#learning stuff

[sarahmackattack]

You know what I spontaneously learned tonight?

The eyes of twilight zone ostracods are "parabolic mirrors", & I don't actually know what that means, but what I do understand is that the consequence of that structure is that they might perceive more light than any other animal. Sick.

Sidenote: If you think that is cool, you might think my atlas obscura class is cool! It's 4 weeks long, once a week, requires no homework or grades, just learning for fun. You follow me, so you might be into that kind of thing. You can sign up here.

[likesdoodling]

This was an idea I came up with while doing Kanji copy work, and the character '悪' (warui) in the Kanji dictionary I've been using just comes with a whole lot of example words, all of which are negative. Which was when I was like, "I can so imagine Atsushi quoting this at Akutagawa" Also one of the pronunciations is 'Aku' which while a different Kanji from the one used in the name 'Akutagawa Ryuunosuke', is still kind of funny. Hence 'malice' being pronounced as 'aku-i' and 'evil deed' as 'aku-ji'

Didn't really know how to draw Rashoumon, but I ended up going with dragon heads. Cause I feel like I've heard it described similar to dragons somewhere, and it was fun.

Also, kinda random but-

Writing Atsushi and Akutagawa shouting at each other is hilarious.

:D

[michaelatmandelacounty]

POV: your friend gives you the best science lesson you've ever had about her dragon designs for certain characters not completely sure how to say it since she's still thinking about making an AU...

But rn I got the skeleton, respiratory and cardiac functions, and digestive system down...

Will keep you updated!! Until tomorrow my sillies!!

[dragonnan]

Two new things I’m teaching myself so far this year. How to animate stuff and how to create custom fonts. Will have a nifty font set available soon for anyone interested.

[bunnies-and-sunshine]

Good news!

Little snuggle buddies.  River decided it was nap time after I cleaned her front paws. 💕

I heard from the vet today and he said that River's kidney results were normal, so it's not kidney failure!  Due to her globulin levels being increased, he suspects she has an infection (UTI) and is prescribing her Baytril, which I'll pick up tomorrow.

He also wanted to ensure she stays hydrated, so is going to show me and big human how to give subcutaneous fluids (it's a two person job).  This will save her the stress of a car trip and vet visit. 

Her calcium levels were a bit high, though that is most likely due to diet (alfalfa is in the critical care mix as well as some of the hay cubes since she doesn't really try to eat actual hay anymore).  He said at her age, we pick our battles and it'll just be something to keep tabs on--I'll try to increase the timothy pellet portion of her paste mix and the bunny Ensure mix.

[sparksel]

Just finished up an intro to woodworking class I was taking. All hand tools, no power tools. I learned SO much but I'm also very excited for the next class, where we get to use the loud scary machines

[jennyyyeeettt]

Forever reblogging

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

[aroaceleovaldez]

i had a thought of "do people not know what AUs are anymore?" and then i remembered nobody explains fandom stuff to new people anymore so it is entirely plausible people genuinely don't know what AUs are and nobody has explained it to them, so for today's lucky 10,000:

"AU" stands for "Alternate Universe" or "Alternative Universe" (same difference) and is basically any thought scenario for a fandom that isn't canon and can't fit within the canon universe. If it takes place in the canon universe but something is notably different, that is typically what's known as a "Canon divergent AU," because it diverges from canon.

an AU can be absolutely anything. There's a couple of widespread pan-fandom au scenarios that often get thrown around, like coffee shop aus, genderbend aus, hanahaki aus (hanahaki is a whole thing in itself i'd recommend researching on your own), etc. One you might hear sometimes is "crossover AU" which is when you have characters from one fandom interacting with characters from another.

You can have as many aus as you want. They can be whatever you want and you can do whatever you want in them. It's a sandbox for you to play around in and explore how things would be different or how the characters would act in those circumstances or environments. Maybe they have different relationships with each other. Maybe they behave slightly differently. Or you can just say "Okay, [x] is true. How did they get here? How would things have to be different for this to occur?" which can also be fun.

If you are ever confused about why people ship something that seems completely out of the blue or doesn't make sense to you in the canon setting, there's a good chance they like it in an AU setting! Not everything everybody is interacting with is necessarily the canon! Not everybody wants things to exist in canon and just want to explore playing dolls in a different sandbox and that's okay. And their sandbox might look a lot different than yours, and that's also okay. You have the freedom to make your sandbox whatever you please. Do whatever you want forever. Get funky with it. AUs are fun.

Okay that's my schpeal. everybody go have fun and play nice now.

[subparseshow]

<BIG J> has a lesson to [TEACH], but it's not the lesson he [PLANNED]. Tune in at 5PM for our [PREMIERE]!

[carnage-cathedral]

btw guys managing your symptoms also means apologizing for things you didn't mean to do. sometimes you do things because of your disorders that you genuinely didn't mean to do, but if it hurt someone you still have to take accountability and make up for the hurt you caused

[gwydionmisha]

Back at my second college I had a housemate taking a summer intensive course in Latin. He was an older student. he needed a language course and had picked Latin because it's mostly read only.

He was struggling. I offered to help. He was a month in doing it all day every day. Studying his ass off. In danger of failing.

We sat down with his homework. I asked him to translate a sentence for me, so I could see where he was with it.

He started translating the words in order, like an English sentence. After some questioning I discovered he had memorized all the declensions and principle parts, but the Grad student teaching the course hadn't explained what they were FOR.

He had no idea what nominative, accusative, ablative, perfect tense, etc. meant. He assumed at some point it would be explained. It had not been explained for a month, the teacher was just letting him fail because she assumed anyone taking a language would already know that, even though Latin grammar and English grammar are really different. O.o

Latin uses position of the verb in place of punctuation. The ending of the word tells you what the word is doing in the sentence. You can leave certain words out because you can assume them from the grammar. Often the words in the sentence are arranged for aesthetic or poetic effect or for emphasis. Except for the verbs, where the words are in the sentence isn't important for simple decoding the basic meaning. Like, they matter for art or rhetoric or whatever, but not for figuring out who is doing what to whom.

So I explained it properly and he immediately started decoding sentences.

We were both so mad.

Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.

[illusionary-night]

entry the third

whole lot of dilly-dallying today. lectures were a bore except for philosophy holy FUCK i have to actually try in philosophy im gonna kms no i wont :3 aaaaanywayyyy i was lonely today and i got ahold of an old piano keyboard and the range makes me sad but i also tried drawing today (see last post) but i also made no progress on actual schoolwork and im a failure and bleh. didnt even go to the arcade

didnt jack off though

[mrtequilasunset]

Listen man, you guys can't be like "you guys need to be normal about asexuality" and then turn around and get weirdly judgemental when you find out someone doesn't have sex by choice. Like that's weird that some of you do that.

[flootzavut]

I love reading a sentence in a language I've been studying and understanding it. Like a year ago I couldn't speak or understand any Welsh, now I get emails in Welsh (like very simple emails targeted at learners, but they're entirely in Welsh) and understand them. That's an amazing feeling.

the feeling of learning is legitimately so cool. there’s a little whoa sound effect that plays in your brain whenever you read a sentence that expands reality for you a tiny bit

[susartwork]

He's joking, guys-

Idk what this is. I've had this comic idea in my notes for literally a year, so I used it for color practice XD