It probably depends on which language you’re learning and whether there’s a good deck available but I’ve moved onto flashcards with Anki.

The main problem with Duo (before all of its current problems) used to be that it didn’t really give much context unless you were on the full website and clicked through to read the grammar rules, but the card deck I’m using for basic Spanish has all of that built in and visible from the start so it’s been a good foundation on the language.

I’ve also heard excellent things about something called the “pimsleur” method but that seems expensive to access through official means. I’m sure there are other ways to try it out, of course…

Exactly!

Kept it going for a while, making sure to take a day off once a month to avoid building another stressful streak. But I kinda got to the end of its usefulness and wandered off to other things.

Just started learning Spanish and I thought about firing it up again but the app is such a mess these days I actually can’t face it.

Edit: Remember getting rid of the streak doesn’t actually lose your “progress” in learning the language, which is presumably the important part. It’s just a meaningless number. You can do it!

Ngl that damn streak took over my life at one point, I was over 1000 days and climbing. Decided one day to just…let it go on purpose. To no longer be caged by the tyranny of the owl.

Highly recommend it, the sense of freedom is unreal.

I’ve thought about it an uncomfortable amount and decided you might be right.

You’re welcome.

Andy Serkis and Liv Tyler

As much as I love Lemmy, it’s just honestly not ready for another big influx yet. The 0.19 update broke so much, it really brought home how precarious this whole thing still is. Those of us who are here either a) kind of enjoy the jank because it feels like an adventure b) were morally outraged enough to make a stand against Reddit or c) both.

I have a very small amount of influence in the niche community of fibre crafts and especially cross stitch. Would I be able to explain Lemmy to my audience in a way that made sense and that they might even want to try out? Absolutely. Would I actually do that until it’s a bit more stable? Absolutely not, apart from a couple of specific individuals that I’m already working on.

Trying to force people to join platform B when platform A is already serving their needs makes no sense. You need to find the people who are dissatisfied, the people that would actually benefit from trying something new, and then make sure they’re aware of the option.

Don’t get me wrong through, I do encourage people to learn about and dip their toes into the Fediverse in general. Just last week I convinced a wave of fibre crafters (often older ladies who have barely ever ventured outside of Facebook) to try out Mastodon and Pixelfed and some of them have really taken to it! Alt text and content warnings and everything! One or two fellow YouTubers are even setting up PeerTube channels to bring over more crafting content.

Why did I tell them to join Mastodon over Lemmy? I’m literally moderator of !knitting@lemmy.world and !lemmy_stitch@sh.itjust.works so surely it’s in my best interests to bring them over here?

No. I know the demographic, I know what they’re annoyed about with big social media, and I thought Mastodon / Pixelfed were the best replacements for them.

As much as we would all love to see Lemmy become huge, you have to meet people where they’re at. If Lemmy is genuinely the best choice for everyone who is currently in /r/adelaide or whatever, then brilliant, your strategy makes sense. But if it’s not actually in their best interests, if they’re just going to be annoyed by things breaking and not see enough value to make it worthwhile, then there’s no point doing it just because you wish Lemmy was bigger.

Maybe the moral of this story is that the real strategy you want to be looking at is getting tiny niche influencers on side! 😄

Curse seasonal colour analysis and all of its surprising accuracy! I don’t want to be a bright spring, I want to be goth!

You live your best life in that blue dress kid and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Glad to hear other folks having positive experiences here too! Idk about you but every single time I’ve corrected someone for referring to me as “he” on Lemmy, they’ve actually apologised. Quite the change from Reddit!

Being welcoming to people in general goes without saying. But we’re specifically in a thread about encouraging more women to join and making them feel safe to do so.

Woohoo! Get them over here, December is going to be SOCK MONTH it’s very exciting haha 😄

I’m a woman, and make no attempt to hide that fact in my posts. That said, I also don’t personally have much interest in talking about being a woman, so don’t sub to any of those places you linked.

Over on Reddit I just sort of let people assume I was male a lot of the time, since it wasn’t really relevant to what we were talking about. But from the start on Lemmy I’ve made sure to call out incorrect assumptions, downvote and give a talking to people stereotyping or being misogynistic, etc etc. And the more of us (of all genders) that make that same decision, the better things get.

I also mod !knitting@lemmy.world which as you might expect is largely although by no means entirely women. Any questionable comments over there are dealt with swiftly, I am absolutely not having it.

I don’t necessarily see it as a “problem” that Lemmy is seemingly male-dominated (I say Lemmy because my Mastodon is very much female-and-NB-dominated). It’s more just a fact of early adopters tending to the techy interests that skew male. But if someone does see it as a problem and wants it to change, there are basically two things to do:

1. Make sure you’re helping make Lemmy a welcoming place for non-males
2. Invite your non-male friends

All that said, other women may disagree but I don’t particularly feel like a minority on here and never really think about it until coming across something gross (which is a LOT less often than on Reddit, thankfully). There may be few enough women that I recognise their names often when they post, but let’s be honest Lemmy is a small world and that goes for most regular posters in general.

(And it helps that I’m middle-aged so if any little boy thinks they can upset me with comments about my gender or appearance or whatever, lol, the self-confidence of age is a wonderful thing 😉)

Edit: Just wanted to add, if you’re not a man and you’re reading this thinking “wow she’s lucky, I’ve had such a bad experience here” then first, I’m sorry you’ve had that experience, people suck sometimes. But also, drop me a DM let’s see if we’ve got any interests in common and I can maybe signpost you to some more friendly communities and people. Between my two accounts I spend WAY too much time on Lemmy!

I make videos that are usually somewhere between 10-20mins long, and I know that video storage really adds up fast. My worry with things like this is that I basically can’t afford to donate as much as I would be costing. But maybe there’s some kind of relevant info on that somewhere that I just can’t immediately see. Definitely worth an investigate, at least!