Oh lady, I’m getting so good at Spanish

I started Duolingo about a week into the pandemic and am now starting to learn the past tense. I’m kind of stoked by how my comprehension is growing – especially when it comes to spoken Spanish. One of the things I’ve noticed though is I have a harder time understanding the female speaker vs the male speaker during the verbal tests. At first I thought maybe she was speaking faster than the male speaker. Now I think it’s unconscious bias — which I’m very bummed about. I think my brain pays slightly less attention to a female voice. Yikes! There are a lot of online tools and tests for unconscious bias for anyone who wants to find out exactly where their blind spots are. I know I’m slightly more homophobic than the average test taker, slightly less biased than average against race but I’d not taken one on gender — so maybe that’s next so I can quantify?

It’s been interesting watching the clown town show knowing that it’s been canceled. For sure we’re so screwed forever but at least this phase of it is over. Maybe someday I’ll look back on the trump years and think of them fondly in comparison to whatever competent maniac is in charge. Tom Cotton for example. He has the intellectual capacity to weaponize his worst impulses.

I’d just spent a year becoming fluent in German and I realized I was never going to be fluent in French and Italian. This is a thought I had on a train in Sweden in 1993. It was the precise moment I realized that I was, for sure, going to die before I’d done everything I wanted to do in my life. It’s also what I’m feeling right this instant. I just got off a zoom meeting with an A list writer. He’s written a lot of people’s favorite movies. There’s no way I’m going to catch up. Okay, so I’ll lower my standards. Also, yes he has a ton of oscars but I kind of don’t love his films. Like, they’re not movies I wish I’d written despite how wildly successful they were. One thing though that struck me about his approach is he writes every day. Just every single day. I should probably do that. Hasta lluego.