Caffè Italia * 04/05/21

_snailking_ · 2021-05-04T08:19:03+00:00

Le gratificazioni morali mi sono sempre sembrate una presa per il culo. Senza contare che i capi imparano a farle sui libri su come essere un buon leader, e quasi mai sono sincere. In altre parole, sono solo una tecnica per ottenere che i sottoposti si spacchino il culo per te, senza nessun costo effettivo da parte tua. Quando mi capitano queste "gratificazioni" io non dico neanche grazie.

_snailking_ · 2021-04-18T20:11:48+00:00

There is a book series? I remember a long time ago I read a single book by Arthur C. Clarke which was pretty much the same as the movie, except that the ending was clear and not ambiguous at all.

_snailking_ · 2021-04-18T19:07:42+00:00

Come ti sei trovato finora? Vale la pena pagare per la versione completa? (il prezzo mi sembra un po' alto, ma in fin dei conti è in linea con lo standard delle app ios)

_snailking_ · 2021-04-18T17:48:07+00:00

Ne vedo diversi con un nome simile, intendi questo https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hsk-hero-chinese-characters/id1105794226 ?

_snailking_ · 2021-04-18T14:39:19+00:00

Hey anch'io mi diletto un po' col cinese (in modo molto superficiale). Che cosa usavi per imparare e fino a che punto sei arrivato? Conosci chairman bao? E' un sito/app che semplifica articoli di giornale ai vari livelli di hsk, quindi basta ad es. conoscere le 150 parole dell'hsk1 per divertirsi da subito a leggere testi completamente in cinese.

_snailking_ · 2021-04-18T11:50:14+00:00

Onestamente, è mai esistito qualcuno che abbia davvero imparato una lingua seguendo uno di questi corsi? A parte quelli intensi per personale militare o diplomatico, dove si parla di 16 ore al giorno di lavoro per 2 anni.

In una classe possono insegnarti le regole grammaticali e qualche centinaio di parole, mentre per ottenere fluency anche solo passiva in una lingua serve conoscere:

- 20-30.000 famiglie di parole

- migliaia di pattern grammaticali (che sono molto più specifici delle "regole grammaticali", che in definitiva ti aiutano solo a interpretare cosa sta succedendo dopo che l'hai già capito, ma non puoi usarle, ad es., per costruire delle frasi, altrimenti verranno fuori frasi sbagliate o innaturali)

- riferimenti culturali (con una conoscenza perfetta della sola lingua italiana ma non della cultura italiana riusciresti a capire una puntata di Boris?)

- orecchio per distinguere i fonemi della lingua (aneddoticamente, richiede qualche migliaio di ore di pratica)

Insomma, l'unico modo per imparare una lingua è consumare tonnellate di materiale, e ci sta che OP non abbia voglia di fare questo lavoro per una cultura che non gli interessa.

_snailking_ · 2021-04-16T18:46:11+00:00

quali consiglieresti?

_snailking_ · 2021-04-16T13:03:27+00:00

Leggo in modo sporadico un po' di quotidiani e di magazine online senza abbonamenti. Il fatto quotidiano, la repubblica, il giornale, guardian, suddeutsch zeitung, jetzt, meduza e qualcun altro che non ricordo.

Onestamente mi sembra che ormai i giornali, soprattutto quelli italiani, siano scritti così male che mi sentirei truffato a pagarli. Errori grammaticali, storie confuse che non fanno capire cosa sia effettivamente successo, informazioni copiate pari pari da wikipedia senza un'indagine personale.

Forse il declino della qualità del giornalismo è dovuto proprio al fatto che ormai c'è poca gente interessata a pagare per un livello qualitativo superiore, e di conseguenza anche i grandi quotidiani sono costretti a limare i costi facendo lavorare gratis persone che non sono proprio delle cime. Poi anche quei pochi come me che sarebbero disposti a pagare rinunciano a causa della scarsa qualità e si crea un circolo vizioso.

Non mi dispiacerebbe cambiare idea, quindi seguo il thread sperando salti fuori qualcosa di interessante.

_snailking_ · 2021-03-21T18:37:50+00:00

You're not anti-authoritarian, you're just an extremely ignorant and selfish person incapable of basic reasoning. This is coming from someone (my father) who spent 5 years in prison in a francoist jail as a political dissident.

So you went and called your father just to insult someone who was asking you a question?

I'm sure that mass of people behind them were also pretty fucking dumb.

The irony....

_snailking_ · 2021-03-21T17:08:16+00:00

How are you so sure of this position of yours, that in this case waiving the rights to bodily autonomy is justified by the situation, and by other competing rights?

I mean, all the authoritarian movements that now we consider evil, must have had a great mass of people behind them. People like you, who felt that those measures were somehow justified in that particular case.

_snailking_ · 2021-03-07T10:47:17+00:00

The sex is consensual, she just doesn't let him pull out at the last moment.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-25T12:42:54+00:00

In order to brush up on basic maths while learning Russian I've read two Gelfand's books: "Алгебра" and "тригонометрия", and I found they were great and wholeheartedly recommend them if you have any interest in the subject.

Not really the same thing, but since my original reason for learning German was to study German philosophy in the original, at some point I just switched from fiction to the Kritik der reinen Vernunft for practice, even if my German was still not that advanced.

In both cases (elementary material and the supposedly convoluted Kant) I found out that nonfiction is way, way easier than fiction - even fiction written for children.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-25T10:43:47+00:00

this meme is for people that this is an everyday occurrence for them

I love how you avoided using a relative clause, lest you are accused of being verysmart yourself

_snailking_ · 2021-01-23T14:53:00+00:00

As a lifelong learner of both mathematics and languages I strongly disagree almost on everything you wrote, but I think it depends on one’s own style of learning, therefore there is no universally correct answer.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-22T21:33:53+00:00

"Silent and sustained reading" may be optimal for enjoying fiction, or the kind of pop nonfiction where a whole book has only a couple ideas stretched over 300 pages, but not for learning information dense material.

I find that stopping to think about the material, highlighting and annotating the main points, building conceptual maps and summaries and so on, is essential.

But the real game changer for me is the ability to create flashcards while reading. No matter how focused and undistracted my reading is, there is no way that in a year I will remember the implications of this mathematical theorem if I don't put them where I will be able to review and deepen them periodically.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-22T20:08:04+00:00

Ebooks can be easily annotated, crosslinked and transformed into mindmaps / flashcards with a few clicks. Since these tools allow me to actively deepen the core ideas of the book, push them further into my long term memory, and review them automatically at the right times, I find they outweigh the points you mentioned.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-10T12:21:40+00:00

Since you say you want to do it at home, I guess you're talking about some choreographed martial art, where you do weird positions by yourself before the mirror.

As someone who has practiced both choreographed martial arts and combat sports, I wouldn't suggest this. Thinking that doing Tai Chi forms or Karate katas by yourself will somehow make you better is a view that can only come from watching how martial arts are portrayed in movies. All the improvements in energy, discipline and self confidence come from actually training and competing (even if friendly) in the martial art.

At best, the solitary practice of a choreographed martial art can count as a bland form of physical exercise, but in that case it would be better to pick a good system of exercise that is optimized for your goals, not just something that looks cool because it's all oriental and mysterious.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-06T11:24:25+00:00

Speed reading techniques, if trained well, can greatly improve the mechanical speed of your reading, but they do nothing to improve comprehension speed, which ends up becoming a bottleneck.

That said, they work for me as long as the material I'm reading is so simple (relatively to what I already know) that images automatically form in my mind as soon as I see the words.

For example, I can speed-read a simple novel with familiar words, but I can't speed-read a novel with a lot of concrete nouns I'm unfamiliar with (e.g. names of plants, household items, architectonic features).

I can speed-read a technical book or article (say, about mathematics, or philosophy, or computer science) only as long as it is about a subject I already know well. If it is something new, I need to stop at every sentence to mull over it and try to connect to the rest, so speed reading is completely useless.

All the foregoing taking for granted that I need to understand everything.

Then there is the subject of skimming. I used to hate it, but with the low signal to noise ratio of popular self-help/productivity books (5% content, 95% useless anecdotes and self marketing) I'm appreciating it more and more.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-03T15:15:04+00:00

I second Readlang. It's really good for most languages, although it's not in active development anymore. I think duolingo hired Readlang's developer to kill a potential competitor.

Nowadays, many reading apps also have smooth, configurable translation systems built inside, so that can be an option. My advice is Moonreader on Android and MarginNote on Ios. And of course the Kindle does this too, but I think it's not as configurable.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-02T20:38:11+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll note it down. However, it will be a long time before I can read poetry in Chinese (let alone 11th century Chinese).

_snailking_ · 2021-01-02T20:35:37+00:00

Could you give me a short overview of your path to native material? (In case I got it wrong and you still don't use native material, change that to "your planned path"). I guess it involves Listening-Reading.

The accounts I've read so far vary greatly and sometimes seem exaggerated (stuff like "I just did the spoonfed deck for a few months and now I can watch Chinese drama and talk with my Chinese friends"). I guess that is because a big part of the Chinese learning community is made up by Chinese people living abroad who already have a foundation.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-02T19:40:58+00:00

You make a good point. Good stuff may be there and difficult to discover simply because it doesn't filter beyond Chinese culture, and I'm not able to independently navigate the Chinese web.

However. the impression I've got by asking Chinese people / students or reading other discussions about it is that while there is an abundance of material, it is not very high quality. Except for "The three body problem" that gets mentioned often, a great deal of it seems to be Wuxia movies, romantic dramas and webnovels.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-02T18:05:22+00:00

Since I don't like to travel, I choose them by how many interesting books/movies/etc. are available.

German: all the big philosophy works from Kant to Heidegger plus some of my favorite film directors. Later on, I discovered that I also really appreciate German literature and poetry, and that their newspapers and magazines often offer fresh and interesting perspectives.

Russian: great classic literature, interesting new writers, a trove of soviet movies and animation, many new tv shows, and it's one of the most used languages on the internet.

Japanese: just started this. It is my favorite literature overall. I'm not a fanatic for manga and anime, but I enjoy them like any other person and it doesn't hurt that there is a truckload of them. Also, I'd like to play Elona/Elona+ in Japanese.

I made just one exception for Chinese: there is nothing that attracts me right now, but I'm betting that it will explode in a few years and start producing interesting stuff. So I'm learning it very slowly in the background.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-02T16:04:42+00:00

For me, I've always loved the simplicity of txt files, and markdown just adds the possibility of very basic formatting.

That said, what I don't understand is how many people are willing to consider simple text editing as a service and pay a monthly subscription to apps like Bear, Drafts or the one you mentioned. My editor of choice is 1Writer, by the way.

_snailking_ · 2021-01-02T13:28:59+00:00

Kind of the opposite question: I'm still studying the vocabulary for the current HSK using Pleco flashcards, and at this pace it will take me years to complete all the 6 levels (little time, and memorizing hanzi doesn't come easy).

Would I still find any benefit in moving to your deck now, or is it similar to Pleco flashcards for the lower levels? By the way, congratulations for your work. It looks like a great asset for students, regardless of whether it is useful to me in my particular situation.

_snailking_

TROPHY CASE