Get Dunked On

cool stuff available on youtube

archaeology related and not really (just things I watch while knitting = you can learn something but it shouldn’t bore you to death)

Irving Finkel:

The First Ghost Stories - ancient Mesopotamian beliefs

The Ark Before Noah: A Great Adventure - story of one really exciting cuneiform tablet and bearded guy who make reconstructing the ark possible

Short story of deciphering the cuneiform writing 

How to write cuneiform - (or short video that shows you that you really couldn’t do that)

Genevieve von Petzinger ‘s TED talk about  32 symbols found in caves all over Europe

Museum Tour: Ötzi the Iceman - 3D printing a replica of Ötzi, what did he eat, what did he carry, etc. 

A Neanderthal Perspective on Human Origins - lecture by Svante Pääbo, who’s worked on neanderthal genome

History of fashion and whatever Karolina Żebrowska is up to these days 

Ask a Mortician - everything you want to know about death, iconic corpses, flying corpses, well, a lot of corpses in general 

Art history with Waldemar Januszczak

everyone always says that the best profession you can have if you love hearing tea is working in HR but I disagree. as a lawyer you literally get the tea from all angles and from everyone involved and get to ask questions about it and make people swear that it’s true under the penalties of perjury. you also get to gather receipts and be like, but your honor, the receipts

A Resource for Reading Practice: The Chinese Reading World

I wanted to share a resource for reading practice that I stumbled across recently. It’s called the Chinese Reading World, and it was a project led by the University of Iowa.

The site was put together from 2005 to 2008, so it’s not super up to date. However, there is a ton of content! Everything is sorted into 3 levels: beginning, intermediate, and advanced. 

Each level has 30 units, and each unit has 10 lessons. The lessons begin with a vocab pre-test, then there is a reading with some comprehension questions. Lastly, there is a vocab post-test, which is the same as the initial test (at least for the lessons I’ve done so far). There’s audio for each lesson text, but unfortunately it can’t be streamed—you have to download it. There is also an achievement test at the end of each unit.

My experience has actually been that I already know all the words on the vocabulary tests, but the reading passages contain other words that I’m not familiar with.

So far, the readings I’ve encountered are not very long. This is nice since reading longer pieces can be frustrating at times. With shorter readings, you can just read 1 or 2 on some days and read more when you have more time/patience. I believe the readings are taken from Chinese newspapers.

Also, every unit has a theme. With 90 units total, there are bound to be themes that interest you. Example unit topics:

Directions and Asking Direction 方向和问路

Sports and Outdoor Activities 体育和户外运动

Chinese Music and Musicians 中国音乐和音乐家

Chinese Minorities and Local Customs 地方习俗和民族风情

Chinese Sports and Olympic Games 体育和奥林匹克

Contemporary Chinese Literature and Writers 中国当代文学和作家

The 3 levels also each come with 5 proficiency tests. They seem to be based on vocabulary knowledge, so expanding your vocab is clearly a huge focus of this site. The only thing I’m unclear is about is I’m not sure exactly when the proficiency tests are meant to be taken. After completing all units? Or are they spaced out so you are supposed to take test 1 after the first few units, test 2 after the next few, etc.?

I’ve started working my way through the advanced section this week. With 300 advanced lessons alone, it really feels like I have an infinite number of articles to go through!

i finished reading your story and i must say that, while it's alright, there's so many plot holes because the characters made irrational decisions and didn't think logically 100% of the time. consider fixing this next time please

Webb captures Jupiter's faint rings, auroras & hazes

l composite from its NIRCam instrument(x)

"the education system traumatizes students it deems stupid" and "the education system traumatizes students it deems gifted" are two concepts that can and should coexist.

whats the deal with the stigma around giving up anyway. yeah this is hard so i do not want to do it anymore. we don’t keep our hand inside a burning flame just to feel like a martyr. i’m off to get a milkshake 

09/03/21 • poem made from the handout for a lecture on the fragmentary historical sources and missing tomb of alexander the great

Keep reading

normalize not knowing shit about your special interests. normalize studying your special interests for 12 hours straight and not retaining a single shred of information

i must not miss class. missing class is the mind-killer. missing class is the little-death that brings total obliteration. i will face my lecture. i will permit it to pass over me and through me. and when it has gone past i will turn the inner eye to see its path. where the class has gone there will be nothing. only i will remain.