Haha I get it! I’m more curious than cautious when it comes to things like this, for better or for worse. So far, I’ve only had good experiences. Just offered because I don’t think we live all that far apart.

I’d go in with you if you wanted. I order stuff from Europe all the time and it’s fine. PM if you want.

There wouldn’t be any “h” if you thought of it in terms of Spanish sounds.

If you really get into the weeds, the funky spelling can sometimes give you a clue about how the word is pronounced. (But only sometimes.) For example, “rhetoric” can have a bit of an “h” sound, especially in British English. I notice it some in American English too, but it can vary from person to person.

Or “gnats.” The “n” is a tiny bit different than if you said “Nats,” like the baseball team. You obviously don’t say the “g,” but the tongue comes up a little in the back of your mouth, almost like you were going to say a “g.”

That’s nothing to worry about, it’s just something I’ve noticed.

It sounds like you’re thinking about the words and playing with them, which is always a good way to learn. I remember being a kid and laughing about g-nats and k-nees. You know, when you say all the letters and really exaggerate. After a while, you just know it.

My go-to is to look at the word for a while, listen to the pronunciation a few times, and try to say it. If I hear the word again, I can usually see it too. I get a transcript in my head when someone says something, or even when I think something. It’s just always there.

If I forget the spelling, the transcript will get blurry or stop. So it’s usually easy to remember the spelling, and if I forget it, I really want to look it up.

I don’t need glasses. Haven’t had my hearing tested, but I think it might be better than average. I can hear high frequencies annoyingly well, 20kHz or a little more (checked with a spectrum analyzer). It’s fun to listen to the high harmonics in music. Vacuum cleaners and electric cars are less fun.

I can usually hear my muscles and bones moving. It’s very quiet and low frequency, and the muscles rumble. I can usually tune it out though.

Hearing is a backup sense.

That might vary by person, but for me it’s not. If I had to pick between being able to see and being able to hear, it’d be hearing, hands down. Being able to see is amazing and I’d miss it, but hearing is just a whole other dimension.

Being able to know how someone is feeling, just by hearing their voice. Listening to music and hearing all the shapes, colors, and feelings that come with it. The colors aren’t always ones you can see, like blue or yellow. It’s hard to describe. I’ll close my eyes and just listen at a concert (not the whole time) and same with TV, a lot of times. I usually remember it better that way.

If I have to find something in a backpack, I’ll often do it by feel. I probably look like a raccoon washing its food, but it just works for me. You can tell things apart by feel and sound.

There are different ones for different kinds of writing (general, academic, journalism, and more). Chicago Manual of Style is one of the general ones. It’s good, and considered authoritative, but you have to buy a copy or an online subscription.

A free one that I like is Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab from a university). It’s easy to understand and has good info.

That made me think of the screaming choir from Finland. He says

Do people need to shout? Yes, that is necessary. Human being comes to this world, it’s the first thing they do.

It feels good to go to a concert and just scream your head off.

Were you pretty sure the price would go down, or did you just roll the dice? I’ve watched prices at the places I’ve lived, and they only ever seem to go up. As in, I’m paying $1600, about to get raised to $1800, and the unit next door is listed for $1900. But one place used RealPage, and I would bet the other one used something like that too.

Well I’ll be. 20 times their body length.

He said, “Sag mal, wie lange wollt ihr bei dem Scheiß bleiben?” He said the problem was that Trump was rambling (this part of the speech was unscripted). Article is in German. Here’s a partial translation by DeepL, tweaked by me:

His interjection should not be interpreted as a political statement. “No, that would be completely wrong. The political content is not the problem,“ says Deja, adding: ”I interpret all the time for people whose political statements I don’t agree with. The problem with Trump was that he suddenly started associating freely or saying the same thing three times in a row. The difficulty when interpreting is following these confusing leaps of thought.” He explains: “If a speaker has organized thoughts, then as soon as the sentence has started, you can roughly guess what will come next. You can keep surfing that wave. But that’s impossible with Trump.”

I believe it, because simultaneous interpreting is really hard, intense work. You have to listen, remember it word for word, understand it, and give an accurate, natural sounding translation pretty much instantly. You have to try to convey the tone, understand cultural differences, and figure out how to say things that just don’t translate well. It’s so much work that interpreters often work in teams so they can relieve each other every 30 minutes or so.

Officers or prosecutors withheld the existence of multiple witnesses and police reports, including one of an attempted armed robbery at a gas station across the street from the furniture store within hours of the murders. The original judge also behaved inappropriately, the lawyers say, getting a doctor to prescribe Valium to a holdout juror, who only then voted to convict.

Withholding evidence is not that uncommon, unfortunately, but it looks like it was especially bad in this case. And giving Valium to a juror is an egregious overreach. The full details of what happened are even worse than it sounds at first glance.

She was under a lot of pressure because she wanted to talk about the evidence and the other jurors didn’t. They yelled at her and heckled her, basically, until she fainted. The judge finds out and says it’s no problem. Defense lawyer asks for a mistrial, gets turned down. Juror says she doesn’t need a doctor. Then the judge makes a phone call, in secret, and gets her doctor to give her Valium. Enough that the other jurors thought she was “floating.”

The worst part is, the Florida supreme court saw no problem with that. They said it wasn’t judicial misconduct, it was just the judge being concerned and looking out for her.

This is the aria. It’s from an opera called Cosi Fan Tutte.

Smell, not that I remember. Sound, all the time. I’ll have conversations or hear people saying things, sometimes in different languages. Sometimes a word comes to mind that seems totally real, but usually it’s not. Some of the more detailed dreams have had storms, sirens, earthquakes (that eerie rumbling they have). Or even music.

I’d say even one landlord is too many, but easier to deal with. The scale this seems to be happening at is mind boggling and should be criminal, in my opinion. Or whatever it takes to stop this.

I have some open-back headphones (wired) that I can wear for hours and forget they’re there. Not hot at all. The cushioned part is breathable too. They were a little snug at first, but great since then.

I understand that, but at some point they will hit a number where people in the area can’t afford the 1st month (or more) down or even monthly payments.

I lived in a place where that happened. There were very obvious changes as the rent kept going up. (I stayed because everywhere else was going up just as much.)

• Long-term tenants moved out.
• A lot more one bedrooms had roommates.
• People had less furniture. Sometimes just a mattress on the floor and a plastic chair.
• A lot more three-day notices and eviction notices on people’s doors.
• Some apartments turned into Airbnbs.
• One apartment turned, very not surreptitiously, into a “massage” place.
• More and more units stayed empty for months.

None of that stopped the rent from going up. If anything, it went up faster.

The article does mention him by name. His part of the story starts in section 5 (the detective and the sheriff). I couldn’t believe the part where the mole brought a bug to the Kinch’s house, his dog stole it, and then he just handed it back without asking questions.

Same guy who bragged about being on a “black squad” and woke up with blood on his hands, wondering if he had killed someone.

Link for anyone who missed the article. It’s a long read, but worth it.

People began to rejoice in their ability to speak freely. Furious debates over the country’s future ensued. In cafes, over cups of coffee and cigarettes, furious arguments were taking place about the direction the rebel-led government would take, voices raised as people tested the new limits of their freedoms.

Still, it was not easy to shake off the idea that the regime was watching. During an interview with a public-sector employee who preferred to remain anonymous, the employee paused as they were asked about their opinion about the new government. They excused themselves and went to the next room, where they threw up.

Returning to the interview with red-rimmed eyes, the employee apologised.

“You ask me if I’m afraid? Of course, I am afraid. I am 53 years old. And in 53 years, this is the first time that I am speaking freely,” they said.

Yeah. And how is it that corporations, or big businesses in general, have elevated themselves to an almost holy status? Why is it murder when Blackrock kills 17 civilians in Iraq (Nisour Square), but not when an insurance company denies an operation that a doctor who’s at the top of their field says could save your life? And the hospital helpfully tells you it will cost over a million dollars. For all the non-Americans, that’s not an exaggeration.

And even with Blackwater, it was only the individual employees who got convicted. The company just kept going under a different name. And the employees got pardoned later.