Things Duolingo Says [Vol. 2]

Welcome to Dating with Duolingo, where Duolingo teaches you exactly what you shouldn’t say to find the man/woman of your dreams. Names are borrowed from the Social Security Administration’s top 100 names over the past century to be as generic as possible. With that said, let’s head to the local bar and learn how to discuss your new soulmate.

After a long day of work at a lamp design studio where they’ve spent the last three hours discussing the ideal lightbulb angle for their newest lamp, Mary and Patricia roll into the bar for a couple drinks and dinner. “I really think 37.5 degrees is perfect,” Mary says when they’re settled at the bar with their first drinks. “It’s just the right compromise between style and illumination.”

Patricia downs a shot of vodka and groans. “No more work talk.”

“Okay, fine,” Mary says. “Well,” she adds after a moment,

Patricia pauses, a second shot of vodka halfway to her mouth. “What?”

“I’m not kidding,” Mary says. “I’m tired of being single.”

“You could get a dog,” Patricia says.

“A dog?” Mary says. “Can a dog make dinner for me? Help with dishes? Do my laundry?”

Patricia shrugs. “No, but just like a boyfriend it can unexpectedly eat your food, break your favorite mug, and push you to the edge of the bed and steal your blankets at night.”

Mary is about to reply when somebody catches her eye. She grabs Patricia’s arm and spins her around to face a table across the bar. “That guy over there in the green shirt.

---
Across the room, Robert and William are eating fries and watching the curling championship. At a commercial break, Robert glances around the room to see what else is playing on the bar TVs. He spots Mary and Patricia at one end of the bar and nudges William with his foot. “Hey, man. I think that woman over there is looking at you.”

William follows Robert’s nod toward Mary, who suddenly becomes very interested in the Bangladesh Cricket League game on the nearest TV. His jaw drops. “Dude,” he says,

“What?” Robert says.

William gets up. “I’m going to go talk to her.” He saunters over to the bar and leans on the counter next to Mary. “Hi.”

Mary turns away from the cricket game and smiles coyly. “Hi.”

William points to the seat next to Mary. “Can I sit here?”

“Sure,” Mary says. On the other side of her, Patricia starts gulping down a mostly-full glass of Long Island iced tea.

William sits down. “So,” he says,

Mary's smile broadens. “Aren’t you a charmer?” she says.

Patricia thumps her empty glass on the counter, pushes a handful of bills at the bartender, and stands up. “Well, I’ve got to get going.” William and Mary, gazing deeply into each other’s eyes, don’t hear her. On her way out of the bar, Patricia kicks the leg of Robert’s chair. “Hey. You want to get out of here?”

Robert looks away from the blissful couple at the bar, then up at Patricia. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

End scene. And there you have it. A completely realistic and appropriate account of true love.

The Pandemic Year

Over a year ago, the country abruptly came to a stop as COVID-19 spread through the states. In an effort to control the coronavirus, events were cancelled, businesses closed, and people asked to remain home as much as possible. One year and half a million deaths later, the US is still reporting tens of thousands of cases a day, but the situation appears to at least be managed, if not controlled, plus vaccines are rolling out, so people are starting to return to jobs and school and other everyday activities. I’ve written about how I spent most of my pandemic year, but I wanted to highlight a few more things, and present some pie charts, because it’s been awhile since I posted any graphs [see here for definitive proof that studying lowers your grades].

My last big public event was my band concert on Sunday, March 8, 2020. On that same day, Bernie Sanders held a rally in Ann Arbor and undergrads were returning from spring breaks in who-knows-where. By Wednesday, classes were cancelled; Thursday, March 12, was the last time my research group saw each other in person at group meeting, and I haven’t set foot in my office since Thursday, March 19. In the year following, I’ve basically only been to the grocery store and the great outdoors. I’ve travelled exactly zero miles on any form of motorized transportation, including car, bus, plane, train, ebike, and Spin scooter. I did cover close to 300 miles on my bike and another ~200 on foot for recreational purposes.

Pandemic activities included 1 trip to the dentist, weekly outings to the grocery store, and just under 140 Ann Arbor parks visited (~90%). On the home front, I attended 1 Zoom wedding, hacked off my own hair twice, did a couple dozen loads of laundry, and washed approximately 5,982,481 dishes (confidence level = -99%). Shockingly enough, research got done. Weekly meetings with my advisor continued via BlueJeans/Zoom, as did group meetings every 1-2 weeks, one of my coworkers had a successful Zoom defense, and, of course, I got my first first-author manuscript published. H-index greater than 1, here I come. This brings us to our first pie chart, summarizing how I spent the pandemic, more or less.

How I Spent the Pandemic
[click to enlarge, and it should also be less blurry]

Next, we’ll consider my questionable diet, in which peanut butter may or may not be a staple food. For over a year, I’ve prepared/cooked every single breakfast, lunch, and dinner that I’ve eaten. While I would like to support local restaurants, I haven’t eaten out or ordered takeout at all. The process is almost as much effort as cooking and more effort than granola bars and instant oatmeal, so I’m probably deficient in any vitamins not found in fortified cereal and milk. See pie chart below for a model of a highly balanced and nutritious diet. I baked on average once every other week and made the following: peanut butter cookies, cinnamon rolls, sugar cookies (x2, different recipes), banana bread, pineapple upside down cake, popovers, apple cobbler, cranberry orange muffins, chocolate chunk cookies (the only bake from a mix), banana walnut muffins, chocolate peanut butter swirl brownies, pineapple cake, pumpkin cranberry bread, pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, chocolate cupcakes, molasses cookies, cranberry orange scones (x2), brownies, banana muffins, shortbread cookies, thumbprint cookies, and pecan rolls.

What I Ate (featuring 193 peanut butter and jam sandwiches)

Finally, let’s look at what (TV shows) I watched on Netflix. Additionally, I saw Jeopardy! almost every weeknight, watched the Revolution’s post-shutdown season, and saw a couple dozen movies, but the Netflix breakdown is more interesting. This pie chart includes a rough estimation of the time spent (in hours) watching each show based on the number of episodes and episode length. Bake Off has close to hour-long episodes, TNG and Grey’s Anatomy are about 45 minutes, and everything else is 21-25 minutes. I finished The Office right as lockdown started, and started on TNG, which I’m now 6 (of 7) seasons through. For both Avatar series, Parks and Rec, and Schitt’s Creek, the hours shown are the complete series. Kim’s Convenience is everything on Netflix, and I’m now eleven seasons into Grey’s Anatomy, which is ridiculous, but entertaining, in a ridiculous way.

What I Watched on Netflix

In hindsight, should the pandemic have been handled differently, particularly in the United States? Quite probably. But despite everything, I still managed to explore Ann Arbor, eat a lot of baked goods, get a paper published, and watch plenty of highly educational TV, so the year wasn’t all bad news.

X Marks the Spot

In my December 2020 summary I mentioned that I bought cross stitch supplies to have something to do during winter that didn’t involve staring at a computer screen. I’d stumbled across the cross stitch subreddit some months ago and thought about getting into it more seriously than I had in the past but didn’t know if I’d be into it enough for it to be worth buying all the supplies. Then I figured I’d basically spent a year only paying rent and buying groceries, gave in, and bought all the supplies. Cross stitching may not be as useful as say, knitting, or woodworking, but it has its advantages. It’s reasonably compact and at the bare minimum, all you need is embroidery floss, fabric to stitch on, a needle, a pair of scissors, and a pattern. You can also buy hoops, frames, and stands to hold the fabric as you stitch; lights, headlamps, and magnifiers to see better; bobbins and cases to organize your floss; thread conditioner; needle minders; and lots of other gadgets, but you don’t absolutely need those things.

I had a pair of scissors from a Walgreens sewing kit, so I ordered floss, fabric, and a pack of needles online (thank you, 21st century). The site I ordered from (123Stitch) looks like it’s stuck in the early 2000s, but they offer fixed rate shipping in the US and fulfill orders quickly. The subreddit also has good things to say about their customer service, though I haven’t had reason to contact them. They ship using USPS, which despite mail volume or staffing delays, has delivered my packages within a week the two times I’ve ordered supplies.

To start out, I decided to try some free patterns from DMC, one of the big embroidery floss manufacturers. My first pattern in about six and a half years was carrots. It was a good project for getting back into cross stitch. Each individual carrot was a few hundred stitches and just four or five colors so they came together pretty quickly. There weren’t a lot of randomly scattered single stitches (confetti) or an excessive number of color changes. The only part that had to be counted a little more carefully was the carrot tops, but even there, unless you severely or frequently miscounted, no one would know if you were off a square once in a while. No half or quarter stitches, just full stitches and backstitch.

Carrots

After the carrots I moved on to a blue whale and a sea turtle. The blue whale used the least number of colors of thread (seven, I think), so had a large patch of a single blue across most of its body. The backstitch in this pattern was a little weird. They asked for the backstitching to be done with three strands (it’s common for backstitch to be one strand), and there were long runs and stitches that ended in the middle of edges or squares, which is fine, just unexpected for an otherwise straightforward beginner-ish project. There was also a French knot for the whale’s eye. I followed a YouTube video and made a knot. Whether it’s a French knot . . . or not . . . I don’t actually know.

Blue whale

The sea turtle was probably the most complicated pattern, and it’s not entirely done because I’m missing a color of floss that was sold out online. It’ll get done eventually. All three patterns are 4-6" in width/height and were stitched on 14-count Aida (the fabric with holes for cross stitching) with two strands of floss except for backstitching. The coverage I’m getting is satisfactory, though you can see gaps with some of the darker colors if you’re very close. I’m now five weeks into a full coverage 30,000-stitch pattern that I picked to keep me occupied for the rest of winter and I’m about a third of the way done, so you can start looking for the big reveal in May at the earliest.

Sea turtle

Things Duolingo Says [Vol. 1]

Imagine this. You’ve travelled (pre/post-covid) across the world for an exciting summer vacation. You can’t wait to see the sights, eat local food, and be immersed in a different culture. At the bus stop, waiting for the bus, you meet a fellow passenger and begin to converse using the foreign language skills you specially acquired for this trip. After discussing the weather, confirming that you’re a visitor to this fair country, and getting a restaurant recommendation, your new friend gestures to your bulging backpack and casually asks what you’ve got in there. “Oh, that,” you say. “I packed my cat in my backpack.”¹ Thank goodness, you think, I learned how to say that on Duolingo.

Duolingo has a bit of a reputation for teaching you sentences that you absolutely do not need to know how to say. It may stem from its initial intent of teaching through translating sentences from the internet. There’s a lot of weird stuff on the internet. As they’ve moved toward developing a more comprehensive language learning platform and generating their own content, the bizarre sentences have stayed. To practice these extremely useful phrases, I decided to come up with hypothetical situations in which they would be valuable to know.

All Ears
Walking down the street in some big city full of strange people, you and your travelling buddy are taking in the sights. There’s a lovely Gothic church down the street. Quaint cafés and specialty cheese shops line the street. Suddenly, you stop in your tracks in the middle of the sidewalk and grab your friend’s arm. “Look,” you say, pointing out a man across the street, “that man has so many ears.”² (Does he have extra ears on his head? Is he carrying an armful of ears? Who knows.)

Wanted: Dead or Alive
To graduate, your high school requires you to perform community service hours. Unfortunately, you waited too long to sign up and the only opening left is at the nursing home. When you show up to fulfill your hours, you’re given a list of residents to spend some time with. You take the list and locate the first resident. You knock lightly on the door and enter the room. “Hey!” you say brightly. “Are you dead?”³

The Pen is Mightier
After the weekend, you and your coworker are catching up over cups of coffee while hiding from the boss in the kitchen. Your coworker, with whom you share the hobby of quill pen calligraphy, mentions a new stationary store that opened across town. You nod. You’ve heard about this store. “Ah, yes,” you say. “They have a good selection of feathers.”⁴

This concludes the first volume of Things Duolingo Says. If you enjoyed it, don’t worry, there’s plenty more where this came from.

¹En español, my Duolingo language of choice: Empaqué a mi gato en la mochila.
²Ese hombre tiene tantas orejas.
³¡Oye! ¿Está muerto?
⁴Tienen una buena selección de plumas.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

My latest slightly ill-advised adventure took place on a Sunday morning at the beginning of January. I rolled out of bed and was eating breakfast when I looked out the window and saw a snowy winter wonderland. Because it was early on a weekend morning, the snow was light enough, and it hadn’t been windy overnight, not only was the ground covered in several inches of snow, but so were all the tree branches. I’ve been working on a photography project (to be revealed later), and was waiting for a day such as that to get snow photos. After consulting three weather forecasts, I determined that the temperature was going to rise above freezing by lunch, and two out of three forecasts said that the snow would stop by midmorning. The third said it would turn to rain, but two out of three is sixty-seven percent, which is a passable grade in plenty of engineering courses. Also, it didn’t feel like a snow to rain kind of day, and I was willing to take the risk of getting caught in rain. I decided to try and catch the window of time after the snow stopped and before the temperature rose above freezing so there wouldn’t be snowflakes blurring my pictures but would be snow on the tree branches. Which meant that I had to get out that morning.

Having no progeny, pets, or plants to be responsible for, I finished breakfast, got dressed, and was out the door with my camera, water, snack, and extra dry jacket, mittens, and hat in ten minutes. My destination: Barton Nature Area. Depending on your definition of walkable, it’s walkable from my apartment. I arrived at the nature area without incident, encountering the usual three categories of people dumb hardy and adventurous enough to be out in that kind of weather: dog walkers, exercisers (including runners, cross country skiers, and fat bikers – bikers riding fat bikes, not bikers who are fat), and photographers. And I got the timing almost exactly right. It stopped snowing about fifteen minutes after I arrived and by the time I left, the snow was already melting off the trees.

This nature area is contained within a loop of the Huron River, with bridges connecting it to the other side of the river. It’s adjacent to the Bird Hills, Kuebler Langford, and Hilltop Nature Areas, which together form one of the largest, if not the largest, contiguous-ish natural areas in Ann Arbor. There is a way to hike a loop through the four parks (which I did here), but on this morning I stayed within the Barton Nature Area. There are good views of the river, a dam (according to the parks and rec website it’s the only dam in the city still generating electricity), and a pond. I walked a loop through the park before making my damp way back to my apartment, where I spent the rest of the day nice and warm. Enjoy the photos.

The Huron River from the south bridge

Looking the opposite direction, train bridge and US 23/M-14

Snow-covered trees

A tree and a pond

Train tracks