As A Saxaphone Player, I Understand This Deeply

Bro I just finished the one piece live action, and I am floored with how good it was like??? Koby being a main side charecter??? The small details and the scenery?? How the crew's relationship is being portrayed?? The casting?? Amazing. The amount of times the show had got me verbally hyped up got me wondering if imma get a noise complaint. I can not wait for the next season to come out.

Repost so I can find later

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

Maybe I should have tried screaming instead...

Sometimes, I wonder if anyone will hear the words I speak towards the wall. Then again, can I really expect anyone to when I know no one will answer? Maybe I'm hoping for a spontaneous thought, an unexpected action that will lead me to a different room that's not filled with silence.

Emphasis on cannibalism

10 Non-Lethal Injuries to Add Pain to Your Writing

New Part: 10 Lethal Injury Ideas

If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain, here are some ideas: 

1. Sprained Ankle

A common injury that can severely limit mobility. This is useful because your characters will have to experience a mild struggle and adapt their plans to their new lack of mobiliy. Perfect to add tension to a chase scene.

2. Rib Contusion

A painful bruise on the ribs can make breathing difficult, helping you sneak in those ragged wheezes during a fight scene. Could also be used for something sport-related! It's impactful enough to leave a lingering pain but not enough to hinder their overall movement.

3. Concussions

This common brain injury can lead to confusion, dizziness, and mood swings, affecting a character’s judgment heavily. It can also cause mild amnesia.

I enjoy using concussions when you need another character to subtly take over the fight/scene, it's an easy way to switch POVs. You could also use it if you need a 'cute' recovery moment with A and B.

4. Fractured Finger

A broken finger can complicate tasks that require fine motor skills. This would be perfect for characters like artists, writers, etc. Or, a fighter who brushes it off as nothing till they try to throw a punch and are hit with pain.

5. Road Rash

Road rash is an abrasion caused by friction. Aka scraping skin. The raw, painful sting resulting from a fall can be a quick but effective way to add pain to your writing. Tip: it's great if you need a mild injury for a child.

6. Shoulder Dislocation

This injury can be excruciating and often leads to an inability to use one arm, forcing characters to confront their limitations while adding urgency to their situation. Good for torture scenes.

7. Deep Laceration

A deep laceration is a cut that requires stitches. As someone who got stitches as a kid, they really aren't that bad! A 2-3 inch wound (in length) provides just enough pain and blood to add that dramatic flair to your writing while not severely deterring your character.

This is also a great wound to look back on since it often scars. Note: the deeper and wider the cut the worse your character's condition. Don't give them a 5 inch deep gash and call that mild.

8. Burns

Whether from fire, chemicals, or hot surfaces, burns can cause intense suffering and lingering trauma. Like the previous injury, the lasting physical and emotional trauma of a burn is a great wound for characters to look back on.

If you want to explore writing burns, read here.

9. Pulled Muscle

This can create ongoing pain and restrict movement, offering a window to force your character to lean on another. Note: I personally use muscle related injuries when I want to focus more on the pain and sprains to focus on a lack of mobility.

10. Tendonitis

Inflammation of a tendon can cause chronic pain and limit a character's ability to perform tasks they usually take for granted. When exploring tendonitis make sure you research well as this can easily turn into a more severe injury.

This is a quick, brief list of ideas to provide writers inspiration. Since it is a shorter blog, I have not covered the injuries in detail. This is inspiration, not a thorough guide. Happy writing! :)

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

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You've probably already done this, but what is the difference between "por" and "para"?

So this is an extremely important (and honestly really confusing) topic. First I have to say that in general, para is used more for a recipient of something and por usually means there's some kind of exchange happening

That's not the whole of it, but in everyday Spanish you're probably going to see para as "for" or "in order to", while por is usually "in exchange for", "per", or there's some kind of transaction or exchange

Now I'm going to go into more of the differences - but this tag also has more information overall

-

First I'm going to talk about para because there's less things it's used for. Linguistically, para came from por + a... so it is literally "for" + "to" which is "in order to"

for / in order to [like para hacerlo "to do it" or "in order to do it"... or para que + subjunctive is "so that (something can happen)"]

recipients - specifically things like indirect objects, like sending letters to someone aka "that letter is FOR them"

opinions - para mí is literally "for me" but it comes out like "in my opinion"; but this can be used with any object pronoun para mí, para ti, para ella, para él, para nosotros etc.

when things are due - especially in school settings you'll see things like para el lunes which comes out like "on Monday" or "due Monday"

...

With por you'll find a lot more meanings, and some of them are idiomatic like set expressions

First let me touch on a lot of the idiomatic ones because they're usually obvious and easy to list:

¿por qué? = why?

porque = because

por favor = please

por ejemplo = for example

por cierto = by the way

por ciento = percent [lit. "per cent" or "for each hundred"; as an example cien por ciento is "100%" which is used just like English either as literal mathematics or saying "totally" or "completely", or in reviews that something is very good] el porcentaje = percentage

el porvenir = the future, "what is to come"

por casualidad = by chance

por suerte = by luck, by chance

por consiguiente = therefore, consequently

por desgracia = unfortunately

por las buenas = "the easy way"

por las malas = "the hard way"

por fin = at last

por lo tanto = therefore

por lo visto = apparently

por todas partes = "(happening) everywhere", "all over the place"

por doquier = everywhere, every which way

por si acaso = just in case

por otro lado = on the other hand

And a few others but these are probably ones you'll see a lot - also for times of the day, when things are happening you use por - like por la mañana is "in the morning"

You might see something like mañana por la mañana "tomorrow morning" or mañana por la noche "tomorrow night" - por with a time of day means it's happening then. And it's almost always mañana, tarde or noche for "morning", "afternoon/evening", and "night"

...

The other uses of por are a little less intuitive sometimes:

"through" - por el pasillo is "through the hallway", or por la ciudad is "through the city"

"by" / "around" - this is based on approximation but in directions it's used with estar, like está por ahí "it's over there", or está por allá "it's around over that way"...... or just saying like está por la biblioteca can be used sometimes to be like "it's around the library"

substitution - por is used like replacement or exchanging for "instead of"; like hacer algo por alguien can be "to do something for someone" in the sense of "so they don't have to" or "in someone's stead"; it gets translated as "to do something for someone" but it's not benefit it's instead of

with substitution you also see it for refunds and bartering and transactions in general

exchange - very similar to substitution, you'd see this for currency like un café por un dólar "a/one coffee for a dollar"; or if bartering something like tres manzanas por tres naranjas "three apples for three oranges"

"per" - just like substitution, this is a kind of exchange - but like por hora is "per hour", or por kilómetro is "per kilometer"

multiplication - por is translated as "times" or "multiplied by" in mathematics; you'll see tres por cinco as 3 x 5. In fact, por as "by" is so common in math that people abbreviate por as X...... so for example; x k? is por qué? in abbreviations [in math the common words are más "plus" (dos más dos is 2+2), menos "minus" (dos menos dos is 2-2), por "by/times" (dos por dos is 2x2), and then entre is "divided by" (dos entre dos is 2÷2) but literally "between"... but you can see dividir por/en/entre in general, it can depend on the country]

-

There are times when you can see one or the other though. And they are different:

¿por qué? = why? el porqué = the reason, the reason why, "the why", motive

¿para qué? = for what purpose?, to what end?

Using por qué as "why" is much simpler and a general question, but para qué is a specific question like "what do they hope to achieve" is the feeling behind it

Both get translated as "why"

Next is votar

votar por (alguien) = to vote for someone, to vote in favor of someone

votar para (algo) = to vote for something

This is usually more cut and dried, but votar por tends to be used specifically with candidates

votar para normally comes with nouns or with verbs, but not people

In other words votar por quién "vote for who?" vs. votar para qué "vote for what?"

...

Others are a little weirder like para siempre is "forever" and that's the one you see the most

You can see por siempre in poetry/lyrics and it's like "in perpetuity" or "everlasting", it just comes out very fancy"

...

The other that's a little confusing is with directions; para can mean "up to", while por can mean "going through"

We were taught things like para el parque is "going in the direction of the park" or "going up to the park"... while por el parque means "through the park" like crossing through it or going past it

para in directions can sometimes be used like hacia "toward", while por is an intention to go through or "cross"

I hate being an academic procrastinator because I love being able to dive deep and spend hours on a project, or give my undividing attention to material and finish it to the best of my abilities.

But.

It just takes so long. The point of deep work is that it takes up time.

And from a standpoint, it's so easy to step back and say, I'm putting off that 4 hour session for later. But I'm not. Not until it's too late, that is. I like to believe that I'm getting better at it. But at this rate, im not too sure...

— Trista Mateer ,“I Still Forget We’re Not Even Friends”

What I yearn for

I want to k n o w. I want to understand literature references, I want to lay on grass in the summer and recognize constellations, I want to read books from all around the world, I want to know how history affects our everyday life, I want to learn how to play the piano, I wanto to learn diffrent poems written by diffrent authors and be able to recite them by heart, I want to learn diffrent languages. I want education to be accessible. I want to fall in love with every single day.

Study Tip #1

How to remember stuff for a long period of time?

Firstly, you should know that our brain is very adept at forgetting things it doesn't consider necessary for its survival and it fails to understand that excelling our exams are veryyyy important for our survival.

So, what you need is revision of your subject matter over and over again, over a period of time.

How to achieve that though?

Flashcards are often used for achieving this technique but to be honest, for a very vast syllabus Flashcards get quite overwhelming. So I created REVISION SHEETS for myself. It's the same thing as flashcards but it encompasses a few other techniques that makes the vastness of the topics a little easy to control and comprehend.

I make them two ways: one is completely random, with information important to remember but from various different topics. And another is by making mindmaps.

And in both of these things, I add information in QnA format. Easy.

Step by Step guide to revision sheets:

Firstly, I'd advise you to read/understand a chapter/topic through a lecture, a youtube video or a textbook. Atleast have a basic understanding of the concepts.

Check the major headings or the major sub-topics.

Start plotting the mindmap roughly, by Sub-topics and how and where you'll put them for better understanding.

Now, when you're writing content, put it all in QnA format, especially HOW you want you remember the information.

There, done.

Just make sure to use that sheet to revision at good intervals of time.

You can, of course, make changes to this process. But this is what I've done for my revision work.

[Also, I am not sure if someone else might not have already thought of this idea. Though, I don't think such study tips have any copyright but I'm just putting out there that if it resembles something that others have used/talk about online, then it's because we both thought of the same thing. And you'll too probably to solve your study problems. So all the best, let's all work hard and find our happiness.]

-Tanishka

Pictures from pinterest. Credit to the owners.