Zompist Bboard Again

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Jul 24, 2025 8:09 pm Damn it, I completely forgot that one of my shows was airing today and missed it. Unfortunately I have no other way to watch it since that would require me to sign up for a streaming service. So tired of being too poor for luxuries. I realize that hardly matters in the grand scheme of things, but the overwhelming austerity of my life really does grind on me. I work over twelve hours a day and eat literal gruel for breakfast all while never playing video games, going on vacation, or whatever else.

Is piracy good for you?

I signed up for the language test (in Luxembourgish!) I need to do to become a Luxembourger, and I'm already starting to freak out a bit with the preparation. The test date is in mid-September, and I think I should be able to pass, but I'm also feeling my anxiety start to climb...

doctor shark wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 12:18 pm I signed up for the language test (in Luxembourgish!) I need to do to become a Luxembourger, and I'm already starting to freak out a bit with the preparation. The test date is in mid-September, and I think I should be able to pass, but I'm also feeling my anxiety start to climb...

Good luck!

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 4:17 pm

doctor shark wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 12:18 pm I signed up for the language test (in Luxembourgish!) I need to do to become a Luxembourger, and I'm already starting to freak out a bit with the preparation. The test date is in mid-September, and I think I should be able to pass, but I'm also feeling my anxiety start to climb...

Good luck!

Seconded!

doctor shark wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 12:18 pm I signed up for the language test (in Luxembourgish!) I need to do to become a Luxembourger

Thirded on the good luck.

Are there alternative languages for the test then?

Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 4:33 pm

doctor shark wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 12:18 pm I signed up for the language test (in Luxembourgish!) I need to do to become a Luxembourger

Thirded on the good luck.

Are there alternative languages for the test then?

It's a deliberate attempt to keep Luxembourgish to not be driven to extinction by French by requiring new Luxembourgish citizens to know at least a modicum of Luxembourgish.

Over the past few days, the brakes on my car have been making a grinding noise. It looks like I will need to get them fixed ASAP although my tight schedule makes that challenging. Aside from politics anyway, it feels like most of the problems facing me over the past decade have involved cars in one way or another.

doctor shark wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 12:18 pm I signed up for the language test (in Luxembourgish!) I need to do to become a Luxembourger, and I'm already starting to freak out a bit with the preparation. The test date is in mid-September, and I think I should be able to pass, but I'm also feeling my anxiety start to climb...

I have every confidence you'll do well on the test. if I may ask, could you share some anti-anxiety tactics you practice?

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 10:00 pm it feels like most of the problems facing me over the past decade have involved cars in one way or another.

have you tried praying to the car god(s), or appeasing them with song or sacrifice? It works for me.

keenir wrote: ↑Fri Aug 01, 2025 12:17 amhave you tried praying to the car god(s), or appeasing them with song or sacrifice? It works for me.

Like rotting bones, I have no use for religion, only practical action. Unfortunately that required getting the brakes replaced this morning. The mechanic said the brakes had worn down to nothing and said I needed them changed immediately. Given how terrible they sounded, I felt inclined to trust him. It cost over five hundred dollars, quite an expense on my ever tightening budget.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 4:51 pm

Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 4:33 pm

doctor shark wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 12:18 pm I signed up for the language test (in Luxembourgish!) I need to do to become a Luxembourger

Thirded on the good luck.

Are there alternative languages for the test then?

It's a deliberate attempt to keep Luxembourgish to not be driven to extinction by French by requiring new Luxembourgish citizens to know at least a modicum of Luxembourgish.

Indeed, and the level of Luxembourgish needed to pass is quite basic (CEFR A2 speaking, which I probably have for both German and Dutch, so Luxembourgish shouldn't be a huge issue!). Interestingly enough, though, the civics/knowledge of Luxembourgish society test, which I took back in March, was not available in Luxembourgish: you could only take it in French, German, or English.

There are also bypasses for not needing the language test, but I don't qualify for either of them, so language test it is. And at least it only costs €75, unlike the Dutch inburgeringsexamen, which costs about €270 for the whole battery, or the German test my other friend is taking for German nationality, which will run him close to €250. The thing which makes me nervous is that I haven't had time to take classes, so I'm just hoping my knowledge of German and Dutch will be sufficient (but just replacing the vocabulary with Luxembourgish!).

And I do have some friends with whom I can practice, so I'll see about bribing them: I have a week off I can dedicate to intensive practice (because I'm getting nasty e-mails from HR about not having taken "enough" leave days.)

keenir wrote: ↑Fri Aug 01, 2025 12:17 am I have every confidence you'll do well on the test. if I may ask, could you share some anti-anxiety tactics you practice?

I think the big thing is mostly to try to be as prepared as possible, though often my main anti-anxiety trick when I was preparing for my Ph.D. defense was primarily to take a break from things. Having dedicated time where I tried to not worry about things helped, especially weekly Magic: The Gathering playtime with some friends in the area. But, again, a lot of this dulled the anxiety: I think it only went away once I had started my presentation for my Ph.D. defense. :P

have you tried praying to the car god(s), or appeasing them with song or sacrifice? It works for me.

I do this for experiments and grant writing, but instead to the Science gods (and normally through the burning of incense). It appears to have worked to get me my Marie Curie grant a year ago. :P

I am so done with Reddit. The subreddit for 50501 (the guys behind the No Kings protests) is seemingly being taken over by bots, and that's the main reason I've been going there lately.

There's also quite a bit of doom & gloom about politics across the site, which doesn't help.

MysteryMan23 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 02, 2025 9:47 pm I am so done with Reddit. The subreddit for 50501 (the guys behind the No Kings protests) is seemingly being taken over by bots, and that's the main reason I've been going there lately.

There's also quite a bit of doom & gloom about politics across the site, which doesn't help.

They’ve started automatically adding inline search links to certain comments’ keywords, like malware from the ’00s.

Well, I'm now officially unemployed, and hunting around for part-time fully-remote software development jobs, which seem to be like back nonhigh unrounded vowels in Indo-European languages.

alice wrote: ↑Sun Aug 03, 2025 2:30 pm Well, I'm now officially unemployed, and hunting around for part-time fully-remote software development jobs, which seem to be like back nonhigh unrounded vowels in Indo-European languages.

Sigh. Commiserations.

alice wrote: ↑Sun Aug 03, 2025 2:30 pm Well, I'm now officially unemployed, and hunting around for part-time fully-remote software development jobs, which seem to be like back nonhigh unrounded vowels in Indo-European languages.

While I'm doubtful of [ʌ] in Enɡlish, plenty of its accents have [ɑ]. (The first of my clauses is a vent.)

It only took three days for my car to break again. This time something sounds wrong with the engine. It suddenly got louder and deeper on my way to work this morning. Possibly the muffler broke again. I really do have terrible luck.

I have to accept that I might not feel well in the foreseeable future.

Richard W wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 6:27 am

alice wrote: ↑Sun Aug 03, 2025 2:30 pm Well, I'm now officially unemployed, and hunting around for part-time fully-remote software development jobs, which seem to be like back nonhigh unrounded vowels in Indo-European languages.

While I'm doubtful of [ʌ] in Enɡlish, plenty of its accents have [ɑ]. (The first of my clauses is a vent.)

This is probably pertinent; I've applied for two such jobs in the past five days. Both involve something malloc will never forgive me for: writing software which trains AI to give better results. Oddly, both offer the same "(ridiculously large number)$" per hour, and one saw the word "Rust" on my profile and contacted me on (professional networking social media site), even though I've never used Rust commercially.

Richard W wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 6:27 am

alice wrote: ↑Sun Aug 03, 2025 2:30 pm Well, I'm now officially unemployed, and hunting around for part-time fully-remote software development jobs, which seem to be like back nonhigh unrounded vowels in Indo-European languages.

While I'm doubtful of [ʌ] in Enɡlish, plenty of its accents have [ɑ]. (The first of my clauses is a vent.)

In the dialect here STRUT is true [ʌ(ː)] except before /d/ (where then it is [ɐː]) and START is conditionally raised to [ʌʁˤ] before voiceless obstruents except when the following syllable also contains /r/ and to [ʌːʁˤ] exceptionally in the word target.

I made a new zeptoforth release, 1.14.2.1, yesterday, to find that there were two important issues that really needed fixing now today, necessitating another zeptoforth release, 1.14.2.2, today. (At least I did not need to spend the time to rebuild all of zeptoforth the first time around...)