elldoubleyew
I see to your point, the joke leans to imply that Chinese people will lie about the ingredients served in their restaurants to save some money.
This stereotype, however, is predominant amongst Chinese people in China. This joke would fit right in on any Chinese TV show, questioning the legitimacy of the meat at a cheap restaurant is a joke older than the country. This may be why the author calls it "harmless".
It would be the equivalent of a Chinese sitcom where a character might suggest that visit a Texas Barbecue you might get shot by some revolver-wielding cowboy. I don't think many Americans would take offense.
But as the author mentions, strict self censorship amongst broadcasters has effectively cut all scenes that mention "China" or "Chinese" just to be safe.
I have prescription OCD meds that I've been on for a couple of years. I pay 100 USD out of pocket every 3 months for a telehealth appointment with my doc where she asks "everything okay? Same prescrition?" Its totally useless, but I've yet to find a service that is <33 USD/month to save me any money on this.
For structural grammar there are a lot of different routes to go about this, MNN teaches these pretty well in my opinion. I tried using bunpro (https://bunpro.jp) with mixed results but I know some people who swear by it.
As for knowing if your understanding of a sentence is correct, if I have doubts at my level I assume that I am likely incorrect. I typically google the part of the sentence that I am unsure about and either look at images or posts that use it in different contexts. Reverso context is also useful for this (https://context.reverso.net/translation/)
One more note that you may or may not be aware of:
Culture and language are closely intertwined, they drive each other, and Japanese is certainly no exception to this.
Japanese isn't spoken as literally or certainly as English is, especially to strangers. They use this system called "Keigo" which you'll find translated as "politeness" but that doesn't really completely encompass the idea. It is just a way of speaking in certain situations that covers your bases. Japanese is a language that is often stereotyped as needing to say a lot to say a little and this is often true.
Its useful to try and learn this intuitively. Hear and see it used often to the point that you just know the idea being communicated. Its difficult to translate many of these concepts to English because of how outside of our cultural sphere they often are (which is why I believe trying to teach them in English from the beginning is a fools errand, they must be learned contextually).
2. Full immersion while ideal is impractical for most people interested in studying this language. You can still give yourself full immersion while learning anywhere in the world by using Japanese learning resources and limiting your English use to the minimum necessary (dictionary lookups, explanations for particularly troublesome concepts).
By the end of MNN 1 going into MNN 2 I swapped from a JP -> EN dictionary to a JP only dictionary. If I didn't understand a word from context in the book I would look it up in the dictionary, if I didn't know a word in the definition I would look that up and so on until I understood using only Japanese.
One of the reasons I tend to hold MNN as gospel is the way that it doesn't treat you like a child. The conversations are very realistic to what you would hear in modern spoken Japanese, with Keigo and all of the clunkiness that comes with it from lesson 1.
I noticed your disclaimer: "Despite being in the form of stories the Japanese used is beginner Japanese and may not reflect the way native speakers would express themselves. "
If its not used by native speakers, why learn it this way? Maybe they could understand you if you spoke like this, but you would be unlikely to understand them without the need to speak to you as if you were 4 years old.
For grammar you are out of luck. Japanese is a much more grammar heavy language than Chinese, typically much more complex.
I used the two books, audio CDs, and an excellent YouTube channel called "Nihongoal" that provides supplementary lessons to each chapter in English.
In 2 years of daily study I have a better command of Japanese than I did in Chinese, my college major... Admittedly the Chinese study has helped me immensely with Kanji.
When you study Japanese in Japanese you are constantly reinforcing prior knowledge while acquiring new concepts. Minna no Nihongo does an excellent job of pacing these concepts in a way that is powerful but not overwhelming to a foreigner learning the language.
I guess I am just a bit apprehensive to teaching Japanese in English because of how much efficiency you loose in that concept reinforcement. If you want to learn words and phrases this approach might work, but if you want to actually speak the language I feel that its going to take a lot longer.
I personally don't know any right-wingers that wouldn't call you by the name/gender that you request them to. These people probably exist but it is a very small group.
Theres a difference between disagreeing with the concept at a societal level vs disrespecting someone on a personal level. Far fewer people do that.
I'd like to se a source on this. I don't think different political ideologies imply adversarial intentions. China has been as friendly to the west as it can be while still protecting its own cultural and economic interests.
If western leaders would stop seeing China as the enemy and instead as a partner we would see a rise in infrastructure and economic opportunity globally.
China is not trying to do global charity work, they have their own motives as well. They are also not the devil incarnate. I would argue that their intentions in foreign policy are still _generally_ more morally palpable than most western nations.
These contractors (usually overseas) are paid mostly on commission and there are thousands of them. Its not how most big tech companies handle recruiting. They hand a gigantic list of emails to the mob and implement the "casting a wide net" strategy.
Also Japanese never displayed a flag (あ for hiragana, ア for katakana).
I think it's better to follow this convention.
My understanding is that they can't really enforce this. You can still hold multiple citizenships even if its against the rules.
The server validated that the coupon code was legitimate, but the actual discount value of the coupon code was validated client side in JS for some reason.
So he could turn any 10% off coupon into a 100% off coupon by modifying the API requests during the checkout flow. I'm sure this was illegal but he ate a lot of free fast food before they ever fixed it.
I just wish they could be a little more consistent with things like this.
Its an "old guy" thats either appointed by stakeholders or personally heavily invested in the success of the company.
Like it or not his "feelings" are formed from decades of experience in making a business profitable.
I understand its not every case but lets not be overly-dismissive of his opinions, especially on HN where we are so concerned with ageism.
Seems like a new extension for this pops up every few months until the content publishers get savvy to the latest workaround and someone else finds a new method.
Originally these would just set the referrer to a search engine regardless of where the link came from and the paywall would go away, I'm not sure how exactly they fixed that but I believe that eventually stopped working.
Seems to be a bit of a cat and mouse game at this point.
When I tried to go back from this page it presented me with "articles to check before you go" which is infuriating.
So I quit entirely for medical reasons. No caffeine + medication has entirely eliminated my physical symptoms of anxiety. I definitely miss it sometimes though, I feel like I am still more groggy in the mornings than I used to be.
I play league of legends at least 4 hours per day, sometimes 20+ hours. I am obsessed with learning all the intricacies and improving in the ELO-based ranking system.
I still maintain a full time job as an SWE, a romantic relationship, and personal hygiene/diet. Admittedly LoL comes first before work for me, and can cause tension in my relationship at times.
I know many men that have a very similar relationship with golf, but are they golf addicts?
Theres really no winning here, FF already has to follow in Chromes footsteps because of how dominant they are in the market. They have all the decision making power on "what the web supports".
I always thought the purpose of these kinds of exams was to determine if you had enough work ethic to pass them. The information actually included is peripheral at best most of the time.