#daily Duolingo

[ghouhlish]

If I remembered to write every day like I remember to do my French duo lingo everyday this blog would be a different story

#thougths #duolingo #french #French duolingo #daily duolingo

[kimberlysplanet]

It’s Duolingo’s 10th anniversary. I just ordered this anniversary plushy of Duo. I’m not into stuffed animals but this is so kawaii! I had to have it.

I got it from the Duolingo store.

store.Duolingo.com

#diary #journal #my diary #Duolingo #daily Duolingo #Duolingo plushy #cute Duolingo #Duolingo stuff #cute #kawaii #language learning #my daily diary #my day so far

[cellgatinbo]

love how it's seemingly a universal thing for qsmp members when something gets postponed or they don't have anything to do for a bit they're like "oh shit this is the time to do my duolingo"

#qsmp #cellbit watching daily dose and he just pauses it like 'wait. duolingo time'

[copperbadge]

Hey Sam, this came across my feed on twit and I wondered if you’d heard about it at all? :(

https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/18sx06i/big_layoff_at_duolingo/

Direct link for the curious. Short version, a post on Reddit reported that Duolingo laid off a "large percentage" of its staff, replacing them with AI. I hadn't heard about it, but I knew there were reports about Duolingo trimming its offerings and losing a lot of goodwill after revamping itself a year ago; they've been public about their use of GPT-4 AI starting last March, and it was a tentpole of this year's annual convention, so I was aware of that as well.

The Reddit post is by a former Duolingo contractor, who also shares their severance letter, which is terse to say the least. They state that of their four-person team, two people were let go, with the others left to "babysit the AI". They say that they're a translator and that the people who remained were recast as "curators" for AI translation.

But the post is also not otherwise sourced. So here is everyone's periodic reminder that if the only source is Reddit and Reddit isn't citing other sources, you need to dig a little.

All journalistic sources I've seen (that aren't paywalled, like the Bloomberg article most of them cite) are visibly using the Reddit post as their entre, but also state that the percentage of contractors who were let go is about 10%. That's 10% of contract workers, not 10% of all staff, although admittedly I don't know how many people Duolingo employs, contract or otherwise. 10% is a meaningful chunk, but Duolingo has said that the contractors were let go because their projects had wrapped. While company reps state that this all could be related to the use of AI, they've also said that it's not a 1:1 replacement.

Mind you, the company isn't offering much in the way of backing that up, either.

So there are a couple of issues. Some workers probably were let go simply because their work was finished; the Reddit user doesn't seem to be one of those. We are still seeing that at least some of these jobs were replaced by AI, which is undoubtedly a harbinger of things to come. We don't know what impact this will have on the app. We don't know what kind of work the majority of those people were doing. There's a thread in the Reddit post about whether the voices are now "AI voices" but there's no citation to back up the idea either. They definitely aren't doing AI voice generation for the Latin, where one of the voice actors has a nice voice and also a very loud pet bird.

There is a bigger issue of contract work in the digital and translation industries in the first place; a lot of these people should have been full employees and would have had more protection from this if they had been. Translators have also been brutally devastated by machine/AI translation, which is its own issue. But these are separate and much larger problems that are in no way unique to Duolingo.

I don't like taking this stance because I feel like I'm defending both Duolingo and AI, which isn't my goal. My goal is to remind people that if you see a single source offering a vague statement, you should fact-check. 10% is likely a lot of people but it's not "a huge percentage". We have no real numbers on who was fired, just this person on Reddit saying they're a translator and they were let go. Do I believe them? Absolutely, I have no reason not to and the basic gist is backed up by statements from Duolingo. Do I trust this person's intel? Not especially, after the loud axe-grinding noises they made while posting. Do I trust Duolingo, whose goal is to make money and not look bad while doing it? Not especially either, simply from the standpoint of "the bigger the company the more they're likely to screw you".

But the point is we don't have good data, and this is a complicated and nuanced issue involving a lot of different factors. So either you have to let it go on past, or you have to be prepared to dig a little deeper than a person posting to Reddit about getting laid off.

In any case, Duolingo is one of the few activities that brings me joy right now (I know, I'm working on the issue) and is the only language learning structure that has ever actually worked for me, so despite the new intel and despite the fact that I know a lot of people think of Duolingo's revamp the way I think of Tumblr's new dash, I'm going to keep on with it.

(Plus I paid up for a year, so I might as well at least use it until the year runs out and then reassess.)

#your daily news digest #sam learns italian #duolingo

[vexacarnivorous]

my duolingo has started to join this year's dracula daily hype

#langblr #duolingo #dracula daily #bahasa indonesia #mine

[zzzzzestforlife]

🌤️ refreshing + renewing activity ideas 🌻

left: finally caved and started habitica a while back — it's basically my cuter to-do list now 🤷‍♀️ right: i'm so good at 반말 (casual speech) thanks to all the k-content i consume 😎

I completed Habitica's March Self-Care Challenge (in the last possible week 😅) and one of the prompts was to make a list of things that ✨refresh and renew✨ you. After keeping track of this list mentally for some time, it was so nice to finally write it all down and realize how much support I have simply from my own actions and from where I choose to direct my focus! Highly recommend these activities and if you have any recommendations that help you gain energy, please share them with me too!! 🙏💕

Go to Sleep

i'm totally serious, i'm not just saying this because my entire blog was founded on my love for sleep

easy, low-effort

everything is better when you're well-rested

being unconscious and unaware is the situation to be in for least possible stress

Exercise

ok, the complete opposite end of the spectrum, but it's connected when you remember that physical activity while awake leads to better sleep!

eliminates/prevents chronic pain issues (learned from personal experience, unfortunately)

you feel like That Girl™️

if you like the feeling of accomplishment and progress, this one's for you because ENDORPHINS, BABY!!

Watch a Comfort Show

bonus if it's a comedy — laughter does SO much for your psyche

again, easy, low-effort

set a binge limit though because even if you have nothing else planned for the day your body WILL complain and you WILL feel like trash if you go more than ~3-4 hours

Go for a Walk

bonus if it's in nature/outdoors because exposure to sunlight cues your body to make you sleepy later at night

easy, low-effort (can you tell i'm partial to activities of this variety)

eliminates/prevents chronic pain issues!!!

Listen to your Favorite Music

have a dance party!!

sing (or lip sync) along!!

while cleaning

while commuting

while cooking (just be careful not to get too into it and burn something... or yourself...)

Get into Flow State

this doesn't necessarily mean doing something typically "creative"

you can get into a flow state when doing ANYTHING if you're able to lose awareness of yourself/time while doing it!!

which is usually why doing something you enjoy and that requires higher-level cognition (i.e. a creative hobby) gets you there

BUT you can also achieve it more "passively," for example, reading a good book or learning about something your passionate about (personally something highly open-ended works best, e.g. you can just keep learning languages forever and ever)

💌: i had way more items in my list, but these have been the most reliable ones from my experience, and you deserve the best! ❣️ until next time, take care, lovelies 💐

#that girl #it girl #self care #daily habits #daily routine #habitica #duolingo #studyblr #study motivation #study inspiration #zesty's life #self empowerment #self love #student life #lifestyle #hobbies #100 days of studying #100 days of productivity #100 days of self discipline #langblr #korean langblr #dream girl #becoming that girl #study aesthetic #dark academia #dark aesthetic #lifeblr

[blumin-onion]

Daily Doodle Day 163

<- Day 162 | All Days | Day 164 ->

Clippie and Duo making threats :)

#🧅 art #traditional art #daily doodle #daily doodles #onionart #doodles #doodle #sketch #sketches #beginner artist #fan art #duolingo #duo the owl #clippie #paperclips #pencil sketch #art #artist #artwork #artblur #artblr #small art blog #art blog #small art account #small artist #artists on tumblr #dailydoodles #daily drawing

[ultrasofts]

abolish france

#she says as she does her daily duolingo french lesson #football lb

[viktorrotkiv]

One of my Duolingo sentences today was "he is a weird Dutch doctor" and I clicked 'next' automatically before I could take a screenshot 😔😔 y'all would've loved Arabic Duolingo Van Helsing

#dracula #dracula daily #van helsing #dr van helsing #abraham van helsing #mineltg #duolingo #25 notes

[ledstaracg]

#daily doodle #duolingo #sorry this is late #iykyk #lily duolingo #zari duolingo #ai is a plague

[itwoodbeprefect]

on a deep & fundamental level i don't think whoever decided to allow a maximum of four language settings on my phone's android keyboard understands me. why not five. why not six. why not..... ten

#i've been bumping into this for weeks now. there are three that i use in a practical sense on a daily basis. so those need to stay #the fourth is currently french which i truly don't Need but do Want #so to get something else i COULD swap that one out but it would come with. just. annoyances. when i go on my next duolingo binge #but that leaves 2-3 others that i also Want. and i could easily invent a few more! my desires are MUCH closer to ten than four #does the fact that i don't actually speak russian mean that i shouldn't spend a few hours answering little app prompts #and learn a few isolated words and phrases out of curiosity??? for fun? with a cyrillic keyboard and russian predictive text? #FOUR language settings? this is actually where orwell got the final number in the title of his book from :( #*

[bisonaari]

I'm tired of getting this/tämä and that/tuo wrong on duolingo why do yall use different words for those concepts

#THIS IS MY MOST FREQUENT MISTAKE AND I HATE IT #I KNOW THE MEANINGNS OF COURSE #and also in french we technically have 'ceci' and 'cela' but in daily life we just use the shortened version 'ça' for both #so I just tend to use this and that interchangeably WHILE I KNOW THEY'RE DIFFERENT #SO OF COURSE I ALSO USE THEM INTERCHANGEABLY ON DUOLINGO #BUT THEY'RE NOT THE SAME #AND SO I LOSE HEARTS ALL THE TIME BECAUSE I TRANSLATED TUO AS THIS #URGH #anyway #bison learns finnish #lol

[takookii]

I started duolingo again to help me with swahili

#duolingo #just your daily reminder #my art #digital art

[dogstomp]

Dogstomp #2598 - February 13th

Patreon / Twitter / Discord Server

#comic diary #daily comic #comic journal #autobio comics #february 13 2022 #comic 2598 #duolingo

[toomanystoryideas]

vent post ig

i just feel so fucking hopeless like all the time i wish i had friends to do things with but i have like 5 people max and that’s pushing it, two girls i see all the time during the week but they both go home every single weekend, one girl who’s fun to hang out with but is always busy with work and school, her roommate i don’t even know that well and have never hung out with one on one, and one guy who’s chill and really sweet but he’s got a girlfriend and way more of a social life than me so he’s also always busy with his friends and the only time i’ve done something with him outside of taking the train to/from classes was an evening mass since we’re both catholic. my roommate usually goes home every weekend so at least i can cry alone in peace or just eat every meal here while watching movies by myself but she’s here this weekend and i feel so awkward not leaving the room on a friday night except to go to dinner by myself while she’s having fun with her friends. at least i’m working 16 hours this weekend so i can be somewhere else for most of the next two days

on top of this i just checked and i have at least two visible cavities and i know it’s not my fault since i’m genetically susceptible to enamel weakness or whatever the fuck but it makes me feel like literally nothing i do matters since i’m so focused on making sure my teeth are clean because of my terrible dental history and i have a wisdom tooth growing in that i’m definitely going to need to get removed and i’ve never gone under anesthesia before and i’m scared i’m going to like out myself to my parents or something which would be so fucking unsafe for me. idk

#whatever #can’t even cry since i have to wake up at 5:30 tomorrow and it’s almost 11 #so i have to go to bed but i haven’t even done my daily Duolingo lesson since I’ve just been doing nothing feeling like shit for hours

[shinemon311]

#mobile #duolingo #japanese #duo #results #progress #education #daily results