Random Thread ~Usagi-Chan ☮ Tūsurī~

[Celedam]

Your widget got cranked.

I know that sounds dirty, but what it really means is that even complex or delicate procedures can become laughably routine if they're performed enough times by a specialist.

LASIK, for example — the mere thought of cutting into the eye (the eye!) sends most people screaming, but for an experienced LASIK surgeon with the latest tools and techniques… pfft.

(LASIK is on my mind because a local newscaster committed suicide yesterday, due to depression following LASIK complications, and the story has been all over the local news media today. the complications she experienced are very rare because widgets, but the media are beating the story the death — and thereby exaggerating the risk — because she was one of their own.)

[esm]

I recently got a freelance part-time linguist position doing some stuff for Facebook (project currently ongoing indefinitely), so I'll be less broke than I've been for the past half a year. I'm also excited to have something stable I can add to my schedule.

I need to pay off bullshit debt and all, but I want to save to travel a bit here and there, since my schedule should be flexible. My manager for my research job is super nice, since that's also a part-time job anyway, so I could be gone for a while here and there.

I think I need to find new health insurance though.

[TotallyUncool]

Congrtulations - that sounds good!
(I hope you can find good health insurance.)

I need to shift/rearrange my time so that I can fit in some travel and just plain actual living. It's too easy to let work and responsibilities take up too much of my time, and I know that really doesn't work out very well at all.

[erilaz]

esm: Congrats on your freelance gig! I need to scare up more of those myself. I finished proofreading the workbook for a German language textbook recently; I'm still waiting for my paycheck.

Moh: Thanks for reawakening memories of ingrown toenails in my younger days....

[Zunu]

That's so cool, esm! Are you able to share a little bit about the project? Like does it involve machine translation?

[esm]

It's an Entity Linking & Entity Recognition project, and I'll be working with Thai data. I did a test for them with English and it's pretty fun. Working with Thai will be harder because I have less cultural knowledge on that end, but it's also a lot of doing Google searches, so you don't need to know everything if you're resourceful.

Regarding freelance gigs: I got two papers to proofread a few days ago, as the school quarter is ending, so it was nice extra money I wasn't expecting. I also like reading things from other fields.

[Zunu]

That legit sounds super interesting.

[Celedam]

Today I learned the difference between the British Isles and the British Islands.

[DSQueenie]

I left Tumblr cause I got tired of all the "self-care" posts telling people with legitimate mental illnesses to just ~take a bubble bath~.
Imo if they had taken care of all the pedophiles and crap to begin with, they probably wouldn't have had to do all this. Just my 2 cents. [shrug emoji here]

I woke up this morning and my left hand was tingly for about 15 minutes. I'm really this close to flipping out on the pain doctor tomorrow.

You said everything I feel about this Tumblr situation. Tumblr can be good for some things but the community is so toxic.

I hope your hand gets better.

[DSQueenie]

Today I learned the difference between the British Isles and the British Islands.

Sorry for the double post. I’ve never heard of the term “British Islands” before. I’d assume it would have been easier to just say the United Kingdom and Crown Dependencies but I guess that would be laborious to write a hundred times when making a law.