Honestly I love language and languages in general, so I rarely need an excuse to go study one haha.

That said, Mandarin Chinese was attractive to me for a few reasons.

Firstly, a LOT of people in this world speak it, so it has high utility potential and may even come in handy for me professionally.

Secondly, I think the culture and history of China is interesting and that my default lens for it is likely heavily biased. I’ve always found that reading source material and opposing positions or narratives has helped me understand the truth of a matter with more (albeit still imperfect) clarity.

I’m about a month into learning Mandarin Chinese. I expected the character set to be the challenge but really it has been the inflection and intonation that I’ve had the hardest time with so far.

Yeah same. Filed two weeks ago.

A lot of the Pokemon games are text heavy

Religion and cult is basically the same thing with different connotative subtext.

Science

My cat also loves this

He was in a window seat at the exit door, and the bulkhead between him and first class was on the far side of the exit door I think.

Of all the seats on the plane that could do this, his is the one.

Already have been. Am in the process of filing for divorce fwiw.

This happens to my spouse. She’ll have a dream about someone and then struggle to reconcile what she dreamed they did vs who they are. She has actively damaged relationships in some part because of this.

How is Koch going democrat?

Ahh I wonder if someone else also recently read John Green’s “Everything is Tuberculosis”.

Closes your eyes when you stare at the sun?

You know any more details on the situation than what’s in the article or is this some kind of socially acceptable prejudice?

The entire soundtrack from FTL is fantastic and catchy and full of ear worms.

This is a fantastic shower thought!

At some point we need to start criminalizing shit like this and actually holding people accountable.

https://signin.travelers.com/

Cute cat drinking fascism branded coconut water.