#a lui

[christadeguchi]

i watch baseball for the side quests

update: i think you should look at the reblogs for more important baseball hijinks

[allinllachuteruteru]

Duolingo is NOT what it used to be.

“Duolingo is ‘sunsetting the development of the Welsh course’ (and many others)”.

I’ve used Duolingo since 2013. It used to be about genuinely learning languages and preserving endangered ones. It used to have a vibrant community and forum where users were listened to. It used to have volunteers that dedicated countless hours and even years to making the best courses they could while also trying to explain extremely nuanced and complex grammar in simple terms.

In the past two years it feels like Von Ahn let the money talk instead of focusing on the original goal.

No one truly had a humongous problem with the subscription tier for SuperDuolingo. We understood it: if you can afford to pay, help keep Duolingo free for those who couldn’t.

It started when the company went public. Volunteers were leaving courses they created because they warned of differing longterm goals compared to Duolingo’s as a company; not long after it was announced that the incubator (how volunteers were able to make courses in the first place) would be shut down. A year goes by and the forums—the voice of the users and the way people were able to share tips and explanations—is discontinued. A year or two later, Duolingo gets a completely new makeover—the Tree is gone and you don’t control what lesson you start with. With the disappearance of the Tree, all grammar notes and explanations for courses not in the Big 8 (consisting of the courses made before the incubator like Spanish/French/German/etc. and of the most popular courses like Japanese/Korean/Chinese/etc.) are removed with it. Were you learning Vietnamese and have no idea how honorifics work without the grammar notes? Shit outta luck bud. Were you learning Polish and have absolutely no clue how one of the declensions newly thrown at you functions? Suck it up. In a Reddit AMA, Von Ahn claims that the new design resulted in more users utilizing the app/site. How he claims that statistic? By counting how many people log into their Duolingo account, as if an entire app renovation wouldn’t cause an uptick in numbers to even see what the fuck just happened to the courses.

Von Ahn announces next in a Reddit AMA that no more language courses will be added from what there already is available. His reasoning? No one uses the unpopular language courses — along with how Duolingo will now be doing upkeep with the courses already in place. And here I am, currently looking on the Duolingo website how there are 1.8 million active learners for Irish, 284 thousand active learners for Navajo, and even 934 thousand active learners for fucking High Valyrian. But yea, no one uses them. Not like the entire Navajo Nation population is 399k members or anything, or like 1.8 million people isn’t 36% of the entire population of Ireland or anything.

And now this. What happened to the upkeep of current courses? Oh, Von Ahn only meant the popular ones that already have infinite resources. Got it. Duolingo used to be a serious foundational resource for languages with little resources while also adding the relief of gamification.

It pisses me off. It really does. This was not what Duolingo started out as. And yea, maybe I shouldn’t get invested in a dingy little app. But as someone who spent most of her adolescence immersed in language learning to the point where it was literally keeping me alive at one point, to the point where languages felt like my only friend as a tween, and to the point where friendships on the Duolingo forums with likeminded individuals my age and other enthusiasts who even sent me books in other languages for free because they wanted people to learn it, the evolution of Duolingo hits a bitter nerve within me.

~End rant.

[the-evil-clergyman]

The Pole Star by Luis Ricardo Falero (1885)

[unicornconnor]

Happy end

[thelittleriza]

ALERT SPOILER DANS LES TAGS !!!!!!

Je viens de lire le résumé des épisodes de la nouvelle saison de l'Art du crime .... Je crois que je suis tombée dans la Quatrième dimension ....

[princerevenant]

don quixote and sancho panza 👯

[diviedrawn]

Resident Evil 4: jjba edition

[heraxic]

im sensing a pattern here🤔🏳️‍🌈

[raccoons-garbage-can]

What if we were silly sylvanian families characters in love

[eurodynamic]

RESIDENT EVIL 4 REMAKE (2023) dev. Capcom [1,2]

[daily-leon]

[sirrenhd]

arms

[lalapa73]

Dopo sette anni sono riuscita nuovamente a dire il tuo nome, quando dalla mia bocca è uscito di getto senza dolore ho sentito la pace. Finalmente mi sento guarita, ma non è il tempo ad avermi dato questa forza, è stato un angelo, una persona che ha saputo aprire quella porta che tu ed io avevamo chiuso a chiave con le catene. Mi sento fortunata, ho sperato fosse un segno, un dolce inizio di qualcosa di meraviglioso, ma, lui, ha un grande amore, ha quello che io avevo per te. Tu ed io sappiamo che non sei mai stato il grande amore della mia vita, ma tu sei stato l’amore che volevo per la mia vita. Spero che trovi il coraggio di dirle che l’ama e che lei lo ricambi, spero succeda velocemente, anche se so che quando sarà io lo perderò. Perdere lui sarà doloroso forse quanto è stato perdere te , Tiger. Lui mi fa stare bene, mi fa sorridere, mi calma quando ho i miei momenti no, è un buon amico, ma lui mi piace, mi piace senza averlo mai visto, mai toccato. Vederlo, toccarlo, magari abbracciarlo potrebbe cambiare la mia percezione di lui ma così lo sto idolatrando e a breve dovrò disinnescare, spero solo non sia già troppo tardi perché lui mi piace. Tanto.

[the-evil-clergyman]

Twin Stars by Luis Ricardo Falero (19th Century)

[flexscene]

Luis Viera Junior via Instagram

[unicornconnor]

"Future"