We hate cars so much, we’ve come full circle to parroting fossil fuel industry propaganda against EVs, I see.

Yes you can, with one caveat.

According to Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis, compelling, comprehensible input is sufficient to acquire a language. That means input that you find interesting and that keeps you engaged, and which you can understand at least in part. That evolving sweet spot can indeed take you from complete newbie to fluency without ever speaking.

In my experience, though, being able to speak with other native speakers is a huge source of motivation and creates its own compelling input. So I wouldn’t discount that.

I personally know someone who went from no English to being able to converse just by watching The Simpsons.

I’ve seen people with diabetes unable to quit sugar even though it’s killing them, and THAT sounds like hard drugs to me.

We gatekeeping liking the Fediverse now?

I think generalizing the good of human beings to all sentient beings is a great example of how a rigorous ethical discourse can expand traditional morality. The idea of giving rights to great apes is a wonderful example and I hope we can get there soon.

And likewise, a lot of traditionally “wrong” behaviors can be argued to be morally neutral if they don’t really diminish the well-being of human beings. Sex work is another example.

I think simply put:

Morality is an inherent classification of right and wrong behaviors, often the result of tradition, upbringing, and/or society.

Ethics is a moral system at which one may arrive through philosophy and rational thought.

Ethics tends to define right and wrong in terms of its impact on human well-being, and not just as a inherent sense of right and wrong. As such, it may arrive at conclusions that feel “morally wrong” but actually perpetuate a greater well-being. (One example being utilitarianism.) This is also its danger, as one may argue oneself into a behavior which is rationally ethical but inherently harmful (e.g. eugenics).

The power of ethics is that it can be used to derive moral guidelines for new circumstances, such as AI or global ecological considerations. Such considerations can be derived from morality, but they have a tendency to not truly appreciate new variables and instead attempt to reduce new systems to familiar circumstances, thus often missing nuance.

I’d argue that ultimately, a sound ethical system must be derived from rational ethical thought, gently guided by sound morality as a safeguard against dangerous fallacies.

The easy, low-cost solution is to build freight rail. But no, that’s communism and it doesn’t get a tech billionaire their extra billion.

Haha, I’ve caught plenty of Chinese speakers having what they presume are private conversations in my presence, and sometimes even about me. People just automatically assume non-Asians can’t speak Chinese, even when these non-Asians live in China.

I wouldn’t say we speak in people’s faces, but we make comments to each other about random stuff. I would never say something rude about somebody in their faces, but my spouse might go, “Can we go back to the hotel, I really need to take a shit” or something silly and unfiltered like that.

My spouse and I lived in a bunch of countries over the years. We speak Quebec French, English, and Spanish, as well as a smattering of Chinese, Bulgarian, Korean, and a few odds and ends here and there.

We basically speak whatever we think people around us won’t understand. Very colloquial Quebec French in non-French-speaking countries, Chinese around white people, Bulgarian around non-white people, or even a cryptic mix of everything when we’re not completely sure.

We figure anyone who understands is probably someone we want to know… Hasn’t happened very often, but it does happen. So far we weren’t saying anything overly embarrassing when we got caught, but we sure as hell have no filter between us because of this!

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Agreed, which is why I spoke about the chaos and uncertainty of travel. If you’re traveling as part of an organized trip, whether it’s business or a travel package to a resort, you’re basically isolated from this aspect of travel.

I’ve traveled to 50 countries and lived in 7.

I don’t think being well traveled is about distance or number of countries visited… For me, it’s more about whether you’ve traveled independently and built some skills of adaptability and resilience to deal with new situations. That can happen with as little as one new foreign country.

For me, a well-traveled person is someone who can deal with all the stress, uncertainty, and chaos of travel. That can be as simple as ordering food in a language you don’t speak, or deciphering an alphabet you’re not familiar with to get on the right bus. Heck, it can happen in your own country, some times.

But once you’ve done something like that, the kind of travel skill you develop is pretty universal. Not to say no place in the world will ever throw you a curve ball, but once you accept not everything works like it does in your country and you learn to stay cool under pressure when nothing makes sense, you’re well on your way to being able to thrive anywhere you go.

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Yes, exactly! Or, “Ya été bercé trop proche du mur.”

Ça vient surtout du Saguenay!

In Quebec French, people sometimes say of someone who’s not particularly bright:

“His mom rocked him/her too close to the wall.”

It’s just so… vivid and random.