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6 votes
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Surprising detail in New York bank records helped a historian bust a longstanding myth about Irish immigrants
15 votes -
The Second Soul, Part I (on salt)
6 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 -
Northern Sámi, a language spoken in the Arctic, has more than 300 words for snow and a special word for "frightened reindeer" – can it survive in a warmer world?
19 votes -
India moves to implement controversial citizenship bill that excludes Muslims
28 votes -
My clients, the liars
31 votes -
World War II ‘rumor clinics’ helped America battle wild gossip
7 votes -
Salvage of the century: The lost WWII gold of HMS Edinburgh
10 votes -
Battle to save pristine prehistoric rock art from vast new quarry in Norway – archaeologists fear more than 2,000 carved figures could be destroyed
19 votes -
Packages seized by the Royal Navy from a Faroese cargo ship bound for Denmark during the Napoleonic Wars opened – previously hidden away in the National Archives
9 votes -
The decimal point is 150 years older than previously thought, medieval manuscript reveals
16 votes -
Would Roman elections pass a UN inspection?
8 votes -
The Greenwich meridian's forgotten rival
4 votes -
The endangered languages of New York
16 votes -
An American education: Notes from UATX
4 votes -
How Finland survived a 1,000,000+ Soviet invasion (1939-1940)
13 votes -
Modern Viking music: Tragedy of a misunderstood art
8 votes -
The Silk Road - Into far lands
2 votes -
Two waves of mass death hit prehistoric Denmark, with farmers wiping out hunter-gatherers and pastoralists later wiping out the farmers, genetic study reveals
15 votes -
What is India's "uniform civil code" and why does it anger Muslims?
17 votes -
List of unusual units of measurement
14 votes -
California's push for mandatory ethnic studies classes runs into the Israel-Palestine conflict in designing a curriculum
22 votes -
The American Idol theme park experience
20 votes -
American Bar Association calls for US courts to find a different word than master, citing history and negative associations
28 votes -
Tell me about your weird religious beliefs
Let's hear about religious and spiritual (maybe philosophical?) beliefs not considered "mainstream" in the modern West. The percentage of people who identify as "spiritual", "other", or "none" is...
Let's hear about religious and spiritual (maybe philosophical?) beliefs not considered "mainstream" in the modern West.
The percentage of people who identify as "spiritual", "other", or "none" is rising at the expense of larger "organized" religions.
Disclaimer: it's hard if not impossible to draw hard lines around what is considered a "religion" verses a philosophy, culture, or mere ritual or traditional practice. If you aren't sure if what you believe fits the prompt, err on the side of sharing.
Things that probably fit the prompt:
- Minority religions
- Native beliefs/cultures
- Highly syncretic beliefs
- Non-western religions or beliefs
- "Pagan" beliefs
- Esoteric or occult beliefs or practices
Things that might not fit the prompt
- Mainstream Christian beliefs or traditions
- Naturalism or a lack of belief in any particular religious or spiritual tradition
I don't exclude these two categories because they aren't important, but because they are incredibly important, and most of what we think about religious or spiritual beliefs exist in frameworks created by the above two groups. I want to use this opportunity to learn about others, and I feel that I already know a good bit more about atheism and mainstream Christian theism than most other perspectives.
This is a sensitive subject that is tied deeply to people's sense of meaning; please treat your fellow commentor's beliefs, cultures, and values with respect. Thank you in advance for your input and perspective.
56 votes -
Christian Super Bowl commercial outrages US conservatives
39 votes -
Does your Irish child speak with an American accent? The change may not last forever, linguistic expert says.
16 votes -
Why does the letter 'S' look like an 'F' in old manuscripts?
22 votes -
What is the horrible phrase my wife learned from her grandpa?
Hello! My wife's grandfather would say the phrase "ʃɛkrɛplj jɛɽɛ" from what I can decode from the phonetic alphabet on Wikipedia, or my best English estimation "shikrepple yere" with a flipped r...
Hello! My wife's grandfather would say the phrase "ʃɛkrɛplj jɛɽɛ" from what I can decode from the phonetic alphabet on Wikipedia, or my best English estimation "shikrepple yere" with a flipped r if that makes no sense. He would say this when he lost a hand in poker, when she repeated it as a kid got chewed out and told not to say it, and he died without having ever said what it meant. He was stationed in Germany during the Korean War, so our best guess is something Polish..? But we can't find much that matches.
Tilderinos, can you translate what horrible phrase my wife has been casually repeating to people trying to figure it out and what language it's even in? Apologies if this is a slur or something... And thanks!
71 votes -
Russell's Paradox
4 votes -
Bellevue, WA police responded to a call from a US Air Force museum that said a man had offered to donate a Cold War-era missile stored in his late neighbor’s garage
12 votes -
shī shì shí shī shǐ - Story of Stone Grotto Poet
14 votes -
The parliament of Imperial Austria
6 votes -
Welcome to Sealand, the world's smallest state
13 votes -
The state of the world’s 7,168 living languages
18 votes -
The dirty secrets of Pompeii: Brothels, art, and more
15 votes -
Joscha Bach: Synthetic Sentience - Can Artificial Intelligence become conscious?
3 votes -
More Americans are nonreligious. Who are they and what do they believe?
39 votes -
100 years since death of Lenin marked by silence from China’s Communist Party
20 votes -
Eastern Front of WW1 animated: 1914
4 votes -
What happened to David Graeber?
6 votes -
DNA from stone age chewing gum sheds light on diet and disease in Scandinavia's ancient hunter-gatherers
11 votes -
Feminism versus multiculturalism [an argument against feminism and multiculturalism being 'incompatible']
5 votes -
God and the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
26 votes -
The misguided war on the SAT
30 votes -
Engraving on an almost 2,000-year-old knife believed to be the oldest runes ever found in Denmark
11 votes -
Tools for thinking about censorship
9 votes -
The tragic story of this famous meteorite and the boy who fought the museum that took everything from him
14 votes -
G36
9 votes