langblr ahoy　(´∀｀)

Recently I found this site where you can type the Japanese lyrics for the songs. Key is to not stare at the romaji when typing, stare at either the Japanese (with Kanji) or the pure hiragana and type.

Level 1 is already pretty challenging for me:

Other useful AI Removal/Detection links

How to spot AI Hallucinations like a Reference Librarian (originally on Substack)

こんばんは！今日はレビューの２週は話します。

So far it’s more of the same since Chapter 1 of Genki, learning grammar points and then following up with a video explaining more in depth with examples. (Thank goodness the answer keys are archived, saves me some earlier confusion)

(my notes! learned a lot of body part specific kanji this week alongside chapter 2)

Sentences are still a little choppy to write without several lookups to make sure it sounds legible, so this week’s focus will be more on the writing side!

As usual I’ve been doing my Wanikani studies and Anki practice, though I’ve had to slow down a bit on the former when I got a bunch of lessons coming in one day and it got a bit overwhelming. Gotta remember to pace myself… 😵‍💫

Happy birthday, Frantz Fanon! (July 20, 1925)

One of the most enduring and influential anti-colonial theorists of all time, Frantz Fanon became acquainted with racist colonial violence growing up on the French Caribbean colony of Martinique. During World War II, Fanon enlisted with the Free French forces, and experienced further racism from Europeans during his time fighting fascists on the continent. After the war, he studied psychiatry as his political consciousness continued to grow, and in 1952 he published Black Skin, White Masks, which discussed the psychological impact of colonialism on Black people. He worked as a psychiatrist in Algeria for a time before deciding that he could no longer support the French colonial project in Africa and defected to join Algeria's National Liberation Front in its struggle for freedom. He continued to put out a number of influential texts, including his last and most famous, The Wretched of the Earth. In poor health, Fanon died in 1961 at the tragically young age of 36, but his legacy is outsized for his age, having influenced a bevy of revolutionary figures, including Che Guevara, Malcom X, Kwame Ture, and Huey P. Newton.

五月病 gogatsubyou — literally “May disease”

Did you know that 鮭 and しゃけ both mean "salmon" in Japanese?

I came across しゃけ in my Marugoto textbook:

I know "salmon" is pronounced さけ, but what does しゃけ mean? Does it also mean "salmon?" 🤔

Yes and no, apparently!

しゃけ is for food while 鮭 is for the living fish

According to WaniKani:

Typically when you refer to the living animal, you use さけ, and when you refer to salmon as a food, it's more likely to be しゃけ (but it can go either way). There might be some generational and regional differences, though.

A quick Google search revealed this fascinating regional difference:

Basically:

鮭 (さけ) is the standard, formal, and written term. It is often preferred when referring to the living fish in nature.

しゃけ is a colloquial, spoken pronunciation. It is very commonly used in daily conversation, especially when referring to the fish as food (cooked, grilled, or as an onigiri filling).

What about サーモン?

サーモン: This term is used—particularly at sushi restaurants and other dining establishments—to refer to raw, farmed salmon. Farmed salmon is apparently more commonly used in sushi because there's less risk of foodborne illnesses such as parasites.

here's mickey, goofy, donald, and chip & dale. yeah they turned mickey & friends into anime boys. they're an idol unit or something. they're technically not anime boy versions of the source characters, they have different names. mickey's guy is "Neo Michel". not michael, michel, like he's french. chip & dale are "Ruska Moncrief" and "Ranka Monk", they have different last names, they're not brothers anymore so that they can be yaoibait instead, anyways this post isn't actually about these guys I'm just setting the stage for the actual humanizations I wanted to show you

They also did monsters inc. And. Well it's obvious from the designs who mike and sully are. but you will also notice. the blonde one on the left. with glasses. monsters inc is kind of famously about just the two guys so they didn't really have a lot of other non-villain characters to take anime boys inspiration from, I guess, so, well,

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

This year’s is different. They are now federal REQUIREMENTS, which means there’s no flexibility. As was said previously, the 400 pages are not singularly devoted to being absolute shitheads to trans people. Theres a lot of stuff in there, some of which is the standard dry boring grants stuff, some of which is the horrible ideological warfare outlined above.

This document is issued by the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently lead by fucking Russell Vought, the principal architect of Project 2025. This is how they’re going to implement all the horrible shit in there that wasn’t covered by Executive Order. Russell Vought is actively coming for my job, my marriage, and my kid, and most of my friends lost their jobs last year because of him. He is the fucking arch villain behind the heinous shit the current regime is doing.

Keep using your brain and trying that hard thing no matter how foggy. Feel stupid! It's ok! I promise you are not stupid. I promise your brain will appreciate it. And that with time it will be valuable that you tried.

It's so easy to lose a whole week to brain fog. But your brain and body don't just stop existing that week (though it can feel that way). It's so important to try to incorporate puzzles anyway. Cook a meal from a scratch, do a jigsaw, the wordle, sudoku, use your other hand, learn a new card game, watch a brand new show, do simple math equations, write words backwards, learn a new language (or even just random phrases from a few), play a podcast, read a fun article or magazine, try a new creative project. Something! To help you feel better longer and keep your brains synapses synapsing.

Find a way to push yourself into it. Ask a friend to do it with you, set a timer, build it into your routine, have a bunch of fun games on your phone, puzzles by the bed, set your google to open straight to wordle.

TO CLARIFY: neuroplasticity is magic. And CONTRARY to prior belief it does not just stop after like 25. The brain can recover in exceptional ways so if you feel behind, or feel like you lost so much of what you knew due to a deep spell of illness or depression or injury; it's never too late. Never too late to nuture your brain to a better state of health.

Today's phrase is "頭剃るより心を剃れ（atama soru yori kokoro wo sore）".

【Vocabulary & Grammar】

1．頭（あたま, atama） It means “head.” Here it refers to shaving one’s head, often associated with monks or symbolic purification.

2．剃る（そる, soru） Verb meaning “to shave.” Used in its dictionary/plain form.

3．より (yori) A particle meaning “rather than,” “instead of,” “more than.” Used to compare two actions or states.

4．心（こころ, kokoro） It means “heart,” “mind,” “spirit,” “inner self.” It refers to one’s inner attitude or moral character.

5．を (wo) Direct object marker. It indicates that 心 is what is being shaved (metaphorically).

6．剃れ（それ, sore） Imperative form of 剃る. Strong command: “shave!” or metaphorically “purify!” “cleanse!”

Put together, 「頭剃るより心を剃れ」 means to value inner purification over outward rituals. It reminds us that true discipline comes not from changing our appearance, but from refining our heart and mindset.

There are people who shave their heads as a sign of remorse. Visually, it may seem effective, but hair isn’t the only thing that needs to be changed. When we express regret, we should also aim to grow in our hearts.

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OpenAI scraped the entire web. All of which had been a labor of love from humans. Wikipedia is the backbone of a lot of LLMs, and that was volunteer human labor. They stole it and now they're selling it back to us.