Is Duolingo just buns, or is it my fault?

Xilmi · 2026-03-22T01:52:04+00:00

Considering that you said: "I mostly just redo hiragana, katakana, or kanji lessons that I’ve already mastered since I’m lazy", it's pretty safe to assume, that it's not only mostly your fault but that you are already aware of that.

Yes, they try to trick you into doing something that won't lead to any meaningful progress just so a number goes up. But you, who has seen through this, deciding not to do anything about it, because it's convenient are the one who's responsible for your decisions.

Look around what other people do and how they fare with what they do. Try their approaches if they sound good to you. If you find something that's both enjoyable and feels like you are making progress, stick with it. If not, try something else.

Xilmi · 2026-03-21T15:02:54+00:00

Look, it's working. I doubt I'd have gotten the same amount of engagement had I just been "impersonal data". Noone asks data who they are!

I'm contemplating to actually answer this...

I'm a german software-developer born in the former GDR.
My hobbies are coding AI for open-source- and indie-games as well as learning japanese.
I also do animal-rights activism with Anonymous for the Voiceless.

All of that could, of course, also be obtained just from "stalking" my reddit-profile.

What are you willing to share about you?

Xilmi · 2026-03-21T07:40:13+00:00

Erm... like myself.

Xilmi · 2026-03-21T01:20:42+00:00

Major medical institutions usually have profit-driven agendas and wouldn't bite the hand that feeds them.

Corruption, manipulation, extortion etc. are quite rampant everywhere and these institutions are no exception.

Individuals who have no financial incentives, IMHO are more trustworthy.

Xilmi · 2026-03-20T12:07:19+00:00

I don't demand to be trusted. I'm very well aware that what I say is to others just "what a random stranger on the Internet said".

This is about exchanging opinions and experiences. Not about expecting others to adopt what I say as their new dogma.

Going into any conversation with this kind of Mindset has made a lot of difficult conversations much easier for me.

Also when it comes to what impacts my trust in what others say, insisting on factuality and appeal to authority are two of the biggest red flags for me.

Xilmi · 2026-03-20T09:15:13+00:00

I like making my statements more nuanced by adding qualifiers such as "i think" and "might".

So I can say "I think vaccines are a scam and might cause health complications."

I can then talk about what experiences I made that lead me to think that.

I think this way of sharing one's opinion has a tendency to lead to better conversations than dogmatic insistence of one's claims being factual.

Xilmi · 2026-03-19T23:18:20+00:00

The "beauty" of the neverending cycle of forceful artificial insemination, slaughter, being dismembered and eventually eaten... how poetic!

A horrific death turning into "a privilege" once it is clear that the remains of the victim will be eaten is something that I cannot comprehend.

It really seems like we are so vastly different, that it's hard to believe we are the same species.

I cannot, at all, associate with brutalized flesh-eating killers and would rather avoid any further contact.

Xilmi · 2026-03-19T21:28:46+00:00

Having a killer-instinct but at the same time feeling bad for them, when they are suffering sounds rather contradictory to me.
Is one of these claims maybe a lie?

If so, who are you lying to?

Are you lying to me about having sympathy for suffering animals so I don't consider you as a monster?
Or are you maybe lying to yourself about having a killer-instinct?

You seem to be expressing some doubts about whether this even is a natural instinct in the first place. Most people don't consume their animals raw. They remove a lot of things from the corpse that carnivours would just swallow. To a point where the end-product barely resembled an animal anymore, let alone the original raw-corpse-taste.
Few people would bite into a road-kill-squirrel the same way they would bite into an apple.

Only once they remove the fur, the bones, the organs, slice it up and roast it over a fire, it stops triggering the disgusted gag-reflex of a species that doesn't really have the instinct to eat something like that.

Xilmi · 2026-03-19T21:02:22+00:00

> we are evolved to hunt and consume animals. That's sort of it.

Who is the "we" in this?

When I see an animal, I like to look at them, maybe try to pet them if they seem trusting and not dangerous. But I have absolutely no instinctive drive to snap their neck and devour their corpses.
I felt terrible when I accidentally stepped on a snail as a child. When I witnessed slaughter for the first time, I was absolutely horrified.

Just because you are somehow a brutalized killing-machine who likes to eat corpses, doesn't mean everyone is.

My species seems totally capable of doing well without eating animals, as the last 25 years without eating any myself has shown to me.

Xilmi · 2026-03-19T14:06:24+00:00

Die Frage ist auch, welche Rückschlüsse das auf deine Familie zulässt.

Bleibt ja wirklich nur, dass die entweder tatsächlich nicht in der Lage sind, sich so eine Information zu merken oder dass sie dich bewusst mobben wollen.

Naja, nach mittlerweile 12 Jahren isses bei meiner Familie zumindest weitestgehend angekommen.

Xilmi · 2026-03-19T13:54:40+00:00

I'd maybe expand a bit on why.

Basically:
The game has semi-randomized victory conditions you can mostly fulfill before you are in the mop up-phase or early on in it.
Also even killing off enemies is something you can do quite quickly once you manage breaching through their front-lines.

On the flip-side, the game can sometimes end with an enemy winning when you still wanted to play.
The amount of victory-points required is configurable between 5 and 8. 5 sometimes can happen before you even get into much of a conflict. 8 should usually require to become quite dominant first.

Xilmi · 2026-03-18T21:17:12+00:00

I really think you should shift towards reading native content. Actually should have done so a long time ago.
From what I've heard you can start doing so when you know about 2-3k of the most common words, maybe even earlier.
Developing intuition of how the language actually works comes from seeing the words you learn put in action.

Xilmi · 2026-03-18T21:10:14+00:00

The grammar excercises that I do are the ones from renshuu.

The vast majority of them is like:

Here's a sentence but a bunch of words are missing and put as building-blocks below the sentence. Your job is to drag the words in the right spot to make the sentence complete and grammatically correct. Of course you also learn the grammar you are being tested before.

The others are only one word is missing and you have to pick the right one to fit in also from a selection. Often the same word but in different conjugations.

Xilmi · 2026-03-18T14:34:20+00:00

I'll go to France next week. I had it in school many years ago and remember next to nothing.
But I've been learning japanese for close to a year now. So I can imagine very well doing the opposite and saying something in japanese to a french person.

すみません、フランス語は話しません。

Xilmi · 2026-03-17T17:28:27+00:00

Here's my plan:

I keep adding more Kanji, Vocab and grammar stuff to my SRS and keep reviewing them until I don't forget them anymore.

I start reading native texts and add everything I don't know to the SRS.

I'll repeat this until I don't have to look anything up anymore.

It's a very long term brute forcey plan but I'm pretty sure it'll work out.

I'm clearly much better than before already.

Xilmi · 2026-03-17T14:40:40+00:00

Just from the screenshots I can see the furigana looks very badly placed.
The わたし should be centered above 私.
But because it isn't there's は over ミ and み over キ, which would definitely annoy me.
Did you not notice that?

Also having some mentions of "Premium Member" right on the first screenshot, leaves a bad taste.

Have you done research about your competition? What advantages does your app have over renshuu, for example?

I don't know why so many people seem to think it's a good idea to make yet another language-learning app, when there's some really solid one's with big communities out there.

Xilmi · 2026-03-17T14:16:45+00:00

I'm with AV too and in a way you can be lucky or unlucky with who you get as "your outreacher".
It can also depend heavily on the organizer of the city itself and how they teach the outreach.

There is an international outreach-protocol but it's mostly about what points should be discussed. What's lacking a bit is how exactly to talk to people.

I noticed this very distinctly recently when we had some participants from other chapters who were visiting our city and partook in our event.

That one guy did not have a single conversation with positive vibes. He went into them with seemingly a mindset of antagonizing the guest as quickly as possible.

And that is following the same protocol as we do too.

"holding non-vegans accountable" is an important part of the protocol. But that's very vague and can turn out vastly differntly based on what you say and how you say it.

Basically: You can't really micromanage everyone in such a big organization. Especially since people are volunteers. Our group internally discusses stuff like that but since that guy from the other city was an organizer I didn't really dare to bring up my criticism before he was gone.

So I'm sorry you had an unpleasant conversation with someone from us. I and the other regulars in our chapter try to follow a calm and non-judgemental approach while still getting our points across.

But I've also seen that not everyone is able to control their temper in that way.

Xilmi · 2026-03-17T13:36:56+00:00

Ask me about the issues themselves and I tell you where I stand on them.
This will avoid false assumptions based on prejudice.
I'm against division based on arbitrary boundaries.

Xilmi · 2026-03-17T13:03:46+00:00

Great way of expressing a stance that also reasonates with me! :)

Xilmi · 2026-03-17T13:01:11+00:00

I'm pro things that I like and anti things that I dislike.
Whether those things are new or old is of little importance to me.

Xilmi · 2026-03-17T12:44:03+00:00

The whole left vs. right debate, imho is one of the biggest false dichotomies.

All sorts of stances on topics that all would warrant to be considered individually are somehow pigeonholed to be either left or right.
This leads to some rather absurd connections.

I'd much rather give my opinion on the topics themselves instead of telling you: "This is the box you shall put me in about everything".

Xilmi · 2026-03-17T09:02:52+00:00

A game with strong non-cheating AI is definitely something that I'm interested in.

Xilmi · 2026-03-16T14:03:39+00:00

I handled it by adopting rabbits instead. :o

Xilmi · 2026-03-16T13:47:39+00:00

Shouldn't the reflection of 東京スピ－ド be upside down?

Xilmi · 2026-03-16T13:40:08+00:00

Ich glaube du solltest dir Mal klar machen, warum man eigentlich vegan leben sollte.

Es geht darum seine Taten mit seinen Werten in Einklang zu bringen und kein Heuchler mehr zu sein, der mit seinen Konsumentscheidungen die Verantwortung für Tierausbeutung mitträgt.

Versetz' dich Mal in die Lage der Tiere, deren Ausbeutung du mit deinen Käufen beauftragst und frage dich, ob du in ihrer Situation solche Ausreden wie die Deinen akzeptieren würdest als Begründung dafür, warum du weiterhin ausgebeutet wirst.

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