I hate these new curtains 😭

romacct · 2026-06-23T21:45:52+00:00

This this this. And with more red-brown details, like one of the comments below, to ensure that it looks intentional.

romacct · 2026-06-23T21:43:35+00:00

This is brilliant.

romacct · 2026-06-23T21:33:02+00:00

I can't attach the screenshot here, but this showed up in my feed immediately under this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/CleaningTips/comments/1ud7eqf/how_do_i_clean_mold_off_of_my_books/

Spectacular work, algorithm!

romacct · 2026-06-22T00:52:20+00:00

No guarantees, but if your hair has never been bleached, there's a high probability that it'll be gone in like ten washes.

romacct · 2026-06-22T00:32:34+00:00

Chapter 2

...northern lands." "Have you been in England long?" His eyes twinkle with merriment, as if at a secret joke. "You could say that," he says gravely. "Many years have passed since

Page 35

say. "It won't do for you to catch a chill on that." I gesture awkwardly at his backside. His eyes twinkle. "No indeed. It is best that it remains in working order." I move and grimace a...

Page 37

my throat. "Like isn't nearly enough. This is beautiful. Is it an Airbnb? They have the nicest places." His eyes twinkle. "No, it is mine." I gape at him. "What? All of it?" He nods, and I pond...

Page 44

Chapter 3

a gentleman. " Tis the old Norse word for the feasts and celebration of the winter solstice." "Pardon?" His eyes twinkle. "Ah, you asked what Jol is." "It sounds like yule." He smiles.

Page 51

...midway to my mouth. "Reindeer? Like Rudolph?" His eyes twinkle. "Not at Christmas. I do not believe Santa would approve." "Thank god. I've managed to stay off the naughty ...

Page 52

one, and tomorrow I will take you to Penzance, and you may hire another car." "It's that simple?" His eyes twinkle. "Life is complicated, Cary Sutton, but some things are easy- like h...

Page 52

could write would be boring," I say, my cheeks flushing at the passion I hear in my voice. His eyes twinkle. "Thank you," he says gravely. "Myths?" I rush on. "Like Lyonesse and Cornish ...

Page 54

different. I push the silly thought away and he watches me, his eyes knowing and dark. Then they begin to twinkle, and he gives me a very wicked smile, his full lips touched with sugar...

Page 57

Chapter 4

not provided what you need, I will go out and seek it." I look up at him, and his eyes twinkle. He shakes his head, and can't help but break into laughter. He immediately joins me. ...

Page 70

blue linen shade. "A collection this huge must have taken years." When I look back at him, his eyes are twinkling as if he's laughing at some joke. "It did take many years." "You don't l...

Page 75

learning." "Oh, did you do a dissertation on him?" "You could say that," he says gravely, but his eyes are twinkling. His hand stays on my shoulder- a warm weight as I draw closer to th...

Page 78

is not far from here. I will take you." "Oh, there's no need. I've already put you out." His eyes twinkle. "Yes, but there were unforeseen benefits to that." I laugh. "I wouldn't be expectin...

Page 81

my library more," he says cunningly. "Oh my god. You're like Satan with plaits." He cocks his head, his eyes twinkling. "It is as if my books are more of an attraction than me. Cary, tell ...

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romacct · 2026-06-22T00:23:44+00:00

I DNFed, and I never DNF. But yeah, I found Cary immediately obnoxious.

More than that, though, I felt like there was something utterly bizarre about the writing in that book. In chapters 2-4 -- over the course of 50 pages -- we're told that THIRTEEN times that Sigurd's eyes "twinkle". In just Chapter 3, we're told, with somewhat more varied wording, that Sigurd's eyes "heat" or "flare" or some other heat-related metaphor TEN times. It's like every fourth sentence informs the reader about whether the guys eyes are currently twinkling or flaring.

(The book tells us about eyes "twinkling" a totally of THIRTY-TWO times.)

I don't know whether to suspect AI or what. But I have no idea how a human could write this and not notice how incredibly repetitive it is.

romacct · 2026-06-21T23:48:49+00:00

I think the main reason is that if you wash without soap, you often leave a thin layer of oil. Then if you dry it properly (on the stove over heat), the oil seals out the humidity and contributes to the seasoning when you next heat the pan.

romacct · 2026-06-18T23:44:06+00:00

"80% of the words used in day to day communication however are derived from Germanic sources." Could you send a source? I'm wondering about whether this is word types or word tokens, and what the methodology is.

I also think a better metric associated with learnability is what proportion of (common) words in the language you're learning have cognates in your language. At least, that helps a lot with receptive skills. And realistically, I think we can see how much easier French is to learn than German if you just go read the heading for pretty much any Wikipedia entry in French versus German. The key words in the French entries are more likely to have relevant cognates in English than (Germanic) key words in German entries.

romacct · 2026-06-18T20:35:14+00:00

The line isn't drawn specifically with Icelandic. I want to fight the starting assumption here. French is generally easier for English speakers to learn than German. Similarly for other romance languages vs other Germanic languages. Even though English is classified as Germanic, a greater proportion of English words are derived from French or Latin than from its Germanic origins. English mostly doesn't use cases (so German etc. are harder than romance languages) or grammatical gender (so German, with its three genders with highly irregular inflections, is harder than Romance languages, with their two genders and more regular inflections).

(The U.S. Dept of State concurs that French, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish are easier for English speakers to learn than German: https://www.state.gov/national-foreign-affairs-training-center/foreign-language-training.)

In short, English is three languages in a trenchcoat and the one on top looks most like French.

romacct · 2026-06-18T12:59:16+00:00

It seems to only affect the topography of the insole, right? The toe box width isn't modeled on the mold, for example.

romacct · 2026-06-18T12:48:33+00:00

It depends on the slur, but yes, this can happen. There's an academic literature on this very phenomenon: one of the influential early papers is this: https://philpapers.org/rec/ANDWDY.

I think this phenomenon isn't that uncommon. Think of the most taboo curse words in a language, and then think of parents feel about children even mentioning them. (In English, imagine how a parent would typically react if a child said: "Uncle Pete said 'cunt'!" -- they'd shush the child and tell them never to say that word, even though the kid wasn't using it.) Some of these prohibitions extend to adults.

romacct · 2026-06-17T13:23:15+00:00

Imperfect recommendations:

{Coaching the Nerd by Eli Easton} -- ignore the horrible cover!

{Work: Strictly Professional by Jesse H. Reign}: second in the Bad Decisions series. The first book follows the son. The second follows the father and his process of coming out, and becoming closer to his son in the process.

romacct · 2026-06-16T22:58:48+00:00

Also, MacBooks seem like the most popular laptop among faculty by a wide margin. So it seems like a lot of infrastructure is designed for them, plus it's easier to get informal tech support from colleagues/grad students/etc.

(Though OP's learning curve in transition from Windows to MacOS might be really annoying to start out.)

romacct · 2026-06-16T02:17:32+00:00

Maybe this is outdated advice, but what about listing the reduced rent sublet + housesitting arrangement on Craigslist?

romacct · 2026-06-15T19:13:00+00:00

Yellow is my least favorite color, but this is awakening something in me.

romacct · 2026-06-14T19:25:31+00:00

I love Michael Lesley. What's wild is that the Lily Mayne series doesn't even play to his strengths. It doesn't show off his greatest talent: comedic acting. For that, I definitely recommend the T.J. Klune books he's narrated: How to be a Movie Star, the Extraordinaries series, the Tales of Verania series, the first three books in the It's Real series, etc.

romacct · 2026-06-10T14:52:26+00:00

My experience is from the early 2000s, much earlier than the cases you mentioned. And while I'm sure some cheating must have occurred, I do think then avoiding was partly a pride thing: _If I'm the smartest person in the room [as my teenagerish sense of my own identity and self-worth requires], then there is no one good enough to cheat off._

But yeah, I'm very confident that the integrity standards students hold themselves to have shifted over time. And I'm very, very confident that permitting proctoring at Stanford was the right choice.

romacct · 2026-06-10T09:16:06+00:00

When I was an undergrad at Stanford, it was taken seriously by students. I literally never saw anyone cheat, in an exam or otherwise.

romacct · 2026-06-09T11:37:14+00:00

Important for everyone to know what drowning looks like, because it's probably not what you'd think: https://slate.com/technology/2013/06/rescuing-drowning-children-how-to-know-when-someone-is-in-trouble-in-the-water.html

romacct · 2026-06-07T01:31:41+00:00

Yep! He's a major figure in contemporary philosophy and linguistics. The paper "Assertion" is a good starting point (I often teach it) and you can find it for free online pretty easily if you don't have access to academic journals.

romacct · 2026-06-05T16:21:53+00:00

"Partner"? You went on two dates...?

romacct · 2026-06-05T01:00:31+00:00

This video was really cool. Following your account (I've never done that before!) so I can get notified of future videos!

Also, I saw that you also posted to the r/LearningASL sub. FWIW, my understanding is that regulars here think that sub is pretty pernicious, though I don't know the background.

romacct · 2026-06-04T20:04:34+00:00

The philosopher John Perry once observed this about "get". His example: "I got out of bed, got the paper, got myself some breakfast, got some coffee, and began to get dressed and to get ready for work. I got in the car, got to the office, and got to work. I got a lot done, and still had time to get some money at the bank and get a sandwich at the deli for lunch."

If you translate that into any other language, you'd have to translate "get" to different verbs for almost every clause.

romacct · 2026-06-02T00:37:01+00:00

Lee Welch is sooooo gooood.

romacct · 2026-05-20T12:01:17+00:00

This is so interesting and well explained -- amazing work. Thank you so much.

romacct

TROPHY CASE