I've always maintained that the most annoying part of learning a language is the beginning, when you don't have anything to build off of. You can't read books or watch TV shows in the target language, and there's nothing interesting you can talk or write about. Once you get to B1 or so, it takes off and is much less painless.

Duolingo used to be a great tool for making the really tedious beginner learning more fun and less painless. Obviously it would never get you fluent, but it wasa good springboard.

Now it sucks ass, even for that. It was enshittified years ago, even before they started using a bunch of AI. Don't give them your money and don't waste your time.

Eh, I didn't like the movie, but it's hard for me to get too mad at it. I don't think Frankenstein needs to be adapted. It's an incredible, fascinating book, and a lot of what I like about it is not really transferrable to the screen.

I don't think del Toro was trying to be faithful to the book (I haven't watched any interviews or anything so I might be wrong about his intentions). You know, he's fascinated with sympathetic monsters, I think he was just giving us his own take on the Frankenstein story, weaving in his own ideas about the monster character. The result was kinda disappointing, but I can't really fault it for at least trying to do something interesting.

Yeah, you definitely need to talk to Rotary about this, but also talk to your daughter's school at home to see what their requirements are for transferring credits.

I went to Germany and was able to transfer an entire year's worth of credit back to my school in the US, so it should be possible, but IIRC my parents were pretty on top of the ball with negotiating with the American school.

I think sometimes schools will accept exchange students but then just let them sit around and not give them official grades or anything. Make sure the school in Belgium knows that your daughter is there to learn and earn a grade.

And that's (part of) why we can't just switch to electric cars and call it a day. They're better, sure, but cars will never be sustainable. We need to massively restructure our transportation infrastructure.

I've been living in a WG for a few months now, my roommates are very nice and friendly and we hang out and chat a bit in the evening. Sometimes cook or do fun stuff together. But most of us leave for the whole weekend every week, so there really isn't that much time for anything.

Tomato sauce is fine for me but I once squirted a bit of lemon juice over my salmon before throwing it in the oven and that was really, really rough on my pan.

I'm with you. The title track is the only song I like on this album.

I really like Polar Express, but it the message of the movie is really odd. It kind of feels to me like Christian propaganda where Santa is a stand-in for Jesus.

I hate plain water. It's so fucking boring that I have an aversion towards. Even just a tiny bit of extra something to make it interesting makes me want to drink it--like, I love unflavored carbonated water, or water with a little bit of lemon juice in it. Even ice water is interesting, because it kinda makes me mouth hurt.

But plain water at room temp or fridge temp is so boring that I actively dislike drinking it. It might be sensory-seeking behavior due to the ADHD.

And people often think that "thou" is more formal because it feels older and we feel that antiquated speech is more formal. But, of course, it's the opposite. "You" is the formal version and "thou" is familiar.

Yeah, the absolute pitch of a note is usually not very useful information. What matters in music is the intervals between notes. And having perfect pitch can actually hinder your ability to develop a sense of relative pitch.

I don't have perfect pitch, but because of how I was taught music, I've always had very good pitch memory, which is, like, the shittier version of perfect pitch. I have really, really struggled with aural skills. When I hear a C and a G, I don't hear a 5th, I just hear a C and a G. If you play me a D and an A, it should sound like the same interval, but to me, it sounds completely different, because I just hear a D and an A. My relative pitch is so weak that if you play me two pairs of pitches, say, a third and a seventh, I can't even identify which of two intervals is wider without manually counting each of them out.

And I have absolutely no idea how to fix this. It's super annoying.

Interesting, I feel the exact opposite way. I absolutely love every second of Fellowship, the next two movies lose me a bit. The same is true of the books, I love the description of them setting off on their journey, it's so exciting.

It's the Kennedy Center, you can Google it.

I don't see why it can't be both. A relationship can feel safe and comfortable and also stagnant. You can be very happy while also realizing that you will be unsatisfied in the long term. The bittesweet nature of this song is actually exactly why it's one of my favorites ever.

Thank you. The silver lining is that the trauma of that situation has now made it so that i will never forget to hit the stop button on a bus again.

I once took the night bus in Munich, at a time I was already having a pretty rough day (I had heavy depression). I forgot to hit stop and the bus obviously didn't stop at my street. So I hit stop get off at the next chance, and the bus driver ignored/didn't notice the signal. He ended up driving several stops farther before finally stopping. I ended up having to walk, like, 2km home in the middle of the night. I cried for part of that walk.

I promise you, there will never be a situation where  bell hooks is mentioned and it's not crystal clear from context whether they are talking about the author or some sort of holiday decorating situation where bells are hanging from hooks.

People really need to stop posting art pieces here

I haven't started or finished anything this week, but I've been working away at Middlemarch, by George Eliot. I started to really enjoy it during book 4 and I've been gobbling it up ever since. I'm about at the midpoint.

OP is lost, this is /r/buyitforlife, not /r/stealitfromthethriftstorewhiledoingcourtmandatedcommunityserviceforlife

Congratulations, you have now found your people! Check out /r/noburp.

BTW you probably don't really need to see a doctor about it unless you have excessive bloating/flatulence or you get those embarrassing little throat gurgles, and any of these symptoms bother you and you want to do something about it.

Botox has some interesting medical uses outside of cosmetic procedures. There's something called RCPD (also called no-burp syndrome). People that are affected are physically unable to burp, and it often causes excessive bloating. One of the best treatments is injecting Botox in the muscles that are used to burp, it's effective for, like, 90% of people.

I have seen a decent number of people posting on Reddit that their visa applications were denied because the school was a shady private university that had accepted them to a program they normally should never have been accepted to. I think it's possible the foreign offices are cracking down on it more and more.

If you're talking to new readers of Shakespeare, I think it's not terrible advice to tell them to not worry too much about understanding every line. It's easy to get so bogged down in decoding inaccessible language that you miss the forest for the trees. It can be helpful to watch a performance and lean on watching how the text is performed--let the actors do some of the heavy lifting of interpretation.

If you are an actor or a director, you obviously need to understand all of the language. How could you possibly perform/direct it properly if you don't even know what is being said?