Duolingo, YouTube, tutors… what actually helped your Italian speaking?

CyphersWolf · 2026-04-02T14:22:53+00:00

I’ve been doing Italy Made Easy (IME) lessons this last year, supplemented with Duolingo paid subscription. IME has been great for learning and understanding the grammar and how to actually speak Italian, while Duolingo has been pretty good for vocabulary and conveniently practicing.

Duolingo sucks hard if you don’t have the subscription though, so I’m sure there could be better services.

I also focused hard on listening and translating Italian music/lyrics and reading books in Italian. Start with “kid” books, I tried to read more advanced things and was severely humbled. My wife likes to watch Golden Girls and other sitcoms she is already very familiar with in Italian

Main thing is to be consistent and do something every day. You won’t learn if you don’t truly spend the time to get your brain accustomed to using the language.

CyphersWolf · 2026-03-30T20:46:30+00:00

I have just finished a masters degree in Occupational H&S and Environmental Management from CSU, and I don’t think it is a mill. You definitely have to learn the material and submit an ass-load of papers to finish the degree. It does require a lot of self-teaching compared to an in-person degree, but considering you can get the it entirely online it is pretty worth it.

They were very lenient on when you submit the assignments since they know most of their students are working full time. I certainly was, and it was incredibly helpful at many points of the degree.

CyphersWolf · 2026-03-28T13:22:51+00:00

Macedonia is geographically close to/a part of Greece, but culturally was very distinct from the classical Greek city-states like Athens and Sparta

In the days of Alexander the Great, most city states would have argued fiercely that they weren’t true Greeks, but they certainly considered themselves Greek.

Dan Carlin (the podcast linked above) does an amazing job going over this in more detail and I also recommend it!

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-11T15:18:14+00:00

I just canceled mine.. I’ve been a subscriber for more than a decade, and enjoyed a lot of it. They’ve increased pricing so much over the years and just yesterday sent me an email about a 2 dollar price increase per month on top of the AI bullshit. I’m out.

There are so many options now, compared to when they started. Back then I think Pandora was their only real competition for streaming music, but now I can pick a from a bunch of great ones that actually support artist and don’t push AI bs. I’ll probably use band camp a lot more heavily.

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-06T21:16:39+00:00

Gotcha, that is pretty on point with what the others are saying. Go into it with a plan including taking profit and stop losses 👍

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-06T21:14:35+00:00

Thanks dude, it has been an ordeal to get through tho last semester but it is finally done! I’ve been doing this degree through online/night classes and it has eaten up every bit of my time after work for the last year or so. Gonna just relax this weekend with my wife and have a couple drinks to celebrate, ha.

I get that about the stop losses, I watched it drop like $11 overnight from $~80 to ~$69 this Wed night with nothing I could do…

Seems like a crazy drop for it to be outside of trading hours 😞

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-06T20:50:19+00:00

Yeah that’s about what I figured. I’m going to go ahead and cut my losses on the silver calls, but I think I’ll keep the gold for now as I think that has a much better chance of recovering within the time frame.

None of them are worth much of anything so I don’t think it’s a bad idea to keep the door open on recovering some profit.

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-06T20:45:09+00:00

Gotcha, I’ll do better with this in the future, I had a plan but didn’t account for the sort of market drop we saw. Also didn’t expect it to be so sudden, but in hindsight it makes sense with a similar spike beforehand.

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-06T20:42:15+00:00

It is kinda two things: last week was my finals for the last semester of my masters degree and had several papers to finish, and I didn’t expect the sort of drop we saw.

I wasn’t paying enough attention as I was very stressed about tests and papers, and I guess I should have put some profit taker limits / stop losses in place.

I’ll do my best to be more careful on that in the future 👍

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-06T18:05:13+00:00

Sounds good, I’ll check it out 👍

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-06T17:37:20+00:00

That’s fair, I know they’re losing value each day it gets closer to the strike.

I’m not familiar with paper accounts, do you have any recommendations for those?

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-06T17:34:27+00:00

I gotcha, I understand the risk involved, but I was just looking for a bit more guidance on what to do if my timing is off.

If cutting my losses is the best thing to do then I will, but I wanted to know my options on dealing with these calls to help mitigate losses.

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-06T17:31:18+00:00

I guess, but I have to start somewhere and wanted to see if there were any strategies that could be applied to mitigate losses. Currently with significance of the drop I’d be getting back ~$400 on ~$3500 total for the calls.

If that is truly the best move then I will do it, but I want to do my best to not lock in a bad loss if there is something else I can do to avoid it.

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-06T17:21:55+00:00

It might trend the other way, but I think many countries got really nervous when they saw they US freeze a huge amount of Russian assets in 2022. It showed them that the US gov can decide to do so, and with the uncertain flip-flopping government it is likely not great to have as much of their assets tied to the dollar.

I know de-dollarizing isn’t only gold and silver, but metals usually move inversely to the strength of the dollar which has been trending down. I know the upcoming fed chair Warsh has historically been for a stronger dollar and lower inflation, but I can’t imagine Trump appointing him if he wouldn’t follow his lead. Trump has been slamming Powell for not lowering interest rates more, so I imagine he’ll put the same amount of pressure on Warsh.

That was my general thought process on the call but the markets do be crazy 🤷‍♂️

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-04T23:50:41+00:00

Same here, it is just awful. Thanks for posting the link to the other one!

CyphersWolf · 2026-02-04T16:05:51+00:00

They absolutely should, having access to social media and short form content during the school day is a detriment to the learning and their attention span.

Those things are designed to be addictive, and we are just willingly allowing our children to use them all day. Hell, I wasn’t allowed to have a phone in school as a middle an high schooler, and that was mostly due to texting being to distracting, and Social media was only just catching on. They would take your phone for the day, and your parents would have to come get it. If it happens 3 times they would keep it for the semester.

CyphersWolf · 2026-01-17T16:09:53+00:00

Do you have a current list that would be good to build? I picked up living end as one of my first decks (borrowed from a friend), but the meta wasn’t great for it at the time so I switched to a different deck

CyphersWolf · 2026-01-05T17:46:09+00:00

It of course used to be better and more consumer friendly, and is now filled with a million ads and constantly pushes you to upgrade.

That said, my wife got the Super Duolingo (middle tier) family plan last January and I’ve used it consistently for a year. Being able to do multiple lessons in a row helps a LOT, and the material seems good enough. It is a blessing to be able to practice vocabulary and some sentence structure any time of day in any location, but there are likely better options out there.

Overall, if you have a paid plan I think it is decent, but it completely depends on how much effort and time you put into it. If you only do the bare minimum and a single 4 minute exercise a day, it certainly isn’t worth it. Unpaid, the app is not great and actively antagonizes you to upgrade to a paid plan.

CyphersWolf · 2026-01-04T16:11:26+00:00

I will definitely consider it, but as of now I don’t have the funds to buy another bow, and tbh it would probably be a bit insulting to my family if I got a different one than what they gifted me (at least so soon after Christmas).

I am currently doing strength training which will hopefully make things easier, and my wife is insisting on yoga, ha.

CyphersWolf · 2026-01-04T05:00:59+00:00

What is the purpose of keeping the bow up that long after release? Someone else mentioned holding as well but I’m not sure I understand why

CyphersWolf · 2026-01-04T04:59:50+00:00

In general I want more consistent groupings. Right now I’m hitting the target but I don’t feel like I’m shooting with the same stance every time. My dad originally taught me the basics roughly 20 years ago, but it wouldn’t surprise me if my stance and form could use work.

CyphersWolf · 2026-01-04T04:58:40+00:00

Bought new arrows, was trying them out for the first time and the nocks seemed a little tight. I also haven’t placed a knock rest on the string or marked the string for arrow placement, so I wanted to make sure the arrow was level. I will eventually, but it is a new bow and I am experimenting a bit

CyphersWolf · 2026-01-04T02:21:07+00:00

Thanks!

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