All the teachers were deaf.

Deaf people LOVE when hearing folks try to communicate so they’ll do anything they can to help you out generally.

That is the exact opposite of what I experienced when I was learning ASL.

At one point in my life I had planned to learn ASL/English sign and work as an interpreter. I lived in an area on the west coast with a community college that had a huge deaf community and a very good ASL interpreter training program. I did almost two years (just short of completing) before bailing out.

Our classes were complete immersion from day one. No speaking or writing was allowed. Later classes, fingerspell was to be kept at a minimum. It was pretty cool but at times really frustrating. It’s easy to build your vocabulary of noun and verbs, but more abstract concepts were hard to understand in this setting.

Think of it this way. How does someone explain “abstract concept” with only gestures you don’t understand yet?

Why did I quit?

I’m a hearing person and the deaf community was generally pretty hostile towards hearing people in the program. One deaf woman went so far to say I was exploiting her disability. That’s kind of the vibe I got from many in the community. This was the main reason for leaving. I didn’t want a job where I worked with people who actively hated me for no reason.

The second reason; it was very hard to become fluent. I was getting pretty familiar with the local dialect (a blend of ASL and English). I was getting good at reading sign, but MY signs sucked. I just didn’t have people to “talk” with out of my class and they were all hearing people in the same boat as me.

You can pick up sign languages by watching videos over and over, but your pronunciation is probably going to suck without someone actively correcting you.

Ban THC but allow alcohol, tobacco, and guns?

BHA-HA-HA-HA!

Why even lump pedos in the same sentence with the gays

That’s the new MAGA argument. I was getting in front of it.

They’re basically arguing if gay and trans people are born that way, and that’s fine, then pedos are born that way so why isn’t that fine?

It’s a stupid argument because gay and trans people by default exist without victims.

In my opinion there is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay, bi, trans, asexual, etc.

I’m Canadian. I support social programs and humanist programs. I support regulation of business so they don’t abuse their positions of power over people and to curb their habit of doing bad things in the name of more profit. I’m for taxing those with hordes of cash and giving the struggling worker a break. I support people to have the freedom to be who they want to be (gay, straight, trans, etc) as long as they aren’t hurting other people (IE pedos don’t get to harm children because they “were born that way” or god said it was cool). I support protecting the land, water and animals. I think Trump is a cunt.

I’m probably pretty left-wing.

I’ve been using Thunderbird for email for years. I use it with some SMTP servers on shared hosting platforms, a yahoo account and a few gmail accounts - one with calendars. I don’t have any problems with it. Runs stable, doesn’t crash or do weird things. My only complaint would be search is a little clunky, but it works.

I had to use Outlook client for year at another job and that client was hot garbage.

There wasn’t.

I made one.

I seem to be lacking in Soma and orgies.

Ah crap. That means I’m an Epsilon.

Love it!

Make it happen, captain.

I’m not sure of the shape change reason, but I prefer the thinner cans. I have a candy store with soft drinks and I can put more of the thinner cans on the shelf. Usually one more can per shelf.

Ah ha! Perfect. This is what I was missing. Thank you.

There are a ton of really cheap Chinese IP cameras out there. Those are less secure then ring or wyze cameras.

Agreed. Better to make it a month or two. This gives you time to find replacement companies and then hopefully never return to Amazon.

I’ve always had a manual car. I love them. That is until I ended up dating a younger woman and we moved in together. Several years later the manual turned into the second car only I drove. That got sold and we now have two cars she can drive.

One day I might teach her how to drive manual. We live in a really flat area with no major hills, so it shouldn’t be a problem. One day maybe,

I got banned a few weeks back for an anti-trump post.

That account was 11 years old and I was very active over those years. But nope. Don’t talk smack about the orange god.

It solidified Lemmy as my permanent reddit replacement. No ragrets.

100% agree

The heads pick up dirt and over time the tapes shed on the play and record heads. It’s a dark brown mass that builds up. The thicker it is, the more it interferes with record/playback. Playback will sound muffled with a loss in the high end. Also, the buildup promotes the tapes shedding more doing damage over time. It usually comes off easy with a few light wipes with an alcohol dipped q-tip.

The only “trick” I’ve heard is you are supposed to only wipe off the tape head the way the tape runs across it. The idea being you don’t want to scratch the head which would then damage the tape. I don’t know if this was just folklore, but it seems logical.

I used to have a reel to reel Tascam 8 track that ran 1/2 tape in my studio. I was always careful to wipe only in the direction of the tape and I’d clean before each studio session. I never saw any build up on those heads.

That’s when I’d put my “smart” phone in the toaster and go dust off the Nokia 3310

Half the bands mentioned in this post are from the 90s - or had their haydays in the 90s.