Ed Marshall @esm@mastodon.social

I feel like I've been on some sort of personal improvement bender since the year started: losing (a lot of) weight, learning 日本語, "swiping right" again, even stopped biting my nails.

It seems I'm coming to a critical juncture though: I would cut someone for a little pasta, Japanese makes me feel dumber every day, I remain desperately lonely, and my goddamn fingertips itch.

(Not really looking for advice or help here, just having a shitty night and screaming into the void a little. It'll pass.)

Your April Fools Day joke isn't funny.

Still having fun. 🙂 #日本製

Also, jisho.org is an international treasure. I don't even have the words to explain how good their dictionary is.

The GNOME 日本製 IME is tremendously good with a Latin keyboard: type romaji, get hiragana/katakana/kanji automatically. Even an idiot like me can use it.

I'm similarly impressed with Google's IME for Android: it's basically T9, but for hiragana. I'm guessing this a pretty common input arrangement on mobile in Japan?

(It'd be easier to use if my instant recall of hiragana was better. 😛 I have so much work to do here; I'm still not sure why I thought learning a new language was a good idea.)

If I once had the notion that I was modestly intelligent, and perhaps even capable of learning new things, I have thoroughly driven those ideas away by trying to learn a new language.

(But I still think Japanese is a ton of fun.)

Holiday traditions should be delicious

Trans bay-area friends looking for portfolio shots, or who just want to try doing an artistic shoot: an amazing friend who does queer & body-positive photography is looking for models for a (timely) new project.

I can put you in touch, or their Instagram post is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpVTWV8l0n2/

IM NETZ DES FBI

I am unreasonably happy about acquiring this.