All assignments are submitted electronically now, and if he’s in philosophy, he will also have to follow formatting requirements like font, font size, margins, and spacing. Practically, he’s doing as much as he is allowed off-computer.

If they had, they’d know there was a 13th disciple named Matthias. I’m not even kidding, it’s in the Book of Acts. He was selected to replace Judas, and is described as having been with them since the beginning.

I tried out a bunch, including Babbel, Busuu, Language Transfer, Mango, and Memrise. I didn’t like them for one reason or another. I finally landed on Lingodeer. It’s similar to Duolingo, but it is a paid app. (You can try level 1 of any language for free.)

The regular subscription price is definitely not worth it. It’s okay (not great, but not awful) when they do their sales. But I felt okay about paying human workers.

This kind of learning is a great start, but will only get you so far. If your local library has access to Kanopy, look for the Great Courses series on Spanish. I thought that was an excellent series after a little bit of Duolingo.

We barely rejected the right wing nuts, and they could easily take the next election. While relief is warranted, we should not be smug or complacent about it, either. Lies more faster than the truth, it’s still an uphill battle for morality and decency.

Duolingo got me enough vocabulary in Spanish to put the simplest sentences together, and then follow more robust lessons. I still think it was a good starting point, but I won’t use it anymore on principle.

A little over a year ago, a guy tried to ask me out and I’m the process said a few dumb things in an attempt to impress me. The dumbest of them all was that he was planning to buy a Cybertruck as his next vehicle. By the time he’d said this, I’d already long made up my mind about this guy. Mind, this was the period of time when Elon was just an asshole and hadn’t gone full Nazi yet, but even then, this dude’s choice of vehicle told me I’d made the right choice.

Theseadays I wonder if that guy ever got his idiot truck, and, whether he did or not, if he’s changed his mind about it.

Librarians go to school to learn how to manage information, whether it is in book format or otherwise. (We tend to think of libraries as places with books because, for so much of human history, that’s how information was stored.)

They are not supposed to have more information in their heads, they are supposed to know how to find (source) information, catalogue and categorize it, identify good information from bad information, good information sources from bad ones, and teach others how to do so as well.

I had to tell a bunch of librarians that LLMs are literally language models made to mimic language patterns, and are not made to be factually correct. They understood it when I put it that way, but librarians are supposed to be “information professionals”. If they, as a slightly better trained subset of the general public, don’t know that, the general public has no hope of knowing that.

I never really got into tea because I always found the flavour disappointing compared to its aroma. But I recently tried yerba maté, which isn’t a tea but definition, but is similar. It’s made from the leaves and stems of Holly and has a strong, bitter flavour that definitely does not disappoint. It’s enjoyed in places like Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil. Now I start my day with a mug of coffee, then sip on maté the rest of the day.

The best use, for me, is asking ChatGPT to give me five (or however many) scholarly, peer-reviewed articles on a topic. Then I search for said articles by title and author name on my school library database.

It saves me so much time compared to doing a keyword search on said same database and reading a ton of abstracts to find a few articles. I can get to actually reading them and working on my assignment way faster.

AI is a great tool for people who use it properly.

I don’t understand what you mean by Firefox’s development is driven by the community? It’s not a community contributed open source software; my friend worka on Firefox and is a Mozilla employee.

The problemo see with this construct is that it only benefits current actors. There won’t be space for a new generation of actors.

I enjoyed this because it took me a second to think what a not-dried prune is: a plum.

Ask a local to show you some of their winter clothes or to take you winter clothes shopping. Your warmest clothes right now are not warm enough. Capacitive touch gloves will let you use your phone.

If you have a car, get a snow brush and ice scraper (for windshield and windows). There is winter windshield fluid, get and use it when it’s snowing. Get winter tires, it makes a difference. Insurance companies give a discount for having them. If there’s snow on the road, go slower than you think you should, and start braking at least twice as early as when it’s dry. Accelerate and brake slowly. If your car is sliding on ice, resist the temptation to keep pressing your brakes, try your best to steer the slide instead.

If your car gets stuck in snow and you need to run it to keep it warm, make sure the tail pipe is well clear of snow (carbon monoxide). Keep an emergency blanket, hat, gloves in the car in case of breakdown. If the wheels are stuck in a snowbank (just spinning in place), some sand or non-clumping cat litter can give you traction. You can sacrifice your floor mats for this, too.

If you walk instead of drive, consider crampons for your boots for if it gets icy out.

There’s different textures and density to snow. Wet snow is dense and heavy, dry snow is light and fluffy. Shoveling can be very different depending on the snow. Lift/push with your legs, now with your arms or back. Take breaks if needed.

If you wear glasses, they will fog up when you go from outside to inside. Sorry. You could get anti-fog stuff used for snow and ski goggles, but most normal people just wait for them to warm up.

A scarf makes a big difference.

Wool can keep you warm even when wet.

Be prepared for power outages especially if the area does not bury power lines. Heavy snow, or worse, ice, can make tree branches heavy and fall and snap power lines. If this happens, be mindful of carbon monoxide. People, families have died trying to keep warm by running generators, stoves, etc indoors without proper ventilation.

Snow reflects sunlight; wear sunglasses if the sun is out and there’s snow on the ground.

Go outside and listen when the snow is falling. It makes everything quieter and it’s really ice to hear.

Snow that’s warmed slightly then frozen again is crunchy and fun to walk on.

If you’re north enough, the sunlight will not be sufficient for creating vitamin D. (Plus you’ll probably be indoors more, less daylight in general.) Consider a supplement.

Consider a SAD light if lack of daylight affects your moods.

The thing that I can’t understand about this product is why they didn’t cover the function keys. They are literally functional.

While there must certainly be some devout Muslims who try their best to keep the “rules”, as I’d expect in any group, a lot of Muslims are not so different frombthe rest of us non-Muslims.

My coworker is a former Muslim who had to leave his home country due to persecution when he became a Christian. Here, he’s made Muslim friends who regularly invite him over for dinner and they serve… Pork. They say because he is not a Muslim, they respect that and don’t force him to eat halal. But why does not forcing him to eat halal equate to them eating pork?

They are genuinely his friends, but he is also their “excuse” to break halal.

Refusing to use nail polish remover to clean off permanent marker because that’s “for women”. It’s acetone, my dude, acetone.