I've only barely started playing MTG but I am so far baffled as to how the community doesn't have some IRL equivalent of Pokemon gyms. People put so much effort into creating decks with unique theming, and while plenty of people are trying to optimize their decks to be flawlessly unbeatable, even more just seem to really like decks with cool themes surrounding particular creature types or mechanics.
I just think Magic would lend itself really well to a type of semi-competitive scene where you and your buddies can hop on the bus to the next town over to go fight Crab Guy (guy who likes crabs) at the Crab Gym (room at the back of a game store with paper crabs on the walls) to get your Crab Badge (small pin with a crab on it) by defeating his Crab Deck (deck whose only creature cards are crabs)
This is the most real MTG post of all time cause I'll give you one guess which of these two cards was an absolute menace in standard and had to be banned and which one hasn't seen any play since getting reprinted
Why learning mandarin is not that hard, if you were considering studying it but scared (this post is partly joking, in that any language could be easier for you to learn than another, and it depends on the individual, so you may not find these aspects as easy or vice versa you might think another language's aspects i found hard were easier for you. Also, if you've studied or tried to study japanese then in particular these aspects compared are going to be more familiar)
1. You're scared to learn hanzi. There's 4000 you say. They look hard! Well some happy news: hanzi are made up of 214 radicals put together (like letters) to make 1 sound-meaning piece (so like how c a r are put together to mean CAR). The sound meaning piece is hanzi. Each hanzi usually has 1 pronunciation (compared to english which often pronounces syllables multiple ways). Each hanzi is like 1 syllable or word-part. Many hanzi are 1 radical that's related to it's pronunciation, and 1 radical roughly related to it's meaning. (With some exceptions, like with any language). Examples: 人 认 任 仁 仞 all have the person radical 人 "ren" (which looks like a diagonal line with a straight line down, when it's put on the side of hanzi), all of these hanzi are "ren" like the radical, with different meanings (which the other radical hints at). So 人 means person, since it's just the person radical. 认 means to know someone, and the meaning radical on the left is the smushed radical 言 that means speech. As you get used to seeing hanzi, you'll notice that you can often guess the rough pronunciation (at least enough to see 吧 ba and then later see 把 疤 靶 and guess that if you type "ba" you can look them up, since they all share 巴). You'll often be able to start guessing new words based on the meaning radical, and hanzi you already know. There's some hanzi which are just one radical, like 人 person, 女 woman. Many of these are like the 214 radicals, and the radicals are the main thing you'll need to memorize. I know 216 feels like a lot. But once you practice identifying those 214 radicals, new hanzi become much easier to remember because you can recognize how to make them and what information they might contain about meaning and pronunctiation. If you learn 手 shou is hand and it looks like 扌when it is a radical, then you can start figuring out 把 and 拉 may have something to do with hands or using them. Many verbs that people do, have the hand or foot radical. Here's a list of the radicals:
Most words are 2 hanzi put together (similar to english driveway, airport, steering wheel, cross walk, coffee cup, inter-nation-al, extra-terrest-rial) with the sound-meaning hanzi contributing to build a new word. There's some 1 hanzi words, like person 人. There's some 4 hanzi words and phrases. You'll learn hanzi and over time, that will result in learning or being able to guess MANY MORE WORDS beyond just the number of hanzi you've learned. If you learn 清 qing means clear, you'll see new words like 清晰(qingxi distinct, clear) 清楚 (qingchu be clear about/understand), 清除 (to clear away, eliminate), 清新 (pure and fresh, original), 清洁 (qingjie clean). If you guess "something to do literally or metaphorically with "clear" then you may figure out the words with 清 in a show or novel, if you know the other hanzi then you'll then learn to guess even more words.
Once you learn a few hanzi, it opens up the understanding of many words. Then as you learn more, the words you can guess expands a lot. You can rely on radicals in hanzi to help you guess what pinyin to type to look a hanzi up, and what general area a hanzi might relate to in its meaning (like the water radical 氵in 海 冰 池 indicating these hanzi may be related to water).
2. The grammar! Is it hard? Now this will depend on what you prefer. Mandarin has no conjugation. I hate conjugation. This means when you learn a word? You can recognize the word in all contexts. You don't need to learn several versions of "to run" in mandarin, it will always be pao 跑. There might be similar words, like in english dash/sprint/run etc. But you're not memorizing run/ran/running. You learn 跑, and you'll recognize it in the past, present, future, and with whoever is saying it. (Edit 3/3/2025: I have removed the bits mentioning Japanese because I do not know Japanese very well, and I already mentioned English conjugation). 明白 (understand mingbai) is the same whether its I understand 我明白, i understood 我明白了, 我会明白 (i will understand that... although id use liaojie or zhidao probably). In chinese you may use another word for tense, like english says "i will go/i have gone" and 会，要，了， 过 show up in those sentences. And there is 的 得 地 which have grammar functions. But there's no conjugation. The sentence order is also generally subject verb object, if you're an english speaker then the overall word order will be familiar and make it less of a hurdle to get used to other grammar differences. There are still significant grammar differences, and it'll depend on you on how quickly you can adjust to them. But all languages have grammar differences.
3. Tones! What can I say. There's a lot of good youtube videos that explain the 4 tones and neutral tone, tone sandhi (tone changes), and how tone pairs may be easier to study with. It is definitely new if you don't already know a tonal language. But it is also something you can practice listening to, and get better at hearing. It is something you can get used to recognizing in months, it may not take you years. There are hurdles with speaking, but people who learn english have to learn where to put the emphasis in pronuncing multi syllable words (along with learners of french and german and spanish). Practice, shadowing, and working on where you struggle, are part of it just like any language. I've found these pages very helpful: dong-chinese has a Pronunciation guide under Learn Pinyin, and if you go through it and do the practice tests it can help a lot with listening skills:
Learn to read and write Mandarin Chinese in context through real example sentences, images, songs, and videos.
And this site Accent Lab has tone pair drills. I really like this exercise, as tone pair recognition helps a lot with recognizing words:
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The fact that scammers are using the Palestinian genocide to scam people is disappointing yet not surprising. It just sucks that Tumblr doesn’t fix this problem despite me receiving 50+ asks that just copy and paste this message.
If i met a white person irl I’d beat the shit out of them and mug them just because of this post. Because of you. Maybe even kill them. Because of you. You had to say this and now some random cracker bitch is gonna die. Are you happy? Was it worth it?
This app is literally SO motivational. Everyone’s hating on the pro @na girlies but don’t realize that 90% of them are healthier than the people that are hating. Like they literally don’t get that consuming junk everyday is NOT healthy. Calorie counting can be toxic but it’s far better than just consuming useless calories and fueling your body with too much sugar. Why eat a whole bag of chips when you can just eat cucumbers? They’re so much healthier and beneficial for our bodies. We are treating our bodies unhealthy with our modern day diets. Let me not talk about those mukbang’s where they eat 6 crumble cookies??? In one cookie there’s already over a 1000kcal??? There’s no reason for your body to be needing all of that. The community is also so motivational and caring. Helping each other out. I literally LOVE it on here!!!
OP has conflated a healthy lifestyle with an eating disorder, and in such a way that is so cognitively dissonant that there's no unpacking it unless the delusional thinking is dropped. You're cooked!
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