jonathanjaeger

I feel like a Hackeroni gets cooked in a pot with some bolognese

Yup, I always do one story when I'm strapped for time just to keep it going on days I can't do exercises.

My boss stopped learning Spanish on Duolingo when he lost his streak. It's a powerful motivator even if it's not a "true streak" due to streak freezes and such. My streak is at 1436 and if I lost it, I wouldn't stop Duolingo because I actually like it to learn, but the streak does make me happier, haha. I think I've had 2 days in the last few years of streak freezes due to 1 day forgetting and 1 day the site not saving my exercise. Ah well, I still like my streak even if it's not 100% pure!

Ah sorry, don't remember who was the original tweeter before the quote tweet.

I'm not defending the current system, but the predatory tactics of a decade+ ago changed dramatically under Obama and there are other steps currently being taken to prevent overly aggressive marketing tactics. University of Phoenix, for example, completely changed their marketing habits (among others afraid of getting sued/losing accreditation).

My boss got me on CookUnity and I use it because the taste/variety is good enough and I'd rather spend my time on my hobbies. Re: portion size, you just have to know what to pick to get your money's worth.

The calorie counts looked way off in the past, and my boss actually contacted them about it. I still don't believe most of the calorie counts and breakdown of macros.

I heard their service went downhill for some people but I've never had any issues, and a long time ago got a deserved refund for something.

I always get alerts before the cutoff time, so you could "skip" that week rather than message customer service. I'm not saying the author's gripe isn't real, it is, but they've at least always been clear with my orders.

No way Stripe will go public via SPAC.

Deaths from the current year can take a while to be finalized, and Decembers can be one of the deadliest months. If the U.S. hits 500k excess deaths this year, that's still a 20-25% hike on our normal death rate (2.7M give or take). Seems like Sweden will surpass past years in the end, perhaps by a similar percentage.

I live in the East Village and sure you can see the occasional rooftop gathering or neighbor having a 5-10-person get-together, but except for some anecdotes about 'underground parties,' nightlife is quite shutdown except for outdoor (and minimal) indoor dining that closes early. No one I know has been to an 'underground party' and we are the types to go out to bars/dance places on weekends outside of Covid.

So I went through the whole Duolingo tree for Portuguese and thought it was high quality and got me good a foundation. As others noted, there is no substitute for actual conversation/interaction with native speakers, and I wish I started that sooner. I also second the recommendation of using something like Anki or Quizlet for vocabulary practice. I only noted that it's good to have a base before starting with professional teachers because if you're budget isn't unlimited, you might not get the bang for your buck having teachers walk you through the most basic stuff like hello/how are you/how much does that cost/etc. that you can get with Duoloingo/Rosetta Stone or similar programs. But if you want to start off with Italki and lessons on day 1 with native speakers, it certainly won't hurt!

I do daily 30-60 minute conversations with native Brazilian speakers on Italki. That can add up in price quickly, but I would recommend at least 1-2 lessons per week to start after getting the basics down on something like Duolingo/Rosetta Stone. It was a world of difference between year 1 only using Duolingo/YouTube etc. and actually having Brazilian teachers correct my grammar, pronunciation, and add vocabulary for very context-specific situations that came up in conversations. Not to mention slang, idioms, etc.