Translation:

Noam Chomsky is alive!

At 3:41pm EDT today the 18th of June 2024, his spouse, Valeria, confirmed to me that Noam Chomsky is recovering his health. The rumors about his death are false. #NoamChomsky

Boy is that a fine line

A lot of them came after the fall of the USSR and the things got pretty bad in Cuba in the late 90's/early 00's. Not necessarily because they're rabid anti-communists.

I think it's more about the non-alphabetical nature of it. I've heard Korean script is quite easy to learn for example.

But I've heard it's much easier once you have some level of fluency in the language. I mean children don't intensively study Chinese characters until they're already speaking at a level higher than most language learners get to.

They say for Spanish you need like 1500+ hours of listening and watching to get to a decent level. Chinese, it's more like 3-4000+. Much respect. No cognates to fall back on.... Can't imagine!

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Talk to an injury lawyer and get well

I mean I've always been baffled that this wasn't already how it works. It seemed to me if they wanted to make them hard to block this was the obvious answer

If you're into self hosting Immich is awesome. Completely replaced Google Photos for me

Pretty much for travel. I wanted to go to a Spanish speaking country, living in Florida makes Cuba one of the cheapest to get to and also very safe for foreigners (which helps get my GF on board). Plus being communist well... Kinda makes it top choice lol

I'm just flying straight from Miami. There's definitely restrictions and rules but they are very easy to meet. Can't stay in pretty much any hotel. (Have to stay in a "Casa Particular" which is just like an AirBnB - quite literally most of them). Because the hotels are state run and the US wants you to not give them money. Then you need to eat at the private restaurants and have "meaningful interactions with the people" it's really not a big deal for Americans to go anymore. Of course all these rules on what I can and cannot do are the rules of the "land of the free" not Cuba's rules.

But here straight from the US govt is an example of how to comply:

Example 1 to § 515.574:

An individual plans to travel to Cuba, stay in a room at a rented accommodation in a private Cuban residence (casa particular), eat at privately-owned Cuban restaurants (paladares), and shop at privately-owned stores run by self-employed Cubans (cuentapropista) during his or her four-day trip. While at the casa particular, the individual will have breakfast each morning with the Cuban host and engage with the Cuban host to learn about Cuban culture. The traveler will not lodge, or pay for lodging, at any property on the CPA List to the extent prohibited by § 515.210. In addition, the traveler will complete his or her full-time schedule by supporting Cuban entrepreneurs launching their privately-owned businesses. The traveler's activities promote independent activity intended to strengthen civil society in Cuba. Because the individual's qualifying activities are not limited to staying in a room at a rented accommodation in a private Cuban residence (casa particular), eating at privately-owned Cuban restaurants (paladares), and shopping at privately owned stores run by self-employed Cubans (cuentapropista) and the traveler maintains a full-time schedule that enhances contact with the Cuban people, supports civil society in Cuba, and promotes the Cuban people's independence from Cuban authorities, and that results in meaningful interaction between the traveler and Cuban individuals, the individual's travel qualifies for the general license.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-515/subpart-E/section-515.574

Of course, the one and only department that actually enforced this is the Treasury department. I've heard some formerly Cuban immigration agents in Miami get huffy about it on the way back but they literally can't do anything. The treasury has the right to request your receipts and records from the trip for 5 years. AFAIK they've never done this to individual travelers. So people can and have just flagrantly violated these rules with no consequences. Not that I would of course.

Sure. The method I use is called "Comprehensible Input". To start I used/use Dreaming Spanish.

Basically you just kinda... Watch stuff in Spanish. That's it. No translation. To start you begin with really simple stuff with tons of hand gestures and visual aids, so you don't really need the words to understand.

Then you move on to less and less visual aids. Then you can do podcasts and other audio only stuff. Then you can move on to just watching whatever you normally would but in Spanish. The beginning is a bit of a slog because the stuff you can understand really isn't very interesting but you'll get through it. Now I listen to audiobooks and watch dubbed TV series. It really works. I've been at it 9 or 10 months or so. I can get by with basic speaking and can get my point across (if in a very roundabout way sometimes) but I definitely need much more practice there. I have about 750 hours worth of watching/listening to stuff in Spanish. The method says English speakers need about 1500 hours to get to a practical fluency. (Plus a few dozen hours speaking practice, which you don't do until the later parts.)

If you spend a lot of time watching or listening to random stuff online, you can totally just replace that with this and learn Spanish in 1-3 years. It's almost magic tbh.

Here's a playlist that explains it (turn on English subtitles)

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlpPf-YgbU7GrtxQ9yde-J2tfxJDvReNf

Not news I'm going to Cuba in a couple months and I'm very excited. Been learning Spanish for a while now and can understand shows and everyday speech. (Though uh, admittedly I have a hard time with Cuban accents lmao)

Any recommendations? Going to Havana for just 4/5 days.

There's an option in Themes to change to an "Android" mode which helps a bit, but it still looks iOS-y with that bottom bar.

But it was based on Apollo which was made with the explicit purpose of being as stock Apple looking as possible so it's no surprise. It doesn't bother me at all.

And Android

Although honestly I can imagine a cop seeing this and going "fuck I can't deal with this dip shit today"

John Oliver got some decent jokes. He just really likes to stop short of what really needs to be done.

I really like Immich and it works great for me. But I will be setting up Ente authenticator self hosted at some point

I can't tell you how long I've wanted to have a self hostable authy alternative with mobile and desktop apps plus a web portal.

Yeah it sucks. I wanna go to China but similar issues (super expensive tickets to the other side of the planet and couldn't really immerse in culture.)

I'm heading to Cuba this summer, pretty cheap to get to from the US

12 years since they stopped selling the 2nd Gen. Not bad imo.

Oh nooooooo