). i-adjectives are called that because they end in the i-sound. On the other hand, na adjectives can end in anything and are called that because the character na appears after them when they modify nouns.

Nouns: The most vast word group, these words can end in essentially any character/sound.

Verbs: Also a very vast word group. Has the most forms of conjugation, which take a lot of time to learn but become easier to distinguish once done (e.g. words ending in (ました, ませんでした, etc. are obvious verb words). Generally divided into two sub-groups, ru-verbs and u-verbs, because they end in ru (る) and u (う) respectively. However, this only applies when they are in what is called the Dictionary Form, which is the superficial equivalent of the present/future tense in English.

です (desu) and だ (da): A copula, a word used to link subject and predicate. Usually marks the end of a clause or sentence.

Now, a short and simple line from one of my favorite anime series, One Piece.

ルフィは海賊王になる男だ！ “Luffy wa kaizokuou ni naru otoko da!” (Literal translation: “Luffy is Pirate King become man!”) (Proper translation: “Luffy is the man who will become Pirate King!”)

Of course, the English translation of the line right there is going to be something you’ll be given if you’re watching the show with subtitles. The Japanese line we have provided and written out is something you’d have to pick up yourself by ear. It goes without saying that this is why learning at least hiragana would be important.

Now for the analysis. How many of these words in this Japanese line, of the seven, do we recognize with our current knowledge?

(Luffy/ルフィ) = name of character = noun (also appears before subject/topic marker wa, which means it is a subject/topic/noun)

(wa/は) = particle/topic marker

(kaizokuou/海賊王) - one of the words we’re likely to not know as a complete beginner

(ni/に) = particle

(naru/なる) = another word we’re likely to not know as complete beginners, but from what we just learned, we could assume it’s a verb because the ru ending

(otoko/男) = the last of three words here that we’re likely to not know, but we might be able to presume that it’s maybe a noun based on the spelling

(da/だ) = copula to end the sentence.

So, four out of seven. Not bad. This gives us:

“Luffy is [UNKNOWN NOUN] [UNKNOWN VERB] [UNKNOWN NOUN].“

The only verb in the English translation we have available is “become”, so then we now have:

“Luffy is [UNKNOWN NOUN] become [UNKNOWN NOUN].”

We know from Japanese sentence structure that object type words such as direct objects, indirect objects, etc. are positioned before the verb action unlike in English where they appear after the verb.

So this means the word positioned before our verb, naru/なる, is connected to the action. We refer to the English translation and see that that word is “pirate king”. So then we confirm that kaizokuou/海賊王 means “pirate king.”

“Luffy is Pirate King become [UNKNOWN NOUN].”

Which leaves the last unknown word to become the last word left in our English translations, “man.” Thus, otoko/男 means “man.”  

“Luffy is Pirate King become man.”

While this is our definitive answer when it comes to meaning, but we do need to naturalize it to make it sounds like proper English.

”Luffy is the man who will become Pirate King.”

In the end, if we didn’t take the time to learn about Japanese sentence structure, verb words, noun words, adjectives, particles, etc. we would not have had any means to engage in this process of elimination and potentially learn 3 new words from one line of dialogue: kaizokuou/海賊王 means “pirate king,” naru/なる means “to become,” otoko/男 means “man.”

Even if you’re not catching the Japanese lines by ear perfectly and are barely only making sense of two of the seven words-say you only heard the “ni naru” part of that sentence, that can still be good for you because it’s reaffirming for you various nuances about the language such as the fact that you use the particle ni with naru to make the grammar pattern that is “to become.” Admittedly, ni naru is perhaps an overly simple example, but there are in fact a lot of verbs out there wherein it’s hard to remember whether to use them with the particle ni/に or some other particle like o/を.

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