La Majeur's full back Tattoo (chapt. 115)

Btw after 6 years of using this mfing app, youtube finally thinks im japanese and i think thats just hilarious

Tumblr imperial core liberals only sharing donation posts for Palestine and not even touching posts that spread information regarding how current circumstances have not manifested spontaneously, that Israel has been targeting Palestinian lives since Israel's establishment, and that the genocide of Palestinians is the ultimate goal of the settler colony state, really reveals that the only thing an imperial core liberal is willing to do when a crisis occurs within peripheral states is throw money at it until it disappears so they can pat themselves on the back for pushing around their share of their country's wealth

neuvillette is so kind, gentle, beautiful...

i have a need to run my hands along his horns/antennae

also to give him hugs since according to leaks and loads of hints in the story he cries every time there's a trial 😭

okay i Finally feel like i have the time and energy to get back to genshin

it’s a small thing early on in the tcg grand prix thing but i thought it was interesting

so when kaeya greets charlotte, he says “enchantée”

which is initially in line with him being a smooth talking kind of guy

but since charlotte is from fontaine, which is mostly based on france, he’s probably just greeting her in her national language, which is really thoughtful and respectful of him

i just thought that was neat :0

Sorry for spamming you so much I just don't get a chance to talk about this that much lol, but I really hope the cast keep their accents. Like Inaki has done mostly Spanish film/tv which makes sense and can speak English well but obviously has a thick accent so I wonder if masking that would change his acting in anyway. Also Sanji with a chavvy British accent works with his character like he's a foul mouthed, smoking rude guy usually.

I love chatting about the LA no worries! I hope they keep their accents too. Inaki's accent is imo perfect for Luffy. I haven't heard much of Taz besides some short clips because I've never seen anything else he's done but I think a posh English accent that gets rough and chavvy when he's heated would be hilarious.

StEx Appreciation Month Day Twenty-Five: National Engines

Favorite Actor: (Just for my faves, cause I don’t think about the Nationals as often)

Espresso: Gary Sheridan 

Brexit: Kevin Kohler 

Turnov: Luke Dowling 

Ruhrgold: Cole Dunn

Favorite Song/Scene: Their introductions, them racing, and that lovely moment in the megamix now where they all wave their flags :)

Favorite Costume: I love Espresso’s update costume! Bobo being orange makes a lot more sense, the Japanese Engine looks the best and most accurate in the update as Manga as well. Ruhrgold being the white, red, and blue ICE design is perfection. 

Favorite Ship: BoboxEspresso, Ruhrgold/Carrie or Joule

Headcanon: Exchanging phrases in their different languages is always something they have fun with every year at the championship races 

Unpopular Opinion: Uhhh, not sure I have any? Other than I really prefer Ruhrgold over Weltschaft? For obvious reasons...also the only British engine I care about is Brexit, sorry

Practicing Russian in France while speaking English and eating Japanese mochi

Right now I struggle to draw old people, I gotta improve it, but still attempted to give a go to a human Kerubim cause he's the best grandpa-dad

(more info in my tags if you wanna learn more?)

Chapter 116

Duolingo is NOT what it used to be.

“Duolingo is ‘sunsetting the development of the Welsh course’ (and many others)”.

I’ve used Duolingo since 2013. It used to be about genuinely learning languages and preserving endangered ones. It used to have a vibrant community and forum where users were listened to. It used to have volunteers that dedicated countless hours and even years to making the best courses they could while also trying to explain extremely nuanced and complex grammar in simple terms.

In the past two years it feels like Von Ahn let the money talk instead of focusing on the original goal.

No one truly had a humongous problem with the subscription tier for SuperDuolingo. We understood it: if you can afford to pay, help keep Duolingo free for those who couldn’t.

It started when the company went public. Volunteers were leaving courses they created because they warned of differing longterm goals compared to Duolingo’s as a company; not long after it was announced that the incubator (how volunteers were able to make courses in the first place) would be shut down. A year goes by and the forums—the voice of the users and the way people were able to share tips and explanations—is discontinued. A year or two later, Duolingo gets a completely new makeover—the Tree is gone and you don’t control what lesson you start with. With the disappearance of the Tree, all grammar notes and explanations for courses not in the Big 8 (consisting of the courses made before the incubator like Spanish/French/German/etc. and of the most popular courses like Japanese/Korean/Chinese/etc.) are removed with it. Were you learning Vietnamese and have no idea how honorifics work without the grammar notes? Shit outta luck bud. Were you learning Polish and have absolutely no clue how one of the declensions newly thrown at you functions? Suck it up. In a Reddit AMA, Von Ahn claims that the new design resulted in more users utilizing the app/site. How he claims that statistic? By counting how many people log into their Duolingo account, as if an entire app renovation wouldn’t cause an uptick in numbers to even see what the fuck just happened to the courses.

Von Ahn announces next in a Reddit AMA that no more language courses will be added from what there already is available. His reasoning? No one uses the unpopular language courses — along with how Duolingo will now be doing upkeep with the courses already in place. And here I am, currently looking on the Duolingo website how there are 1.8 million active learners for Irish, 284 thousand active learners for Navajo, and even 934 thousand active learners for fucking High Valyrian. But yea, no one uses them. Not like the entire Navajo Nation population is 399k members or anything, or like 1.8 million people isn’t 36% of the entire population of Ireland or anything.

And now this. What happened to the upkeep of current courses? Oh, Von Ahn only meant the popular ones that already have infinite resources. Got it. Duolingo used to be a serious foundational resource for languages with little resources while also adding the relief of gamification.

It pisses me off. It really does. This was not what Duolingo started out as. And yea, maybe I shouldn’t get invested in a dingy little app. But as someone who spent most of her adolescence immersed in language learning to the point where it was literally keeping me alive at one point, to the point where languages felt like my only friend as a tween, and to the point where friendships on the Duolingo forums with likeminded individuals my age and other enthusiasts who even sent me books in other languages for free because they wanted people to learn it, the evolution of Duolingo hits a bitter nerve within me.

~End rant.

If you're upset about duolingo firing it's translators, you should check whatever the equivalent to the BBC is for your target language (or the BBC if that language is English, but if your target language is English and you're reading this I think you're good) because a lot of major national news organizations have resources for learning their language. For example, DW has resources to learn German, NHK has resources for learning Japanese, TV5monde has resources for learning French. They're usually free (or at least, I haven't encountered one that's paid yet) and usually pretty comprehensive (though like with all language learning apps/websites def supplement it with other resources)