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Cake day: February 24th, 2025

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  • One of the wonders of being an adult is that our peers stop being limited to people who are the same age as us. Now in my late twenties, I have friends 10 years younger than me, and 20 years older.

    Dating is different than friendship. But it’s not so fundamentally different that I’d feel weird about dating an adult in those age brackets. Is it more likely I’m going to date someone closer to my age? Sure. On average, they’d be more likely to be in a point in their life that I’m looking for, but it’s not a guarantee.

    I’m a bit above your age bracket in question, so I’ll comment on what advice I might give to a friend in that age bracket. Were a friend of mine to be thinking about getting involved with someone 20 years their senior, I’d tell her to think carefully. She should spend some time thinking about what she wants from a relationship. If she’s still interested in going out late and drinking, or she likes raves, I might say she should consider whether her potential partner is still looking to have those things in their life. The opposite too, if she’s the “comfy book and a movie at home” type of gal, is she wanting to be with this partner who’s super into going out adventure biking all the time. I’d tell her to think carefully about why she’s interested in this person, but also what this person sees in her.

    On average, people gain some level of “maturity”/“wisdom”/life experience/je ne sais quoi about them as they get older. On average, people tend to date people who are similar to them in some ways. On average, partners will have similar levels of this vague term for aged distinction that I lack a term for. Relationships that don’t follow this pattern are, then, unusual. Not bad or wrong, necessarily. My left ear is substantially asymmetrical from my right. That’s unusual, but not a problem, except I have to be careful when finding earbuds that fit both ears properly. Similarly, those who date with large age gaps like this are unusual. Not inherently bad, but with some things to look for. It is more common that these sorts of relationships have some sort of unhealthy dynamic. Maybe that’s a predatory power dynamic, or financial inequality, or just some skeevy 40 year old who thinks “coeds are hot sex toys, especially when they have daddy issues”. Or, maybe they just both REALLY like boats. Like, they met when they both learned they were building a to-scale hand crafted replica of Viking longships, and it was a wonderful match for them. Or, maybe they both have a kink for plastering lizard scales on themselves, putting on goggles, sunning themselves on the patio, and then fucking like rabbits. The reasons they can find love for one another are many, and are not mine to limit, or to judge. I can judge them, mind you. If their relationship is based on how much they both love drowning puppies, they’re awful people. But that’s who they are, not who they love. That’s different.



  • I suspect this will depend somewhat on your level of knowledge in those other languages. Japanese is broadly considered a very difficult language for native English speakers, and it’s pretty substantially different in many ways from English. Learning it is indeed possible, but takes a long time and a substantial commitment of energy. However, those with a decent fluency in Chinese (I use this rather than Cantonese/Mandarin because I don’t understand the nuances well enough to speak intelligently as to their relation to Japanese-learning) or Korean (and probably many other languages) will have a much easier time with the transition compared to those with a primarily-English background. Additionally, Japanese Kanji have a relationship with Chinese characters, and so learning the Kanji is easier for one with a meaningful Chinese background who has had to learn those characters already.

    For some context, one can attend Language School in Japan, which is a half-time (~20-25hr/wk) course load taught with full immersion learning. That is to say, the course is taught almost entirely in Japanese itself, but doesn’t require any knowledge of the language to participate, as you’ll work up from a near-zero understanding. In many of these classes, the first few weeks might lean a small amount on English to explain certain concepts, but the complexity of English required is very low. It takes about 2 years of these courses in order to reach a “basic” fluency. Many who take the 2-year course take the JLPT (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test) and study up for the exam can test into the N2 category, which is what you’d minimally need in order to attend school or seek a job in Japan.

    Learning on your own, I’d probably say you should expect either to spend many hours a day on study, and/or to spend multiple years before you’d reach the point of being able to understand a significant amount of the anime you consume. Learning the grammar and vocabulary are one thing, but actually consuming content in the language is an important part of learning, and jumping from nothing to full-on anime is a HELL of a jump in complexity.

    As to how to go about it, there are tons of excellent resources available online for paths to take. Most will point you to various textbooks to work through, which is a pretty decent strategy IMO. The Genki series is one that is often recommended for those not working from a class, since it discusses the material in English.







  • Ava@lemmy.blahaj.zonetomemes@lemmy.worldMath
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    7 months ago

    “Base” is the number of distinct integers you have in play. In Base 10, there are ten of them. 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. You can think of the numeric representation 10 as “1 ten, and 0 ones.”

    In Base 2 (binary) the only two digits available are 0 and 1. The first four binary numbers are 0, 1, 10, 11, which represent zero, one, two, and three. In Base 2, “10” means “1 two, and 0 ones.” But, “Base 2” can’t be written in binary, there’s no concept of 2! Indeed, the way we reflect two in binary is 10. Which means, when we’re talking in binary, “Base 2” is written as “Base 10.”

    This holds true for EVERY base. In Base 4, we have the digits 0, 1, 2, and 3. So if we want a value of four, we need to write it as 10. “1 four, 0 ones”. So, when we’re talking in Base 4, the way to say “Base 4” is ALSO by saying “Base 10”!

    The trick behind it is that numbers written don’t have context-free meaning. You can’t communicate what “10” means without knowing how many distinct digits your conversational partner is working with. Most people have centralized on base 10, but there’s no inherent advantage to doing things that way. Indeed, it’s kind of awkward in lots of ways. Consider Base 12 (the digits of which are most often 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, as an aside). In Base 12, you can easily divide your base numbers by 1, 2, 3, 4. That’s SUPER handy, since we obviously break things up into groups of 3 and 4 pretty often in our daily lives, but that’s pretty painful in Base 10 because you immediately run into the need for fractions.


  • While it’s <10% across the entire population, LGBTQ identification rates are at 23% for GenZ. https://news.gallup.com/poll/656708/lgbtq-identification-rises.aspx

    But the reason it’s an issue for many is that people don’t really say “normal” to refer to things like sexuality, gender, etc. in a “statistically most likely” way, they use it specifically to exclude the other group from being considered normal as something lesser. Or, to put it another way…

    Let’s be honest here. a high percentage of the time that someone categorizes something (implicitly or explicitly) as “abnormal” it is done with intent to label the subject as something undesirable. It’s pretty safe to say that if a term is very often used in a negative way in a specific context, then we can reasonably assume that default definition when that’s the context we’re in. I don’t understand why people are so often afraid to acknowledge that we don’t live in a world of pure definitions, and rather must exist in a situation where the context of a statement is relevant.


  • I mean, saying that it’s a fight for “basic human rights” is a positional statement within the context of the time when the fight is needed. There are white supremacists (as individuals, not as a rule) out there who genuinely feel as though their rights are being “infringed” upon by anyone who’s skin lacks a perfectly porcelain pallor. In America at present, it’s being (disingenuously) claimed that squashing trans people is in the interest of the rights of women and children. Those pushing that agenda don’t believe that, but many of the followers do. If trans people are eradicated, it would be framed as a win for basic rights in the future.

    More than that though, you’ve applied context to the poster above your that isn’t present in their original post, nor in the OP. Limiting the point to “basic human rights” has sort of set up the claim “all historical fights involving justified topics were justified.”