The Luminous Prophet

Harbinger of Hunger, Avatar of the Void. Emptiness Incarnate. Why have you come before us?

[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)

"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)

[what-even-is-thiss]

One time I was at a pub trivia night with some writer friends and we almost won but there was a tie. As a tiebreaker they asked us and the other team to write down as many moons of Jupiter as we could in two minutes.

None of us are very into astronomy so at first everyone was like oh we’re gonna lose but there were three of us at the table that night who were either former classics majors or otherwise super well read on Roman mythology and the three of us were like give us that paper right now and we just took turns writing down all of the lovers of Jupiter from mythology that we could.

So of course we won lol

[is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not]

The ultimate insult among Clan aerospace pilots:

"You are good, but you are no Tyra Miraborg."

[vexwerewolf]

"Some Khans only get a couple of lines in the Remembrance. A freebirth enemy got an entire verse. You will not get a single word."

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

“If I had time travel I’d kill Hitler” “If I had time travel I’d stop my favourite politician getting assassinated” you’re all thinking way too small. If I had time travel I’d stop Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from dying on the moon due to Soviet sabotage, kicking off the Great Nuclear War and devastating half of the planet.

[stavarosthearcane]

Good Job.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#this post gets me every time 

It’s from two days ago fam how many times could there have been

[heroofthreefaces]

do you think no one else has time travel

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Happy one month anniversary to this post that has not allowed me a single day of fucking peace since I made it.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#surprise reblog!! 

STOP IT’S BEEN MONTHS. MONTHS!

YOU CAN STOP.

[roach-works]

wow if only you had a time machine

[transdaughterofthesun]

Honestly having reached a billion notes I think it’s safe to say that in the Year of our lord 2041, this is the most popular tumblr post out there.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I’m killing your parents before you’re born

[iforgotmyfandom]

:)

[idiototheinternet]

Still here, why’d you hesitate @derinthescarletpescatarian

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Your mum’s ability to hold up under active gunfire was really hot. I’m your dad now.

[lizyarikus]

Isn’t that the plot of Terminator

[anexperimentallife]

Where do you think the plot for Terminator came from?

[what-if-i-just-did]

This is such a classic trainwreck post that has the vibes of a 2014 screenshot posted to Pinterest and then the last addition is just last Tuesday I can’t even

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Imagine how I feel

[mrsjdavis]

POST, LIVE FOREVER!!!!!!

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

It doesn’t have to

[smegorl]

Yes it does.

[type-blaze0]

Of course it has to, it gets a billion notes in 2041

[angels-haven-official]

We all know who needs to be @’d

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

[cryptotheism]

HOW TO BE GOTH IN HEAT WAVE

[thestarsareundecided]

Carefully.

[vexwerewolf]

[vexwerewolf]

Quijas on PilotNET asked me to make a lore-accurate version of this meme so here you go

[jaubaius]

Vampire and werewolf dating

[runcibility]

OP I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DIDN’T CREDIT THIS, BECAUSE THERE IS SO MUCH MORE!

This is an ongoing series by @sarahseeandersen called “Fangs” - it’s absolutely worth following and keeping up with!

https://tapas.io/episode/1559785

[cottoncandyinsides]

Sharing the credited version!

[inficetegodwottery]

[phuntasm]

[twenty-one-fnaf-phans]

[sindri42]

In

no

particular

order

[pisswallet]

really cool. so its a goth and a hippie

[fenris-calls]

Me and whatever goth gf I’m given

[ruvelli]

I absolutely loved this series, and the entire thing can be read for free on Tapas.

Unfortunately, she did end it, but what’s there is worth at least ten rereads. I go back to visit it every few months or so. :3

[notaboyscout]

also? available as a hardcover book.

Fangs

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!The spooky, sweet romance between a vampire and a werewolf proves to be irresistibly fun in this love story by Sar

[deadpowol]

[furryprovocateur]

9/11

[furryprovocateur]

not even joking this is one of the worst possible changes that i could've reasonably conceived of to happen to video games.

[furryprovocateur]

having thought about it this is a generationally anti-consumer announcement that will have a profoundly detrimental impact on consumers and retail markets. this will price out new consumers even more than a $600 PS5 and $80 games will. this will make games less accessible and more nickel-and-dimed. this will make games impossible to share irl without giving your console up, and will stop institutions like libraries from being able to loan copies of modern games. and most importantly, it will be for a minimal profit, as most of the sales in video games are already digital.

this is such a staggeringly catastrophic piece of news that i'm shocked it wasn't said by nintendo. congrats to sony for one-upping them in anti-consumer practices.

[thestarsareundecided]

Congratulations to Sony for clawing last place out of the hands of Microslop.

[geckyjuno]

my bedsheet is pregnant and it's. the rest of my laundry

[muppetyaoi]

another one for the collection, gang.

[enba-and-luka]

[psshaw]

[lilifred]

everyone's talking about the ibs/autism haha funny comparison thing while I'm still stuck on the concept that hamsters exist in the wild. like naturally

tf do you mean they're a wild creature. you find those ankle-biters at the pet store

[psshaw]

Not a biologist, but the evolution of mammals is way more granular than you might expect. Humans are the sole surviving species of the genus Homo, which was a real party before the other ones went extinct. You're in for a fun time.

Domestic cats are believed to be domesticated not from tigers, but from the African wildcat:

Which evolved to be small just because it's sometimes more useful to be small.

And no, hamsters are not off-brand rats. They're part of the rodent order, which includes beavers, moles, capybaras, guinea pigs (yes, also wild) and lots of other fun things:

[thesecretuncle]

Shit. This dude knows an extreme amount about a niche subject. Crazy what you can accomplish when you have treatment resistant IBS

[psshaw]

I want it on record that I shit mostly normal.

[rosieandthemoon]

found this screenshot on threads. I am cordially inviting all of you to post this in the comments/reblogs of any and every Al post you come across, on any platform. Especially useful for accounts who “teach” people how to use Al.

[beardedmrbean]

Congratulations on the cat

[siriosa]

cat delivery system works in mysterious ways, yo

[fawnpalmer]

quarterly reminder that if i reblog something ai-generated it is 110% and always an accident and for the love of god please tell me so i can delete it from my blog

[hellogoodomens]

I actually lost one really nice follower because of this and I’m still sad.

[brisim-claimhte]

The best thing about being a chronically online papyrologist in training is being assigned an unpublished fragment to decipher, and slowly realising it's talking about the purity of mesopotamian copper.

Two millennia after Ea Nasir, the Romans are worried about buying impure copper ingots, imported from Mesopotamia.

[prokopetz]

If ever you get tired of responding to questions about "rp-forward" games with verbosity and pedantry (which, to be clear, heaven forfend you do, I love reading those posts) may I humbly suggest the (in my opinion highly entertaining) alternative of telling people "Good Society will probably work for you" and refusing to elaborate?

You know for a fact that if I ever resorted to a bit like that it would be Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine.

[prokopetz]

#I am only vaguely familiar with the game #why would recommending Chuubo's be a bit in this case? (via @moltensludeinbrainattack)

The structure of the game manages to hit a remarkable number of features that folks who think "RP forward" actually means something and isn't just a marketing phrase would typically regard as categorically excluding a system from being "RP forward", while looking nothing like the kind of game you'd tend to picture based on those features.

You don't want the mechanics sticking their nose into every little thing? Chuubo's is so intensely preoccupied with mechanising the mundane that forming intentions to do things is a rules-mediated action. There are specific target numbers for stuff like "do it correctly", "look like you actually know what you're doing", and "be happy with the result", and without a relevant skill or resource expenditure, the best outcome you can ordinarily achieve is "make everything worse".

You want to do stuff because it "makes sense for your character", and not because it gives the most points? As far as Chuubo's is concerned, those are the same thing. Just living your everyday life is framed as a kind of quest, with milestones and XP triggers and whatnot; this is a game where you might actively look for excuses to "have a conversation in a poorly lit place" or "gaze contemplatively over a large body of water" because your personal quest line awards XP for doing that.

You want a game that will let you make up whatever character you want and doesn't expect you to faff about with "classes" and "levels" and such? Not only does Chuubo's effectively have both of those things, it's so strongly opinionated about what sorts of characters are appropriate that it recommends you use pregenerated characters until you get a good feel for the milieu. One of those pregens has a character sheet that's twenty pages long – and you might assume that means most of it is just a big tedious lore dump, but it's not.

And on top of all that, it's not combat focused (because it has no formal combat system) and doesn't ask you to roll dice all the time (by dint of the technicality that it's a diceless system), so it can't readily be dismissed as "not RP forward" on any of the usual grounds. It's a slice of life game about adolescent gods attending high school. The kid who owns the titular Wish-Granting Engine can turn into a giant snake.

[prokopetz]

@caseyuptobat replied:

The only reason to actually play this game beyond novelty is if you have a supreme case of writer's block and are running behind to turn in a manuscript of an azumanga-esque 4koma chapter

Not true.

It's also a very solid choice for running Homestuck.

[prokopetz]

#turn into a giant snake you say 👀 (via @the-meat-machine)

It doesn't help.

[thestarsareundecided]

That sounds more like a chuuni book than a game system.