happy4crazy

Interesting! I have the opposite experience. I've gone on a bunch of very low-carb diets, maybe ten at this point (not sure if they were exactly ketogenic or not), and I've enjoyed them. But every time I try low-carb, my sleep gets extremely light (I'll wake up 3 or 4 times a night), I sleep a couple hours less than normal, and I get weirdly vivid dreams. It's always the weird sleep that makes me quit the diet.

It's analogous to the real and imaginary parts of a complex number. Does it makes sense to add a real number and a purely imaginary number? Aren't they different kinds of things? Yes, and yes!

Hard to say if it's worth the effort, but I've taught myself enough French to read classics (e.g. Hugo, Déscartes, Tocqueville), and it really is an immense pleasure. I imagine I'll get a kick out of it for the rest of my life.

I've been teaching myself French (from scratch) for the past two years. I read nearly as well as I do in English, and I listen well (some slangy television dialogue is still a bit tough).

Some things that have worked for me:

0. Goes without saying, but consistent effort. I've done at least a little French every day for the past two years.

1. Reading a lot. I started with the Harry Potters and now read for pleasure pretty much exclusively in French.

2. Reading on a Kindle. Instant dictionary lookup! This is such a big efficiency boost that I think that reading physical books is simply a mistake.

3. Listening a lot. I listen to about an hour of French podcasts/youtube channels a day.

4. Studying grammar. I mainly study grammar when I run into something tricky while reading, but I really do study.

5. Flashcards. I've only started making them in the past month or so, but yes, they really do work. I feel silly for not realizing that sooner. I highlight interesting words/expressions as I read and periodically dump them onto index cards.

My favorite Pynchon name is Carmine "Two-Ton" Torpidini, from Vineland.

I like to think of a functor/applicative/monad f a as being "more or less" an a.

For example, take a list of Strings. It's "more or less" a single string, it just hasn't made up its mind yet :) When you say fmap reverse myStrings, you're saying: yeah yeah, I know my string hasn't made up its mind yet, but just reverse it. So you reverse all the possibilities. When you say

  (++) <$> myStrings <*> yourStrings

you're saying: yeah yeah, I know my string hasn't made up its mind yet, and neither has your string, but just concatenate them. So you concatenate all the pairwise possibilities. The monad stuff says you can do control flow: (yeah yeah), but if my string is this long, and your string is a palindrome...

Promises: A Promise Int isn't an Int, but eh, it's more or less an Int. Just as you can add 1 to a regular Int, you can fmap (+1) promisedInt. Just as you can replicate 3 'a' to get "aaa", you can

  replicate <$> promisedInt <*> promisedChar

to promise some repetitive String. (And presumably promisedInt and promisedChar will resolve themselves in parallel!) The monad stuff: if this promised Int ends up being prime, then...

Parsers: A Parser Int (something that can gobble up a string and produce an Int) isn't an Int, but (in some contexts, if it's helpful) you can think of it as being more or less an Int. Saying fmap (+1) intParser says make a parser that parses whatever intParser does, and then adds 1 to the result. Doing

  replicate <$> intParser <*> charParser

makes a parser that tries to parse an Int, and then a Char, and then gives you a repetitive String. Monad stuff: if I parse a prime number, then...

Functions that take some fixed argument type, say Float. A Float -> String isn't a String, obviously, but it's more or less a String :) It's just missing a Float. If I say fmap reverse justNeedAFloatToBeAString, I'm making a new function will take a float and then reverse whatever you get by feeding it to justNeedAFloatToBeAString. If I

  (++) <$> almostAString <*> almostAnotherString,

I'm making a new function of type Float -> String that feeds a Float (the same Float) to both subcomputations and then concatenates their results. Monad stuff: if this almost-Int ends up being prime...

Functor says you can treat a single f a as more or less a single regular a. Applicative says you can treat any number of f a values as more or less any number of regular a values. Monad says you can do control flow with f a values as if they were regular a values.

Here's what I want: "Study Grouper". Grouper but you go do something educational, e.g. a wine class, cooking class, dance class, amateur astronomy class, painting class...