Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 15

As with other posts in this series, this is the results of a test I took today, June 17, 2021.

員直医次痛花決枚飯宅早貸耳足薬四病頭失礼村体長者科号伝田送

It took me 7 days since the last row to learn row 15. This is the longest a row has taken, but I didn't study on Saturday and didn't put in a full effort on Sunday either. Am I deprioritizing kanji? Not by a long shot. This is a genuinely difficult row, skipping a day and a half means that I got 5.5 days of preparation. You can see I got all of the row 15 kanji correct and only forgot two of the readings: 決 and 送. Why do I only memorize one reading? Because I'm almost always near enough to a computer to type in the reading if I forget the kanji. My IME can turn full readings into kanji + hiragana or katakana, so the partial readings that I draw next to the kanji give me a key to a lock that hopefully will form as a result of using the kanji. For kanji that actually have two common readings, I find myself naturally learning them. For example: 外 can be がい or そと. Which one do I type when I type it? がい for 外人. Anyways, you might notice that I didn't draw 体. That was a miss on my part. I was able to draw that kanji no problem on previous tests, so I have no reason to count that as wrong. I drew 番 instead of 号 because the definition is not easy to remember. 番号 is a very common word meaning number like 電話番号 is phone number. I also drew 番 wrong which is unfortunate. Anyways, I'll memorize that. I also missed the first stroke on 宅 which is a little embarrassing, but if we consider briefly the options, there are no kanji that look remotely like 宅 with the crown radical 冖. Therefore it's just a mistake, not a mark against my test score (communication not calligraphy). If we do the math, that's 27/28 (not counting 体 since I didn't draw it) so 96%. That's higher than what I've been getting on the big test (20 kanji from all rows 1-14) so this test was luckier than usual.

At around 20:52 on Thursday night I decided to discuss a problem I've been having for months. Weak arguments on twitter are so frequent among those people who I truly admire and consider worthy of listening to that I consider the signal to noise ratio to be abysmal on the platform. I made an 18 minute 23 second video in an attempt to educate some people on how flimsy an argument is being made in response to a large FOIA dump of Anthony Fauci's emails. My arguments: masks protect others and your risk tolerance decides whether you should wear one even after you're vaccinated. Most people should wear masks in some situation until evidence suggests otherwise. The lockdowns were an effective measure against the spread of the disease and should be weighed as such.

The wording of the above paragraph shows how difficult it is for me to argue with the kind of nonsense that I was trying to debunk. Instead of a single tweet, I had to spend 3 hours researching and making a video to explain how my peer had made a major mistake in arguing from bad evidence. It's not a one-off either, while he spends countless hours doing research, it's pretty clear that many of his arguments are a millimeter deep. Indeed he and I disagree on BLM, antifa, and fascism. While I don't have 3 hours to go over 2 more of his tweets, it's pretty clear from his response to my video that it would be wasted. That is to say that me reading his tweets would be as futile as reading tweets of the fascists that he retweets. So why am I not naming him? I named him in the video if you want, but I don't want the first result on Google for this guy's handle or name to be an article linking him to fascists, because... he doesn't deserve that. So why am I willing to associate with a person who retweets fascists? I suppose I had enough respect for him before knowing his opinions that I feel obligated to make completely sure that his opinions are completely wrong before deciding. Alas I think this is the reason he kept his opinions to himself in the past -- he knew that people like me would lose respect for him immediately.

Each blog post I hope to show off a bit more of what I'm doing besides kanji and as I spend more and more time on learning Japanese (not just kanji) I find it difficult to go about a "normal" day. That is to say if I was working full time, what would give? 1 hour of Japanese I could still do. Depending on the job, I might not be able to exercise for 40 minutes to an hour everyday. What would I have left? Eating, insomnia, the weekend, and not much else. It feels like despite having 120 hours at my disposal each week, removing just 40 of those hours results in catastrophic loss of everything else. In 2019 I was able to do quite a lot of hacking in my free time after work and on the weekends (~10-12 hours per week realistically) but that was it -- there was nothing else I could do the whole week. But now if I assume that I'm only spending about 6-12 hours per week on Japanese, where is the 40 other hours I should have? And the answer is pretty obvious. I'm relaxing. I'm watching videos (which I did when I was working), I'm working on my 3D project, and I'm making progress on projects that may never see the light of day. That is me. That's who I am.

Until next time!

I'll hopefully post all tests as I pass them. Wish me luck.

Previous episodes:
Learning to Read and Write Kanji
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 5
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 6
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 7
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 8
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 9
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 10
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 11
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 12
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 13
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 14