Not in the uk. Was shocked to see depictions of “drug stores” in American media as a child.

He’s mad that people are selling stuff in the temple when it should be holy (and commercial activity is NOT holy)

It’s a fair critique. I suppose i personally dont really know many pundits that aren’t of this type of another. I wouldn’t say TV ones or YouTube or podcasts any other place would be a better (though my suspicion is YouTube has the greatest reach but I wouldn’t assume any particular subculture from it was world changing or universally known or whatever, the culture is too deeply fragmented)

As for the groups discussions, I suppose I don’t think “pundits” as a concept is really that important to us. It’s like asking what literary critics a writers group talks about a lot, we’re more interested in the politics than talking about the people talking about the people talking about the…

Kinda the whole point is that we want to think about the interesting problems ourselves and what we can do about it rather than having other people do that for us

I’m in a leftist group that regularly discusses politics. I know one guy who follows him, and regularly talks like this (he’s the biggest happening thing, a huge voice on the left etc)

Noone else thinks about or talks about him. I’m not here to trash on the guy, hes probably fine. It’s more a point about the usefulness of twitch as a political project. It’s a deeply insular place. Much like it’s annoying when people act as though niche twitter stuff is world news.

This was me. I feel it’s damn near a miracle I got through university. Make good friends people. Get together with them regularly to study.

Some professors made slides with information in. Some had unrelated pictures where they presumably said the important info. You can guess which classes were hard for me based on that alone (even when id use the course books for those)

It’s a common criticism but do you think a reasonably smart person couldn’t struggle through it? I reckon they’d be especially likely to succeed if they were equipped with a good book and some humility. Humility can’t be given but pieces of advice can. Do you have any good ones?

Isn’t it already illegal in most countries? Everywhere I’ve lived there are dB maximums, plus extra penalties for modifying exhausts to be loudee etc or loud music

XCOM 2. I love enemy unknown/enemy within, but bounced right off 2. There were so many little details that just made me quit after about an hour. In comparison, I’ve run through the other dozens of times.

Yes, 100%. Go talk to people. Travel. Trust. Love. The internet, social media, the news are as real as lord of the rings, or fortnite.

I have almost never met someone evil or truly unreasonable. I have of course left places that were not working for me. People trying to rope me into status games I didn’t care for etc, or pressure me to do stuff I didn’t want to do. Sometimes it’s unpleasant, even painful. But not remotely something that can counterbalance all the great interactions and great people I have met. Heck, it’s doesn’t compete even just the kindness complete strangers have given me.

Catch people who do you harm in a different situation, years later and talk about it, and the same people are often reasonable, open to change, open to talk about why they do what they do.

You don’t have to forgive them. But for me, it helps.

Penicillin? Dust mites??

The Netherlands colonized half the world despite being smaller than Mongolia - Venice was able to stand up to countries like the ottoman empire despite being only a single city.

Financialization isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing either.

Damn I thought you were being sarcastic

Testing (including my own) find some such system prompts effective. You might think it’s stupid. I’d agree - it’s completely banapants insane that that’s what it takes. But it does work at least a little bit.

How often do you upgrade your computer? I do the same but without really trying, it’s literally the case that by the time I start to feel I need a new pc there is already a new CPU socket, often several, and new ram format. I’ve almost never been able to actually reuse stuff. I imagine the only scenario where I could do that would be if some component straight up broke

I’ll preface that you’re trying a much harder language than me so maybe such a method is truly necessary but for me I didn’t do any “repeat X many times” I just tried to understand, and once I knew what was being said, I was happy to move on I never had such a structured method, although I do sometimes write down lists of words or phrases I don’t know and ask friends about it or look it up. My phone’s notes app is full of them. I don’t worry too hard about words that I keep forgetting multiple times, if they’re common words they’ll come with time.

I try to avoid Google translate/chatgpt, I feel like it’s nicer with my physical English/danish dictionary or asking friends, but I understand not everyone has instant access to native speakers.

Just remember that the biggest thing is to keep at it. Time beats all

Haha yes. I think I’m a little past that stage now - currently at Christmas with my danish partners family. Able to participate in most of the talk, understand about 80% of what is said and can guess most of the rest. Feeling quite proud! I’ll take a look at the sketch !

I’m learning danish while living in Denmark. I have terrible ADHD. I think the biggest two things I’ve found that’s helped my pronunciation and helped a lot with understanding casual spoken speech has been a) singing together with others. I think the dopamine and activeness of trying to predict how a line will be said Vs how people actually sing it shows how words can be changed and chopped up and how they can’t (how do people naturally change or squash together syllables to fit the song and/or rhyming)

B) is podcasts. I have found them very good for commuting/gaming. At first they were language learning ones specifically but now its stories, trivia, etc. I still really struggle to listen to podcasts with multiple hosts but im getting there. I think seeing stuff with subtitles is a bit of a trap - i found myself quite reliant on them and couldn’t understand anything with them off. Much better to struggle through podcasts bit by bit, pausing where I need, and after a couple of them I was mostly up to speed

Same in Denmark - Adventskrans. Learned about it recently (its my first Christmas in Denmark with my partners family wish me luck folks!)