Toots for yingtai@zirk.us account

Written by Yingtai on 2025-02-02 at 18:38

On this day, I found out about Resting Slavic Face from @timkmak's dispatches from the Ukraine war.

https://journa.host/@timkmak/113934728509601659

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/culture-and-smiling/483827/

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-02-02 at 18:03

Some day I will manage to remember the difference between the words 飞盘 fēipán (Frisbee) and 飞碟 fēidié (flying saucer) but today is not that day. #Mandarin

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-02-02 at 14:28

I have been consuming so much #Mandarin content from China that I just did a double-take at a Singaporean company addressing customers with 你 nǐ (you) instead of 您 nín (respectful version of you). We are such uncultivated peasants 😅

https://www.tiktok.com/@creative.knowledge.labs/video/7395134865689152775

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-24 at 17:09

There's a new STI in town to ask your doctors to test for. Mycoplasma genitalium. I found out about it from this account of an impressively organised orgy. https://aella.substack.com/p/my-birthday-gangbang

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-21 at 03:52

Though having said that, I'm having a good hard think about whether I should stay logged into RedNote because @dianeduane says the spyware concerns are very real and I trust her. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2025/01/15/is-rednote-safe-heres-what-millions-of-tiktok-users-need-to-know/

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-21 at 03:50

I tried to read this article about the Tiktok migration to RedNote (though it's already old news) and I cannot believe the author's shortsightedness. In my opinion, this is a GREAT time for Americans to get lessons from the mainland Chinese on how to operate covertly on social media subject to government surveillance.

(Edit: sorry, fixed the link. Again. The Forbes website is so messed up.)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonsnyder/2025/01/14/tiktok-and-rednoteconsent-without-transparency-isnt-freedom-its-control/

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-20 at 07:35

I have acquired a copy of the standard undergrad textbook A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations! Yay!

But my joy is tempered by the fact that all the Chinese/Japanese terms are given phonetically. No characters anywhere! Ack.

I wonder if anyone's done a vocab list? Haven't been able to find one so far.

https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Chinese-Japanese-Civilizations/dp/0495913227

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-20 at 01:05

I have just read a most gloriously kink-informed science fiction short story. I am in awe of the author's powers of #kink negotiation. I think it might be the first time I've come across a story in this format, too.

https://www.bafflingmag.com/issue-eighteen/xeno-iso-synth-for-one-time-encounter

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-18 at 03:11

The above are mainland Chinese vocabulary. These are the Taiwanese equivalents I'm aware of:

表情包 (CN) ... 梗图 (TW)

贴纸 (CN) ... 贴图 (TW)

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-18 at 03:01

Victory is mine! I have FINALLY got all these ducks lined up in a row!

表情包 ... meme, gif (common)

贴纸 ... sticker

绘文字 ... emoji

表情符号 ... emoticon (common)

https://www.163.com/dy/article/F1609CSS0514R9KE.html

In some ways this is not terribly useful because Chinese speakers seem to use the words with even less precision than English speakers. But accuracy gives ME satisfaction, dammit!

[#]Mandarin

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-17 at 00:23

Update on my Discord situation. A friend invited me to their fanfic server, which is extremely friendly and active and chaotic! When I got upset about the Chinese learners' server yet again, I left and we started a thread about learning Chinese. It's lovely.

I might rejoin that server at some point, just to be able to refer to my old messages, but if so I'll try to take a big step back and remember that they made me scared of clicking on notifications.

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-13 at 17:10

Try to control yourself, I tell myself sternly as I put away my needle and thread. No more mending for you today. I am such a strange person. 😂

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-13 at 01:44

Courtesy of the American Dialect Society, the 2024 Word Of The Year is "rawdog".

This is the same august body of scholars who gave us "-ussy" as the 2022 Word of the Year.

https://www.avclub.com/american-dialect-society-word-of-the-year-rawdog

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-10 at 01:43

Facebook is aligning its policies with the incoming Trump administration, the examples in this article are HORRIFYING. From @caseynewton

https://www.platformer.news/meta-new-trans-guidelines-hate-speech/?ref=platformer-newsletter

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-10 at 00:35

@gdog I saw this Tumblr post about vintage gay porn films and I thought of you https://www.tumblr.com/kyraneko/772039782863978496?source=share

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-06 at 15:02

One of the joys of having a bad memory is rereading childhood books. And sometimes they're way better than I realised at the time. Right now it's the Bagthorpe Saga and wow, Helen Cresswell was a heck of a prose stylist! (Though the humour is very Are the Straights Okay.) #reading

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-02 at 13:49

Also, bilingualism achievement unlocked: yesterday it took me a minute to remember the word "areas" in conversation because all I could think of was the #Mandarin word 方面. I think this is the first time this has happened since I was a kindergartner outside culturally specific vocabulary!

This really is a humble brag because it's a documented effect of bilingualism. There's more about the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism in this book: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313150/the-bilingual-brain-by-costa-albert/9780141990385

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Written by Yingtai on 2025-01-02 at 13:44

I have finished my second #Mandarin chapter book! It went so much faster than the first!

It's actually only a very easy bridge book. But I'm still very proud of myself. I have the whole series and I'm looking forward to whizzing through them!

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Written by Yingtai on 2024-12-28 at 21:29

I've just realised that I can actually get vaccinated against covid every 6 months in Singapore. The government recommends a 1-year interval, but they only require that it's been 5 months since the last one.

And it's still free. And everyone has to mask up in medical settings here.

Good things.

https://vaccine.gov.sg/covid

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Written by Yingtai on 2024-12-21 at 09:55

Yesterday I discovered that literary Cantonese survived in Hong Kong and I am gobsmacked. (All Chinese dialects used to have a literary version alongside the colloquial version, but Mandarin has taken over most of those functions elsewhere.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_written_Chinese

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