The Problem Here Isn’t That Large Language Models Hallucinate, Lie, Or Misrepresent The World In Some

Can We Find Paradise? (I found mine in You) - Submitted by alliveirrr

#E1AC97 #D6DA99 #F9EBE8 #496551 #DF8E88 #FADE9F #D05456

You know, when you're young you think that everybody out there really, really gets you. But, you know, actually, only a handful of them do. All the people who like you, despite your faults. And then if you discard them, they will never come back. So, when you meet those people you should just hold on to them. Really, really tightly. And don't let them go.

k.b. // sex education - netflix

Even with a blank map, a lot of people can only name 45-50 of the 64 states.

Label the States [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

Geography Challenge: Can you label all the states? [An unlabeled map of the United States, but instead of 50 states, there are borders for 64.]

you know what fuck it, I love you historical spelling. I love you weird fossilised preservations of obsolete alphabets, grasping for something that exists now like mist, like liquid, its true pronunciation lost to time but not quite forgotten, not yet. a ghost remains, a friendly one, comfortable in this old house. I love you repurposed letters for phonemes that neither the old language nor the variety they were borrowed into has any need for anymore. I love you sensible vowel pairings that have grown - improbably - centuries later, into unwieldy diphthongs, quietly thriving in an ever-shifting environment like weeds nestled cosily beneath the shade of grander plants that have long since turned to mulch. I love the word 'diphthong' (the little thicket of consonants in the middle of it, sprouting up from nowhere to trouble tongue and penmanship alike). I love how Phoenician fingerprints remain in a Norman revision of an Anglo-Saxon reworking of a Roman borrowing of a Greek repurposing, all these shapes and signs moulded again and again like clay, like mud, spun like flax to carry all those lovely glides and nasals and obstruents which come and go and come and go over time as the sounds mutate and grow apart, and the people grow and age and die, leaving behind nothing except (sometimes) a page. a poem. a piece of themselves, their voice, rendered in imperfect beautiful scratchings whose contours match the ceaseless flow of time, heavy with all that history and somehow also light with the sheer urgency of being written. look at it, isn't it wonderful? this moment in time that holds within it yet other moments? other echoes calling down through the centuries? this is how we spoke, this is what we sounded like, once. this is how we thought our ancestors would have said it. I love the inconvenience. English is so hard to learn. the spelling is so illogical. so cumbersome. it's frustrating. it makes no sense. it's inconvenient. yes and yes and yes, and yet you too are inconvenient, you too are inchoate and too much and you fail to resolve into a neat and comprehensible order. but look at you. how lovely you are. I treasure you. why should the words you speak be any less lovely.

vegans make peace with honey

no shut up do it

The Sino-Arabica Project

Xiao’erjing—Writing Chinese with Arabic Letters: An Introduction

A writing system is not merely a means of recording sounds and ideas, but itself a carrier of religious and cultural values. In Europe, for

Xiao’erjing is, at its core, a phonetic writing system which represents the phonemes of Chinese using adapted Arabic letters. In its phonetic aspect, Xiao’erjing is thus akin to pinyin, the system commonly used to write Mandarin Chinese in Latin letters, though differing notably in that tones are not explicitly marked. This lack of tone markings may be cause for confusion, given the vast repertoire of homophones in Chinese. In a given semantic context, however, native users of this writing system rarely encounter ambiguity, just as an experienced reader of Arabic or Persian has little difficulty inferring the short vowels of a given word despite the absence of diacritics from most texts.

Sharing this article that I thought might interest both Arab and Chinese speakers following me

language learning is such a personal thing that there is no “right” or “wrong” way of doing it. it’s whatever works on bringing YOU closer to YOUR goal.

you want to watch tv shows but don’t really care for speaking with others? yay!! no speaking practice needed.

you want to learn quickly for an upcoming trip? yay! text book phrases and simple grammar.

you’re a beginner and it’s been 10 years? 2 weeks? 6 months? it doesn’t matter. as long as you are working towards bringing YOURSELF closer to what YOU want to achieve, you have succeeded: you are succeeding; you are doing great.

i find that so much demotivation comes from comparison and/or trying to follow other's advice too closely. if anki decks don't work for you, that's fine! if duolingo works well for you, then use it!

this language learning thing, it should be enjoyed. in the sea full of deceptive polyglot stories and videos on top of videos attempting to understand how to learn languages in "the fastest way possible" sometimes we should sit back and ask ourselves, "when is just learning things, enough"?

with that i hope you all continue working towards your dreams! whether you want to become a translator or just watch a few more movies in your target language, you can do it. i know you have it in you.

Man.... uh.... as one of the young musicians (not yet great as im lazy so probably wont reach that), i dont know what to think