All The Smol Things

[All The Smol Things]

[ruhua-langblr]

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)

[All The Smol Things]

heavensenthearty asked:

Hiya!! 👋🏼😄 How's it going? Your fashion taste for Zuko in a Modern AU seems to be artsy, or maybe "formal" is the word. That shirt he wore when he gave Sokka romantic song advice looked Versace🧐. Anyway, I was wondering how you came up with it, he always struck me more as the type that didn´t care much about fashion, so I'm curious about other´s opinions and heacanons about it. And do you have any other fashion headcanons for the rest of the GAang? Also, their music tastes. How did you come up with them? Especially Katara's! 😍

demaparbat-hp answered:

Hello! As it happens, I have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings™ about this, so I’m leaving these over here, and the rest of my ramblings down below the cut!

Keep reading

[All The Smol Things]

[abracadaze]

i feel so bad for nikola tesla like imagine spending years beefing with a guy who has conned the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and you end up dying broke and starving and alone and then 100 years later another guy cons the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and he's doing it all IN YOUR NAME. he must be rolling in his grave like a fucking rotisserie chicken

[satusepiida]

His ghost is setting those cars on fire actually

[coyotegestalt]

I hadn’t really considered “the agnostic demigod of electromagnetism is the reason Musk’s companies fail” before, but I like the concept. 

[blackwoolncrown]

Let’s help him out. Likes charge, reblogs cast

[All The Smol Things]

[judeiscariot]

i know i sound pretentious but the average internet user’s ability to interpret art is like really really bad

[judeiscariot]

like every once in a while i’ll see that post of this katerina kamprani sculpture pop up on my dash and the notes are all like ‘um how would you even use this 😂’ or ‘it looks cool but all i can think is how impractical it would be’ so sorry but are you stupid? genuine question

[darnitjack]

Jude, can you tell us more about the cool coffee sculpture?

[judeiscariot]

yeah i'd love to! like i said this sculpture is by katerina kamprani, a greek architect-slash-artist. this sculpture is called 'engagement mugs' and its from a series called 'the uncomfortable,' which is "a collection of deliberately inconvenient everyday objects." here's some of my other favorites from the series:

kamprani's intention with this series was 1) to deliberately annoy the viewer, and 2) to reexamine our relationship with the world around us and challenge assumptions about the purpose of objects we see constantly in our everyday lives. she takes a household object, boils it down to the core components of its functionality, and makes those functions obsolete. i like this series a lot and the mugs in particular really strike me, partially because of the sheer skill required in their production. i'm not a sculptor and i don't know much about the intricacies of that medium but you don't have to be an expert to know it took a lot of time and thought to construct that piece, and make the mugs look so cohesive yet also like they started off as two separate components. this is a small thing but the way the colors of the coffee interact with the colors of the individual mugs is a really nice touch too. i can't know for sure if the artist had intention with this piece beyond frustrating the viewer, but i think it has a pretty obvious interpretation when it comes to relationships and codependency - when two people 'become one' it renders them both unable to perform their individual function without hurting the other. if i tried to drink from one of these mugs without lifting the other, the liquid would spill and one or both of the handles might crack and/or break. i think it's about the impracticality of codependency. from what i've seen through research i've done on this artist a fairly common reaction to this piece is for people to initially think 'oh that's kinda sweet,' the same way you might think that about two people who are indelibly attached to one another, but when you look at it a little closer you realize that it'll only cause problems beyond the first 'that's sweet' reaction.

[princeofbadassery]

I believe the above picture is actually a 3D rendering, as are many of the others, but the prototype she created looks almost identical, just without the coffee.

ALT

Here is her website with renderings and prototypes!

The Uncomfortable

The Uncomfortable is a collection of deliberately inconvenient everyday objects by Athens-based architect Katerina Kamprani.

theuncomfortable.com

[captainlordauditor]

okay well. task failed successfully bc I saw the coffee mugs and I thought of soulmates.

[All The Smol Things]

[whentherewerebicycles]

saw this on twitter and wanted to save it here

[hauntedselves]

Image transcript:

Thriving: "I got this"

• Calm and steady with minor mood fluctuations
• Able to take things in stride
• Consistent performance
• Able to take feedback and to adjust to changes or plans
• Able to focus
• Able to communicate effectively
• Normal sleep patterns and appetite

Surviving: "Something isn't right"

• Nervousness, sadness, increased mood fluctuations
• Inconsistent performance
• More easily overwhelmed or irritated
• Increased need for control and difficulty adjusting to changes
• Trouble sleeping or eating
• Activities and relationships you used to enjoy seem less interesting or even stressful
• Muscle tension, low energy, headaches

Struggling: "I can't keep this up"

• Persistent fear, panic, anxiety, anger, pervasive sadness, hopelessness
• Exhaustion
• Poor performance and difficulty making decisions or concentrating
• Avoiding interaction with coworkers, family and friends
• Fatigue, aches and pains
• Restless, disturbed sleep
• Self-medicating with substances, food, or other numbing activities

In Crisis: "I can't survive this"

• Disabling distress and loss of function
• Panic attacks
• Nightmares or flashbacks
• Unable to fall or stay asleep
• Intrusive thoughts
• Thoughts of self-harm or suicide
• Easily enraged or aggressive
• Careless mistakes and inability to focus
• Feeling numb, lost, or out of control
• Withdrawal from relationships
• Dependence on substances, food, or other numbing activities to cope

End transcript.

[All The Smol Things]

[rockpapertheodore]

Sometimes self-care is, actually, NOT getting onto the computer and little treats and watching youtube videos. Sometimes those things are self-care, but sometimes they're also avoidant behaviors.

Sometimes self care is waking up and just. Fucking getting in the car. And driving to the bank. And the store. And buying the cat litter. And changing the cat boxes you've been avoiding because your brains been stuck in a hole. And picking up the trash you've been piling up. And getting a load into the wash. And mowing the lawn before the village council sends you a formal complaint and potential-fines warning.

Like its hard and annoying to do because it sucks. It sucks so much. But if I don't start working on this pile of bullshit I've let build up because it stinks and i was stuck in deer-in-headlights mode, I risk letting it turn into fuckery. I do not have the patience for fuckery that I once - foolishly! - thought I had.

[butch-obliterated]

This mentality helped me so much. Framing my "chores" and mundane tasks as self care and something I can do for myself, really helped me. On a good day I feel like I can genuinely enjoy basic to-dos because I get something nice for myself afterwards, even if that nice thing is just a better living environment. And sometimes it's still too hard, and that's okay too.

[All The Smol Things]

[doggirlpaws]

The spirit of Diogenes is alive and well

[rowark]

This is funny, obviously, but even if you don't go to the extreme of the example above, this is a separate seat for one person, with a back and 4 legs:

But it's not a chair. It's a bar stool.

This, however, are all chairs:

Each one is missing at least one component of the chair definition above.

So like... it's almost like strict definitions are exclusionary.

[lizluvscupcakes]

Reblog to hit a transphobe with a separate seat for one person

[the-haiku-bot]

Reblog to hit a

transphobe with a separate

seat for one person

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[lizluvscupcakes]

[i-say-ok]

ok!

[All The Smol Things]

[charlesoberonn]

It's gonna be such a funny mess when Donald Trump dies of a stroke on April 1st, 2024.

• Naturally everybody will think it's fake because of the date only to lose their minds (both positively and negatively based on their opinion of trump) when realizing it's real
• There will be massive celebrations in the streets and on social media and lots of predictable "don't speak ill of the dead" discourse about those celebrations
• Weird evangelicals will pull some weird number trick talking about how Jesus was conceived on April 1st and that makes Trump a sort of messiah and people will make fun of that
• The Republicans (after they're done with the faux-sadness and faux-outrage) will stomp over each other to be his successor but none of them will succeed. They'll tear each other apart and have no single nominee for the November elections.
• There will be discourse about if Biden and the living former presidents should go to his funeral (they won't, he was a traitor insurrectionist)
• The Ukraine-Russia War immediately goes in favor of Ukraine as morale in the Kremlin is reduced. China similarly backs off from its threats on Taiwan.
• Ten thousand new memes are made, some sticking around for years to come.
• Not a month later a bunch of unofficial biographies of Trump hit the bookshelves, many with new details about just how awful he was.

[rivkann]

[flower-in-a-horror-novel]

Like to charge, reblog to cast

[wilwheaton]

Honestly? They had me at "Trump dies".

[All The Smol Things]

[tau1tvec]

Well ???

[gender-luster]

this pos motherfucker

[All The Smol Things]

[edains]

Rick Riordan constantly trashing the movies for not sticking to his books then releasing a show in which he rewrites everything and loses the spirit of the books entirely

[thesungod]