Assimil is a great way to throw yourself into the language. Each lesson is in the form of a conversation with audio and the pdf has the text along with the translation.

Listen to the lesson without reading the text first. This gets you used to the sound of the language. Then read the text, then text with audio, and finally read the translation along with whatever notes on grammar (don’t focus too much on the grammar aspects when you are first starting out), neither on spellings. Later on you’ll be asked to go back to earlier lessons and reproduce the text. The first phase is to internalise the language. You can read the recommended Assimil way of learning and adapt the steps to something that suits you.

Assimil works well along with Language Transfer for me. Assimil is more immersive while Language Transfer is more explanatory.

I find that music is also a great way for me to learn new words. Once I listen enough times to a song I like, I start humming along, maybe repeat a word or two. The important thing is to not stress yourself out trying to sing along to everything. Maybe there is a catchy chorus or bridge section that is memorable. That is good enough to form associations with words. In this, I find pop songs are a better genre because they are catchy.

Something else I do is have a notebook where the only rule I have for myself is: no using my native language. I try to explain new words to myself using a sketch or whatever basic words I have already learnt. Don’t worry if you can’t draw well, neither can I. But I can draw something that looks like a spoon or a hill. Then I label them, and bam I’ve already learnt two new words. To build on that, I can draw a stick figure on the hill - this has taught me the verb climbing. You get the general idea. Just don’t stress yourself out trying to journal every new word you come across. Be creative and you’ll have fun.

I do this too. I do not like anything on my Desktop, but I download files to there, which forces me to deal with them. Interestingly enough, my Downloads directory is a barren wasteland.

It maybe comes from an all or nothing mentality. I would have tremendous Schadenfreude if Reddit does indeed die, but the culture there changed and I don’t really care if all of Reddit migrated here. As long as Lemmy is active enough, I am content.

That’s what I miss about Reddit the most.

I really ought to start looking at usernames before I read comments.

Uh oh!

Even if there is nothing wrong with Meta trying to federate with the Fediverse, I do not want them here.

Honestly, at this point I am quite jaded and sick of the shenanigans of big tech. Repeatedly they have violated the trust of their users. Unless they show active change in the way they conduct their operations for the benefit of the end user and not advertising agencies, I would prefer to not have them in my life if I can help it.

EDIT:

I might have misread the intention of your post. If you are asking about the fallout of Meta federating, there is a possibility that they attract too many users to their platform. This is my personal anecdote. I wanted to get rid of all products owned by Facebook to the point where I told my contacts that I am switching to Signal and will be uninstalling Whatsapp. I even reasoned with them that I wanted to choose not to use Whatsapp, and that I still wanted to communicate with them, albeit on Signal. I even emphasised that I wasn’t asking them to uninstall Whatsapp. Ultimately, only about a third of my contacts joined Signal.

Everyone says there is a choice in not using Whatsapp, but is it really a choice when there is no one to talk to on Signal? That is my worry that something similar would happen with Threads.

You want upvote, you get upvote. Now, would you like updog?

I did the same too. I liked my current instance’s affinity to technology and figured I may as well join a smaller server to avoid the strain of the Reddit exodus.

ChatGPT is an engineering marvel in that it has understood the semantics of language. However, it has absolutely no idea what it is talking about beyond generating the next token in a string of what sounds like natural language. I wish more people would understand this nuance.

I exclusively use Freetube for my Youtube needs. It is great when it works. Sometimes you have to find the right Invidious instance for it to work properly. A few times videos play at 720p. I have also noticed search failing for specific terms sometimes - for example “machine learning”. I don’t know if it is a bug or blacklisted words/phrases.

These are a few reality checks highlighting it isn’t a perfect experience all the time, but I will be damned if go back to a vanilla Youtube interface after having gotten used to Invidious and then Peertube.

The upsides are less fluff that is recommended, you control your own feed with the videos from the channels you subscribe to, no ads, sponsorblock, and I guess more privacy.