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do you think love can bloom even on a battlefield?

@chromiumlungs / chromiumlungs.tumblr.com

Alice. A fandom blog. desc last edited may 8, 2022.
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it's poor form to air your petty grievances with someone when it comes out they did something actually bad. save that for companies, like when you learn duolingo removed kanji from its beginner's japanese courses as part of their collab with crunchy roll

duolingo is shit for japanese imo*, here are some apps i reccommend:

Hey Japan - comes with a cute shiba inu bc fuck that aggressive owl. its basically duolingo made specifically for japanese and much better at teaching you HOW the language works.

Kanji Study - its the grey one, made by one person. it covers the first 80 kanji plus the main radicals that make kanji up, PLUS hiragana and katakana FOR FREE. you can practice by drawing, flash cards, multiple choice, and you can decide whether you read or select the romanji/character/meaning. i learned hiragana in 5 days using this. the upgraded version (one time payment) with higher level kanji goes on sale a few times a year, consider supporting the app if you find it useful

Todai - more advanced but good for reading comprehension. japanese news in... japanese. highlights which JLPT level words are and gives percentages of each level for each article. has inbuilt dictionary to check words you dont know.

Takoboto - my preferred japanese dictionary but there are loads out there. i like it bc i can search in english, romanji, kana, or kanji and it breaks down kanji compounds into individual characters. it also shows different conjugations eg: to eat, eating, ate, to be able to eat, etc

those are just the phone apps i use, there are so many other resources out there that are free and not pulling bullshit like skipping one of the 3 'alphabets' of a language

*to be clear the reason i think duolingo is shit for japanese is that it doesnt follow the JLPT pathway. which... you dont NEED exactly, but i think the country that had to make a new, easier language profiency test bc not enough people were passing the existing one will know how to build courses that teach their language. plus duolingo is doing *gestures* whatever shit that is up top.

if you seriously want to learn japanese, memorise your kana (drop romanji asap or youll forever struggle and I'll come to kick your shins) and find the ebook of genki 1 that someone uploaded, or some other JLPT N5 course. but NOT duolingo.

Edit: just realised that duolingo may be your only real option if your first language isnt english (too easy for me to forget, sorry). in that case, make sure you supplement duolingo with your own kanji study!!!

thinking about all the “small” art that’s ever existed. songs that were only ever sung in one village. stories written by children that got lost in the shuffle. personal paintings that didn’t survive the test of time. how they affected the lives of just a few, but still existed, still mattered to someone.

this is not a sad post!!!! this is a celebration!!!!! art is part of the human condition!!!!!!! we were born to create and share!!!!!!!!!!!

“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.

"you are functionally a conservative" is such a good and clarifying insult

Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.

There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.

Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."

Functionally conservative. It's so important to have the language to express that.

Thank you for this addition!

And, following up on the previous post …

“This makes me uncomfortable” is NOT a valid reason for censorship

These fucking book editors should remove themselves from the profession ASAP 😡

The only reason a book should be removed, the ONLY reason, is “we are keeping it in the restricted section for research because its only intended function is to cause harm.”

And to be clear, when I say this, I’m talking about shit like To Train Up A Child and The Protocols of Zion. One is a text responsible for the deaths of multiple children because it’s an abuse how-to, and the other is entirely fabricated “protocols” from a group that never actually existed but is claimed to represent all Jews, and it’s basically one long antisemitic screed.

And even these should be available. Just. Not where they’re gonna be used to start a white supremacist cult.

One of the most life-changing things I ever learned came from Mythbusters, where they tested and proved (with cognitive testing puzzles and reaction time tests) that lying down and resting with the intention to sleep STILL provided significant mental benefits over just staying awake, even if a person couldn’t fall asleep in the amount of time they had. 

It helps me to actually sleep to know that just lying down with my eyes closed is still doing me some good, and helps me to not freak out/beat myself up when I stay up later than intended. Any amount of rest is better than no rest!

So if you didn’t know that…now you do

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do you know that i think of this post every time i can’t sleep op. what mythbusters did for you, you have done for a great many others.