• 20 Posts
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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: May 15th, 2019

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  • Conflicts over language have been tied to other conflicts (political, cultural, war) for a very long time. Cultural genocide against indigenous people has targeted indigenous language use among young people. Many people in India have objected to the establishment of Hindi as a UN language because they fear it will advance the extinction of their own language. I’m not saying some Replacement Theory bigot kvetching because someone dared speak a language besides English is equivalent. It’s more that language does have a special place in culture in a way that is very common.




  • I wouldn’t say it’s a point of pride in the US usually, because it does make life difficult and limited. In the US, a lot of situations simply require English. It means relying on friends and family as translators, so the person can be at their mercy. They also can become very isolated within their immigrant communities while they watch the younger multilingual generations be able to integrate. My impression is that it is usually older people who struggle most learning English that remain in this group. I can’t think of anyone who is even vaguely younger who didn’t make an effort to learn English.

    I remember a middle aged Iranian woman who was taking ELL courses at my university. We happen to be at the gym at the same time some nights. I could tell it was a struggle, but she was clearly picking up more of the language.


  • I used OkCupid for some dates before I found my now husband. It took quite a few dates on my side, but I just considered that par for the course. For him, I was his first date on OkCupid. For that matter, I was the first man that he dated, though he had dated a girl in high school.

    Unfortunately, in the decade since we’ve met, I think both straight and gay oriented dating apps have probably taken a turn for the worse. We both had extensive, descriptive profiles and talked for a long time before meeting up. I keep hearing that the gay apps have turned into mostly hookup apps, but I can’t speak for straight apps.



  • I wasn’t able to get a good read on it either. I didn’t spot anything obviously wrong from a technical standpoint, but I’m not a systems developer. It just doesn’t have much that distinguishes it on a non-technical level. The design is neat, but other OS projects like Redox have shot past it in a shorter period of time. That tells me something’s broken, whether it’s technical or social.