I am approaching Day 180 in a row of learning German and I finally progressed to the emerald league on Monday. In my previous post, I wrote of the futility of striving to achieve the Apple Activity challenges. I see the Duolingo challenges in a different light.
When learning a language it’s easy to hit walls and it’s easy to lose enthusiasm and drive. Starting a new module entails making a lot of mistakes and this discourages you from spending time on it.
I’m on the Apple Activities March Walking Challenge this month. The app has decided that I must walk or run 298 kilometres. It’s an average of 9.6 kilometres a day. This is both easy and challenging at the same time. Walking 10 kilometres takes about two hours.
When I had a broken arm I walked more than two hours a day, because I had nothing else I could do. I also walked that much because I couldn’t bike, take the car or drive the scooter.
I usually read several books at a time. This is because I start books but find that my interest is drawn to another topic. As these are usually factual books I can afford to take a break from one book and return to it later.
The Aeronaut: Travels in the Air I started reading this book last night. A meteorologist from, the mid 1850s wanted to study the weather more accurately and in order to do so he wanted to measure the weather from a variety of altitudes.
On one side of the Channel, you have people like Colin Furze building fun machines that have the fatal flaw of having an internal combustion engine. On the other side of the Channel, you have people like Marc Gyver building an electric car with easily bought components. The video below shows the construction process without talking, and without music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FIznSec7BA
For about 2000 Euros, with bike parts, and the right skills, you can build your own cars.
Last night I went to see Interdependence, an environmental film in eleven parts. It is a collection of short films that explore environmental themes around the topics of air, water, and earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSKBBztInug
When I watched one part it reminded me of Les Vacances de Mr Hulot, a french film from 1953. It looks at a dystopian vision of the future where people go to the zoo to see animals on screens and inflatable balloons serve as sea mammals.
Yesterday I went on an Ingress bike tide that passed by bison. I went from Nyon to Mies and from Mies up towards Gex, and before getting to Gex, I turned towards Divonne where I met an Ingress player before heading home, as the sun was setting.
I went out in the morning, dressed warmly. It was warm. Warm weather means less clothing on the bike ride. With such a great opportunity I decided to go for a bike ride.
Walking and finding old trees is still possible if you look around. If you’re attentive you can find trees that are hundreds of years old. They are massive compared to younger trees. Their trunk is broad and their branches are complex.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWb2iO9F0KM
If you walk around the Mediterranean you will find thousand-year-old olive trees and if you walk around Switzerland it is also possible to find old trees. There are two or three parks in Geneva where you can find them.
With the sentence “Of Twitter threads (Mice) and Blog Posts (Humans)” you’ll see that I’ve done two things. The first is that I’ve modernised a well-known book title to draw parallels with the practices of writing Twitter threads and blog posts.
People write twitter threads because they think that it’s fast, convenient, will draw an audience and it’s trendy. It keeps people within the same site. No browsing between platforms and websites.
I stopped playing Ingress a few years ago because of how much time it requires. I have started going on Ingress walks again - a 12km path to level 13 in yesterday’s case, because I’m combining the daily walk that I would do anyway, with listening to podcasts and audiobooks, anyway.
By walking and listening to audiobooks and podcasts I am constantly learning about new things. Recently I’ve been listening to current affairs podcasts, I listened to 13 minutes to the moon, I listened to podcasts about the Swiss Watch Industry and more.
Today I opened YouTube, looked at the choice of videos and thought “I don’t feel like watching any of this content because of its headlines”, whilst eating lunch. Instead, I tried something less habitual. I opened the podcast app on my laptop and looked for videos that might be interesting.
I ended up watching one about air pollution in Geneva. I found the use of drones flying over Geneva interesting because I’m not allowed to fly in Geneva due to it being within a five-kilometer radius of Geneva but also because it’s a populated area and it’s illegal to fly over people without authorisation.