Neocities.org

🐀🐀🐀 "This week I bought and used stamps for the first time in my life." this is a whole genre of zoomer content discovering the real world for the first time

Ok, but did you have to lick them? If not, then you're still missing out ;)

my math professors are the same way

@daliwali Yes, I was standing in the post office feeling ridiculous haha. and @bmh, I think I'm still missing out! The ones I got were festive, though. @hui I wish I could be an anthropologist who observes math professors in their lectures across the world.

...this will involve a lot of tweed, I think.

Added poem(s): "It has been calculated that each copy of the Gutenberg Bible. . .required the skins of 300 sheep."

"New" movie review that has been languishing on my laptop and which I have tried my best to resuscitate, so that it can finally take up less room in my head

Sorry, I didn't mean to delete your comment, siqu! Shaking my first at Neocities UI... ah well. I wanted to thank you for the observation because for all my thinking about meditativeness and sustained attention being a part of this movie, I never thought to mention it explicitly, so I'm glad you did here.

Actually, I really like your comment because it makes me think of the movie as something almost alive, with intention. Via an obscure alchemy the whole ends up being greater than the sum of its parts. Or, so much is said with somehow so little

a human is only living when they are /being/, not doing -- so the movie may remind (as least surmised from your observations and additional comments here) -- thanks for sharing it (´･ω･`)

neurodivergent masking is how i cope in real life. “I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face” ― Franz Kafka

if you surround yourself with elites, you become elite. thanks for the quote :)

I remember sitting in on office hours for one of my math classes when I saw you had uploaded that page. Fantastic timing...

I quickly read They did not expect him part before class, I’m looking forward to reading the rest afterwards, thank you very much …

I like the analogy of math and learning an instrument. To me "symbol-manipulation" is like "bad technique"...the conditioning of a habit without real understanding of the why and how. But we shouldn't forget that instruments should be fun to play, not a chore to perform.

Thank you so much for reading, blamensir ^_^

Part of my research has also gone into "raging against a machine" in a sense: https://discourse.32bit.cafe/t/creation-of-computers-on-the-local-level/1017 But a couple of those links I hadn't seen before. Thank you!

LLT, you probably know much more on this topic than I do; your post is a treasure trove of resources. Thank *you* for sharing!

Categorization & classification is antithetical to authentic writing; try to hold your own against it!

Joost A.M. Meerloo theorized the dark forest of the web: "he is reduced to the mechanical precision of an insect-like state. He cannot develop any warm friendships, loyalties, or allegiances because they may be too dangerous for him. Today’s friend may be, after all, tomorrows enemy." what draws me here is connecting with interesting people, not NPCs (or bots) on corporate platforms.

So long as you enjoy writing, I will enjoy reading it, whatever the topic may be. As the saying goes, "we are our own worst critics." Likewise, there is no pressure to conform to the expectations of an audience if we see sharing as a dialogue.

I wish the reality was gentler.

i just woke up but im reading this immediately

Thank you so much for the interesting observations and resources! I've always wanted to learn Russian and German for scientific purposes. I really ought to pick them back up again. I would imagine that many language learners who persist to fluency do so for reasons similar to that quote attributed to Nelson Mandela. To paraphrase: "If you talk to a person in their language, it goes to their heart."

The joys of human connection! Unfortunately, as you've eloquently pointed out, there are two significant obstacles: The most effective way for one to approach their own study of a language often only becomes apparent in hindsight, and a significant core of every langauge is idiomatic and conditioned through use rather than the result of some type of inherent logic.

I also agree with much of what suboptimalism mentioned. It often comes down to cultivating a mindset, having a clear intention and a strong motivation. Learning materials that try to shoehorn one language into the structure of another are more of a hinderance than a help, while translation is often an attempt at fitting a square peg into a round hole.

Therefore, it becomes a matter of learning a few fundamental pieces thoroughly, and then using them to "bootstrap" the rest of that core by repeatedly relating the language to itself through a steady stream of input and personal experiences. Developing these associations is vital if one wants to avoid my mistake of learning a lot *about* languages versus actually *using them*.

I hope you find it useful, Hui! Your recent remark on Russian is what reminded me I had this file on hand, after all :)

Thanks as always for the thoughtful comments, LLT. That Mandela quote is a classic and it endures because it's true. I like your description of "bootstrapping" the language. I've made the same mistake of learning /about/ the language; in fact this mistake is by no means unique to language learning. It reminds me of the comment you left some months ago about the act of /doing/ mathematics and how procedural knowledge

is often overlooked in favour of declarative knowledge. The gap between them hurts.

I feel your pain 😩 Haha! Well, at least sharing experiences can shorten the gap between them. Thanks again!