I have mixed feelings about this because while the sense of privacy on discord isn't really real and we are definitely losing out on stuff being archived and saved because of the lack of indexing, I don't think it's a full 100% unadulterated good for everything people say online to be search engine indexed either

I think about this a lot and it breaks my heart in advance, god

Oh huh, all this time I just assumed they were only being held afloat by ~investment dollars~ and whatnot.

You don't need to pay anything, their business model is already stable. The people not paying are being covered by Nitro subscribers and various other deals they've made.

It's a sold business, but not one made for exponential growth which is why people get worried.

Oh ya I mean more like, in the hypothetical scenario where they weren't driven by profit hungry infinite-growth jackals. What would be the break-even cost? $1? $2?

They're already making money with nitro, boosts, and the partnership program. they don't need to do this, but it's what investors want

I wonder how much Discord would have to charge for it to remain good? I'd pay $3/mo for Discord to never change.

discord eating up so many communities, to the point where stuff that you used to be able to find online is stuck in an unindexed discord, is a shame

can we please all just go back to forums when discord dies a death

Good news, it's here https://twitter.com/jasoncitron/status/1457841222995693570

honestly i've been wondering when it's gonna take that turn for quite a while. kinda surprised it hasn't yet

If i made a game this fun i would too lol i don't blame him

he name his own game the game of the decade

also this game actually rules lol

My Japanese self-education has been disorganized and spotty lol (thanks ADHD).

Before I started going "I should learn Japanese" in earnest i had probably watched anime for like five years. This helped a bit but English subtitles can be a crutch that prevent you from really diving into learning. Looking stuff you hear up to see what it actually means helps, but full immersion helps more (more on that later). Learning the language as spoken also helps with learning the alphabet.

I started what I'd call actual "study" with duolingo. Duolingo was actually pretty great for helping with the basics! There came a point though where I felt like I was starting to hit a wall, and something about the app/site just wasn't doing it for me anymore. Supplementing Duolingo with other resources gave me a bit more mileage (I'd highly recommend "All About Particles" by Naoko Chino as a reference), but yeah eventually I stopped using it.

Now, I've started a multi-pronged approach focused on immersion. I'm finding it really effective. I guess if it works for a baby it can work for an adult, albeit slower haha.

I'm starting with watching anime or shows I'm familiar with without English subtitles. The point isn't trying to understand everything, but to focus on what you can and pause and look things up when I'm really curious about something. Slice-of-life stuff is particularly good because it contains the most "normal" talking aside from the stuff like anime girls yelling "eeeeeeh!?!?" An added benefit of this approach is it helps a fair bit with making sure your accent is good.

Daily, I'm using the popular Tango N5 (and some day N4) flash cards in Anki. Anki superb free flash card program.

I'm also starting to play games I'm familiar with in japanese. Right now I'm playing Earthbound and Dragon Quest V. Earthbound is actually pretty nice because it contains almost no Kanji. Itoi designed the game so his daughter could play it. For the alphabets I have printouts of hiragana and katakana when I forget any characters. I also keep a text file of notes for each game in the same folder I put the (100% legally acquired) ROM of the game in. This usually includes a table of translated menus in both the english and japanese, and unfmailiar kanji I come across. Tabs are very helpful in this. This is also good practice for using the japanese ime.

The games are very slow going. I've barely gotten through the intro in either, but it still feels very enriching. I also speak pretty much every word aloud as I'm reading it. This helps reinforce both speaking accent and alphabet familiarity for me.

To figure out unfamiliar kanji, I use a OCR screen capture program called "Text Grabber." It's $3.00 on the windows store and absolutely worth the price. You need to make sure you're set to the japanese IME in windows before capturing though. For Kanji that it can't read (no OCR is perfect), jisho.org has a great find-by-radicals tool. And a good find-by-drawing tool. And is just a good dictionary in general.

I'll also start digging into a visual novel at some point, but none have really grabbed my attention.

Anyway that's about where I'm at now. Good luck if you decide to start diving in!

What's your Japanese learning history been like? I've been thinking of whether to learn German or Japanese next and my main worry with the latter is its writing system, but, I mean, here you are working on it.

I do not worry about getting to the end of literacy if I pursue Japanese, like reading novels and such, but whether I can conceive a route to get there that has some rewards on its own. With French its pretty simple: read a couple pages in a novel and get to progress in story in a daily session, noticing it's getting easier and faster on a monthly basis and so on. I'm kind of wondering how I would set up my routine and when I could realistically expect to have fun playing a game or reading manga in Japanese.

a good call

but yeah i do really want it to be five because it's basically my favorite dragon quest

V doesn't at the very least but i'm managing ok without it thanks to jisho's kanji lookup-by-radicals tool

Dragon Quest games have furigana, right? Pretty good for learning

I watched 5 (what a trip lmao) and next up is 6. after I finish the thing I'm obviously gonna go back and watch all the ones I skipped

The segment where he talks about the crunch he went through making his videos and the health problems he acquired because of it hurts to hear. Just a couple of days ago he got into some mild twitter drama where people trashed on him for saying this was the hardest job he has ever had. harder than working in fast food and customer service.

idk, those qrts from people who had no clue who this guy was completely shitting on him kinda fucked me up lol

N

NINE

I SEE

lol at the end he links a playlist with seven other videos that add an additional 9 hours

oh wow only an hour long??? surprising restraint from our boy timothy