>... Together with our 173 trusted partners...
In a full screen, multi-stage permissions pop-up.
Yeah how about no. No need to lie, tell me how you really feel, maybe "we will sell anything we can to anyone we can because we need the money".
(It is a very detailed pop-up tho, in a good way - breaks down each toggle with individual companies, and there's a search across all of them)
Firefox + uBlock Origin + EasyList Cookie List
...until Firefox learns to dismiss cookie banners on its own (they're working on it).
"find a better user agent" is not handwringing; "i can't find a better user agent" is handwringing.
Just look at how much mental illness politics seems to produce in people who interact with it less frequently.
The only physical skill I have that might be comparable is typing, but (as a programmer) even after typing for over 40 years, while I can type without "thinking" about where the keys are, I can usually type only three or four words without needing to make a correction.
Worth mentioning I started when I was a kid. Learning something when you're young is so much easier due to the available time and the ability to obsess (this was also pre-internet mostly). When I try learning new instruments these days it takes much longer because I have responsibilities.
So may it really is about the journey, and any learning is good learning.
Your mind, body, and any skill will deteriorate over time if not regularly trained, so it must become a part of your life.
And because of this, the answer is easy - do what is permanently and realistically sustainable for yourself. It doesn't matter what's best when you're only going to really keep with things that are personally satisfying for yourself.
This is when I realised it was getting serious. But he’s a Norwegian born in the 40s, so talking about his mental health and opening up to him is near impossible.
I did call him out on these massive lapses in memory, but jokingly though.
However, without formally addressing anything, he started out of no where and never, ever before doing it my entire life: sudoku.
1-2 hours a day, then more, all the time.
He’s now in his mid 80s and as sharp as ever.
I know he went and saw a GP, and they prescribed sodoku.
But the effectiveness of it, taken seriously, is absolutely incredible.
You know when you are learning something and you get to that point where it is kind of a strain. That feeling that is kind of tense, exhausting but intriguing, all because you are about to get that thing. It is the transition from something being purely cognitive and moving into behavior intuition, like playing an instrument.
That is the thing that, in part, is keeping you sharp.
I say in part because don't forget your physical health, diet and social health. They all contribute.
David Sedaris did a long interview on learning French (he also became proficient late in life) where he said something like: when you first start learning a language, everything is new and interesting. Eventually you become fluent, you get into a pattern, and 'living in a foreign country' is just 'living'. (heavily paraphrased -- I'll try to find the original).
Anyway, my point is that I think "learning a language" is probably as good as anything else when it comes to "brain stimulation", but in my opinion, the real value comes from being completely immersed in a new culture and kicked forcefully out of any sense of routine.
Edit: interview is here - https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/transcript
Relevant bit:
---
Someday, David says, he'll be more comfortable in French. His accent will improve and that daily anxiety will be removed from his life.
David Sedaris: But when it is removed from me, then I probably won't be interested in living here anymore. I'll probably leave.
Ira Glass: Because it'll be just like living back home.
David Sedaris: Plus the more you learn, the more disappointed you wind up being. It's easy to like somebody when you don't know what they're saying.
> Age plays a role too. Studies suggest that the effects of languages on the brain are stronger for young children and the old than they are for young adults. Bilingual tots seem to outperform in cognitive development in the early years, but their monolingual classmates may catch up with them later. One meta-analysis on the topic found that 25 studies of 45 found a bilingual advantage in children younger than six, while only 17 found them in children aged 6-12.
That's gonna be a let down to most people who read the title and make assumptions.
To this day, I still find Spanish a bit more challenging than my native language or even English. I think it's because even though I moved to Spain over seven years ago, I never fully immersed myself in the culture. I'm pretty sure I haven't read a single book in Spanish.
I still do that classic thing non-fluent speakers do: I'll get halfway through a sentence, realize I don't know a specific word, and have to rephrase my thought more simply. To be clear, I'm far from a beginner, just not yet fluent.
Anyway, I can attest that grappling with a language you haven't quite mastered is a daily mini-puzzle that definitely keeps the brain working a bit harder than it otherwise would.
On a side note, I love that LLMs can handle so many languages now. After 17 years of living abroad, I still feel most at ease speaking my native language, Russian, even though my vocabulary is a bit lacking these days for more complex topics. It makes me completely understand why people prefer to receive medical care in their native tongue.
Isn't that a thing everyone does? I don't have as many languages as you, but when I finally got to the point where I could reliably do what you're describing in Japanese, I felt like I had actually achieved a baseline level of fluency for the first time. The flywheel became self-perpetuating vs. my French, where every sentence is a struggle.
Not asking to be argumentative, btw -- just wondering what's on the other side.
P.S. I've typed this out in English after having achieved such unlock.
The C1/C2 divide does seem to mix up that concept and the idea of "looking for the right word". I sort of understand what it's getting at, but it's unclear.
I still think (as a native English speaker), it's fairly routine to stop and re-think what you are saying because you're grasping for the right word.
For example, in the linked clip[^1], the speaker says:
"uh the European Union uh that's not a US creation that's a you guys creation so don't ex..[abandoned word] the strength of the west [abandoned sentence] and the west is a really I don't know what"
[^1]: https://youtu.be/_hBd8w-Hlm4?si=7-kvpUoeYo5ODPiI&t=787
So, if you know the entire language, then you can complete your thought. But if you only know the common parts of the language then you may need to start over with a different sentence structure in order to express your thought.
Maybe that maps to C1 vs C2? At C1 you can express your thoughts with occasional backtracking, but at C2 you almost never need to backtrack?
My wife is a native Russian speaker, and despite making numerous grammatical errors is far better understood than I am.
German, I have no such problem despite being far weaker at the language imo.
however, my kids are soaking up languages like a sponge. we speak Hungarian at home, English and Hungarian with our friends, and they speak both Swiss German and German at school, so they are already trilingual.
I know several families where the parents brings their own language, they speak English as a common language at home and the kids learn German/Swiss German at school, so that makes them... quadlingial?
I feel the same, albeit on a much lower level. Somehow Spanish just feels strange to me. For instance, a subject in Spanish often gets placed after the verb in a sentence, so I constantly have to figure out where the subject is: is it before the verb? after the verb? Or there's no subject and the conjugation of the verb implies the subject? I guess it's just a matter of time to get familiar with the verbs and it takes time. Also, listening comprehension is a huge problem for me. Even discerning words from conversations is very challenging. When I was learning English as a second language, I could understand most of what was said in an action movie or a simple sitcom like Friends after I could read simple novels like Sheldon's If Tomorrow Comes. However, I can read simple novels like El Alquimista now, yet I could only understand what was said in Extra at best with a super focus. In contrast, listening to Japanese is much easier for some reason, even though my level of Japanese is way below N5 (equivalent to Spanish's A1).
You can see this by how those companies operate with their divisions in the Middle East. You won’t see a pride flag. If you were really taking a stand, you’d fight the hard fights, lose money. Not just do things where you think you can get away with it.
In fact, if I’m not mistaken, most of those companies changed their policies on DEI hiring as soon as Trump said anyone with contracts with US government could not participate in DEI or they lose those contracts. But there is no uproar all.
I guess these days a few paragraphs qualifies for an "in depth" article. No links to any of the sources referenced, except to one of their own pages. Not very useful.
That said, sure, as someone who speaks several languages and can mostly understand a few more, I think there are interesting insights gained by having this ability. For me, a lot of it has to do with, perhaps, less-than-verbal communication. Each culture has a certain way to communicate in person during conversations. Spanish spoken in Spain, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and Argentina, while different, also drag along non-verbal cues that are distinct in each culture. Same with English in various parts of the UK, US and other anglo-speaking countries. As much as some Canadians think themselves to be French, there are differences there as well with France. Non-verbal cues in the Arab world (and Middle East in general) are different as well. How you sit, move, pace, use your hands and gesticulate during in-person conversations are linked to both language and culture. Etc.
Who remembers the bar scene in Inglorious Basterds? Yup, very true. Instant communication.
The opposite is to remain closed. This is a dangerous state of mind and culture.
From TFA:
all these studies take for granted the uncontroversial mental superpower that you get from language study: being able to talk to people you could not have otherwise.
Talking to more people in more contexts is a practical affordance: having more tools in the shop means being able to handle new and different types of problems effectively. People solve problems working together with people.
Having the cognitive adaptability to use new and different tools is certainly a valuable quality. We can nurture it as a learning objective, but it may may not be as universalisable as we have hoped. That said, the cost of not trying to educate people is to fail even worse.
1. Maybe that’s not their fault, as they are ostensibly interested only in the biology. But it still seems like a major hole when discussing the benefits of being bilingual.
People from Paraguay speak both Spanish and Guarani. A lot of people from Mexico speak both Spanish and Mayan.
Does that have the same effect as the son of a family that speaks English and German?
She once told me that she likes to read conversational books like “Greg’s Tagebuch” in German while “Harry Potter” type books in English.
Everyone in my neighborhood who was not economically okay spoke different language than English.
I think it hurts more than helps when you are polylingual if you decide to spend majority of time in country like United States.
I have collected a lot of data around this. Time and time again, I can prove with data, that native english langauge speakers outperform anyone else. Whether it is college admissions, admissions to incubators like Y Combinator, job opportunities, sports opportunities, housing opportunities and more. If language is the sole factor to be considered, then polylinguals do not win.
When you speak a foreign language than English, you accent is bound to be messed up. Look at Indian Americans or Pakistani Americans or other people who speak dual langauge. There is always something off about their accent. This leads to acceptance and at time getting asked "are you american" or "were you born here?"
I am not saying dont learn foreign language. But, language is one aspect of being polylingual. You just dont speak words. Words have meaning and they are deeply ingrained in cultures.
If you know long term where you want to be, learn and speak and immerse yourself in the culture. Otherwise you are just creating more noise for social media points and making it harder for yourself to be a master of one language.
That's not true, in this case it is simply the accent they learn because everyone around them has this accent.
But learning different languages when young doesn't mean one develops a foreign accent. I know Flemish people of Vietnamese origins who speak correct Vietnamese as well as Flemish with a perfectly good farmer accent from West Flanders. And their kids speak native French with a neutral (French) accent in addition to native Flemish, because the French speakers in their family are French and not Belgian.
When learning languages young, accents don't creep from one language to the other, that happens when one learns a language later on.
I agree with your point regarding English however, I think everyone should learn it regardless and I can't help but feel like it's a lighthearted language.
I wonder if others are the same, but I feel like a different person based on the language I speak.. somehow I'm "kinder" (is that the right word?) when I speak English for example..
It seems that Americans can never win. Either the most racist xenophobic people in the world that deserve to have foreigners take their country over. Or, they’re fake cosmopolitans larping. Of course the real answer is that people are just envious of Americans. But we won’t go into that.
It’s true that AI is making nearly any intellectual endeavor pointless from a necessity standpoint. But that’s OK, we’re going to be able to intellectually dive into things that we actually want to do for enjoyment in the future. People will still learn languages and study whatever they want.
I find foreign language is interesting and fun. I don’t know if it’s the brain stimulation or just the sheer joy of having a secret language that many people around me don’t understand.
I would rather do the opposite and try to learn as many languages as possible. I can’t imagine the fun of reading “Cien Años de Soledad” in Spanish or Dostoevski in Russian.
It’s not a brag but here’s a sample of how my polylingustic life looks like: In the past week I had discussions about Clausewitz’s “Vom Krige” and “Rét Samadhi” by Gitanjali Shree, discussed Marathi poetry with my daughter, listened to mellifluous Tamil songs like “Nenjukkul Peidhidum”, appreciated my wife’s Uttara Kannada accent, all the while consuming English media in copious amounts.
Languages and accents are a unique part of being human and I firmly believe that we’re meant to be multilingual.
For the most part, I don't feel like it has made me any sharper. Had I taken the ~2000 hours I'm in the hole for so far and spent them on going to the gym and sleeping more I'm nearly certain that would have had a much larger effect on my day to day mental acuity. Had I spent it on my career I'd probably be substantially richer. I probably have another ~2000 to go before I reach a level where I'm happy plateauing.
In general I think it's very hard to justify learning a foreign language when subjected to a normal adult person's cost-benefit analysis. I persist mostly because I just really, really, really want to reach true proficiency, not the fake proficiency that gets you an A in Spanish or Latin class, as I outlined in [1]. If you don't have a similar drive your time and energy is probably better spent elsewhere.
[1]: https://andrew-quinn.me/thoughts-on-language-learning-at-the...
muneeer•3h ago