Reeks of the chat history access attempts and the like, or is it just my paranoia?

That’s a direct pipeline, it seems. Goes straight to the EU.

There’s a different pipeline (maybe several, not sure) going through Ukraine.

Thanks and you’re welcome!

I somehow forgot to mention this: don’t worry too much about rehearsing words. This is not the most effective way to learn them in most cases, because your brain just doesn’t consider something important and worth remembering until it has a very, very good reason to; forcing the repetition of certain words that way usually doesn’t happen to be that reason.

If you know it works for you, though, then go ahead, but otherwise, don’t beat yourself up and don’t give it more time than it deserves. After all, if you don’t happen to ever use the word or even see or hear it in five years or even more, then why really bother? ;)

I’m NOT a native English speaker by far, but I am a translator and a linguist (according to my BA degree, at least) and have spent 2.5 years teaching people English (with great results, too). Hopefully you’ll find my experience relevant to yours and comforting.

My native language is Russian (thanks for the alphabet) and I’ve never been outside the country. I learned English mostly playing Space Station 13, which is an online role-playing game (if you let it be) where you have to read a lot (some of it even outside the game, i.e. guides and forums to get a good grasp of some mechanics) and write a lot (to communicate with other players); I mostly opted for translating single words or, sometimes, short phrases that I couldn’t understand, and did it both ways, i.e. to English and to Russian. On top of that, I spent a lot of time talking to people on the Internet, both on forums of various kind and through private/direct messages.

So I read a lot, admittedly, even if it wasn’t fiction. I also watched a lot of YouTube and other media, but I can’t say it did much for my vocabulary.

As expected, I saw more progress when I was not that good with the language, because I had to face a lot of the frequent words, phrases, and constructions. At some point I just stopped encountering much new.

But that was until I picked up fiction in English. I can’t remember how often I had to look a word up, but I can definitely say that I had to do that more with Lovecraft than Rowling, for example, and never with some others. Hell, sometimes I have to look things up when reading Russian writers.

So, first of all, this is completely normal, especially if it happens with words that you recognize as non-essential for the plot or your understanding of the events. Second, it very much depends on the book and the author.

If I had to guess, you probably experience that with verbs or adjectives, as these usually serve as the means of introducing some variety or profoundness into one’s texts. I would say that, if you can help it, ignore them until they really prevent you from truly grasping the idea of what’s going on or what kind of emotions it’s supposed to invoke. You, however, mention that you are able to infer the meaning of many of the words you look up from context - and I, being a bit of a scientist, say that this is probably the best (if not the only) way to actually learn a word.

I’m saying this because language is a very abstract phenomenon, and so is everything that it is comprised of. In English, for example, we have two separate words for a desk and a table, while both are translated as “Стол” (Stol) to Russian, because the distinction between the two never necessitated a single-world solution to my ancestors, apparently. Whatever people put in dictionaries is an approximation of what multitudes of people that speak the given language think of when they hear or use the word, and that’s very different between languages.

So, I think that the best a person who understands the language as much as you do should just try and consciously resist the urge to look up meanings, for it seems to me that the context can already give you more than enough idea. As a result, I believe you should enjoy the act of reading more and develop a more natural, intuitive understanding of the words you may encounter.

But most importantly, don’t forget to praise yourself on the already-massive achievement you’ve made, and thank yourself for the gift of being able to comprehend the vast amount of literature and other thoughts and ideas that the speakers of the English language have produced across centuries. Good job, good luck!

Obligatory fuck AI and the illeterate bros pushing it.

What kind of videos, though? A lot of such material is very far from being proper educational material that we show other people to really teach them much, let alone educate them well enough to be anywhere trustworthy. This is a very processed material, with years of preparation once you consider the prior education of the individuals involved in the creative process - think of the past experiences silently influencing them, their initial knowledge on the subject obtained from somewhat basic facts from school or otherwise, their misconceptions, iterations that nobody knows about, and many other things that we don’t usually directly associate with the act of working on something like a video, but that eventually do dictate a lot of the decisions and opinions put into it.

It’s one thing that the AI has no intelligence in it whatsoever, but the fact that it’s being pumped with information and “knowledge” in basically the reverse order doesn’t help it become any better.

On the other hand, the entire thing is not about making something that works well, but something that sells well. And then there’s people putting too much faith into the thing and trusting it with way too much stuff than they should (which is also the case with a lot of other tech, though, admittedly).

Some things of today are so damn unexciting.

We’re very proficient at walking, but somehow haven’t produced a walking home or anything like that.

It’s not very linear.

Not if it’s treated like a social media for whatever reason.

Xing (German) and Headhunter (Russian), for instance, both allow you to hunt for jobs and browse companies all without Facebook-like posts and corporate culture.

LinkedIn is a very curious artifact of moronic cargo cult-like chase for money and market share where companies just try and copy whatever the big player did, like Facebook at the time, hoping to make loads of money for the investors and stakeholders, but the absolutely anti-human corporate culture of the US makes the place is even more moronic.

Happy to help!

A gentle nudge towards, let’s say, alternative means of acquiring media to enjoy. One that, ironically enough, Neil Gaiman commended himself (under certain circumstances, of course). One that is still better than giving money to someone you don’t want to support as a person or a creator.

A fellow Sprecher, I see! Happy cake day!