I second Duolingo and Drops for mostly vocabulary learning, and then I’d supplement with a textbook for grammar and a more structured learning experience. I keep seeing the everything learning german book recommended, but really, just choose whatever looks reasonable and go through it doing all the exercises
Since the problem of the joycons breaking down has come up a few times, I just want to mention that you can easily couple 8bit-do controllers, or presumably any others, and play with those instead. That’s likely to mean they’ll be available for a while. Not sure that you can do anything about a DS’s buttons breaking
What eras do they have/use?
I fully agree. I just think that the economic situations have been getting more and more precarious for lots of people, meaning getting to a modest amount moves further into the distance. I truly believe that we’ll have more people championing climate change issues if we put them in positions where fulfilling their own needs is easier
By changing the system to give them better options and easier choices. It depends on why they don’t care or know, of course. I’m assuming a low SES here, where there’s little energy to inform yourself or change, different strategies should be used for other groups, like more education in schools, etc
You’re right, that is also an effort, though I think it’s one that our current situations make easier, given the amount of free information and the ubiquity of smartphones. Still, I see your point.
On the idea of consuming less resources being a waste of resources: Every one of us has a limited amount of mental energy. Most of us have to spend a lot of that on making a living. If we want to live perfectly moral lives, we can expend the rest of it doing that. But then that is the only thing we will change in the world. On the other hand, if we spend that energy on reforming policy and inspiring societal change, we may have further reaching effects. I don’t think the former is necessarily the more moral choice, though it definitely is a moral one. In an ideal world, we’d all do both of course
Not an unfair point, I grant you. I’d say that while a single vote is a small drop as well, it also requires much less effort of someone, whereas changing your life consistently every single day in ways that are difficult and unpleasant is a lot more to ask. I’d say it’s a matter of effort vs. reward
Fair, I should have made the effort to use “poor” in quotations, too. I love the idea of mutual aid working that way. I guess I’d be worried about relying on it for anything as potentially life-or-death as healthcare, but that’s a few steps further down the line than we’re discussing here
I don’t believe that we can defeat polluting corporations by not buying their products simply because we can’t completely buying products - many people aren’t in positions to be choosy and often the same companies own the “good” product that do the bad. We need the support of the government to be able to influence these giant corporations with regulations and taxes on pollution
I’d agree with your politics there, too. The poorer you make yourself, the more likely you are to live a moral life. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to also make it a good, comfortable, safe life, and I think it’s a bit much to ask people to go that much against their own interests. (This varies from country to country of course, I’m sure there’s places where you’d be ok)
I’m all in favour of everyone deciding this for themselves. Every person acting ethically is a good thing.
What I disagree with is people pushing other people to act ethically in the same ways when the impact is so small and their activism could focus on much bigger fish
Speaking from a US point of view, society is often structured in such a way that a lot of the solutions you offer are made significantly difficult for consumers, especially with lower income.
People simply aren’t well-enough off to be able to look beyond their own experience and want to improve the world as well. I think that’s why we need to champion worker’s rights as a big part of the push towards all this, too
I feel like this is the option that is most discussed in public discourse, which is the problem. If we discuss climate change through the lense of “Why don’t people bike, since driving is bad for the planet?” rather than “What structural changes (bike lanes, public transit, car-free city centers, etc.) can we offer to encourage people to cycle more?” or even “What are the biggest transport-related emissions (private jets, flying in fresh fruit from halfway across the world, using trucks for shipping, etc.) and how can we work as a society to eliminate them?”, then people will feel disenfranchised, and even if we all started cycling it wouldn’t help nearly as much as if we tackled the bigger corporate issues. It’s neither pragmatic nor fair to focus on individual action at the scale of single consumers.
I think it’s more a matter of going after someone randomly punching people in the face every now and then when there’s mass shootings and stuff even worse going on would be a bad use of resources, even though of course the person punching people is morally in the wrong. Similarly, encouraging people to reduce waste and cycle more is not a good use of resources, when companies are burning coal and rich people take their private jets everywhere.
I second hedgehogs for Germany, they’re so cute! Also, or squirrels are so different from the US kind, they’re just unfortunately a lot shyer, too