imvii

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!

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.

30 people along the route of the parade cracking tear gas grenades at the same time would be lovey to see.

This is clearly not worse than J6 and those people are heroes now.

My 11 year old account got banned and I'm not even sure why. I posed a lot over the years. They said I was banned, pointed to a deleted comment. When I asked what the comment said they replied the reviewed the ban and now I'm banned.

I believe it was for a comment about how America would be in trouble if they invaded Canada (I'm Canadian). I stated some basic facts that Canadians look like Americans and they will attack America on American soil. It was matter of fact, not promoting any sort of violence.

Whatever. America is dying. I suppose services hosted on American soil die right along with it. We're actively avoiding as many US products and services as possible, so Reddit can kick rocks.

I discovered Lemmy, it suits my needs and I like it better.

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 would also be civilian targets. Those huge retirement towns filled with MAGA boomers in Florida - the ones where they drive golf carts around - those will burn to the ground.

The modern US hasn't fought a war with someone right next door, who looks and talks like them. Not only would it be hard to hold captured cities, but I think many Canadian fighters would walk across that massive unsecured border and start fucking up US resources like electrical stations, water supplies, subway systems, internet backbones, government buildings, . It is super easy to buy guns and ammo in the US, bombs are not hard to make. We would have a fair amount of local support as well.

We Canadians could just walk around the US in public and you've never know it.

Same. 11 year old account got banned for saying something. I'm not even entirely sure what it was. They deleted it and gave me the finger.

Fine with me.