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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: April 19th, 2024

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  • I’ve really enjoyed Busuu (created by Chegg, a US company) for learning eng—> spanish and eng —>german. Their free version has annoying ads but it does give you a chance to test the interface. The yearly subscription fee isn’t bad for the premium version that gets rid of ads. I’ve taken traditional classes and also used various apps like duolingo. Busuu strikes a happy medium between immersion and clear, digestible grammar explanation. I also like their review area (for vocab and grammar topics).

    The platform doesn’t support Vietnamese yet but has chinese, japanese, and spanish of the ones you mentioned.









  • Philosophy is excellent food for thought, working through a MOOC course (MIT/Yale?) and doing the prescribed readings might strike your fancy. Happy to give more specific recs if you have some existing curiosity about a topic. Side note that it’s difficult to find people to talk to online about serious philosophical topics, the options I’ve seen (discord groups, facebook groups) usually aren’t very engaging but the reading and lectures and contemplation are engaging on your own imo.

    Watch ancient history documentaries like the Fall of Civilizations or History with Cy channels on youtube (Fall of Civilizations is also/originally a podcast if you prefer). Whenever I am feeling empty of interesting thoughts this is my go to. When I watch frequently I constantly find my thoughts combining and recombining history with my current experience in a way that feels awfully close to intellectual stimulation. I also find it gives some mildly comforting perspective on current events.

    Built to purpose gadgets. Getting into arduino or similar as a hobbyist can be intellectually engaging. The process of identifying something in your space you could enhance then drafting and executing a plan (including some basic programming) is kind of like a puzzle. Building things you don’t need like an LED based checklist for chores that resets every day, a pedestal that spins to give a house plant even sunlight, or a solar powered bird house might be a fun challenge.

    Edit to add that if you live near a university professors will usually let you unofficially audit their class if you’re interested in a topic and have time during the week.





  • …it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.