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6 votes
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Plans for regulator illustrate inherently political nature of football
4 votes -
Climate sustainability through a dynamic duo: Green hydrogen and crypto driving energy transition and decarbonization
5 votes -
Free lunches, brain breaks and happy teachers: why Estonia has the best schools in Europe
13 votes -
Children predict the year 2000 (1966, video)
24 votes -
Ericsson will lay off about 1,200 employees in Sweden as the telecommunications company faces slowed demand for its 5G equipment
8 votes -
Florida latest to restrict social media for kids as legal battle looms
21 votes -
Cutting-edge tech made the Netherlands a major exporter of food (2022)
15 votes -
Historic covered bridges in the US are under threat by truck drivers relying on GPS meant for cars
37 votes -
Denmark was the first to post an ambassador to Silicon Valley. Now, it is leading Europe's diplomats in putting Big Tech on the right side of history.
7 votes -
In the AI era, is translation already dead?
18 votes -
Investigating touchscreen ergonomics to improve tablet-based enrichment for parrots
19 votes -
GM sued for sale of OnStar driving data
48 votes -
HIV in cell culture can be completely eliminated using CRISPR-Cas gene editing technology, increasing hopes of cure
18 votes -
Johan Röhr's 2,700 songs have been streamed 15bn times – Swedish composer becomes Spotify's most-famous musician you've never heard of
8 votes -
100,000 years and counting – how do we tell future generations about highly radioactive nuclear waste repositories?
20 votes -
IronLev has demonstrated the first-ever magnetic levitation test on regular train tracks
22 votes -
How TV went from bad to great
9 votes -
US libraries struggle to afford the demand for e-books and seek new state laws in fight with publishers
46 votes -
How a solar revolution in farming is depleting world’s groundwater
16 votes -
Once more with feeling: Banning TikTok is unconstitutional and won’t do shit to deal with any actual threats
24 votes -
Tell US Congress: Stop the TikTok ban
32 votes -
Can Sweden keep its edge in the music industry? Stockholm has spawned both some of the world's most successful musicians and music tech companies.
6 votes -
European Commission will open office in Greenland, made strategically important by rare resources and melting ice
7 votes -
In defense of squatting - the community utility of squatting in a world of algorithmic landlord collusion
25 votes -
European Union approves landmark AI law, leapfrogging US to regulate critical but worrying new technology
26 votes -
House passes bill that could ban TikTok in the US, sending it to the Senate
45 votes -
Transport for London’s AI Tube station experiment
11 votes -
Hydropower can be an environmental and human disaster – but do the risks have to be so big?
10 votes -
A new way to learn vocabulary. A story about a word nerd and AI. And a call for help.
Hi logophiles! I am a total word nerd. Over the last six years--mostly accidently--I ended up creating a bunch of vocabulary learning materials and spent way too much time thinking deeply about...
Hi logophiles! I am a total word nerd. Over the last six years--mostly accidently--I ended up creating a bunch of vocabulary learning materials and spent way too much time thinking deeply about how we learn new vocab and how to teach it. My story: basically, via word of mouth, people with kids taking the SSAT and the SAT kept asking me for my materials which I continually iterated on as I got feedback. It wasn't my day job, lol, it wasn't even a side hustle.... just an obsession :) As I shared my "system", I kept dreaming of even better ways to make vocab learning effective, easy, and fun.
Some interesting things about learning vocab. The "keyword method" is extremely effective. (The keyword method is associating a target word with a similar-sounding word (the "keyword") and then creating a vivid mental image connecting the keyword with the target word.) [Ávila & Sadoski, 1996; Shapiro & Waters, 2005]. Further, connecting the new word and its meaning to your own personal experience is much effective than rote memorization. ("...engaging in deeper semantic processing and relating information to personal experiences can activate distinct neural circuits compared to those involved in rote memorization." [Andreasen, O'Leary, Cizadlo, Arndt, Rezai, Watkins, Ponto, & Hichwa, 1995]).
There are a lot of other cool things I discovered on my (research-obsessive) path to make learning vocab radically easier. A core driver for me has always been thinking about the epistemology of word-learning. What does it mean to "know" a word? "Knowing" a definition is different from truly knowing a word, where you can deploy it effortlessly when the context is right. That led to endless rabbit holes of learning about polysemy, colocations, and a whole lot more.
The first day I saw Dalle my jaw dropped. This was it! This was the missing piece for learning vocab 2x, 3x, 4x(?) more efficiently than has ever been possible. The image generation AI tools can make a custom image that packs in your own favorite keyword mnemonic and your own personal story into a cool image. Whoa! Because what has been my total obsession could finally be created in the real world, I teamed up with two good friends with the technical chops to build what had been percolating in my brain for six years. We've built a beta version over the last four months and it is ready to test!
I love Tildes, and I don't want to self-promote, so I am not going to drop the app name / website, but I am here with an ask. We want feedback! We want to make this the dream app for anyone who is serious about growing their (English) vocab. We want you in our beta test group.
The commitment I'm asking of our beta testers is a bit onerous. I want to hop on a zoom call with you while you use the app for an hour or so and have you tell me what you love and hate. I want to ask you a bunch of questions about what you want to see in your dream learning app. Then I want to give you the app for a month a two; hopefully you'll use it and learn a bunch of words; then I want to hop on a 20 minute call with you and get your hot take on the whole thing.
It is such an intense passion project for me; I want to make the app just rock-your-world-awesome. That's why I want to do live user interviews. (Which is a little out of the ordinary for sure.) And I can't do that without talking to real people who care about growing their vocab who are willing to hang out with me for an hour or two. :)
As a thanks for your help, when we go to the paid version, you'll get three months free, and a massive lifetime "friends and family" discount. But more than that, you'll really impact what we build next, and how we can make it better. While it's maybe a little idealistic, or might even sound silly to some, I feel like better vocab = better communication = better relationships. So I am all-in, fervently devoted, and hopeful that you'll come along for the ride and help me make it epic.
Who is it for? Studying for standardized tests? Oh yeah. This will help a lot. Want to raise the ceiling on what you can read. Let's go! Want to improve your English skills? This is for you. Love words. Yep! I'd love to meet you! Basically, if you love words, and/or have something coming up that requires that you know more words, I really hope you'll be part of our test!
More interesting stuff about vocabulary:
--Average high school graduate has a vocab size of 16,000 words
--Average college grad, 20,000 words
--Average PhD. 28,000 wordsTildes is a very smart and well read group, so I' bet the average vocab size around here is 25,000 to 35,000. Want to know your (approximate) vocab size. One of the best (easy and fast) tests is here:
https://preply.com/en/learn/english/test-your-vocab
(I have nothing to do with that site or company, and do not endorse them. It's just that their vocab size estimator is really well done.)Want to be a beta tester, or just talk more about vocab, shoot me a message!
pandacat@onmail.com11 votes -
Automakers are sharing consumers’ driving behavior with insurance companies (gifted link)
58 votes -
How can I best keep my room cool in summer?
I’m looking for advice about what sort of portable room cooling devices to look at and what pitfalls to avoid. Some context: Over the past few years I’ve noticed that I do pretty badly in the...
I’m looking for advice about what sort of portable room cooling devices to look at and what pitfalls to avoid. Some context:
Over the past few years I’ve noticed that I do pretty badly in the heat, especially at night. I live in Zürich, the concept of air conditioning has not yet arrived in this place. The prevailing wisdom for how to survive summer is to just make sure your house doesn’t get too warm in the first place, but my apartment is pretty badly insulated and during the worst weeks it doesn’t cool down that much at night either, so it’s been pretty bad the last few years. I’ve mostly just avoided being in my room whenever possible, but I do have to sleep somehow.
The obvious solution to me is to buy some sort of air conditioning device, a topic I know basically nothing about. My flatmate has one for his room, of the “dangle a tube out of the window” kind, which seems to do an okay job, but it is extremely loud and quite bulky - neither of those are dealbreakers per se, but I’d happily pay a bit more money if that gets me something quieter. In addition, our windows are not sliding windows but ones that open like a door, so any device that requires me to poke something out of the window would probably need a solution for this as well. Any sort of permanent modification to the house such as putting a hole through the wall or the window glass are not allowed.
So my questions are: What types of coolers should I look into, what types are best avoided? Any specific brand or model recommendations would also be appreciated. I looked at one electronics vendor’s website and found a huge range in prices from below 100 to over 1000; I don’t have a specific budget in mind per se, but unless it makes a big difference (e.g. in noise levels) I would rather stay below 500 dollars.
31 votes -
Spacesuits need a major upgrade for the next phase of exploration
8 votes -
Industrial-scale thermal storage unit in Pornainen, southern Finland, will be the world's biggest sand battery when it comes online within a couple of years
23 votes -
New York City subways' ancient signaling systems keep trains going slow – but that's about to change
18 votes -
How illegal fishing ships hide at sea
10 votes -
‘We’re hemorrhaging money’: US health clinics try to stay open after unprecedented cyberattack
31 votes -
Dating apps have gotten so bad that speed dating is in again
45 votes -
Annoying hospital beeps are causing hundreds of deaths a year
27 votes -
Why are there so many methane satellites?
6 votes -
UK academic’s Wikipedia project raises profile of women around the world
15 votes -
3D printed pasta: Aglio e olio and sea urchins with Andrea Antonini
4 votes -
Chile puts brakes on Google data center over water use, environmental concerns
17 votes -
US prescription market hamstrung for nine days (so far) by ransomware attack
39 votes -
Price fixing by algorithm is still price fixing
59 votes -
How can mining precious metals ever be sustainable?
10 votes -
White House urges use of type safe and memory safe programming languages and hardware
38 votes -
Arizona attorney general sues landlords and software company RealPage Inc over 'astronomical' apartment rent hikes
34 votes -
UCLA and Equatic to build world’s largest ocean-based plant for carbon removal
13 votes -
Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu, saying their tech illegally circumvents Nintendo's software encryption and facilitates piracy
@Stephen Totilo: NEW: Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu, saying their tech illegally circumvents Nintendo's software encryption and facilitates piracy. Seeks damages for alleged violations and a shutdown of the emulator. pic.twitter.com/SGZVI6Cs0x
67 votes