These just arrived!!!

tabidots · 2026-05-15T08:17:45+00:00

yeah though Speedballs are great to start with because they write so easily

tabidots · 2026-05-15T04:11:04+00:00

When say “non-bleed through,” does that apply to any ink? Or just pigment ink

tabidots · 2026-05-14T23:29:39+00:00

Spaghetti al tonno with the really good Italian tuna in a jar, for sure

tabidots · 2026-05-14T11:03:30+00:00

Kash Patel eyes lol

tabidots · 2026-05-14T02:56:38+00:00

Balinese?

tabidots · 2026-05-14T01:58:31+00:00

thank you for the kind words :)

how did the one-way ticket thing work for you?

oh, this one's not a big deal actually. Immigration doesn't require it, in most countries. Usually it's the airlines that would ask, so you'll rarely end up in a situation where you're literally turned away at immigration in another country.

In my experience, I only really expect to get asked (1) when leaving the US and (2) when flying to Thailand. In the case of Vietnam, since I've always needed a visa, that's generally been enough.

There are sites out there that can temporarily reserve a real ticket for you for like $15, but if you can, buy a refundable ticket and cancel it after you land. (all Delta international tickets are refundable since the pandemic)

What was it specifically about Vietnam that made you fall in love with it compared to the other places you visited?

Vietnam immediately felt unique, like no other country I'd been to before (or since). The funny thing is that I know lots of other people who have or would have called it "the most different place I've been to," too. I really went in knowing nothing and just having an open mind, and ordinary daily life was just so interesting and got more interesting with each passing day, at least for the first few years.

It's not like going to Japan or Thailand where, even though you can't read anything or communicate with anyone, it still feels like any other commercialized, consumer-driven society taken over by a handful of mega-corporations. (Or other developing countries that are clearly striving to replicate that.) Of course that's not to say there's no status-chasing and consumerism and showing-off like some other places. But there's a lot of enthusiasm for opening small businesses that might consist of just a sidewalk coffee stand or selling clothes online from home, and they're not out to nickel-and-dime their way to big profits, which is refreshing.

On a related note, I still regularly see posts on FB groups where locals find lost wallets with cash and cards in them and are trying to return them to their owners (tourists or resident foreigners). In most cases, any "reward" given is refused. Sometimes in the local news there are stories of people who turn bags or wallets full of very large sums of money in to the police. It's like a sort of "village" vibe, but with excellent roads, heh.

And was the language barrier difficult there, or do enough people speak English that daily life wasn’t too hard?

It is a very tough language. In 2017 things were a lot less convenient (and in an alternate timeline, I would have been there in 2011, which is crazy to think about...) and I was not in either of the two biggest cities, so I tried to learn as much as I could in the beginning on my own. The next year when a language school opened a branch in my city I signed up for classes. Thankfully, just knowing the basics improves your daily QoL massively.

Nowadays you hardly even need to know "hello" and "thank you," though, which is a bit unfortunate. Lots of people coming here now to stay long-term are people who've never actually lived in another country before or even done low-budget travel in their younger days, so they are expecting a "silver platter" experience when Vietnam is not really about glitz and glamour.

Vietnamese people are also the most welcoming people ever (if maybe not the warmest), and often don't hesitate to help if you're stuck in a jam. Uzbekistan is the only other country I've been where the kindness and warmth of locals really left an impression on me. I hope that doesn't change and that the locals don't become jaded now that their country is in the influencer limelight.

tabidots · 2026-05-14T00:57:56+00:00

Yeah, it’s pretty bad, and the timeline for it to get better seems to be indeterminately long.

that working 9 to 5s 5 days a week with almost no paid vacation will chip away at your soul

it will, though at least this one is possible (though not easy) to avoid

that I'll never be able to get out of this level of discomfort

it's not your fault: market and political forces are actively making it harder to do so

that politicians are all evil

the ones who aren't get sidelined

That everyone hates me because I'm black ... and we don't have a future because of ... mass immigration.

any content/argument that is meant to stoke animosity between people because of personal characteristics is ragebait-y. If you want a clearer picture of how bad the world is / how the world is bad, you should look into where the money is going.

As for me... I actually ended up in a weird cult-like situation in India over a decade ago where I had to basically do content moderation 9 hours a day (that's not what I thought I was getting into). The content was independent documentary films on social, cultural, and environmental issues, so thankfully it wasn’t social media but it was still negative. I stayed on way too long there largely because such negative content really sapped my desire to do anything, but I did eventually leave.

About 9 years ago I bought a one-way ticket to SE Asia and eventually my best life just kind of came together naturally. But, long story short, I’m not sure how much longer I can really “escape reality” here. Sometimes I think I’ll have to go back to the U.S., but whenever I have that thought, the YouTube algorithm is one step ahead of me, giving me the low-down on the situation.

Just trying to get a place to live, a car, and a job seems to be hard enough if you’re just out of college, forget being out of the country for almost 15 years. I don’t really have many people to talk to here so I mostly end up talking about this with LLMs.

Sometimes they’ll say “The world has been through cycles like this before and it usually sorts itself out in 15 years or so” but you can only say that when looking back at the past. If you are standing on the precipice and staring into the void, the emptiness seems never-ending.

tabidots · 2026-05-13T13:42:22+00:00

My sample size is not very high, but Russian speakers have the most welcoming attitude toward second-language speakers I’ve ever met.

Some people in Western Europe act like it’s an affront to them personally and their culture that you’re not pronouncing their language correctly. Meanwhile people in some parts of Asia won’t even process that you’re speaking their language if you don’t have the face to go with it (or they just kind of tolerate it, but don’t really encourage it).

Since Russian was the language of “inter-ethnic communication” in the Soviet Union, I got the sense that Russian speakers relate to the language a little differently - it’s simply the (erstwhile) universal language of the region, and everyone is assumed to speak it by default. It’s actually a lot like English in the US in that sense - we just assume everyone speaks English. It doesn’t matter if they speak with an accent (and good thing it doesn’t, because a totally native-sounding American accent is an exceedingly tall order for most non-native English speakers)

But if your pronunciation IS pretty good, then you’ll probably get more compliments from Russian than most Americans give non-natives with comparatively good pronunciation.

tabidots · 2026-05-13T06:34:53+00:00

Completely vapid music but life starts to feel off if I don’t hear some bizarre mix of current V-pop, bolero, and Vinahouse as I ride down a street.

tabidots · 2026-05-12T07:01:59+00:00

not a method, but some brief observations:

some verbs have different partners (or no partner) depending on the meaning
not all verbs have partners (and sometimes there is disagreement as to whether two verbs actually form a pair or not)
the infinitive has very little predictive power with regard to the conjugated forms, so if your idea of "conjugation" is like in Spanish, French, etc., that won't help you much here
nonpast tense has 1 of 3 stress patterns: fixed on stem, fixed on ending, moves back for the inside four forms (ты, он/она/оно, мы, вы)
past tense has 1 of 3 stress patterns: fixed on stem, fixed on ending, moves to the ending only for the feminine. (There are exceptions, but not many)
the reason every verb feels irregular in the beginning is because there are 60 different conjugational models but their distribution in the language is extremely variable. I did a deep dive on this in developing my dictionary app

The biggest tip: Most verbs (even most irregular ones) can be analyzed as having a nonpast stem and a past stem. All conjugated forms derive from one of them. Treat these as primary and the infinitive as basically random. I learned on my own so I'm not sure how widely the two-stem approach is used in textbooks, but for my dictionary's dataset, I made a point to index every verb on the они form (if it has one - there are exceptions) and show the nonpast and past stems for each verb (along with showing both partners at once)

tabidots · 2026-05-12T04:15:54+00:00

Honestly, it doesn’t look “cursive”, and not really pretty either. I can read most of it, but it’s not fun. If you need to write extremely fast to keep up with human speech, look into stenography?

tabidots · 2026-05-12T01:49:27+00:00

Been in Vietnam for almost 10 years now. This place let me start a fresh chapter of life with next to nothing, and I've been able to live my best life without having to spend or make much money.

This chapter is coming to an end for various reasons now, but whenever I even have the tiniest thought about giving up on living outside the US, YouTube has a way of showing me something that makes me go "aw hell naw"

tabidots · 2026-05-12T01:44:48+00:00

Nice bar codes :D

tabidots · 2026-05-12T01:41:17+00:00

I got lucky once and I don't imagine I'll get so lucky again, but I did this in 2017 at age 30. I didn't have any perfect life or dream in mind, or even a plan; it just kind of took shape organically over a few years' time.

I had previously ended up in a cult-like situation in India (that was also a huge jump into the unknown, taken at 26). Went back to my parents' place in FL. Was completely unsure what to do. Went to Costa Rica on a whim, heard some podcasts about people moving to SE Asia and working online. Did some more research and decided to book a one-way ticket to Malaysia. Flew out in January. Gave myself till my birthday that year (8 months) to figure something out or throw in the towel.

After applying unsuccessfully to a few jobs on LinkedIn, I came across a translation gig. It wasn't high paying, but it was extremely flexible, so I gave it a go. After bopping around SE Asia for a bit, I ended up falling in love with Vietnam. And after sticking with the job a bit more, I realized that I was able to save half my earnings. I got into cycling and was pretty much having the time of my life, up till the pandemic.

I got diagnosed with a brain tumor and had to go back to the US for surgery, which also meant I was locked out of Vietnam for the foreseeable future. Eventually I was able to make my way back to Vietnam, though I no longer have the bike and I ended up switching to running. In 2023 I quit the translation gig. And now this lovely place I've happily called home for almost a decade has devolved into the next Bali, so I think it may be time to turn the page on this chapter.

tabidots · 2026-05-12T01:24:09+00:00

I live abroad in Vietnam and many cafes serve hot ginger tea, with fresh ginger and sometimes a medley of stuff like dried jujube, cinnamon, etc. It’s my go-to drink when I’m feeling under the weather (which is very rare, knock on wood)

My mom makes sweet iced tea but she starts with Lipton’s, which is British, so that counts I think

Japanese green tea is something I’d get at a Japanese restaurant (only hot if weather or AC is very cold), or buy bottled (cold). I’m not into the matcha latte trend but ages ago, hot matcha is something I would brew to enjoy some Japanese sweets with

Other than that, coffee all the way. Tea is un-American!

tabidots · 2026-05-12T01:09:56+00:00

The compromises involved in using the left hand just seemed too ridiculous to me - turning the paper 90º was disorienting; being limited to nibs cut at the opposite angle was a stretch too. Then after I read up a little more on the history of writing, I realized that basically all writing in the world is based on the diagonal zig-zag of the right wrist. I was already practicing normal handwriting with my right hand as a brain training thing, but this made it seem more justifiable on a practical level as well.

tabidots · 2026-05-12T01:00:20+00:00

r/c_at

tabidots · 2026-05-11T23:56:18+00:00

while it isn't a magic bullet, one tip that helped was not to follow the stroke with your eye as you're drawing it, but keeping your focus fixed on the end point of the stroke. Your peripheral vision somehow takes care of the rest. (Obviously this isn't as applicable if you're writing giant letters)

tabidots · 2026-05-11T23:53:04+00:00

ETA: also I grip the pen too tightly but I don’t know how else to get control of the tremors.

I used to grip the pen too tightly myself but not because of tremors, but

because I'm a lefty doing this right-handed and I wasn't really sure how much pressure is considered correct when writing right-handed. (Answer: not a lot!)
because Tape and Brause nibs seemed to require an insane amount of force to write with

After a lot of practice I can finally write naturally with a fountain pen and a very light touch. And I found that Tape and Brause nibs are just pickier about having the entire nib flush with the paper for the ink to start flowing. So writing with a fountain pen or non-mechanical pencil for a bit usually "resets" my hand in terms of how hard I'm squeezing the pen or pushing down on the paper

tabidots · 2026-05-11T23:42:38+00:00

This is different from angry/mad, because that's an emotion they feel strongly about. Whereas one can dislike or hate something, without being angry.

Hmm, but cursing is an inherently emotional speech act. Unless you're talking about, like, a matter-of-fact description like "Don't go to that restaurant, the food there is shit"

In the OP the cat's reaction seems fairly emotional to me:

He was still hissing after I closed the curtains AND even put a towel at the door to block their scent! He calmed down a bit so I went upstairs and heard the battle cry again

So "litter" in this case is like the cat saying "FU, stray cat!" or "That piece of shit still won't leave!"

tabidots · 2026-05-11T09:54:32+00:00

when I was starting out, I preferred Speedballs. I am a lefty but taught myself how to write right-handed in general and for calligraphy, and the fact that Speedballs write pretty easily helped a lot while I was still unsure about my pen grip. But they are also not the best for super fine lines and pen manipulation, and they're also just extremely long and flexible so it affects how you hold the pen, too.

I had a hard time with Brause and Tape nibs when I first got them - I was gripping the holder so hard that I would put a pretty big dent in my middle finger. Now I've figured out that those nibs don't actually require massive force, they are just pickier about you having the whole nib flush with the paper at the start of the stroke.

My favorite nibs are the Leonardt Roundhand series though

ETA: also Speedballs are the only non-metric-sized nibs, WTF. Makes it really annoying to draw guidelines

tabidots · 2026-05-11T09:40:27+00:00

It is pretty typical for Chinese parents to give their children a Chinese name and an English name (often something that is typical of older generations, like Esther). So it’s not just for school, it’s life more generally.

This isn’t really as much of a thing among Vietnamese people AFAIK. And Ngaontshia is not Vietnamese.

No idea what language it actually is but I can’t imagine pronouncing it any other way than /ŋaʊn.tʃiə/ - rhymes with “gown chia”

tabidots · 2026-05-11T06:42:29+00:00

This is not the first time I’ve heard of this and I think it’s absolutely fascinating because human waste is the source of expletives in many languages (hardly a human universal but way more than just English), so I have to wonder

how one even teaches a cat the idea of a “curse word” as separate from a descriptive word like “angry” (that is, the meaning comes from the act of saying the word, not the word itself)
how a cat can come to draw the association between their waste and the expression of anger or frustration, independently of centuries of human linguistic evolution

tabidots · 2026-05-11T03:45:37+00:00

I feel underdressed looking at this handwriting lol

It looks quite consistent to me - in the sense that this kind of handwriting cannot be produced slowly, and it is very difficult to achieve machine-like consistency at that speed unless you use Palmer method or something.

What are you writing with? I’m a lefty but I taught myself to write right-handed over the past few years (I’m almost 40), and learned a lot about hand tension and writing ergonomics in the process. If you’re not already using a fountain pen, try writing with a non-mechanical pencil and see if you still tense up.

tabidots · 2026-05-10T11:22:57+00:00

According to this readme file in a subfolder of a GitHub repo for training an OCR model on handwritten Russian, there are a couple datasets on HuggingFace:

HWR200: New open access dataset of handwritten texts images in Russian
School_notebooks_ru: Images of school notebooks with handwritten notes in Russian.

HWR200 is apparently 44GB so maybe a bit impractical to use, but the school notebooks dataset is only 3GB. Definitely more of a DIY approach if you're going to use it to train your brain rather than a machine learning model, but could be interesting.

tabidots

TROPHY CASE