It’s been there quite a long time:(

Main character hard to relate to

We had blackberry vines in the backyard when I was little along a fence bordering with a neighbor (I think they originally started on their side of the fence) and I cried when they cut them down. They were so delicious!

If you haven’t bailed from the platform completely you certainly shouldn’t join the facebook group “ask for pds from people with institutional access” either

I bought the Runtastic six pack abs trainer and butt trainer (one time $5 fee for each app) several years ago and have gone through each program a number of times with excellent results. Especially considering the workouts were only about 10-15 minutes each (so 30 minutes to do one of each). These apps have been discontinued for new downloads but I bet you could fine similar apps for free or cheap that don’t require subscriptions.

FKA USA was a humorous and relatively lighthearted -on the road- post apocalyptic satire set in the US

Dual Memory was light, easy to read, and had some creative ideas about robot intelligence tied in

I agree with the others that Becky Chambers novels feel like a warm hug.

Mine has actually gone down a couple of times with two different car insurance companies. Though my insurance has never been on the hook for a claim from me either.

A lot of rich people like to feel like they’re getting an ‘authentic’ experience on vacation so they visit remote villages and hire locals (who are usually well versed in entertaining rich tourists) to give them ‘authentic’ tours and taste the local booze. I doubt this is what Twain was talking about though.

he did quit over this though

The differences of opinion are still there in irl leftist spaces but it alters how it feels when you’re actively doing something. Online you only see the differences in opinion but the real leftists aren’t just arguing details online (though they do that too) they’re running food banks and organizing housing cooperatives and coming out en masse when someone is being evicted. They’re putting together food packages and sending books to inmates. They’re hiking out into the desert to leave water for migrants and waiting by the train tracks to toss food up to travelers.

Bickering about details online might seem ridiculous to someone who isn’t involved but for the actually active leftists that part is only a sliver of their leftism and it’s not necessarily a bad thing— it’s very hard to imagine the world organized other than it is and one way we can be prepared to make the right decisions together when gaps appear is to discuss everything from every angle. I’m not going to pretend all the stuff online is in good faith and I suspect a good percentage of keyboard warriors who are not actually involved in leftward movement, but I do think in the context of real activism the bickering makes more sense.

Very interesting! What about others sensations like falling or feeling a surface?

That’s why I asked, wanted to hear people’s varied experiences

Dying @ the spongebob dream (nightmare?)

I don’t recall a dream conversation! I will add that I’m not particularly in touch with my dreams (I know some people keep a journal and such). None of the handful of ones I can recall include speaking though.

I don’t use it because I learned about it from my boss’s middle school girls soon after it was released when that was the main demographic so I still feel super weird about adults using it.

That said banning a social media platform at the federal level is a super authoritarian move and is rather unprecedented. Federal book banning will be next (oh no a chinese author!).

I think it depends on your proficiency. I had typical classes for German and Spanish in middle and high school and found Duolingo fine for learning vocab (though I haven’t used it in a few years so ymmv).

Switched to Busuu (premium) two years ago and I definitely felt like I was progressing faster than with duo. I especially like the review feature for both vocab and grammar. Grammar in particular is taught directly whereas (at least when I was using it) duolingo meant for you to infer grammar via usage which limited my understanding.

Busuu also has a feature (one lesson in each module) where you can practice speaking or writing and a native speaker will give you feedback. I personally didn’t find this feature super useful and sometimes skipped the lessons using them.

They’ve just introduced an AI conversations feature for a few languages (english to german french and spanish I think) but I haven’t figured out how to update to that version yet. Potentially useful since I feel awkward about messing up in front of real people even if they’re on the internet.

Before subscribing to premium you could only sort of use the app because it would get stuck on a “do you want to upgrade” screen without a way to x out and you would need to close and open the app. Not sure if they fixed it or meant it to be that way for free users but it was rather annoying.

I thought you were serious at first, please mind my blood pressure

“Lipocartilage’s resilience and stability provide a compliant, elastic quality that’s perfect for flexible body parts such as earlobes or the tip of the nose, opening exciting possibilities in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, particularly for facial defects or injuries,” said corresponding author Maksim Plikus, UC Irvine professor of developmental and cell biology. “Currently, cartilage reconstruction often requires harvesting tissue from the patient’s rib – a painful and invasive procedure. In the future, patient-specific lipochondrocytes could be derived from stem cells, purified and used to manufacture living cartilage tailored to individual needs. With the help of 3D printing, these engineered tissues could be shaped to fit precisely, offering new solutions for treating birth defects, trauma and various cartilage diseases.”

They said this was quite helpful thanks again!