ragebutt

“In 2000, Prevost allowed Father James Ray, an Augustinian priest, to reside at St. John Stone Friary in Chicago. Ray had been suspended from public ministry since 1991 due to credible accusations of sexual abuse of minors. Although the priory was close to a Catholic elementary school, Prevost did not notify the school administration about Ray. The Augustinians noted that Ray was assigned a monitor while at St. John Stone. Ray was moved to a different residence in 2002 when the US Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted stricter rules for handling priests accused of abusing minors.”

The augustinians, led by him at one point, have continued to lack transparency, only last year finally releasing a list of offenders 20 years later (which omitted members whose accusers did not meet “their standards”)

Also choice quotes from him:

“Something that needs to be said also is that ordaining women—and there’s been some women that have said this interestingly enough—‘clericalizing women’ doesn’t necessarily solve a problem, it might make a new problem,”

“In a 2012 address to bishops, he lamented that Western news media and popular culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel.” He cited the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”

As bishop in Chiclayo, a city in northwestern Peru, he opposed a government plan to add teachings on gender in schools. “The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,” he told local news media.”

Yeah, super likable

he’s homophobic and a pedophile enabler so they’ll come to like him soon enough

AI absolutely is the new search but only because the major search engines normal people use have completely destroyed their core products functionality for advertising revenue

AI will likely follow suit. In 5-10 years chatgpt or bard or whatever will give you a completely and obviously biased response promoting a product or service with a sponsored interstitial that is labeled as sponsored before you get the answer to make it seem like the obviously biased answer isn’t a gamed response

If I am murdered please don’t do this. I do not care if you feel like it will help you process the events

Even here I’ve posted about how advertising is a destructive force that ruins everything it touches and literally should not exist and there are people that are so indoctrinated by the industry that they rush to defend it

“But how will small businesses prosper without the ability to annoy you with direct mail marketing and Facebook campaigns!”

And truly misunderstanding the difference between something like a business directory, that you willing submit yourself to as a consumer, and can be listed and compiled objectively without competitive advantage for rich assholes, vs advertising, which intrudes on your life.

Well like I said I’m not outright denying its efficacy, but based on initial reactions the guy is marketing it like pseudoscience and should maybe work on clarifying what his method actually is

The problem is that the description of the teaching method, at least in the theory course, was completely devoid of any rationale for how it is different from any other method of teaching (same as the website)

I have no reason to believe his app and courses don’t provide instruction. My issue is with his grandiosity without substance. An educator of all people should recognize the need to substantiate their claims. This, coupled with the fact that the first thing I am hit with on his site being:

“ABSOLUTELY MAGICAL"

"PURE GENIUS"

"TRULY A MASTERPIECE"

"SERIOUSLY THE BEST LANGUAGE COURSES EVER"

"INSANELY CRAZY GOOD" "LITERALLY CHANGED MY LIFE"

"BLOWN AWAY"

"A TOTAL GAME CHANGER"

"PHENOMENAL"

"WORLD-CLASS"

(None of which are attributed to anyone, of course) makes me really skeptical.

It’s really hard to beat flash cards. I like Anki a lot because it codifies them and makes the process of “have I mastered this” a bit more streamlined. Though I feel like a lot of people just download premade decks and while that’s fine you learn a lot making the deck. You can’t get around hours of studying vocab and grammar, especially if you’re after the critical period (which I would hope everyone posting here is)

The gameification that Duolingo brings is valuable and very motivating for a lot of people. The problem is that over the years like many capitalist ventures Duolingo made language learning secondary to earning income. So the primary goal of the app suffers at the expense of keeping you constantly engaged so that you’re far more likely to buy shit even if that means ultimately dont learn all that much

This is interesting, thanks

Edit: I take it back. I had some time after work and the app appears to be a collection of lectures from the founder who does not actually speak each language, but feels their teaching method is so unique that it overcomes this. Looking at the website there is no actual description of what makes their method different or better, just a lot of fluff and boasting about how it’s so great. I didn’t speak any of the languages to review content but I do have a background in music so I listened to the 12 minute music theory lesson 1 and it was just him gushing about how great his method is, 0 theory covered. Maybe it is revolutionary but this reeks of pseudoscience

Hint books were an experience back then. I remember the hint book for myst had this whole narrative about some other person who got trapped in the book, which was supposed to be like the player. It was this whole story of how they solved all the various puzzles. I remember it being quite long but I was also like 9 so maybe it was just like 10 pages

Duolingo sucks for language learning

Slow input method with the word bank which really doesn’t matter early on but becomes a chore that slows progress later on

Doesn’t really do much in the way of correcting errors unless you pay money for the highest level subscription and even then the error correction is weak. A platform like Duolingo has the potential to do really cool error correction; to literally point out the exact error you made and tie it to an explanation. Obviously that’s difficult especially as things become more challenging but duo has had a decade and millions in development funds, which they’ve spent making the courses actively worse to drive up subscription costs and iaps

The lessons are so focused on the whole “gameification” thing that unless you specifically go back to constantly practice vocabulary (and if applicable characters) you will never retain anything. If you merely pound through a Duolingo course from a-b on the prescribed “path” you will struggle immensely and forget tons of early vocabulary and grammar concepts that are introduced and then never brought back unless you seek them out. There are “weak skills” lessons but they are relatively uncommon so you can feel like you’re constantly progressing

The word banks similarly don’t necessarily test retention and just test your ability to do a quick game of matching

You’ll learn something but if you truly want to learn a language there are far more efficient ways. Duolingo is a practice tool at best

More like the focus group thought the masks were “super gay fauci shit” so home depot went with “guy wearing $2 safety glasses that don’t even have a dust seal”