Positive Thoughts

Posting things I don't understand is totally normal. Posting things that make me roll my eyes is fine. Posting things that make me question your values and character is enough to lose me.

Duo has gotten so much worse. They improved a couple of things, primarily related to grammar, but most changes are not good.

It's constantly asking me for words that haven't been covered yet. Often it asks me for words without context, meaning I have to guess what they mean. Example: "note" could mean the noun, as in "he left me a note", or "she was the singer who could sing that note", or it could be the verb "make a note of where you put your keys". All of those would be different words in German. Surprise, they meant "what note did you get on that assignment?" but in American English, we don't use note for that, we use "grade". Then there are just freakin strange sentence constructions. I don't mean the strange sentences that Duo is always known for. Those are kind of charming. (My favorite is "I have many potatoes so I am content", which taught me the word zufrieden). I mean the structure of the sentence is off. It might sound correct in German (how would I know?) but the English version sounds wrong, clunky. Like it wasn't actually written by someone who speaks English well.

That's the point, of course. They've turned so much over to AI that it's not really fluent. It's borrowed/stolen language. I assume the German is similarly messed up.

At least I get a little out of it. The longer I know a word, the more often I see and hear it, the more natural it is for me. The grammar pieces were never fantastic and the only way I can get those is through hearing it enough that it "sounds right". I've never been able to study my way to language. I have notebooks full of German grammar that I've studied, but without taking apart a sentence and figuring out which piece is what tense and should get what ending there's no help in that. I just have to feel that "im Park" is correct and "in der Park" is not.

More Renn Faire from today

At Bristol, we always see the shows. After all these years, they are still fun.

Mud Show

Moonie the Magnificent. Always. Because "one! Two! Eleven!"

Dirk and Guido

We missed Barely Balanced this year. That's a favorite of mine.

Renn Faire time today. Cloudy and very humid, but no rain.

One of the many things I enjoy about the Bristol Renn Faire is that the grounds are lovely. There are mature oaks and so many flowers.