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Learning Japanese, Part 2

  It's been almost a year since I started my daily study of Japanese, and about 10 months since my previous post about it. So how's it going? Apps I ended up dropping almost all the apps due to them either being too restricted in the free tier, not fun enough, or not effective enough, or not having enough time and energy to do them in addition to the ones I felt to be part of my core routine. I'll focus here on the few that I do feel are part of the core routine, and the few extras that I feel are almost but not quite there. DuoLingo The main strong point with this app is how it gets me to consistently maintain my streak, which means maintaining a daily study habit. The way that it's gamified and the fact that it's very forgiving help me avoid falling off completely. It's also okay in terms of drills and introducing new vocabulary, but it feels very slow and based on doing repetitive exercises rather than giving instructions or moving forward with new material. ...
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Shame in K-Pop Demon Hunters

In K-Pop Demon Hunters (KPDH), patterns are a mark of demons, but what they mark is the shame that the demon feels. Rumi, as the child of a demon, also has marks. Throughout her life, these marks keep growing. When she was a small child, these marks were tiny: As she grew older, the marks kept growing: As she got closer and closer to the moment she was going to seal the Golden Honmun and supposedly get rid of her demon marks, the marks kept spreading, until they reached her throat, and she lost her voice: It was only when she was with Jinu, when she started to feel more at ease about having demon patterns, that her voice returned. But why were the marks growing in the first place? Rumi had nothing to be ashamed of. She never did anything wrong. She dedicated her life to protecting the world from the demons. It was Celine. Celine believed that having a demon for a father, that having demon patterns, was something to be ashamed of. Rumi originally didn't feel this way and wanted to s...

Christian Fundamental Misunderstandings of the Bible

Christians fundamentally misunderstand what kind of document the Bible is. When they read the Bible, they do so with the mindset that the Bible was written to them and about them. When the Bible says that Gd said something to Israel, they understand it as if Gd said it to them. However, the Bible was written by Jewish authors for a Jewish audience, and its primary topic is to detail the relationship between the Jews and Gd. It's an internal document that isn't addressed to non-Jews at all. If we compare it to a theatrical play, then Gd is the producer, director, and script writer. The Bible is the script, the land of Israel is the stage, and the cast are the Jews. The actor are supposed to study the script, wear the costumes, follow the stage directions, in order to put on a play. The audience is supposed to watch the play in order to learn the story. The audience isn't meant to learn the story by reading the script, and isn't meant to wear the costumes or follow the st...

Silent Communication

Communication isn't just the words you speak. It's in how you present yourself to others. It's in how you carry yourself, how you move, how you speak, and how you dress. Dress like a gangster, and even if you aren't, people will we weary of you yet also disrespect you. Dress in a way that advertises your fertility, and people will evaluate you on the basis of your fitness for procreation. Normal women who happened to walk late at night on the wrong street sometimes have men in cars stop by and make them indecent offers, not only because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time, but because they looked like the usual "service providers". Conversely, if you dress in a way that is elegant and conservative, you show that you value yourself and are instead evaluated as a potential wife, rather than as a potential toy, no matter how premium a toy you may be. The way you present yourself to others communicates what you think about yourself, and what you think o...

7 Reasons Hamas doesn't want to release more hostages

Hamas Horror Show. I wrote this last week, on Friday 14.02.2025, but I still feel like it's relevant. Apparently the Invaders have been feeding the abductees more in order to make them look good for the cameras, which is why the scene of skeletal Holocaust survivors didn't repeat itself last Saturday. At the same time, there is here also an explanation as to why the Invaders returned the wrong body. They're fucking with us because they are pieces of shit that need to be wiped out of existence. If any of them is innocent, it's up to those few innocent individuals to get the hell out of the combat zone, not on us to walk on needles to try to avoid harming them, if they even exist. Anyway, on to the original post: These are possible reasons why Hamas declared a few days ago that will refuse to release any more hostages. Multiple reasons might be true at once. They want to resume the fighting while casting Israel as the aggressor. They want to extort additional concessions ...

Learning Japanese, Part 1

Since I started playing those Japanese language learning games I posted about before, I gradually got sucked into going all-in on trying to learn Japanese. To that end I started playing language-learning games, reading books about Japanese, and immersing with podcasts and anime. I've tried learning Japanese in the past, and at one time I even had a streak of over 50 days on DuoLingo, but I never got the results I wanted, and it never lasted. I always felt like I hardly made any progress and lost interest after a short amount of time. The many years that I spent watching anime didn't help much. I developed a bit of an ear for Japanese and picked up a few words and phrases, but that's it. This time I'm determined that it should be different, using an "all of the above" approach to how I'm going to acquire this language. Apps Here's a rundown of apps I've tried and abandoned: Bunpo, LingoDeer, Mondly These apps are similar to DuoLingo, but only a few ...

Game Review: Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle

Following the previous game review, I bought several Japanese language-learning games on Steam and tried out a few of them. The one I ended up sticking with the most is Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle. It's a cute game with mechanics that remind me of Chrono Trigger. When navigating the world map or inside a specific region, the player has a top-down view of the world and his character. Battles are turn-based with a side view. The story of the game is that an evil Japanese wizard has come to conquer your country by using Japanese-based magic, and the only way to counter this magic is by using Japanese yourself. A Japanese emissary teaches you the language, guides you on your journey, and fights as part of your team of four. The main challenge comes from fighting the Hiragana warriors, enemies that are characters in the Japanese. They are everywhere and you keep bumping into them, and the only way to damage them is by saying which character they are. That is the main dif...