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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 all endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

"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)

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Now that college students no longer have access to their libraries in the same way we used to and have to do most of our learning at home it would be just terrible if we all knew about https://1lib.eu/ a website which has books on basically every topic ever available for free including college textbooks. Imagine if people were researching their thesis without paying for it. 

DO NOT USE THIS SITE AND DEFINITELY DO NOT NOT TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THIS SITE, THEY MIGHT START DOING THESIS RESEARCH FOR FREE OR JUST START READING BOOKS THEY FOUND ON THERE FOR FUN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE INTERESTING. This would be terrible :( :(

Reblog to spread the word so that everyone knows to avoid this site!

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End of semester makes finding a spot in the library near impossible. I can't wait until deadlines are over and the library is quiet again

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4.1.22 April means the beginning of spring break, end of midterms, and an exciting announcement… my younger sister will be joining me at Cornell next fall!! Our family feels very lucky to have gone from immigrant grandparents, and only one college educated parent, to two daughters aiming for doctorates. She doesn’t have a tumblr, but look forward to posts featuring “LittleArchitectureStudies”!

🎼- Dark Red by Steve Lacy

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apple completely censoring tumblr to the point where you can't even say words that aren't even sexual like soap or pipe is the beginning of the end for tumblr’s usability and user experience. the process already started with the Dec 17 ban and recently with the overexposure of ads. but pretty soon, apple is gonna make tumblr unusable. it's not like virizon cared about making the site functional when they owned it, and automatic/wordpress (current owners) definitely don't give a shit about tumblr now.

everywhere else on the internet, content is heavily monitored and censored. you'll get banned if you say anything that's against tos. sometimes that's good, as it gets rid of all the nazis. other times it's terrible, when people abuse the reporting ai to ban normal people. the whole banning system is unpredictable, so to be safe, people need to censor themselves on twitter and tiktok and facebook and ig and youtube. they can't say "kill", they have to say "unalive". they can't talk about violence, so they have to sugarcoat real world events. they can't swear, talk about racism or sex or history, or even acknowledge that the world is a fucked up place, because "kids use this app". tumblr was one of the last safe places on the internet where you could threaten to kill the president without having the fbi show up to your house.

but with this new apple shit, tumblr is becoming more like every other site online. any post that contains a word on a constantly expanding list is hidden from ios users. any blogs marked as "explicit" (which is also a huge issue btw) are unaccessible by apple users. not straight up banning people, but still preventing access to the real tumblr for those users. now over a third of tumblr’s userbase is either stuck on a completely sanitized version of tumblr, has to use the web browser version on their phone, or just cut off from tumblr entirely.

the internet used to be a place of togetherness and inclusiveness and content sharing and entertainment and fun. now it's mostly corporate garbage and ads. companies love ads. and to run ads effectively, they need as many people as possible to see them. and to do that, the places they advertise have to be family friendly so everyone can use them. that's what all of these sites are doing. banning creativity and expressiveness so they can force you to watch more ads. I understand that there's server costs. I understand that the employees need to eat. but there are so many bugs that haven't been fixed in years that it seems like @staff is getting paid to do fuck all, and instead wasting their time making stupid design decisions to distract us from them selling out.

what does this current situation say about the future of tumblr and the internet as a whole? I don't really know. if things continue as they are, more people will leave tumblr for newer sites, or twitter once tumblr becomes just as unusable as it (might as well use the more popular shitty site if they're both equally shit). eventually, within 5 or 6 years, tumblr will shut down after server costs are too high, and unless users take the time to archive everything, nearly two decades of internet history will be erased forever. I'd give it until 2035 before the internet (and by extention the vr world / metaverse / matrix) becomes so riddled with ads that it becomes completely unusable. unless, of course, something changes with how advertisements work. whether that be a new law that makes it so ads have to be less distracting or optional, or even just some sites refusing to run advertisements at the cost of user membership fees. one of those seems extremely unlikely, and the other sounds equally shit.

the internet sucks ass. I just want to return to 2010 playing club penguin and browsing early tumblr and early watching minecraft youtube videos and playing flash games on newgrounds.

the world would be a better place if literally every single ceo and billionaire immediately died right now.

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tumblr’s like “merry christmas all words are illegal now”

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PSA regarding tumblr’s latest Censorship Nightmare

For those of you who haven’t seen this announcement, tumblr recently made some changes to the iOS version of the app, purportedly to comply with Apple’s content guidelines. These changes took effect on Dec 21, starting in version 22.5.1 of the iOS app. As some of you may recall, Apple’s strict guidelines were the driving force for the infamous Great Purge of 2018, which coincidentally also happened around this time of year, but it seems banning all of the female-presenting nipples wasn’t good enough for Apple.

Below is a summary of the important changes. Note that these changes technically ONLY affect those using the iOS app. If you’re accessing tumblr through a different app or operating system (Google Chrome, Android app, etc) it won’t affect you directly but it will affect your followers who use iOS so you should definitely be aware of it.

The list of banned tags has been expanded. As before, there’s no way to know which words or phrases have been banned until you try searching for them, in which case you’ll either get no search results or the following message: “This content has been hidden because of potentially suggestive or explicit content.” You may think this doesn’t concern you if you don’t post explicit material, but do not make the mistake of expecting the banned tags to be logical or reasonable. I’ve already encountered multiple completely innocuous posts (random fandom gifsets) that seem to be hidden on iOS for no discernible reason.

Blogs that have been flagged as explicit can no longer be viewed. Previously, flagged blogs just had their posts hidden from searches, but if you knew the username you could still visit it after clicking through a warning about sensitive content. Now you can’t access it at all.

Likes and reblogs from blogs that have been flagged will no longer show up in your notes. This one won’t affect most people’s user experience as much as the others, but it does mean you may be missing notes. It’s unclear if likes and reblogs from flagged blogs will still count towards the overall note total (and only be missing from the activity feed and note viewer) but I suspect that’s the case.

THE BIG ONE: ANY POST TAGGED WITH A BANNED TAG WILL NO LONGER SHOW UP ON YOUR DASHBOARD. Previously, if you tagged a post with a banned word or phrase (even if the words were used inside another tag), that post would not show up in searches, but your followers would still be able to see it on their dashboard. Now those posts are hidden from your own followers as well. This includes both original posts and reblogs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the real kicker: even if you don’t tag something with one of the banned words, if the OP used a banned tag, any reblogs of that post will not show up on anyone’s dashboard (on the iOS app). The only saving grace here, and I hate to even call it that, is that the blocked posts are still visible if you visit a blog directly or if you have post notifications turned on.

As usual, tumblr was extremely unclear and evasive about all of this in their official announcement. Not surprising, of course, since if more people were aware of these new draconian tactics I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be more of an uproar about it. Tumblr claims that these changes are somewhat temporary and that they are currently working on something that will allow for a less restricted iOS experience, but they refuse to say what that something is and when it will be implemented. And let’s just say, considering their track record, I’m not hopeful.

All of this is horrible and infuriating for many reasons, but the worst part is how insanely counterproductive it is to creating the “safe” environment tumblr (or more specifically Apple) supposedly wants.

Tags have always been used for both blog organization and filtering purposes. Tagging posts with triggers and content warnings is a common practice that gives users the ability to filter out content they may find upsetting or just don’t don’t want to see for whatever reason. By choosing to ban a bunch of unlisted “sensitive content” tags, all they’re doing is encouraging people who want to share that kind of content to come up with alternative less well-known tags or simply not tag that content at all anymore if they want it to show up on their follower’s dashboards, thereby making it more likely for someone to encounter it when they didn’t want to.

So really, with all of the alleged concern for safety and “protecting the children,” all they’ve done is make tumblr less safe for everyone. Typical.

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Pay Attention to Palestine

I really don’t mean to guilt trip anyone, but the word needs to be spread about Palestine and no major news outlets are covering it. Hundreds of Palestinians are being injured by the Israeli Occupation forces trying to defend their homes from settler violence and ethnic cleansing.

For the past month lynch mobs and anti-Palestinian pogroms have filled the streets of Jerusalem, this is an extension of over 70 years of ethnic cleansing, dispossession, occupation, settler colonialism, and murder that has effected Palestinians, and Israeli courts have ordered the eviction of 12 Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and to hand over their land to Israeli settlers. If you are American, this is what your tax dollars are going to, the least you can do is spread the word and voice your support for us. 

If you are able to donate, here are some donation links for Palestinians in need: 

Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS) 

Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association 

Save the Children 

US Campaign for Palestinian Human Rights

Project Rozana USA 

Adalah Justice Project

Medical Aid for Palestine (UK)

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

Palestinian Policy Network

Electronic Intifada 

Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU)

International Medical Corps (GAZA) 

Human Concern International (Gaza) 

Playgrounds for Palestine

Watch to Donate: 

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(05.05.2021) || a truly overwhelming week that isn’t quite over, but it’s the laptop stealing cat’s gotcha day so that’s nice 🥰

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i cant believe this is a real photo

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hello everyone ! we’ve all been going through online school for quite a while now, so i wanted to share some tips that i’ve learned along this journey that have helped me stay on top of things. i hope they can help some of you as well ! ✨🪴

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Your worth is not defined by academics. You are more than your grades.

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oct 22. 20 - well i’m almost done w week 3 of my uc santa cruz class! even though i’m still a community college student, i’m taking a ucsc class through cross enrollment. i hope doing well in this class will help w my admission into the university (my grade will be on my transcripts) | here are some notes from the first week of the quarter🌿

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[19.10.2020]

i’ve been neglecting my tasks for so long that it’s a chaos rn ✌️😗 no worries tho, i just need to fix my sleeping schedule (and stop reading for 9 hours everyday) so i can function again

🏷 day 4 of the studyblr community challenge: how long have you had a studyblr?

my first reblog is from the 19th of feb 2017 so around that time

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Early morning coffee... early afternoon coffee... the story continues. While working with COVID and supporting protests has made it harder for me to concentrate at times, I appreciate the quiet hours I have been able enjoy.

Stay Safe. Stay Aware. Stay Kind.

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when the required textbook is $350 but you only have $3.48:

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08-08-2020

Desk setup for today!

I have another moot today (this one is more ‘serious’ than the one last weekend so I’m a bit nervous) but let’s hope for the best. 

It’s also the birthday of a good friend today, and I spent the last week communicating back and forth with Customer Service so that I could get her the perfect gift- which should be arriving today hopefully so that should be fun- can’t wait to see her reaction to it 😂 

(Also I realised that my old desk photo didn’t have these stands- I had to get them because the amount of time I spent reading both my text books and on my laptop were giving me neck pain) 

I’m planning on switching up the wall decor either today or tomorrow, hopefully that’ll look as cute as this!

🎧 Perfect by pH-1