Tessera

Maya ☁️➡️🌸@mayaofspring.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I see the texts, the signs, hear the passers-by, and I can't possibly ignore the rich cultural complexity underlying all of this! I must learn, I will learn

I wouldn't find Japanese/Mandarin even half as appealing as they are to me presently if not for 汉字・漢字 tbh

can you feel the fortune flowing?

Incredible things are happening in the Singlish Dictionary

"Recently Added Terms" includes words such as leehsienlowkenuinely and leekuanyewinely

btw as of 2026 there are a total of 3953 emoji in Unicode For comparison, 2136 kanji are considered to be in common use in Japan. A corresponding number in Chinese is 3500 or so. Thus, if we wanted to make logographic English real, we should be able to do so now!

A "Billion Laughs Attack" sounds like an anime villain kind of thing, maybe a bit JoJo-esque, so it's disappointing to look it up and learn that it's just an exponentially expanding XML or Yaml

Maybe not as much, but I keep thinking of 尝 (to taste, try out, experience) as making a 😋 or 😛 sort of face, if you squint

魔 is one of my favourite characters to think of it. Something about it really visually embodies the awe and terror and the bewitching mystery of magic, were it to exist

I'm going to Hong Kong next week Everyone is telling me the following ahead of my trip: East Asian? | speak Cantonese | speak Mandarin no | 😲😲🥳🥳🎉 | 😲🎉 yes | 😃 | 🙅🙅👎🤬🤬 So even though I'm not East Asian, I'm still slightly scared to attempt Mandarin there I think

魔 is one of my favourite characters to think of it. Something about it really visually embodies the awe and terror and the bewitching mystery of magic, were it to exist

I want to say that it's been 4 years for the technology to prove itself for humanity and it failed. Software: worse. Writing: worse. Graphics: worse. Brains: fried. People: deskilled. Diseases cured: 0. How can "but any moment now" be treated seriously? The counterpoint though..

The popular view of AI being a bubble reflects a desire for this to be just a temporary crisis that eventually goes away – because it's bad! it's unpleasant! it doesn't make lives meaningfully better! one wants it to be a nightmare one eventually wakes up from!

I think I actually just don't want to see any AI image ever again. I don't want to have to second-guess every image I see for inhumanity. And those eldritch creations started to make their way into my dreams too. Begone.

An actually embarrassing thing about Japanese is how drawn out it can get in comparison. 「なければなりません」in Chinese that's like two characters tops

Maya ☁️➡️🌸@mayaofspring.bsky.social · 4w ago

I'm dismayed that I'm now finding Mandarin more fun to say out loud than Japanese. The latter feels bland now. My muscles are not being exercised

Accidentally wrote a bullet point in this form earlier today. Just a glimpse etc.

Maya ☁️➡️🌸@mayaofspring.bsky.social · 5mo ago

There's no greater tell that the author's native language is Chinese than when the slogan goes <verb> <noun> <verb> <noun>

Maya ☁️➡️🌸@mayaofspring.bsky.social · 4w ago

It's cute how there's often a meta-process for a process. E.g when tidying things up it's difficult to know where you want the things to be in the first place, but a sweep of one area at a time won't hurt, and that's how you slowly figure things out while making visible progress!

Maya ☁️➡️🌸@mayaofspring.bsky.social · 4w ago

So now I know that the Sinosphere equivalent to Christmas decorations in early November is Mid-Autumn decorations starting mid-August

请注意月台空隙

the Tetris effect for language learning is that words echo through my head words like 你想吃什么 and 我要去旅行

It's difficult to forget that China is being evil about a few things at least when any time you load one of their maps they make sure to remind you with the prominent dashed line

the Tetris effect for language learning is that words echo through my head words like 你想吃什么 and 我要去旅行

Looking up words on Pleco is so fun because it always goes <the word you were looking for> (internet slang) <a perfect one-character homophonic substitution in the word you were looking for that adds a hilariously accurate shade of meaning>

I can't be a woke, I can't be a chud, I can't be an abundance lib, I can't be a don't-tread-on-me libertarian, I can't be a sewer socialist, I can't be a rationalist, I can't be an accelerationist, I can't be a doomer, I can't be a CCP shill, I can't be an LKY shill

Not been posting politically recently because my opinions once again have entered the nuance hat stage

Singapore CBD could go so hard if only they had the guts to pedestrianise it

Lee Kuan Yew: unlike those dirty overcrowded cities of Asia, I'll make Singapore a Garden City also Lee Kuan Yew: draws giant stroads through central SG what did he mean by this

Lee Kuan Yew: unlike those dirty overcrowded cities of Asia, I'll make Singapore a Garden City also Lee Kuan Yew: draws giant stroads through central SG what did he mean by this

Not been posting politically recently because my opinions once again have entered the nuance hat stage

Dipped prata in sugar today and it tasted so much like Polish faworki

I had shui kueh today and the main thing I'd like to report is that it hits the exact flavour profile of pierogi ruskie, just with different base ingredients. We really are more alike than we're different

Did you know that they broke the display of images over there at X dot com? you get to enjoy the exclusivity of good-looking image grids here now!

I've come to associate this type of font with Singapore. I like it

In some way, learning Chinese in Singapore is like what I imagine learning Dutch in the Netherlands must be like. You can see it everywhere, but no-one will ever speak it to you

I've come to associate this type of font with Singapore. I like it

A recurring brainworm of mine is that people would see malformed sentences from me and think it's a sign of ESL, when actually it's just me being a sloppy typist, randomly dropping words, or making an incomplete edit

At the cliff edge of the business core, arcologies stand like giants, and face the eerie emptiness ... what a stupid city

The possibility I'm scared off the most is that it's actually too late for me now and I would never be able to internalise another language's inner workings again, only twist it at the surface level. One purpose for the latter project is to prove to myself that's not the case

in fairness, I'm kind of spreading myself thin between the two distinct research projects of "how do I speedrun Mandarin to where my Japanese currently is" and "can I become acceptably fluent in Japanese at all"