If AI had existed when I was younger, I don't think I ever would have learned Japanese to the level I did (J1). I mean, if smartphones existed I probably wouldn't have done either.

I wonder: do people learn languages more easily with the likes of Duolingo than they did with textbooks and tapes?

This is one of the things to remember: they are vicious, but also deeply stupid.

Surprising no one who understands authoritarianism and/or opportunism.

The compulsion to make one's entire life miserable in the pathetic and ultimately futile hope of adding a few extra years of decrepitude and senescence at the end needs to be more widely viewed as what it is: mental illness.

Cord Jefferson, quitting Instagram, sums many things up:

“I don’t need Instagram to be a haven for free speech for the same reason I don’t need a Jamba Juice or a Hooters to be a haven for free speech.”

When was the last time you put on music and lay down to listen to it? No screens, no other distractions?

I was reading Knausgaard and he puts on a record and stretches out to listen to it. I realised I almost never do that. We scroll, we dance, we cook, we work out. But we don't simply *listen*.

I know a lot of other disabled people are wondering what we can do to help the world be less of a dumpster fire

With limited energy, and often stuck at home with limited local community (or none at all)

So I'd like to talk a little about what I'm trying to do, and why I think it's important

Having had a distaste for sci-fi my entire life, Samantha Harvey's #Orbital has finally made me curious about space.

Watched Interstellar last night (space bits: interesting, human bits: written by an emotionally stunted alien, wtf)

And now I'm sitting down to watch Star Wars for the first time...

Really poor from the Oxford Literary Festival. By giving credence to the false framing that Trans rights and women's rights are in opposition they are not just platforming bigotry, but actively legitimising a dangerous far-right talking point. I will be boycotting because of this event.

Someone had to say it 🤣

She also believes that orgasms can result in terrorism so

The Sunday Times has run a wild piece on the discredited notions of porn addiction with its lead — only? — source being an attorney working with evangelical groups who compares porn to knives, guns, drugs and … thalidomide.

www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/...

Last month I was shopping for a fire blanket to hang over the pellet stove for safety, and the 5-star blanket had thousands of reviews about how easy it was to install, how good it looked, and how safe it made them feel.

The 1-star reviews all said "the fire blanket caught on fire"

Something quite thrilling about this mass migration to bluesky — almost a clean slate, but not quite. Like walking into a party of old friends you haven't seen in ages, eclipsed as they were by a For You tab of bullshit and occasional bangers.

migration, melancholy—moving away, slowly, from Musk’s X—a whole community I’d built up there—leaving a city, a neighborhood, that gave the illusion, for awhile of being a commons, a place where I could make language and communicate and listen—