ragebutt

Just keep in mind that pulling the anode cap of a crt is genuinely lethal electricity. Like you can get zapped pretty bad by a power supply cap (you should get in the habit of discharging these too) but generally unless they’re seriously big caps you won’t die. A crt can kill your tho so make sure you discharge it correctly. That’s why I say watch a video on how to do it, there are plenty of them and it’s much better to see what to do than follow a text description. Keep in mind that sometimes you have to discharge 2-3x (not usually but sometimes, and never hurts to be safe). You’ll see a spark and hear a pop. You can get a tool to discharge but an insulated screwdriver is all I ever used

Macs of that era are a pain. Good luck. Check capacitors of course, replace battery, reset pmu. That era of mac you can get a service manual which is nice, get a meter and you can trace reference voltages thru power supply and logic board. Flyback is notorious in those imacs so look at that (same as above, check for burn, crack, loose, smell). 68kmla.org has a lot of great repair info on that era

It’s persistence too. The language exchange is great to hear, that’s huge.

I’m much better now from daily chats with my Japanese friends. That’s really what was missing from the many, many, many years I spent before imo. I would study flash cards and eventually Anki decks once that was a thing, I would have practice conversations here and there with other weebs or in class during the brief period I had that. But for the most part I just read manga, which isn’t really all that challenging (usually), and I would listen to anime while reading subtitles. It was so passive

But now it’s the study daily instead of when I feel like it. It’s chatting every night with my friends and having them be like oh no, it’s actually もう一つの, not もう一つ. Or it’s “so-reh” or whatever I’m saying wrong. The constant feedback is essential

It’s embarrassing to say how many years relative to how poor my skills are haha. Like if I had genuinely kept my practice up this whole time I would be a near native speaker

Started in high school, like 2001. Lived in a small town so was self teaching via instruction online and help from the somethingawful adtrw dc++ hub and what eventually became 4chan

Took a some classes in college but didn’t minor or anything. Did get a chance to go to Japan at the end of college (around 2007ish) though. My Japanese was pathetically bad, despite having spent 6 years at this point. I had a somewhat decent vocabulary but I had a mix of: didn’t practice grammar enough so I couldn’t speak with any kind of confidence, didn’t practice speaking enough so when I did actually speak I was often unintelligible, and I was a huge weeb so I kept saying cringe shit

That was a pretty disheartening experience (still loved Japan though) so then I basically didn’t practice for a few years. At this point I was starting my career and then went to grad school so it fell by the wayside

Then I started to pick it back up in like 2016 but mainly to read manga. I was done grad school by then so I finally had some time again and started to brush up again, but passively

Then covid happened and I reconnected with some people from Japan I knew. They wanted to work on English, I wanted to work on Japanese, so we’ve been doing that. Now I’m realizing that was 5 years ago and my speech still sucks

God I’m so depressed now

Oh interesting that’s one of my least favorite parts of duolingo

There’s a free app called scripts I’ve been using to learn stroke order. It’s just okay but they smash them at you with much more repetition

Can’t learn if you don’t try!

But seriously that person is correct you can die

But also at the same time it’s a little overblown. My friends and I learned how to do this shit as dumbass 12-16 year olds without the support of the internet and we’re all still here. Research what you are doing, take your time, learn to discharge things safely. It’s not rocket science to discharge a capacitor or a tube. And with proper maintenance that monitor will run for at least another decade or two (but without it convergence issues and that arcing issue might worsen and take it out sooner rather than later)

If you really don’t trust yourself to do it then find someone else though. There’s plenty of dorks out there who love tinkering with CRTs

Do you know much about crt maintenance? If so get on it!

If not: it seems like it’s in good shape but based on your description of the arcing sound and image distortion you may have high voltage leakage.

Before investigating the fix for that start with basics: clean the inside of the case. Open it up, don’t touch anything dangerous yet (turn it off and disconnect power though, obviously). Blast out everything with compressed air. Dust build up, insect nests, etc can wreak havoc but I don’t think this is the issue. I bet it’s the anode cap

Pretty easy fix: clean the anode cap. Power it down, let it sit for a bit, look up how to discharge the tube (you basically bridge the anode to ground with something like a screwdriver. This is dangerous though bc very high voltage so watch a video to see what to actually do and use an insulated screwdriver, obviously)

Once the anode cap is off clean it and the area around it with isopropyl. If the anode cap is damaged that poses a bigger challenge, you can sometimes source a replacement still or bodge repair them if not

If it’s not the anode cap next check is flyback. This is easy to diagnose generally. Just look at it: does it have cracks, does it smell, burn marks, can you wiggle it/is it loose (power disconnected obviously) then that’s probably got some issues. Sourcing a replacement can be a pain

Finally check grounding straps. Less likely but could be a factor

If none of that works it’s probably arcing inside the tube. Sorry if that’s the case and enjoy it while it lasts, nothing lasts forever. This is probably not the case, maybe

Today is the day, here is your sign

Anki and tae Kim

Don’t fuck with Duolingo, waste of money

With active maintenance

Fair point

Yes, the massive fall of deinstitutionalization began in the 60s as indicated on my graph? And as I said it began long before him? I don’t understand what you are disagreeing with

Even the incarceration rise started before him in the early 70s. He just is the one that turned this to a million with the war on drugs

If I can learn it anyone can. I am straight up stupid. Full disclosure though: while I can write it pretty well (with a phone or pc, no fucking way I can do it by hand) my speech is mixed. When I talk to Japanese people they say “wow! Your Japanese is so good!” Which means it’s not very good hahah

Mandarin is way harder because it’s alllll kanji and the speaking in tones stuff is so much more nuanced

I’m pretty sure it’s ranked hard because you have to learn an alternative alphabet. But this is not really that tough. You can learn hiragana fairly quickly. Katakana is not nearly as necessary as you might think. Then learning kanji does admittedly take forever but often you’ll see things are either written in hiragana, only use the most basic of kanji, or if they use fancy kanji they have the hiragana next to it anyway (like a phonetic spelling)

The grammar is a little challenging:

Subject verb object - I sushi eat instead of I eat sushi

The subject gets dropped and implied; the language is heavily contextual. I eat it - 食べます (tabemasu) - i (implied) eat it (implied). This is why llm and machine language translation stinks at Japanese, because it can’t really know context from a single line (though it’s improving, chatgpt got that right though deepl said “I’ll eat”, which isn’t wrong, strictly and did give both I’ll eat it and I’ll have some as alternatives)

Then there’s particles like は wa and が ga which mark the subject and topic, respectively. English doesn’t really have an equivalent.

But this isn’t harder as much as it’s nuance imo. The writing system and alphabet is harder, objectively. There’s 46 hiragana and over 100 if you include the additional forms (which is misleading a bit) then basically the same number of katakana, then about 2,000 kanji in use. That’s a lot to learn but it’s basically an extension of learning vocab

Now should you learn Japanese? That’s a tough one. Stagnant economy, falling birth rate year after year, etc. but your goals are your own and don’t have to be practical

Yes conversion therapy never fully went away although some states have banned it and others have banned the use of shock as aversive despite allowing conversion therapy to continue

To clarify: there are several things people refer to as shock therapy

Ect or electro convulsive therapy is sometimes called shock therapy. This is not conversion therapy. This is evidence based for treatment resistant depression and bipolar disorder. This has an ugly history but the modern version can be very helpful if you’ve had years of no success with treatment. That said this should be something that you discuss and consent to

Conversion therapy is a form of Aversive conditioning. Shock therapy in this context is using electricity as the aversive stimulus. This is a behavioral conditioning technique to pair stimuli. It is theoretically simple and essentially based on the work of Pavlov. I take a thing you like and consistently pair it with something aversive. Eventually you associate the thing with the aversive.

So I may show you gay pornography and give an electric shock. But any aversive can theoretically work: I could show you two screens: gay pornography on one and gory death shit on the other. I could get one of those air horns and blast it to surprise you. Etc. modern conversion therapy goes way harder than this, they’ll do weird fucking shit like put a pressure sensing ring on your cock and show you hot guys, then introduce the aversive when you tingle.

Do you see the issue here? They believe they are making gay pornography aversive to you. But what’s really happening is that they are making expression of sexuality aversive. In the weenie monitor example it becomes getting an erection. This is because the people doing this are not only monsters, they are shitty at their job. They do not understand (or more likely willfully misunderstand) basic risks of what they are implementing and they also do not plan for basic realities like generalization (eg if I make homosexual erotic content aversive to you what’s to stop you generalizing that disgust to all erotic content? That’s a risk they’re willing to take, apparently, and a part of informed consent I bet money they do not explain (amongst many many other things))

Conversion therapy is torture. Aversive conditioning in general is. Anyone who does it should be in prison. They are monsters who care more about their agenda than their clients well being (which they likely do not care about at all)