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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldBeen there
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    2 months ago

    My rule of thumb has long been:

    1. try to listen to what they say.

    2. if I don’t hear/can’t understand initially then ask them to repeat it, but only once.

    3. if I still don’t hear/can’t understand just nod and smile as if I did understand, and listen to the next things they say to try to figure out what I missed in steps 1 and 2. The key is: if you do figure it out that late, mask that revelation and instead pretend you knew along.

    You’d be surprised how infrequently I’ve been called out when going past step 3. I’ve reached that point a few dozen times over the years. But I’ve been caught out… maybe once? If they ask a follow-up question I just bullshit my way past it and then try changing the topic.







  • I don’t have any empirical evidence for you on this topic, but in my opinion yes, I think some people are - especially with oral language adaptation. And I think I’m one of them too.

    I’ve tried learning French on and off for most of my life. Did it in school for several years, got a French tutor who helped me scrape by with a C in it, spent a few years with it on Duo Lingo (I know I know, that so is far from perfect), spent time watching French news. And after all that I’d say my French language skills aren’t even closer to a conversational level. I especially struggle with the oral side of the language, even though multiple teachers have told me I have a good jack for pronunciation.

    I haven’t lived there, so maybe that would push my over the edge? But I don’t know. I think I’m in the same boat as you.

    The language your are learning also factors in. I’ve also tried learning Spanish and have found that easier. Meanwhile, I tried learning Mandarin and was completely lost. And English is often described as being ready to learn at as basic level but difficult to master. It’s such a relatively unstructured language with so many weird exceptions.

    But with all that said, don’t give up! It might just take longer for the oral part to lock in. And your written English is excellent.





  • I started down the Jellyfin path after they made that announcement. It’s super easy to install, and in many ways the UI is nicer than Plex. But I ran into challenges getting my server safely accessible for users outside my LAN. And I haven’t had the time to look into that further.

    Would be great if there was a clean, easy way to set up the webserver portion so it’s as easy to share content entirely as Plex. But I get they are a volunteer project with a lot on their plate.


  • It started happening a few years ago in my area. Maybe like right before the pandemic?

    For a while some of the stations had a hidden option where you could hit one of the unmarked selection buttons and it would at least mute the ads. But starting around the end of last year they took that option away.

    The only stations I know of that don’t show ads are Costco (and I assume Sam’s Club too, but idk). Plus they have slight discounts on gas because they are member only. But my local Costco station is such a headache to get through these days - even at around 9pm after the main store closes - that I not just go to a local Shell or Valero and resentfully try to ignore the fucking ads that always play.



  • Disqualifying in a social sense? Unfortunately, yes I think it would be. It doesn’t matter how awesome your husband is, for a significant chunk of the American electorate, a candidate’s calibre is eclipsed by the voters’ prejudices. And there is a hysteria-level paranoia towards LGBT folks among these people.

    It took ages for a Catholic to be elected President due to evangelical paranoia about ‘papists’. And we still haven’t elected a woman, which is insane when you consider women make up half of the electorate. We did have a black guy elected twice, but that was due to a few mitigating factors: a) the timing was right (in the sense that he ran when diversity was seen as more acceptable); b) he was ridiculously charismatic; c) he was also half white; d) he was a Protestant Christian (despite what the ‘secret Muslim’ clowns kept screaming).

    IMO it sucks that someone’s orientation, ethnicity, gender, religion, or heritage still bars so many good candidates from running (because this isn’t just a case of the visible candidates like Harris, Buttigieg, or even the likes of Carson, Hilary Clinton, or Palin getting denied at the final hurdle; many candidates never make it close to running due to these biases). But this is the ass-backwards, self-immolating world we live in.