I'm seriously impressed with how functional this app is from the start. Like lots of others have said, it felt like coming home given how long I'd used Sync for. Didn't hesitate to pay for the ad free version once that option was added.

It does explain why all the niche communities I visit have gone from quiet to abandoned.

I'm not sure why I am so invested in this story, but I'd love to see some consequences for this cultural vandalism.

Truly life being stranger than fiction, in that he was recently in the news after being acquitted in the US.

He had this to say on the American legal system at the time: "the reason I'm sitting here, let's be honest, is not only because I was innocent... but because I had enough money not to be swept away by a process that's set up to sweep you away".

Yeah, this is my experience with Lemmy so far: it has replaced the "all" experience for me, but all my hobby / interests subs are completely dead.

Thanks Tom - appreciate your efforts as this is fast becoming my favourite corner of the internet. Hope your flat purchase goes well.

Sad it had to happen, but thanks very much to all involved for working on a replacement. Looking forward to signing up as this UK instance has been the best part of the 'fediverse' for me.

I do think the geopolitical angle they are going with is a bit overplayed. It looks like Mandarin is only a bit below the trend for foreign languages in general. Personally, I think part of that is just people realising over time that studying Mandarin won't necessarily lead to business or career success.

I hope it will be, and think it has the potential.

It has already replaced the "all" experience for me, and I automatically come here rather than Reddit. On the other hand, most of my engagement on reddit was with hobby/interest communities. Very few of the ones I visited on Reddit have made it across in an active way so far.

One unexpected thing is that I actually enjoy my specific instance and find myself browsing "Local" way more often than I expected.

Shadowing is designed to address exactly this:

https://www.mandarinblueprint.com/...

It isn't something that I can personally recommend as I've always struggled with it, but there are plenty of people who swear by it.

I would really recommend the Imagin8 Journey to the West graded readers. They are one continuous series which is really handy, they increase the amount of vocabulary featured every few books and they have free audio on YouTube of the series.

https://imagin8press.com/...

I am similarly child-free this weekend, for maybe only the second time since my son was born. I've dusted off the PS5 and am playing the new Final Fantasy, which I'm really impressed by.

This is pure nostalgia.

I've been studying for about 10 years and every phase has been quite different, but the one piece of advice which would have been helpful for someone to give me at each stage....no matter how much listening practice you are doing, you are not doing enough listening practice.

The problem I encountered when I started switching the in-game language to Chinese was that descriptions of game mechanics and systems can be quite hard to read, whereas it's relatively straightforward to keep up with the narrative.

I did the same as you initially and just set audio to Chinese for games like Cyberpunk, and I think it did help my listening. Now I've played through a few games with text and audio set to Chinese and it has gotten a bit smoother.

Maybe an odd choice - but the original xbox. It had Halo, Morrowind and KOTOR. Some of my favourite games of all time. Yes they were available on PC, but I was a kid so didn't have a PC capable of playing these games.

Not sure why this has been downvoted; it isn't self-promotion. I was just sharing material I thought would be interesting to other learners.

Very different type of metal from the bands listed, but Fellowship are my favourite UK metal band in a long time:

https://youtu.be/7j0oE6RiWng

I thought the world was really well realised, but I wish they'd been just a little bit bolder with the story and characters. I enjoyed the first 10 hours, but then put it down.

Someone the other day referred to posting in niche communities as shouting into the void currently, which I thought was apt.