chaorace

chaorace, 2 years ago

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out obscure undocumented data formats and cyberchef is absolutely incredible for that. Here’s a fun little preview of what that looks like

chaorace, 2 years ago

I don’t know what platform you’re on, but from the web frontend my link works as-is. Here’s what the escaped version you sent looks like:

A screenshot of the prior comment showing a really fucked up mess of text instead of a link

If you’re using a mobile app, I would suggest that you report the link rendering issue as a bug

chaorace, 2 years ago

They’re frequently comorbid. Generally ADD develops first during childhood and later on during young adulthood anxiety/depression starts to set in. If that sounds like you, bring it up during your next psych check-in – ADD evaluation is generally quick and accurate, so there’s not much to lose.

chaorace, 2 years ago

“It’s like knuckle sammich day at the buffet and we’re all out of bread!”

chaorace, 2 years ago

Keeps people from noticing that he’s staring at their necks

chaorace, 2 years ago

I think any true “bot” would be flaired correctly.

Just FYI: The bot checkbox an opt-in thing with no enforcement, so it’s basically guaranteed that some developer will eventually either forget to tick the box or deliberately choose not to. These are still early days for Lemmy, so who knows how the situation will eventually evolve… but for now it’s basically the wild west.

chaorace, 2 years ago

What’s an interdental brush/brushing?

chaorace, 2 years ago

The brushing just before bed is the most important one, so you picked a good bare minimum to uphold. No shade, just curious: how old are your teeth?

chaorace, 2 years ago

can recommend electronic tooth brush

Important caveat: just because electric toothbrushes are good does not mean “more power = better”. For natural teeth, you should always brush gently. Don’t go ham just because you’ve got a powertool in your hand!

If your brush has multiple intensity modes, always use the lowest. Same thing goes for your grip! The whole point of an electric is that it can get you clean with almost zero pressure. Seriously: apply no more pressure than necessary to get full bristle contact. It will extend the natural life of your teeth and gums by years.

chaorace, 2 years ago

I’m not the guy, but I’d like to challange my English by talking about this topic.

I vibe with that. I’ve been trying to learn a new language as well, so let me try and provide you with the kind of direct feedback that I wish more people would give me. Overall your writing is good enough that I would believe you were a native speaker, albeit a sloppy one. To take your writing to the next level, here’s what I’d change:

I brush my teeth on a “when I remember to” or “when it’s really dirty”. so like twice weekly probably.

This can be rephrased slightly into a more natural expression:

I brush my teeth on a “when I remember”/“when it’s really dirty” basis, so like twice weekly probably

Why: Saying that you do something “on a X basis” is a very common pattern for this type of expression. I switched to using “/” instead of “or” here to because this particular pattern is so strongly fixed that we can’t add extra words to it without sounding unnatural. I also combined the sentences together because one single compound sentence is generally more pleasing than two simple ones.

except of a bit of tartar (hopefully correct word, the hard stuff that acumilates and sticks to your teeth)

Yup, that’s exactly the right word. It would have also been acceptable for you to say “gunk”, since “tartar” is a specialized word that not everyone will know.

The scary part is thst the dentists I’ve been to did not say anything about it, which leaves me to think they didn’t even see it, that leaves me again to, what else didn’t they notice?

You’ve made excellent use of the trailing question mark! This is exactly the right tone for what I believe you were going for here, though your verb tenses are a little mixed up. Here’s what I’d change to bring the tenses back into alignment:

The scary part is that the dentists I’ve seen haven’t said anything about it, which leaves me to think they didn’t even see it. It makes me wonder what else they didn’t notice?

Why Part 1: You’ve combined “I’ve been to” (present perfect tense) with “did not say” (past tense) inside of the same clause. Mismatches like this sound quite bad because native speakers have a strong intuition for tense construction. Here the issue is fixed by simply changing the entire clause into the past tense, though we could have just as easily done the opposite and made the whole clause present perfect (i.e.: “the dentists I’ve been to won’t say anything about it”).

Why Part 2: It gets difficult to read sentences when they become this long, so I broke it into two. Note the much shortened second sentence. I did this because English speakers tend to favor a kind of long/short/long/short rythm in speech and writing. Less grammar on “down beats” feels better. It’s a pretty cool trick to use once you get the hang of it, don’t you agree?

The thing that I notice and hints that I should brush is the frequent canker sores (again, let’s hope the right word, little annoying ass white spots that, apears, hurts than dips)

This sentence is actually a really good learning opportunity because it reveals something about English-speaking culture: we hate attributing actions to passive objects. Yes… it’s not technically wrong to say “the things that hint I should brush are canker sores”, but it still feels wrong unless you’re writing poetically. Here’s how I’d write it instead:

When I get frequent canker sores it’s a hint that I should brush.

Why: Canker sores no longer do the hinting. It’s you who gets the canker sores and they merely exist as hints. Alternatively, you could even phrase it like this: “Increasingly frequent canker sores tell me that I should brush”. If we anthropomorphize “canker sores” as actively intelligent beings, we’re allowed to attribute actions to them without falling into the “passive object action” trap. Yes… this stupid language really works like that. We will go so far as to pretend that canker sores are sentient if it means we can blame stuff on them. I am sorry 🙏

chaorace, 2 years ago (edited 2 years ago)

Like the alternating long/short. Imma start paying more attension to that maybe ppl actually use it, and I’ve just been ignoring it.

This is basically just a trick to sound more natural with less grammar, so feel free to pick and choose when to use it. So far I think you’ve struck a pretty good balance!

Is it correct to phrase it like: “the increase in X tells me” or “the increase in X leads me to”?

Yes, both of these sentences sound very natural to me. I think you’ve gotten the hang of it

Also what is that “new language” that you been trying to learn, maybe just maybe, it’s mine :)

Japanese! I’m a mega-weaboo lol

I’m fucking ashamed that probably the single largest info drop that I got for speaking tips came from me being a fucking slob… (I should change)

Yeah, you might want to work on your hygiene… It’s OK, though. We all have our circumstances and other people on the internet are rarely as perfect as they claim to be!

Does the focus have to be on X (only giving it adjectives, I believe you’ve done that)?

It’s less about the pattern of the sentence and more about a grammatical concept called the “agent”. The agent is the “doer” of the sentence. In English, the agent is usually (not always!) based on the sentence subject and native speakers will use one of several different tricks to shuffle the agent around when talking about an inanimate subject. I’ll list a few additional ways of doing this below to help illustrate:

Unnatural: My shirt wrinkled

This is a normal type of sentence, so the agent is the subject (“my shirt”). An inanimate agent sounds unnatural, so try to avoid this

Natural: My shirt is wrinkled

In this sentence we’ve introduced a copula (“is”) as the main verb of the sentence. Copula-based sentences like this one describe states of being and thus contain no action at all (e.g.: “My shirt is red” – no action!). No action means no agent. No agent means no problem!

Natural: My shirt got wrinkled

This is a way of speaking called the “passive voice” which implies a hidden agent as the true doer of the action. Since the agent is hidden, it won’t be based on the subject, so an inanimate subject can be used without sounding unnatural.

Natural: My shirt wrinkled itself

This is a way of speaking called the “reflexive voice” which you can use if the verb in question also has a transitive form (AKA: if it’s a “labile verb”). In the reflexive voice, all agents automatically become animate. No inanimate agent means no problem!

Natural: The sun rose

Some non-living things are still considered to be animate. These are almost always things which appear to move of their own volition, such as celestial bodies (“The moon shone”) or vehicles (“The boat sank”). There’s no problem with using animate things as the agent!

chaorace, 2 years ago

May I ask whether you’re and english major? You say so much grammar so confidently, are you a teacher perhaps? The thing about agents I only heard once or twice in English class.

Nah, I’m just a college dropout who has weird interests lol! It has been my sincere pleasure to help out another learner 😊

I’m Hungarian btw, and I know how hard our language is, so I figured I could be of great help. It’s probably for the best as even I don’t know how to speak this shit culture rich language correctly :/

Greetings from across the ocean in Atlanta, GA!