I tried out a bunch, including Babbel, Busuu, Language Transfer, Mango, and Memrise. I didn’t like them for one reason or another. I finally landed on Lingodeer. It’s similar to Duolingo, but it is a paid app. (You can try level 1 of any language for free.)

The regular subscription price is definitely not worth it. It’s okay (not great, but not awful) when they do their sales. But I felt okay about paying human workers.

This kind of learning is a great start, but will only get you so far. If your local library has access to Kanopy, look for the Great Courses series on Spanish. I thought that was an excellent series after a little bit of Duolingo.

Saul (Sha’ul) is a Jewish/Hebrew name. Paulos is a Greek name. Even until now, bilingual people who are of a minority culture (compared to where they’re living) often have two names, one in their their native (family) language and one in the local majority language, one official, the other unofficial.

This was not limited to Paul, even in that immediate timeline. Levi (Jewish name) was also called Levi (Greek name). There’s no reason to believe Paul “changed” his name sheet his conversion. He continued to go by Saul after he became a Christian. He went by his Jewish name among Jewish people, then his Greek name when he travelled across Rome and interacted with Greek-speakers.

I only got a nickel and quarter with King Charles on the last weekend, among a literal handful of change.

There are a lot of years of QEII coins out there, though. She’s going to still be in circulation for a many years, yet.

The person complaining thinks the proprietor is scamming people, and (apparently) ChatGPT, by falsely advertising what products are available.

Idiot: You lied about your product! MapGuy: Where did you see that (on my website)? Idiot: ChatGPT screenshot

This is basically how we ended up with the burqa. A woman’s body is evil because it makes men unable to control their sexual urges, therefore women must be banned. Now, in Afghanistan, a woman’s voice must not even be heard.

How long until the USA reaches that point?

Heck, people are being arrested just for being in the US, even those who were there by legal means. Even citizens aren’t safe if they’re not even checking who they’re arresting before, during, and after the arrest.

We barely rejected the right wing nuts, and they could easily take the next election. While relief is warranted, we should not be smug or complacent about it, either. Lies more faster than the truth, it’s still an uphill battle for morality and decency.

Yes, this has absolutely been a thought for me. I am not removing accounts, etc. from my phone pre-emptively, but I will uninstall things like Lemmy and remove specific email accounts if we have to land. (I use multiple emails for different reasons, so it won’t be terribly suspicious.)

Everyone reacts differently to different things. I know someone who’s side effects were worse each Covid shot he got. He still got them, because he was taking care of an elderly family member, but he had to started planning to be bedridden himself. He’s not antivax, but stopped getting boosters when the family member died because he didn’t want to be laid up for a week at a time.

Just booked a flight to south of the US. Even the most direct flight had a layover. I could have saved hundreds of dollars if that layover was in the US. I opted to pay hundreds of dollars more to have the layover in Mexico.

It was partways about Elbows Up, but it was also I’d rather not get arrested and/or detained and/or deported possibly to an El Salvadorian prison. Avoiding the the non-zero chance of that is worth $500.

Did you not see the part directly after that said he started blaming everyone else?

Duolingo got me enough vocabulary in Spanish to put the simplest sentences together, and then follow more robust lessons. I still think it was a good starting point, but I won’t use it anymore on principle.

*Doug Ford. Rob Ford was his younger brother who was the mayor of Toronto, and who has since died.

I’m not convinced Doug would want the job, maybe in the future. Right now he’s got a majority in Ontario and can do whatever he wants within provincial preview. He can, and I believe he will, cooperate with Carney and caucus to do what’s best for Canada and Ontario in the face of Trump, because that will also be what’s best for him, too. Fair’s fair, he did a not-bad job during Covid and had a rare moment of cooperating with federal and municipal governments, and it truly made him look like good leader for a while. (He became his normal self after emergency measures were lifted and started blaming everyone else again.)

If he became federal leader now, he couldn’t do anything but blow hot air for a while. It’s a bigger stage, but lesser power, and it doesn’t really do anything to benefit him. Doug is after dollars, but I think he does not like the maple maga and has no interest in dealing with them. Cut them out of the CPC base, they’re not likely to win again anytime soon. Or he could just stay premier and have a lot of actual power.

So credit card issuers are bad now?

There’s too much to keep track of these days.

Bloodletting is therapeutic… for some very specific conditions. For example, hemochromatosis, where the body has too much iron, and there has been some preliminary study that blood donations are a way to reduce the amount of PFAS in blood.

But everyone has PFAS in their blood; not every male has (beyond normal) phimosis.

I had one interviewer specially say she was committed to getting back to each candidate, no matter the outcome. I expressed genuine appreciation for that, saying that most places just ghost people.

She ghosted me.

To be fair, I’ve gotten texts from/for both Liberals and Conservatives.

You know what did it for me? Actually being in a relationship, once upon a time. It was short, it was bad, the rose-coloured glasses came off. Socierty and media portray being in a relationship as a happy conclusion, but more more often than not, it isn’t. How many people have dated more than one boy/girlfriend before they married, and then how many of those marriages end in divorce? How many not-divorced marriages are miserable and unhappy? A lot. Being single is way, way better than being with the wrong person, and there are a lot of wrong people out there.

Now, wrong person doesn’t mean bad person, it can just mean incompatible because you want different things, have different values, etc. (Of course, there are actually bad people, too.)

I prefer to live my life embracing the freedoms of singleness. I can come and go whenever I want without having to account to anyone. I only have to consider me when making job and career choices. Finances and obligations are freer. I took a year off work and went away to work on my own self-development; I couldn’t have done that if I had a partner, and certainly not if I had kids. Maybe you would prefer to exchange the freedoms for a partner, and I acknowledge that. But I am saying appreciate and make the best of the situation you’re in now instead of spending the energy wishing for it to be different.

I’m also absolutely not against relationships or marriage in any way. I’m just being realistic about the fact it’s not all rainbows and roses, and there are rainbows and roses to singleness, to.

I know this seems like an unserious response, but it is, and it’s one of the main points of the Barbie movie: you need to learn, perhaps accept, to be enough for yourself.

Ken was looking for validation from Barbie, but when she didn’t, he became angry and all. But the message at the end is right: people should not look to other people for validation. Why? Because you are enough. You don’t need someone else to tell you that. You can tell yourself that. All people are flawed in some way, so what’s it matter what someone else thinks? They’re no better than your to judge you.

And the truth is, the other way is off-putting. I don’t want to be with a person who isn’t enough for themself. If they’re not enough for themself, how can they be good enough for me? I don’t want someone who wants or needs me to be responsible for their emotional management. I want a whole person who is secure in themselves.

One of the problems in society, I think, is the idea that people need to pair up. Women, as a whole, have learned much more quickly than men that romantic relationships may be nice, but they are not essential. We (and maybe our cats) are enough for ourselves. I don’t know how to get men on that same page, too.

I feel badly for remote communities that were looking forward to these services, but Starlink is a security threat directly connected to a hostile nation that has been making overt threats to Canada. Moreover, we have already seen Musk will direct the company to turn off access to people he doesn’t like. There would have been nothing stopping Musk (his lackeys) from eavesdropping on communications and then cutting it off when he felt like it.

The only real way is to invest in other providers, preferably Canadian, preferably public, but most fundamentally anyone that’s not MAGA.