Thanks, I’d never heard that term before and was very confused

I had that exact same conversation with my mom but it went like this:

“Ok mom, picture a cow in your head”

“Oookayyy”

“Now you can see a cow right?”

“What do you mean”

“Like… You can see a picture of the cow, right?”

“Nooo”

My dad chimes in “yes, obviously”

“…crap. Mom, I have some news for you”

Both of us grew up thinking we had no imagination or were dumb. I remember being incredibly frustrated when a teacher taught us the concept of the Memory Palace where you picture things in rooms of a house. Like if you had to remember five playing cards you’d picture a room with 7 red clowns, with hearts on their cheeks. Then in the next room you’d picture a king, holding up a spade, etc. That just made it harder for me to remember and the teacher kept telling me I wasn’t listening or trying.

I feel that explanation about being useless to a sketch artist on a spiritual level, that blew my mind as a kid. To this day I can’t really describe what my parents or wife looks like, I can just list characteristics. I feel my brain trying to visualize but then it comes up empty

Jesus, I had to go into the article to figure out what you were talking about and it’s so pathetic.

But investigators later concluded Greene had staged the attack, alleging she paid a body modification artist earlier to make it look like she was injured. Officers also found zip ties in Greene’s vehicle similar to those used on her, and the co-conspirator’s phone had been used two days earlier to search “zip ties near me."

Look at you, already deducting the taxes 🚣‍♂️💸

That’s the entire point of voting in a two party system

Iris for sure, that’s the color I set in SC2 when I played Zerg

Unlimited toilet paper should be a basic right, what the fuck

That’s fantastic, thank you! I prefer reading to listening when learning so that’s a huge help!

That’s perfect. Subbed is fine too if you’re actively listening but my problem was that I would just read the subs, hear the voices, and never actually listen to what they were saying.

For some reason I thought it would eventually sink in but it never did, the immersion listening has been working much better.

Funny story, I looked up Pokemon Podcast in Google translate and pasted it into YouTube and clicked the first result and actually liked the podcast. I went to watch more, but then realized it’s a general podcast that did a single Pokemon episode. Furthermore, it’s called the Badonkadonk Podcast and each episode starts with the guy saying daaaaamnnnnnmmn, that’s a badonkadonk! before starting the podcast in Japanese. It’s pretty funny, the guy is from America and will randomly break into English

The practice problems made it stick for me, I just worked through the lesson 2’s problems a couple of weeks ago. That said, language learning is a journey. I’ve watched anime for years and did Duolingo for half a year but never got anywhere. I went to Japan in March but was severely disappointed by how absolutely useless I was without Google translate. I finally decided that I’m going to learn it this time and a couple of months ago I started in earnest.

From what I’ve researched, there’s 3 things you need to focus on (after you’ve learned the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets):

• Doing Anki flashcards with a vocab deck (I’m currently using Kaishi 1.5K). This software OP created fills the same role so use that if it works for you, I just like Anki’s algorithms that put frequently missed cards in rotation more often. Don’t overload yourself, just do a little bit every day. If you use Anki, set it to only introduce 10 new cards a day.

• Listening to a lot of Japanese for immersion, arguably the most important. Listen to podcasts, anime with no subs, whatever seems interesting enough to keep you engaged. If it’s about a topic you know about you’ll pick things up faster. Your brain begins to form patterns and with enough inputs will put things together and match words you know with words that are commonly found beside it

• Learning the grammar. This is arguably less important because with enough listening you’ll passively pick it up, but if you study a bit it can jumpstart it.

There’s a concept called tolerating ambiguity: as you listen to Japanese immersion you will have no idea what’s going on. For me it was infuriating, but you need to accept that you won’t understand in the beginning. This is how babies learn. This is the video that started me on my path to actually trying.

The part that people don’t want to admit is that it takes years to get to the point where you can really understand the language and you’ll have to work at it. If you want to go down that journey then feel free to DM me, I can help you get started and we can throw phrases we learn at each other and watch our progress grow over time.

Yeah, it’s rough, I almost quit five mins into the video and I told my wife it’s the most grating thing I’ve ever heard. After finishing the first and second video I was able to tolerate it and concepts that I had read about but never understood were clicking left and right.

I later realized it might have been because the video creator was sick and was constantly in and out of hospitals so using an artificial voice may have just made everything easier and made me feel bad for being judgy.

I’m not super far in the series yet but there’s put out so many amazing videos, there’s problem sets with answers, and the comments are filled with personal anecdotes where the creator answered DMs to questions in a very in-depth and patient manner.

There’s almost no fluff to the videos after the first one, they’re very concise and the explanations make so much sense. It’s easy to read things like “wa is the topic marker, ga is the subject marker” and not gain any clarity, but I finally understand it thanks to the vids. I’m sure one day I’ll finish the series and wish I could hear more

Grammar problems solved.

It took me a while to be able to tolerate the voice but it’s the single best resource for learning Japanese grammar. The video creator passed on but they are by far the best teacher I’ve ever come across

Don’t worry, we’re the greatest country on earth, complete with a robust healthcare system where it’s super easy to find a doctor and get cheap and effective prescription drugs 🫠

Yeah way to bury the lede. Did they change the title or did OP quote the wrong part? The title from the article is

FBI Informant Who Lied About the Bidens Covertly Released From Jail