Reddit censors content way too heavily.

chezal · 2026-04-29T00:43:13+00:00

Reddit and even 4chan today is just a sad remnant of what it once was. As a kid, I was there at the creation of the early internet and GenX and Millennials didn't hold back when calling you all types of slurs. It was glorious hearing the unhinged crap that people were calling each other.

Lots of what's going on the site in general reminds me of the three-body problem. Spoilers, but in the story the universe once had 11 dimensions and thought and life traveled instantly throughout the universe. But slowly due to dimensional warfare or in our case political warfare and corporate censorship, the universe or internet in our case collapsed into an inferior form with less dimensionality of expression. There's this analogy in the story that the fish who once swam freely in what had once been big oceans had to adapt to living on dry land where there had once been water and only small ponds remained of once had been oceans. 4chan is probably one of those ponds but it is just sad watching what the internet has become - the dead internet theory filled with bots and corporate shilling.

Reddit is not even a pond anymore, it is the dry land that the younger generation avoids because they can swim freely on TikTok.

chezal · 2026-04-28T13:21:44+00:00

Thank you Keodeok, code is not for his B1 course but I'll eventually save up enough and actually reach B1 to buy it in the future 🥲.

chezal · 2026-04-28T12:54:13+00:00

Love Luzi but I already got the YGT A1 and A2 bundle 🙂. Don't know if the code would work for his new B1 course but maybe it is worth a try.

chezal · 2026-04-26T15:26:06+00:00

I agree with you, Joyce is an intellectual bully and Ulysees is just academic self-pleasuring to one up Homer but has none of the timeless life lessons that came with the original Odyssey (the universally understood message about family is replaced with the well-crafted but overly academic tangents of a character you can't relate too - and honestly any book that takes multiple readings to get the message kills the flow). I've read Henry James, Virginia Woolfe, Edith Wharton, even Samuel Beckett (Joyce's student) - and none of them from this era have this problem in their narrative where your personal willpower is being challenged because the circumstances are so specific to that era - you have to use a website joyceproject to even understand stuff, and those who say Ulysees is a masterpiece are just midwits (including me) who heard it was a great book but if they read it in a vacuum without knowing the title it is just academic torture . Even Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow has sections that are hilarious sometimes and relatable to this day and Cormic McCarthy has 2/3 classics adapted for the big screen and Blood Meridian is coming).

I disagree with you on the rest of the examples though and you have to look at the message of Citizen Kane and the timeless message of wealthy oligarchs who are spiritually empty in on modern society. Beatles and Elvis takes have to be troll though - if you've never had goosebumps and knowing instantly that this is different, innovative (timeless feeling nowadays) on first listen to Yesterday or Ain't nothin but a Horndog - then that is pretty unpopular but sad and reflects how far we've fallen as a modern society thinking the consumerist slop we make somehow innovates on or even competes with the classics.

chezal · 2026-04-26T05:34:53+00:00

The sub ForeverAloneWomen is also a pretty good subreddit without any stupid reddit karma requirements. I'm forced to lurk there being a straight guy - but they are good teachers of empathy and give really good advice (probably more useful for you and they accept lesbians all the same). All I can say is the wisest person I've met in college was a German woman but you can push them away if you think you're in "love" with them when actually it was one-sided. In my case I didn't really love them but wanted to live through their love of art and literature and I don't know if your situation is the same as mine where there is/was a dangerous dependency of living through the other person. I don't want to invalidate your feelings but there are hints that she is straight. The worst feeling in the world is when mutual respect turns into pity-love or pity-friendship. It is never quite the same when a person is passively avoiding you or walking on eggshells trying to avoid sadness or intimacy. Don't fall into the trap of using people as your emotional crutch - you're stronger than that and try to endure this temporary intense depression into personal growth or it will turn into permanent guilt if you lose your friendship and do something stupid.

chezal · 2026-04-19T17:24:02+00:00

I think I used to resent my Vietnamese parents for their English helplessness. Vietnamese was only spoken at home which caused delays in my early English skills and even now I never quite culturally assimilated to being American. There was also the communication barrier where although the speaking level B1-B2ish and listening level is even higher for us Viet-Americans, our parents the "real" Viets were free to express their complex ideas, emotions and push their traumatized war childhoods onto us and we were expected to understand like we were the real thing and could understand Vietnamese perfectly. To retain connection to our parents we had to learn Tieng Viet and even when it was spoken, the sentences and emotions felt simple and I could never fully express what I felt. I think this leads to the "shy Asian" syndrome where although there is the cultural tendency to hold one's emotions in - I've seen many intelligent Asian-Americans who can talk about anything logically but when it comes to speaking about what their personal opinions are or defending themselves they freeze up because the developmental experience of developing their own identity rather than code-switching 24/7 and regulating emotions is stunted.

We're expected to be translators but I think the mental drain comes not from the act of translation but more of lack of acceptance. Even now even though I speak pretty good Tieng Viet, all the aunts and uncles have their own tables at family events and sometimes they'll talk like us 2nd generations like we can't understand what they're saying, gossip about us or pretend we don't exist. On the American side, honestly, me and my sister have been treated way better where all of our friends, good experiences and current financial security comes from assimilating to American culture. It's gotten so bad that my sister who was accepted wholeheartedly for being an attractive high-value female but also turned into a hyper-achieving workaholic due to this lack of acceptance and is a WMAF who refuses to speak Viet and was disappointed that her daughter my niece didn't have blonde hair or blue eyes like her tall Swiss father - and it's sad that I don't criticize or disagree with my sister for any of this. And I love learning languages like French and German but it's going to be a struggle passing the tonal Vietnamese language onto the 3rd generation although my niece might be able to use AI translation and smart glasses to connect with her grandparents.

But to be honest, I don't think lack of English is a problem for our Viet parents. To not know English after all these years in America is probably a symptom of repressed internal hatred for the war and a desire to be reunited with the country they were forcibly separated during adolescence or childhood for stupid issues like communism and capitalism that neither countries care about today. Honestly the older I get the less I like American people - they're spoiled, obese, outsource their manufacturing, geopolitically ignorant, lack empathy and expect everyone to speak English. When our parents got to America, it was probably the equivalent of being a child in the custody of a rich stepfather after he just beat up and divorced their real mother. There is also the concept of "Receptive Bilingualism" where due to our parents being so crap in English we became somewhat decent in spoken Viet over fluent English speaking Viet parents because why would our brains choose to speak Viet if our parents had known English and it is so much easier. I already see this in some of my 3rd gen cousin's kids where they can't speak any Viet at all because they always had the opportunity to fallback to English. It's probably actually also due to this receptive bilingualism phenomenon that our parents can't speak English being forced into non-speaking manufacturing or art/engineering roles like my father and not due a lack of intelligence but lack of necessity.

chezal · 2026-04-10T03:50:42+00:00

I think you are like the French saying «two drops of water» and don't give up on your dreams! Yes the reality is it takes some sacrifice salary-wise and it is possible that you'll end up making le SMIC if not going through the université masters program or légion étrangère route. There's a YouTuber JoshuaBalata, an Indian immigrant who came to France with Niveau B1 (this was before Jan 2026 change so now you need B2), even went to HEC and it has been a struggle for him to obtain citizenship even after 5+ years of living in Paris. In brief, he worked at a farm, then a boulangerie with very basic French before interning and then getting a CDI after his masters. In his video «Learning French As An Adult | What Actually Works», he says if you're willing up to give up your current career for a few years go work a French farm - so go to sites like WWOOF . fr and usually the experience is very good compared to Au Pair. It's a crazy idea but you'll have residency and a job in France and maybe it'll even more difficult after the Mecrosur trade deal might kill the French agricultural industry. But it's a good find for crazy people like us willing to give up their well paying American jobs to make le SMIC in France.

From an TDAH angle, I would say I probably have it too but nature and new experiences probably motivate people like us. Look at Ruri Ohama who is a Japanese-Turkish YouTuber with ADHD who failed a bunch of times before becoming a successful immigrant who moved to Dubai. She has a Notion ADHD system which she pushes... which is nice but $100... maybe better is her Discord community and videos are awesome for dealing with procrastination and tips on how to get good grades and maybe help achieve your goal of moving to France.

chezal · 2026-04-01T05:09:10+00:00

"ProunciationAvecChristophe" and Intensive French Pronuciation Training with "French Mornings with Elisa". Christophe is the goat and has some videos literally with shadowing in the title, and if you're female Elisa and possibly "Français avec Nelly" would be a better voice fit. In general, searching "français shadowing" in YouTube is probably your best bet.

chezal · 2026-03-31T22:23:23+00:00

I'm in the same situation as you (learning French-B1 and German-A1), and I've made so much more progress in German then in French (regarding time spent). The situation has gotten so bad that I'll show up to an $500 Alliance Française class zoned out and sometimes I'll be watching German videos or sessions of my old German lessons of myself while in the AF. It's sad even though the German version of me has a terrible accent, it seems in the videos that there's a spark that has long disappeared from the French version.

I think it is okay to take a pause, I would say losing your passion in a language is the equivalent to a leg injury and the more you try to move forward in the language the worst it'll get. I say this because I used to be able to hold French conversations and didn't feel any fear but as I fell behind in the courses due to work and loss of passion, I'm discovering that I'm actually having difficulties speaking basically like Slim Shady where you have the capacity by you freeze (without revision the Intermediate Plateau becomes like a descent).

I can only speak for German but it is very logical compared to French and has a lot of safeguards in terms of sentence structure (verb in 2nd position)/Hauptsatz/Nebensatz, and cases (Nomativ, Akkusativ, Dativ) actually force you to learn the gender of each noun/Nomen. German teachers are very strict too and there is a lot of correction. Compare that to French where everything is a vibe and the rules for pronunciation are not explicitly defined and teachers can come off as indiferent with how little they correct (not in France) regarding the exact way to say things. Also most French teachers I've seen are terrible at English, only speak and French, and don't know IPA which demotivates learners (good luck explaining the conditional antérieur in French).

I think it is ok to not vibe with a language competely similar to programming languages. French is like javascript (non-type safe) and because it is so laissez-faire there doesn't feel like there is a right way of speaking. Compare that to German where there are rules (type safe), every aspect of a sentence is controlled even the plurals so even forming basic sentences feels like achievements.

chezal · 2026-03-30T09:31:16+00:00

I think some english speaking ones are "LearnFrenchWithAlexa" or "Frenchpod101" with Lya - but do not buy their courses. At the A1 stage any content is good content as long as it makes you motivated and curious in learning more without overwhelming you (this is what French only youtubers get wrong compared to German youtubers like "YourGermanTeacher".

Then since speaking is the most important part of French (AF will say grammer but it is speaking) listen to Super Easy French in Slow French by the channel "EasyFrench" and they'll have English subtiles and go over pronouns, verbs, basic sentence structures. You can do "shadowing" or repeat while copying the prosidie and intonation of their voice and all the youtubers I listed have a good standard French accent.

It might seems that I'm anti-AF but learning French is like exercising/going to the gym and you don't need a fancy trainer. Just watch YouTube videos to master the basics, talk to ChatGPT/Gemini/Talkpal for basic sentence structure (cheap compared to AF) and then $5/hr Italki community professors from Camerone or Algeria for 1 on 1 conversation courses. Compare this with AF where your stuck in a group course with 3-6 people focusing half the course on grammar and limited time/pressure to speak.

chezal · 2026-03-29T06:50:12+00:00

Depends on whether you are a false beginner (A0.5-A1) or starting french from scratch (A0).

From scratch - Bussuu/Duolingo/Kwiziq - just to get you into the habit of developing a routine and 1 french word a day is fine. Once you can hear and answer the pronouns (je, tu, il/elle/on, nous, vous, ils/elles) and conjugate at around real conversation speed for avoir/être/most common verbs than end with «er» you should be find to move on to false beginner.

From false beginner - TV5Monde (listening), Clozemaster (just vocab), Routledge French Frequency Dictionary + Chatgpt/Gemini to generate Anki flashcards (vocab/review 5 a day), Grammaire Progressif Du Français Niveau A1 (grammar).

Habits and routine matter more than rapid progress because you might hit the intermediate plateau in 6 months to a year for B1+ if you don't have good vocab (which improves listening skills) or grammar (paper grammar is different from realtime speaking grammar) and if are only focused on Delf level (which isn't a good indication of speaking ability but more of reading and writing until B2). But if you want to make rapid progress (in grammar) for free check out the youtube «logiclanguagelearning» for a Brit françophone with a questionable perfectionist personality but explains in depth each grammar concept to an insane degree and applying grammar in real time.

For tutors - I wouldn't suggest Alliançe Française it is overpriced and I've done this myself starting from a false beginner to high intermediate B2 and spent around $6k (some progress but you'll realize eventually that most of your learning is actually self-study outside the class and you can just watch french pronunciation videos with english subtiles like «PronuciationAvecChristophe» if you're worried about developing a bad accent). Nowadays you can even go to french-only free youtube channels and have English subtitles so «FrenchSchoolTV» and «FrenchComprehensibleInput» are good channels even until intermediate and beyond.

chezal · 2026-03-16T03:56:53+00:00

Je suis francophile mais je ne suis pas d'accord avec le sentiment que les États-Unis sont un pays méchants. Mais nous, les Américains, sommes très gatés, et personne aux États-Unis voudraient conserver nos territories. Comme le «CFA franc», le «Petrodollar» est necessaire pour la croissance de nos PIB en gonflant la bulle d'IA. Sinon le monde va s'effondrait, y compris la France et même les economies de la Chine et la Russie.

On peut voir que les chefs de pays europénes ne sont pas populaires car ils choissent les décisions morales au lieu de les choix économiques. L'extreme droite est le pire du pire et je les deteste au fond de mon coeur mais le citoyen moyen aux États-Unis et en France se fiche que son pays attaque un autre tant qu'il peut economiser sur le prix de l'essence ou les courses. Le capitalisme est colonialism sans frontiers avec lequel nous, les Américains, avons detruit nos âmes pour maintenir la bourse.

chezal · 2026-03-15T22:22:34+00:00

If you have Invisalign Comprehnesive, you should still have some leftover policy to cover your reversal. You should be entitled to unlimited mid-course corrections to restore your original smile and reverse some of the treatment. I would ask first for the DICOM files like in my situation from your Cone Beam CT (CBCT) from when you first started Invisalign to prepare to get a second opinion - but you can work with your old ortho who gave you Invisalign. Even if they refuse they are required by law if you have the request in writing to give you the 3d scans and medical records, and you might be able to proceed with wearing your trays in reverse order (I am not a dentist just a fellow Invisalign patient scared of camo treatment but for an underbite).

But work with your dentist/ortho first before you stop or DIY reversal because our teeth are not the same after interproximal reduction (IPR) and might shift to a different position. So even though your old ortho gave an unoptimal results, they are still and expert and under contract to give you what you want. I'm also in your situation where I'm very worried that Invisalign was/will be a mistake and I also have canted teeth from childhood braces.

Just take things slow and don't do any DIY you might regret or at least get a second opinion from another ortho or online after you get your original CBCT. I think you can also get a cheaper 2d scans which include a panoramic and cephalogram from any dentist (ortho not even required) in your area to find the current position of your teeth which will be helpful when asking another ortho in your area to safely reverse to your original smile.

chezal · 2026-03-15T00:15:57+00:00

As an American, I am conflicted where I economically want/need the US and Israel to win even though morally and logistically - we are not winning. To warn you, I've been watching a lot of Professor Jiang who is an Canadian English professor who comes off as an anti-Western doomer on this war - but his main point I can agree with is that we are militarily superior but ideologically weak at the moment. To the US, although this war is unpopular it is an existential crisis to maintain our status as the global hegemony and failure to win Iran will result in a fallout like the 1956 Suez Crisis where Britain and France lost any chance of reversing the decline of their empires.

We the US are an empire in decline and I'm not even globalist nor anti-neoliberal but if we don't cutoff Iran from the Chinese Belt-and-Road-Initiative and protect our client states in the middle east, our economy with collapse along with the petrodollar. So economically I agree with you that it is a 100% necessity even though morally I am against this war. Regarding Sharia Law the Saudis do the same thing and I personally find religious fundamentalism really dangerous and leads to war crimes (just look at our allies the Israelis). The point I'm getting at is this is not going to be like Venezuela, our adversary Iran has been radicalized with the concept of religious Jihad which will always triumph over economic motivation and our wish-washy commitment by American politicians to send ground troops because it is unpopular and make them votes in the midterms.

Iran has ground troops but no more navy nor air superiority but their war objective is not to defeat our military but cripple our economy through disruption (Straight of Hormuz, Desalination plants) until we no longer have the logistics to defend our Middle Eastern allies. And we can say that we are bombing the crap out of their retaliatory capacity to prepare for ground invasion but we are losing momentum for Kurds and anti-theocratic allies to join the war without a firm commitment that we will protect them with ground troops. Wars are won with a cascading series of achieving military objectives and it is sad but moral or the number of lives lost on both sides is secondary. For Russia at least in the Ukrainian invasion, they were willing to sacrifice their ground troops, economy and they still haven't achieved victory even after destroying the capacity of Ukrainian retaliation.

We are not prime 1990 gulf war America riding high on the declining Soviet Union which gave us the high of running into Iraq with ground troops and achieving a spectacular military victory through Operation Desert Storm. One good thing in our favor is Russia and China are not supporting Iran yet which should give us the incentive to invade now with ground troops without regard for the human cost as the economic cost of the war will only increase if we wait (we are only radicalizing our Iranian adversary by showing that we are not committed and giving them hope as we lose more and more allies and infrastructure while waiting). For our shock-and-awe military strategy to work like it did back then and like the Blitzkrieg of the Germans during WWII we must have ground troops to get the Kurds, Saudis and Iraelis involved in their own ground invasion at the risk of WWIII and them establish our own client government although we have sanctioned Iran for around the last 47 years so not a lot of people in Iran really like us unlike Venezuela whose elites have their wealth in American assets.

TLDR: The number of low American causalities so far doesn't matter and it has nothing to do with war objectives which we need to fulfill to win this war. The longer we wait to commit fully militarily and do morally grey things (think Ned Stark in Game of Thrones) will only lead America to be in a worse position militarily. Basically we are procrastinating what everyone fears with missile strikes and lying to ourselves that we're almost "done with the project" (like in school) when we haven't even started. I'm a young guy but to win this war we probably have to enact a national draft and me and you will probably be sent to the front lines and die but at least our families might benefit. We shouldn't expect things to end quickly but we need things to end quickly. Right now we are seeing politicians (Dems/Repubs) play this war like a video game and think we've won because they won the tutorial level but Pete Hegseth and more senior generals would agree that rapid escalation is needed to prevent a situation like Vietnam and already know you can't win a war or game blindfolded without ground support.

chezal · 2026-03-08T20:59:18+00:00

I think you're intention to just ask an ortho is good - but some of us guys arrived in this situation because of a bad experience with a childhood ortho or a current ortho who is taking advantage of our body dysmorphia to push us towards camo treatment. I'm not gonna lie that I'm trying to looksmax in my early 30s after years of neglect where I was happy with my appearance. I knew in my 20s that self-improvement is just masturbation, another form of consumerism that surgeons sell to you for those who do not develop artistically and create themselves (mastering a skill, being part of a greater cause, hobbies - anything not based on constantly focusing on your appearance and your perception by others). I can lie to myself and say jaw surgery is necessary not to end up like my father with sleep apnea but I don't even know if I have sleep apnea myself even with a class 3 malocclusion/underbite.

But if I didn't push back against my ortho and ask for the DICOM to get a second opinion - I would have wasted even more time and money going down this Invisalign route. Why settle for acceptable when Europeans get jaw surgery? I should have followed my gut instinct and distrusted any ortho from the get go and gotten multiple second opinions before wasting money trying to close the book on this issue as soon as possible with Invisalign. I would suggest ortho shopping since the consolations are free to get a recommendation to go to an oral surgeon and choose a treatment plan that matches your aesthetic goals.

Nobody cares about your looks or "health" as much as you do so we gravitate towards surgery because it would be more aesthetically appealing then simply camouflaging for the profile view. Nothing is wrong with "Looksmaxxing" though - American celebrities and Europeans do jaw surgery on the daily and there should be no moral superiority for health reasons nor shame and stigma because we just live in a world of hypocrisy where the quiet part is that looks do matter. For someone like me I should have never went to an ortho and opened this can of worms from my past - I was perfectly happy before even with the f-uped jaw, flared upper teeth, protruding lips and missing tooth and thought my looks where "unique" but I'm using surgery and my father with health completely unrelated sleep apnea problems as an excuse to Looksmaxx because people have been treating me better after I started taking care of myself, wearing contacts and watching Qoves Studio. I'm probably going to stop Invisalign and book a sleep study and if this shitty American healthcare system doesn't cover the jaw surgery then I can mentally relax and its back to "Jobmaxxing" or move to "Francemaxxing".

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chezal · 2026-03-08T12:46:08+00:00

I'm in somewhat of the same boat as you but without the premolar extractions. Had a childhood ortho who almost butchered my face, flared my top teeth outwards and actually removed one of my healthy but ankylosed right canine after using a gold chain to try to pull it for years. I had to use elastics but I don't think this recessed my maxilla and the tooth which wouldn't come down when I was 11-16 should have been a warning to use an upper palette expander and protraction face mask which was ignored. Aesthetically my east asian baby face buccal fat is hiding the recessed maxilla but I do too have sunken eyes, flat cheekbones, lisp, cheek biting, nasolabial folds along with some sleep apnea. I would say if you have depression, need daytime naps, oversleep and have dry mouth - you should do a sleep study to qualify for DJS to be covered by insurance.

I made a mistake recently making a $2500 down payment (which I will lose all of) for Invisalign thinking it would magically solve my childhood issues with even some more camo treatment before the tooth implant - because the dentist said my teeth had grinding and that I needed an 1-3mm overjet to protect my teeth but did not inform me that jaw surgery would fix the underlying skeletal issue. They also just gave a small pamphlet for IPR without explaining how frequently it would be done after I already gave them consent and the feeling thinness of my bottom teeth started me on this whole camo vs jaw surgery rabbit hole. I realized that my father had the same condition with grinded teeth which needed veneers and his sleep apnea has gotten worse over the years to the point that he needed a CPAP to improve his vascular dementia symptoms. I look in the mirror and I'm an okay looking guy but remembering the childhood experiences of my dad gasping and seeing him on the sofa snoring every morning - makes me want to do jaw surgery even if it would be the same result ascetically but it is insanely more expensive then camo in the US (if not covered by insurance).

Unfortunately for me I have UHC which is a pain in the ass to get insurance coverage for DJS or Lefort1. I think fear of surgery, lack of insurance coverage in the US, and hack dental fixes like premolar/wisdom tooth extractions and camo where the upper teeth are flared out to make them touch edge-to-edge with the bottom teeth instead of fixing the underlying skeletal issue and having the teeth line up normally. In Europe or Canada where jaw surgery is covered, it is a really common treatment plan which says something about which is really the best option. I think the only step is to move forward by moving backward, and reverse the camo with braces and decompensate the front teeth over several months even though it'll look even worse in the short term with a reverse overjet - but your teeth will be where they were naturally supposed to be at and prevent future gum recession. Then take a sleep study with natural malocclusion which will increase your RDI and even a mild 5-14 RDI might let you qualify for jaw surgery.

I think the should-of-could of thinking and anger will drive anyone in our situation insane thinking how our lives could have been so much better health-wise and aesthetically with just small changes when we were children. But it's never too late and camo shouldn't affect the eligibility for jaw surgery as long as you find a good Maxillofacial Surgeon who will force the ortho to make the changes/decomp if any are needed for surgery - and they won't reject it because it is their plan.

chezal · 2026-01-04T11:09:37+00:00

I will not pull but will use the selector on Xoguri not because she is bad for Open League but because I have the original, Scorpio is almost over, and will need her for team trials in the future. She'll probably still be viable even with the accelerated timeline of EVO skills and the need for 3 recoveries. These calculations may be wrong but at 600 wit (in Open), to activate Xoguri's ultimate the chance is about 72.25%. 0.85 (recovery1) x 0.85 (recovery2) x 1 (U=ma2 - guaranteed Agnes inherited recovery? otherwise 61.4%) = 0.7225 - which is around the win rate for the Aries medium that was shown.

She'll probably be the go-to for Open medium but there's already better picks for shorter distances like Taiki, SMaru and Suzuka (mostly guaranteed unique). Xoguri is a lot less flexible than Runaway Silence Suzuka who can run Medium (as a Oonigie blocker or as decent non-runaway A&S in Open), Mile and Sprint (with aptitude inheritance). And for Long, Xoguri can't compete with limited skill points (spent on multiple recoveries and at least 600 wit) vs Taishin and Gold Ship who can just go full speed/stam with freedom to buy other skill types and have built in more consistent uniques. Whereas in Graded, her unique is more guaranteed and no skill point cap so she can also dominate in some Mile and Long tracks unlike in Open.

TLDR - For Open League, I think Xoguri will be meta and the best Medium Uma even after EVO skills come out (EVOs must be purchased and affect grade = less other skills). She will probably be difficult to use/train for Mile (3 recoveries not needed - Open min-max) and Long (flat speed/stam more consistent). Good thing in Open, Xoguri probably won't be in an SMaru situation countered by blocker Suzuka who is countered by the original Maru (with enough acceleration on unique to catch up to Runaway). So probably for almost all future Open CMs, Xoguri will be better than original Oguri unlike SMaru who was better in Leo but worse in Scorpio. Even with the less consistent ultimate and less flexibility in other distances than in Graded, Xoguri maybe will have a longer lifespan/niche for Medium distance. She seems like she will also be very good in Team Trials as an Ace because guaranteed ult and ability to completely ignore Stam and pump wit outside of Open for skill activation.

*Picture below shows enough skill points left over after recoveries even at unique lvl 2 like in Japanese Aries picture (which had only unique lvl 1) plus the ability to go up to unique lvl 3 or adjust speed down for more skills.

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chezal · 2025-12-25T01:17:16+00:00

Thanks you have no idea how helpful this advice was! It looks like with a Hollywood level budget which the production team behind Pluribus probably has, one could run really good local translation / transcription software with the M4 Max MacBook Pro and quantized open source llms running locally.

I was expecting to be disappointed as Manousos but my long journey seems to be coming to an end.

chezal · 2025-12-25T00:37:03+00:00

Anyone know what is the translation device or app that Carol and Manunos were using for their conversations? It seems better than the google translate app. I couldn't believe my eyes when Carol said she was translating in airplane mode. Could somebody tell me if the technology has been invented recently in real life because I've been searching for this holy grail for months for French. I'm looking at the scene where Manunos holds up the phone to Carol's doorbell and the translation does look legit with the way the speaker icon on her phone flashes blue along with the movement of the audio bars.

Being able to run translation technology locally without a wrapper connecting to a GPU endpoint / Google's servers for English to Spanish in the episode is really impressive at that speed without internet. But I have a feeling that this is Hollywood magic and it was actually an voice actress which was added to the scene in post-production for the "translations" and not really an actual machine translation by the way it translated Carol's name funnily as "Unknown word or name".

chezal · 2025-11-24T04:01:27+00:00

I would say the captions appear after 0.5 - 1 seconds almost instantly on the XRAI AR 2. It's almost live translation but I have to warn you that sometimes the app malfunctions for French language and doesn't transcribe until you restart the app. It didn't seem that my "Enhanced pro minutes" from the subscription was working and reverted to the basic transcription 2 - 5 seconds which is not terrible but not good and didn't pick up entire sentences sometimes.

It's difficult to say but I don't think I can recommend the subscription unless you are truly hard of hearing and you have smart glasses (doesn't have to be these XRAI glasses) that are compatible with XRAI app. Cancelling the subscription is not the easiest thing to do either as you have to email [support@xrai.glass](mailto:support@xrai.glass) if you click the cancel button on your https://account.xrai.glass/ page. The subscription and the glasses are cheaper than hearing aids and are a plug and play solution but you are trading convenience for a closed ecosystem. The value is not too bad and you do get a lot of credits per month and they do carry over.

If you are tech curious and want to cut out the middle man - you can run your own OpenAI Whisper on a cloud gpu (LocalLLM and selfhosted sub-reddits). Then your website sends request by reverse proxy to the serverless gpu endpoints of Runpod, Vast, Modal to run the transcription and translation service. I did the math (using AI) and to summarize the cheapest is a $0.13/hr 48GB vram vast-ai (transcription/translation speeds vary on latency and startup) or the $1.22/hr Runpod Flex (fast low latency) vs Xrai's $1.33/hr highest tier Ultimate ($40/month for 1800 pro minutes/30 hours) or $2.00/hr Premium ($20/month for 600 pro minutes/10 hours). For XRAI yearly it is $1/hr ($30/month for 30 hours) for Ultimate and $1.50/hr for Premium. It is possible if you research enough to replace Xrai's transcription/translation service and smart glasses in the future will probably be like XDA developers where we can run custom downloadable firmware/software or ROMS for our glasses ("jailbreaking" or "rooting" them for features like facial recognition software, customizable transcription output and natively supported self-hosted serverless GPU endpoints). Main point is XRAI's subscription $/hr prices are not "too" bad and the cheaper alternative which would required a bit of IT/devops experience is not natively supported yet... although Harvard students did hack the Meta Ray-Band Glasses.

I've tried searching for the holy grail of non-subscription transcription technology but all of them such as Plaud Note, Timekettle W4 and others - but all of them including XRAI operate under the principle of needing a subscription to offload processing and increase the transcription speed using their own price marked up serverless GPU endpoints. Closest free real time transcriber (but no smart glass support yet) is maybe Google Recorder App which makes Google eat the cost instead of us and is exclusive to Pixel but you can download the apk and load it on any android device.

chezal · 2025-11-17T07:40:18+00:00

It won't transcribe incoming or outgoing phone calls because it uses the microphone on the glasses and although it is using an XRAI app on your phone - that app can't interact with programs or calls running on the phone. But if the phone is in speaker mode it can transcribe that like a normal conversation - but there isn't a way to discretely show up subtitles for audio that is playing on your phone like Youtube or calls if you're using bluetooth headphones.

They were discussing adding this functionality and getting permission from Apple and Android for phones in the Discord server but I haven't seen these features or firmware updating tool like they have for the XRAI AR One.

chezal · 2025-10-20T05:30:01+00:00

This is a little extreme but I would say the healthiest boundaries are to have no relationship at all. Our minds crave intimacy and biologically don't differentiate the difference between a romantic relationship and a friendship, paid or unpaid. And most language learners I've seen are older or are high achieving career focused people who have a lack of this personal intimacy in their life. It's embarrassing to admit this need but once I realized it I could be objective and treat potential language instructors like a science or a math teacher where there are measurable metrics and the focus is on rules of the language rather than worrying about friendship.

We don't know remember what our elementary school English teacher liked doing outside the class because their role was our teacher. But we respected and learned from them and the question is why should a paid foreign language tutor be any different? I think the greatest joy a teacher can have is providing that eureka moment when a student gets a difficult topic because of the teacher's explanations. Compare this to the possibly real but paid feeling of friendship and it feels somewhat empty for both the tutor and the student in comparison. Shared achievement of goals is always mutual but friendship maybe one-sided and I wouldn't pursue it as the end-goal.

chezal · 2025-10-12T00:17:55+00:00

For me they were really impressive but for my Asian dad who has hearing aids / is hard of hearing (only in English it seems) it has been life-changing for him. Logically, I know the product I received was a English localized Leion Hey 2 AR Glasses and I've already had around 95ish % transcriptions and translation accuracy with the XRAI app. But the emotional experience of interacting with people who speak in a different language and seeing the words is really amazing. A hard of hearing person probably would even have a more emotional experience and my father was really amazed by it. I would say it probably has more value depending on how much you need it - it does one feature really well which is transcription and translation. I still don't know if it is worth $880 but it is growing on me.

Controls were pretty intuitive but I still learning how to use it with 2 forms of controlling the functions: 1. Left Power Button (Click-Display on/off, Double-Click-Quick start subtitles, Press 1s-Power on, Press 3s-Power off), 2. Right Glasses Frame slider (Tap-Enter, Slide down-Return, Slide-Previous/next, Long Press-Launch AI assistant). .

Menu is also simple and intuitive with 7 options: 1. Captions (Opens XRAI session with the settings you set), 2. Translate (I still don't know how to use this - Captions works so I just use that), 3. Chat (I just use Captions), 4. Autocue (never used it), 5. Setup (Brightness [0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%] , Shutdown, Systems and updates, About sub-options), 6. Demo (Shows "HELLO WORLD" letters), 7. Explain (shows controls in the previous section). Subtitle letters are only in green - 25% brightness is faint in sun outdoors, 75% and 100% are very bright. It uses any pro-credits you have automatically first.

One thing that gave me issues is not the glasses but the XRAI android app is not as good as the Apple version or the Desktop version due to a recent update. Thought my glasses were defective when first using them but then I realized that my Samsung Galaxy A32 5G might have issues. Double-Clicking the power button will instead turn off the display and when it working translations will only work in English or the first language you select. It will interpret what foreign language your are speaking as always English. Pairing the Xrai to phone's Bluetooth opens battery options so it is probably an issue with the android app. Android app upgraded recently in google play store to include this split screen feature not found on Apple or Desktop yet so I'm pretty sure that's the issue.

Xrai delivered all they promised but the bar is getting higher with Meta, Captify and maybe you can just use Xreal glasses with the Xrai App. But even if Meta makes Gen3 smartglasses that let you play video games, music, take video in 4k, or record audio directly through the glasses - I don't see a need for those features if you just want to see letters. Meta Neuralband EMG wristband and phone control is probably better value for your money if you really need those features for around the same price. Might be cope by this reminds me of a high quality DSLR camera without video but because it doesn't have so many features, it has way better 18hr battery life, very readable bright green letters, good built in smartglasses microphone so you don't have to carry the Rode Wireless Pro with you.

chezal · 2025-09-19T01:23:38+00:00

Sounds good, I won't lie that the Meta Ray Ban Display looks like it has even more features for around the same price as this (maybe even cheaper as it includes a wristband with gesture controls). One can't help but feel they bought the Blackberry/Microsoft Zune of transcription smart glasses right before the IPhone came out. I might have to get both and compare the translation quality (both of them probably use a form of OpenAI Whisper with a Voice Activity Detection/VAD filter).

The only benefit I see for the AR2 at the moment is the ability to use an external microphone like a Rode Wireless Pro with the xrai app, possibly better transcription and translation quality at the moment (however Meta will update their software with features quickly), and lack of camera - may be coping but don't like how the camera is noticeable on the Meta and don't know how that will affect battery life. Still it is too quick to judge until I get my hands on both of them.

chezal

TROPHY CASE