Inner 8 & the Isms

a firehose of nonsense that entertained me momentarily my hobbies include: avoiding deadlines, bribing myself with cake, and gesticulating wildly at strange men This is probably not safe for work? I don't know your life, make your own decisions

[ruhua-langblr]

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

[gayskrillex]

No one wants to admit this but you don’t actually have to eat eggs and dairy for breakfast. Farmers just did that because they’d milk the cows and collect eggs in the morning. You can literally make a sandwich or a bowl of pasta or really anything you want for breakfast. There isn’t some medical reason you have to eat cereal and milk or fried eggs in the morning—our idea of “breakfast food” is an entirely artificial construct. Do what makes you happy.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Nature Documentary: these deep sea creatures can withstand crushing pressures of thousands of pounds per square inch!

Me: they’re not withstanding a goddamn thing. The pressure is a part of them. Their interiors and exteriors are equalized. Just because your respiratory system is built around a pair of fragile poppable bubbles-

[luidilovins]

Adversely, deep sea life is subject to barotrauma on the opposite end. Often deep sea fishermen pull them up rapidly and their swim bladders expand due to the pressure change and push their organs out of their mouths. Fishermen call it "the bends". So yeah there is no "withstanding" an environment that the endemic life has adapted to because the minute they're taken out they die gruesomely. They subsist on it.

[spider-artdump]

[despazito]

[lesbeansoups]

I think we need to appreciate this part of Brennan Lee Mulligan's WIRED interview a lot more:

"The evangelical right in this country needs to manufacture outrage to hold onto its voting block. [The satanic panic about DnD] was arbitrary, as the targets of their outrage always are. Fight the power."

[plaguedocboi]

I remember when I was younger, anytime I watched a movie where the characters have to kill a scary monster/alien, I always thought the act of killing it was intended to be part of the horror. Like there’s this amazing creature that we’ve never seen before, and maybe under different circumstances we could’ve coexisted with it, but it’s trying to attack you and you have to defend yourself, but by destroying it you also destroy the ability to ever understand it and that’s sad and is supposed to make you feel conflicted.

It was not until well into my adulthood that I realized most people do not have complicated feelings about movies where people have to kill a scary alien monster, nor is that necessarily meant to be part of the narrative (unless it very obviously is). They just want the scary thing to die because it’s scary. I don’t have a real conclusion to this I just started thinking about it for some reason.

[muppetshow2026]

WHAT IS THE CHARGE? EATING A PENGUIN? A SUCCULENT ADÉLIE PENGUIN?

[brokenbloodymolars]

There's a post sitting in my flagged posts that's been there for three plus years. It's a pair of onions in a bag that looks suspiciously like a pair of fat tits. Apparently it's flagged for everyone and God i wish i could show y'all

[brokenbloodymolars]

Lord if this works

[frightfullytreeish]

[ingridverse]

Allium's big naturals

[poetrylesbian]

literally crying laughing at this

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#i'd kinda assumed there was more alpaca in an alpaca

[anarchistmemedistro]

AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt

Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon.

[megaceros]

love that energy

[altrbody]

Fabio Viale, marble sculpture.

[hereforthefunnyguys]

[herainsorcia]

[fox-bright]

That is DIABOLICAL museum design, A++, no notes

[bestalbumtitle]

Round 5:

Which title do you like better?

No One Was Driving The Car

i know you're not the one i'm looking for, but i am so cold and a fire is a fire

Remaining time: 4 days 23 hours

No One Was Driving The Car

Artist: La Dispute

Release: 2025

Note: The title comes from an article about a car crash from a self driving Tesla car.

i know you're not the one i'm looking for, but i am so cold and a fire is a fire

Artist: ana kennedy

Release: 2022

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

Tried to tip a tumblr blog at 1am and it was such a suspicious transaction it immediately put a full fraud freeze on my account

Fortunately, banks no longer just ask 'did you make that transaction' they want to make sure you weren't scammed into making that transaction and 5mins after their call will give away all your money anyway.

This is an honest to goodness life saving movement and I cannot be happier banks are adopting it

Unfortunately, it meant I had to have the most embarrassing financial call of my life

-

Me: Ah yeah I was just trying to tip a tumblr blog

Cash: right and were you directed there by a Facebook link? An Instagram advert?

Me: no I was just on tumblr...on purpose

-

Caah: and this person asked you for money?

Me: oh no they just had a funny story, which happened to be about money and I thought, "wouldn't it be funny if I tipped them"

-

Me: * covering a reblog by reblog update on the adventures my mutual was having *

Cash: okay I don't think that can actually happen though..

Me: It might not have, but i was happy to tip them just because it was funny

-

Cash: and how well do you think you know this person?

Me: *considers explaining how much I know about a beloved mutual without ever knowing their name or face* ... I have no idea who this person is

I think in the end Cash decided there was no saving me from myself

[dungeon-moss]

[bestalbumtitle]

Round 5:

Which title do you like better?

What's Past Is Prologue

The Shape of Jazz to Come

Remaining time: 4 days 23 hours

What's Past Is Prologue

Artist: Free Throw

Release: 2019

Note: This is a quote from The Tempest, a Shakespeare play.

The Shape of Jazz to Come

Artist: Ornette Coleman

Release: 1959

Note: The Shape of Jazz to Come was a major influence on the nascent avant-garde jazz movement and a year later Coleman would both kick off and name the genre of free jazz.

[roycohn]

stop saying "gen z brought back bush-era purity politics" i grew up in the bush era and even then people weren't saying that you're a sex addict for having boring marital sexual congress in the same house as your children. this is just plain unhinged

[prof-grace-aspen]

Literally almost every millennial I know has a memory of accidentally walking in on their parents or hearing their parents having sex. It's fucking normal. Human beings have sex. Your parents fuck. Get over it. Being weird about it isn't healthy.

[whatsnewalycat]

I really loved Robert Evans’s response to this