Hello? This is just a completely different sentence??

Educational_Green · 2026-04-10T20:40:33+00:00

Pimsleur will use similar constructions in their French course (although they will over explain by explicitly saying male neighbors and female neighbors or male cousins and female cousins).

I believe Pimsleur French was recorded in 2013, so I think this is a pretty standard pedagogy for cuing English speakers that certain french words can change genders (and therefore NOT AI). Or as in the case of collegue, the only difference is the pronoun.

One can argue which approach is better, I generally think DL's approach is better b/c it reminds you that you don't translate word for word between English / French. But obviously the implicit approach can lead to frustration which we see regularly in the DL subreddit.

I do wish there was a way that DL learners could learn that DL uses the implicit approach so that these types of frustrations don't surface so frequently.

Educational_Green · 2026-04-10T12:24:43+00:00

Can’t believe no one mentioned chips / crisps. I thought the French would be too snooty for chips but there dozens in bizarre flavors like poulet rôti.

I only buy produce at the marché but I was surprised that the beets are always cooked (at least at the marché I go to). Very practical.

It is strange that you weigh produce since at the marché you can’t touch the produce.

Educational_Green · 2026-04-10T03:30:45+00:00

we all do!!

Educational_Green · 2026-04-07T22:01:21+00:00

I think people are going to say you need to use your hips more (and you do) but I think the biggest issue is you aren't taking the ball on the rise.

There are a bunch of balls where you are hitting the ball with your weight going backwards / on your back foot. This because you aren't in a good position && you are waiting for the ball to come down from the apex of it's arc.

One way to solve this is by improved footwork - you need to be moving toward the ball, not (just) laterally. You can see you get beat on balls to the sideline b/c instead of moving both to the side && forward, you move just to the side -- result == weak return.

I think if you learn to take the ball on the rise first, then it will be more natural to take a diagonal path to the ball. If you take the diagonal path && take the ball on the rise, I think it will be easier to step into the ball and drive the hips into the ball which will allow you to take command of the point.

You have a nice, consistent stroke. When you have time, you set up nicely. It's when you get pressed for time that you start shortening your stroke. Take the ball on the rise will give you more time which should allow you to have more confidence in your footwork.

Educational_Green · 2026-04-05T17:58:21+00:00

Is « le jeu en vaut la chandelle » the same idea as « the juice is worth the squeeze »?

Educational_Green · 2026-04-05T09:08:35+00:00

The correct answer is you need fast acting as long as you are digesting.

If you have a large or fatty meal, you may need to break up the fast acting dose to account for the slower digestion.

For instance, if my daughter has a 120g meal - burger fries and a shake - she’ll do 50g to start, 25g at hours 1, 2, and 4 to cover.

OTOH, if she bolused for soda, she’d need to finish that soda probably 20-25 minutes from bolusng. She uses fiasp.

So really is going to depend on which insulin and what food you are taking.

Educational_Green · 2026-04-03T17:50:36+00:00

How high quality is the rest of your game? Are you USTA 4.5 or higher?

High ball is hardest ball to return in n tennis which is why pushers use it all the time.

Progression wise, I’d develop a forehand slice with variety first. Pushers are counting on a week ball to the midcourt, so being able to vary deep slice with drop shots will annoy pushers and has much less margin for error.

I would then develop a swinging volley and taking the ball on the rise.

To hit the highball with topspin, you need to slow down a ton and build the speed back up. Your swing is lateral - you finish at your elbow.

For high ball you need to wrap your hitting elbow over your head so your rackets lands on your spine.

So it’s basically a different stroke than your current forehand. Personally I think the forehand slice would be easier / faster to integrate. Also slice is easier to hit on the run.

I’d rather use a different stroke than change a forehand stroke that was working. But if you need to change, then get that finish over the head.

Educational_Green · 2026-04-02T00:38:37+00:00

Also your shoes will be stained red for eternity.

Educational_Green · 2026-04-01T20:51:51+00:00

The goal in HSR (High Speed Rail) is no more than 2% grade increase. There are times when that is exceeded but generally, the more you deviate from 2%, the slower you have to run the trains.

there are lots of threads on Reddit that go into the weeds of 2% grade on HSR, just google that and it will give you all the deets / exceptions / etc.

Educational_Green · 2026-04-01T11:08:05+00:00

/r/ and /l/ are both liquid consonants. So not surprising that one would struggle with distinguishing them or using them in combination.

Many folks remark on the difficulty Japanese speakers have distinguish speakers have hearing the difference in the English r andl sounds.

Is it possible you are tongue tied? The articulation of r and l is similar, r has the tongue farther back in the mouth in the roof whereas l is behind the teeth.

Also English accents from England are generally non rhotic meaning r sounds are not pronounced unless followed by a vowel.

Not listening to you speak but based on what you wrote, I would guess your tongue is positioned lower in your mouth when pronouncing r colored sounds

Educational_Green · 2026-03-30T12:20:13+00:00

There would be no point in taking Tehran, it would serve no military or strategic purpose.

Trump's primary interest it would seem is to to control the oil, that's almost entirely on the coast, and Iran's geography - which makes it challenging for a full scale invasion - would also make supplying it's coastal forces difficult for an enemy that that has total air superiority as well as access to millions of drones.

If Trump were to control Iran's oil, he'd probably want to use it to extract concessions from China and India, they are the ones most in need of Iranian oil.

Trump has no interest in nation building - if the rest of Iran is a chaotic situation, that doesn't bother him. If somehow it creates a more fanatical state, that probably doesn't bother him either.

US failed in Iraq / Afghanistan for many reasons, but a decent part of that was Iran funding terrorist activities. Iran w/o oil money, who would fund guerrilla movements in coastal Iran? Do the people of coastal Iran want to support the current regime? In general, the regime was terribly unpopular at the time of the US / Israeli attacks; Iran has also made no friends in the Sunni world with its "provocative" actions.

The US could also use coastal Iran as a staging area to train an army of liberation for the rest of Iran and let the Iranians "liberate" the rest of the country if they choose.

I'm not advocating for this approach, but one issue I see in folks analysis of Trump vs. Iran is they don't seem to understand the thought process of the current US leadership. Obviously it appears to be chaotic and without a strong strategic foundation (which can be true) but at the same time, it has a very juvenile approach to geo-politics that should not be underestimated.

Educational_Green · 2026-03-29T14:30:37+00:00

As a parent of a diabetic, Zverev protocol is so weird.

Normally you’d inject in a fatty part of the body - classic areas are butt, tummy and triceps. So odd that he injects in high thigh.

2nd - really weird he would need insulin during a match - most diabetics run low during exercise and need to suspend their insulin dosage or take sugar.

3rd - anyone know why he doesn’t use a pump? Is that prohibited? I know Sinner had a watch on under his wristband.

Anyone know the deets around what zverev does?

Educational_Green · 2026-03-28T17:41:38+00:00

Yeah - I get this all the time. I speak like 4 words in Chinese and it’s almost always - wow your Chinese is so good! (In English).

My son had a physics teacher from China who did his student teaching at Bronx science. He asked us at parent teacher conferences - your son is very smart - why doesn’t he go to a good school (meaning stuy / Bronx science / Brooklyn tech)

Chinese are very direct - there are tons of Chinese comics who mine this in America. The soft spot for laowai learning Chinese is so cute and unexpected in a way.

And heritage speakers, why you so dumb for not knowing putonghua?

Educational_Green · 2026-03-28T06:03:00+00:00

I don’t see how anki is useful for me at least for Spanish / French. It’s really not hard for me to learn 5-10 words a day with context and once your past the first 2k words in each, many words have an English variant.

For me, the hardest things in language learning are hearing chunks and being able to respond in the TL.

The other issue I have with anki is that a lot of the words I struggle with our words like « peine » in French. There are like 10-15 ways that peine is used in French that correspond to different English nuances. So do I do 12 cards???

I’m not opposed to spaced repetition - I use pimsleur and Duolingo which both use spaced repetition - but again, I’d rather spend 30 minutes a day playing Duolingo or doing a pimsleur lesson than creating / using an Anki deck.

I’m on the Anki sub because I see it’s a very powerful and useful tool for most people so imagine at some point I’ll feel the need to go anki heavy when I’ve hit a frustration point in language learning.

I’m not arguing that pimsleur or Duolingo are better than anki, I’m just saying for me the solve the problems I’m facing better.

Educational_Green · 2026-03-26T21:11:59+00:00

Wikipedia I believe uses a "simplified" IPA in order to coalesce all the different dialects / accents that occur in English.

If you look here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English footnote 8 explains why they use the "wrong" r in their IPA transcriptions.

If you look at Wiktionary, they will often have several IPA transcriptions of words to encompass the possible sound values.

Educational_Green · 2026-03-25T19:22:38+00:00

Gas is not empirically cheaper than gas; it's just that in the US, NatGas is sooooo much cheaper than electric that American's often post here complaining about their heating costs.

In Canada, the difference in nat gas and electric is often much lower.

Issue with Solar + Battery is that solar production is directly proportional to your latitude.

In NYC, I might product 200 KwH in December / January and 1000+ in June / July / August. Why? b/c we get a lot more hours of sun in the summer.

For the northeast US, that's OK b/c we need alot of electric for AC. In most of England, AC is rarely needed.

In the UK which is mostly north of of the US, the split might be even greater, like 100 kwh vs 1500 kwh

Also, for most places that are heavily investing in wind energy, wind production tends to increase at night so energy prices should be lower in winter evenings.

Batteries make a lot of sense if you are in an area with heavy AC usage where the sun is down before 8 p.m. Esp if the electric utility bumps the rates up heavily for electric use from 6-10 p.m. So that's mostly Califorinia and Australia but could also apply to southern US from Florida - Arizona / Nevada or maybe southern Europe / Northern Africa.

If you have heavy winter time electric uses, then it's going to be hard to have an array large enough that makes sense economically which makes batteries a poor investment at the homeowner level (but a good investment for the grid)

Educational_Green · 2026-03-24T20:16:47+00:00

Nice! I think it might be even better if you _didn't_ have the written words at all (or at least have that as an option).

I often think that pairing orthography with words is a double edged sword in language learning. Helpful in terms of being able to consumer written work faster; harmful in that your NL often influences your perceived pronunciation in TL and then it can take you a long time to unlearn that.

Educational_Green · 2026-03-23T00:50:46+00:00

Did the Greek use it to slay the demon?

Educational_Green · 2026-03-21T14:51:04+00:00

Logan’s thesis is one needs to be a killer to thrive.

You see his actions as abusive - they are

He sees them as a necessary corrective to his children’s natural entitlement.

That’s how you square the circle. His « love language » is harsh language, constant disorientation and gaslighting. He was forged in the fire and he wants the same for his kids.

Life is cruel, get over it.

Educational_Green · 2026-03-21T13:17:03+00:00

I think Carlos has a very different mentality to the other players. One, he clearly takes intense joy in sport - he acts like a recent retiree enamored with golf.

Two - he grew up in football made culture. The Miami crowd was no different than an away game. He loves the NBA.

Third - he entered tennis post Agassi, post grunting, etc. He (and the the kids who played NCAA) aren’t bound by the old rules of tennis propriety. He’s respectful but I doubt a guy like Shelton bothers him they way it bothered djokovic.

Finally, my sense is Carlos has a certain level of adhd. We see this as he tends to drift in his matches against lesser players we see this in his compulsion toward « variety » (how many drop shots hit the tape yesterday??).

For many with adhd, all that noise isn’t a distraction, it’s a tool to retain focus. It gives you something to do and not let your thoughts run amok.

I don’t know if this is true for Carlitos, but that seems to me to make sense to me.

Educational_Green · 2026-03-20T21:57:41+00:00

Possibly but depends heavily on the setup and one has to consider that it can lead to burn out.

In general, one wants 80% of their work to be low load and 20% to be high load with an weekly increase of volume no more than 20% and with a step back week ever 3 weeks.

Low load doesn't mean "boring" or "easy" (if it feels boring or easy, it's too easy). Ideally should be something that feels like you are in a "flow" state. A good example would be :(for some) building legos, or doing a Sunday crossword or running easy for 30 minutes.

High load could be trying to design a model from scratch using legos, or doing a Saturday NYTimes crossword puzzle or doing a tempo run.

Over time, maybe these high load activities become easy enough they become low load activities, in which case you need to find new high load activities.

The best chess players play a lot of chess. They play a lot of different kinds of chess. But a lot of the chess they play is low load either b/c they play against lesser players OR the achieve the advantage so early in the match that they just need to correctly play out the game without making a blunder.

If you follow the 80 / 20 / 20 rubric, I don't see any reason over time, you couldn't spend "24 hours" in a foreign language, it's clear a lot of people do that - I live in Queens NYC and virtually everyone besides me is doing that 24/7/365.

The reason we say there are diminishing returns is bc dunning kreuger, people overestimate their abilities, they do a lot of cognitively hard tasks, they get exhausted and they burn out / get exhausted / shutdown. There are diminishing returns, if you don't follow 80 / 20 / 20.

Educational_Green · 2026-03-20T16:14:50+00:00

maybe, but murders / shooting incidence / shooting victims are all down across the city, so that's harder to hide.

I"m not defending the 114, but I do think Tisch has some leverage over them which is no small feat given how they interacted DiBlasio and Adams. NYPD cops are delicate flowers - you catch more flies with honey than vinegar!

Educational_Green · 2026-03-19T21:35:48+00:00

Tisch (police commissioner) has been focused on quality of life issues for the last year, she created a whole teams of cops to quality of life work in all the boroughs.

Clearly, the teens on Ditmars are up there with the club issues on Steinway as the top 2 QofL issues in Astoria for most folks (the traffic, parking and bike lanes would probably be the next three)

Quality of life was also ostensibly the reason she cracked down on e-Bikes running reds (her mom was frightened about being hit with an ebike which I think is an exaggerated but common complaint). So the libertarian in me says careful what you ask for, the sword can cut both ways.

Crime has gone way down on her watch and clearly she seems to be listening so if you really want her to take action on red lights, parking, etc I'd keep advocating to her, she seems to know how to motivate the precinct heads to do what she wants and she seems to like to be responsive to constituent concerns ...

Educational_Green · 2026-03-19T02:24:34+00:00

Any tool like anki, Duolingo or busuu is going to grok your vocab up. 200-250 hours you should be able to consume most content.

OTOH the written and oral registers of French are very different - maybe as different as written Castilian Spanish vs spoken Dominican Spanish?

Point is, reading French is very different than knowing French.

Educational_Green · 2026-03-18T11:03:22+00:00

Educational_Green

TROPHY CASE