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grigri907 commented on Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese   kanadojo.com... · Posted by u/tentoumushi
nodja · 3 days ago
This is actually NOT recommended for a beginner.

Writing and speaking are effective at establishing long term memories, it's why we do it for other things, but a language learning beginner has no idea if what they're writing makes sense or if there's any subtle mistakes in how they're pronouncing words or how they're putting them together, etc.

Language learning experts don't recommend you start speaking/writing unless you have a coach or have reached an intermediate level so that you can discern when something sounds native or not. That way you can self evaluate with recordings, etc.

It is an effective tool for learning, but for self-learning you're gonna be shooting yourself in the foot long term. You should only do it if you have, say, a partner that speaks the language and doesn't mind correcting you all the time.

For Japanese I recommend that you do learn how to write kana/kanji from the start, and even some vocab if you want. But stop there. Don't write sentences, don't try to talk to japanese people on those apps/discord etc. and wait until you're at an intermediate level to do it, otherwise you'll form some very bad habits that are very hard to undo.

grigri907 · 2 days ago
What DO you recommend then between learning kana/kanji and full fluency?
grigri907 commented on The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful   iflscience.com/the-wow-si... · Posted by u/toss1
floatrock · 13 days ago
There's a story of a famous observatory that, iirc, kept on seeing really powerful intermittent signals that they couldn't quite hone in on. It seemed everytime they tried to zoom in on the source they couldn't find it again. Signal was quite elusive.

They finally traced it to people using the microwave in the break room in a very specific way. Some people liked to open the microwave door before the timer went off. The microwave stopped, of course, but there was a split second where it was still emitting while the protective cage was opened, and the energy that leaked out during those couple of ms were enough to screw with the observatory equipment.

Aliens? Nope, just some tired grad student reheating their coffee.

grigri907 · 8 days ago
Believe me, I'm as angry about this as you will be, but TIL that the correct term is "to home in," which makes sense, but nowhere near as pleasing, or visual, as "hone in."
grigri907 commented on I'm a Stanford student. A Chinese agent tried to recruit me as a spy   thetimes.com/us/news-toda... · Posted by u/zdw
khelavastr · 12 days ago
Liberal Americans say it's racist to be concerned about Chinapeople and the Chinese culture when the same culture promotes this level of international crime.

Americans certainly don't seek to turn Chinese students into international serial criminals with the same zeal. It's a Chinaperson problem.

grigri907 · 11 days ago
I can't think of a more textbook example of racism than blaming the actions of a relative few on the entire culture of ethnic groups comprising 1B+ people and spanning thousands of years. Except maybe, describing said people with allusions to well-known historical slurs.

That has nothing to do with American political opinions or word-policing. That's just, like, racism.

What isn't racism is a criticism of a current government's or government department's policy/strategy.

Before you say policy and the decisions of a few are a result of their culture, check out the Fundamental [0] and Ultimate [1] Attribution Errors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attriburion_error [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_attribution_error

grigri907 commented on Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial   trial.medpath.com/news/5c... · Posted by u/amichail
hinkley · a month ago
You've got a crowd of people raised in a Calvinist society who think nothing good comes without suffering, you've got people who feel this is a cheat where discipline should win out, and you have a bunch of people who are used to all easy solutions coming with either a bad lottery ticket or externalities on other people/the environment.

They can all agree that they're waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That said, we are at a point where people are overweight enough that getting exercise has its own risks, and taking a medication that allows you to be more active is likely to cancel out some of those downsides. As long as you do both I have no problem with people taking ozempic, mounjaro, etc.

I would prefer if we figured out what other than cultural changes is making everyone have symptoms of inflammatory dysfunctions. There is more than one thing going on. Processed foods, contamination, some microbe that doesn't culture in agar. And it's spreading to more of the world.

grigri907 · a month ago
That first paragraph could be the preamble to every conflict in my life and it would be evergreen
grigri907 commented on M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued   earthquake.usgs.gov/earth... · Posted by u/jandrewrogers
bicx · a month ago
That area of Russia has seen quite a bit of massive seismic activity over the last couple of weeks. I keep getting earthquake alerts about each one.
grigri907 · a month ago
What do you use for alerts?
grigri907 commented on Gridfinity: The modular, open-source grid storage system   gridfinity.xyz/... · Posted by u/nateb2022
grigri907 · 2 months ago
Learn from my mistake: Not at all about the electrical grid and energy storage strategies.

Great in its own right though

grigri907 commented on What happens when clergy take psilocybin   nautil.us/clergy-blown-aw... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
esseph · 3 months ago
I know people personally that psilocybin, LSD, and other substances do nothing for. All of them also have existing mental health disorders (extreme generalized anxiety, depression, bipolar, etc.).
grigri907 · 3 months ago
Fwiw I find that, due to my antidepressants, i need 3x the dose to have the equivalent experience as my friends.
grigri907 commented on Revenge of the Chickenized Reverse-Centaurs   pluralistic.net/2022/04/1... · Posted by u/GreenWatermelon
GreenWatermelon · 3 months ago
Reading this made my blood boil up a little

> In labor circles, “chickenization” refers to exploitative working arrangements that resemble the plight of the American poultry farmer. The U.S. poultry industry has been taken over by three monopolistic packers, who have divided the nation up into exclusive territories, so that each chicken farmer has only one buyer for their birds.

> Farmers are “independent small businesspeople” who nominally run their own operations, but because all their products must be sold through a single poultry processor, that processor is able to exercise enormous control over the operation. The processor tells the farmer which birds to raise, as well as what the birds are to be fed, how much, and on what schedule. The processor tells the farmer how to build their coops and when the lights are to go on and off. The processor tells the farmer which vets to use, and tells the vets which medicines to prescribe.

> The processor tells the farmer everything…except how much they’ll be able to sell their birds for. That is determined unilaterally when the farmer brings their birds to market, and the payout is titrated to the cent, to represent exactly enough money for the farmer to buy birds and feed and vet services through the processor’s preferred suppliers, and to service the debts on the coops and light and land, but not one penny more.

This amount of scumminess is mind boggling.

grigri907 · 3 months ago
In my experience, the processor is actually the one who owns the chickens (broilers). The farmer is essentially a baby-sitter for 6-7 weeks. The processor also owns the feed and the farmer gets paid on a feed-to-poultry conversion efficiency.

Variables like temperatures, lighting, ventilation rates, chicken house construction, and access/ density have well-established bounds to maximize pounds of poultry. The farmers have leeway to deviate from the recommendations, but they take on all of the risk in doing so. From the outside, it looks like a pretty oppressive relationship.

grigri907 commented on The accuracy of weather forecasts   abc.net.au/news/2025-05-1... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
lif · 4 months ago
agree.

Even a site that displays 'just' recent weather specifics (sans how the forecast was) would be quite helpful.

e.g., the hourly precipitation for the last week or month.

Am NOT talking about generalized monthly climate data, fwiw.

Anyone?

grigri907 · 4 months ago
University of Iowa has a service to aggregate this sort of thing. It's CSV format, but otherwise seems like what you're looking for?

https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/download.phtml

u/grigri907

KarmaCake day133April 20, 2022
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industrial energy efficiency engineer
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