I also remember hearing how the Japanese word “ramen” is comes from a pretty different Chinese word.

It’s cool though that a tonal language like Mandarin / Cantonese is strongly related to a non-tonal one. I wonder what happened there historically.

I don’t know much Japanese, but the bits I do know suggest it’s a very different language than English. Not just different sounds, but also just a different approach to expressing things. Like, I think instead of saying “I’m hungry”, they just say “hungry!” Presumably though, they do use “I” when it’s needed for disambiguation.

For, example, if you’re with a friend and someone asks “are you guys college students?” The response would probably be something like “He is but I’m not”, right?

Yeah, well it’s hard to do it without any errors, but it’s an error every 5 minutes or something, whereas a perfectly competent normal person when sight-reading text will probably make an error every 30s.

Watashi wa nihonjo ga wakarimasen.

I’ve heard, and I don’t know if this is true, that voice actors who specialize in narrating books have to be superstars at this. Not only are they expected to be able to sight-read an entire book without making mistakes, they also need to do the required acting so exciting scenes are exciting, happy scenes are happy, gloomy scenes are gloomy, etc. Plus, as they come across new characters in the book, they’re supposed to be able to give them distinct voices and remember and recreate those voices as they show up later in the book.

Of course, a blockbuster book with a big budget for the audio version won’t have an actor wing it. They’ll be able to pay to have an actor and a director read the book first, and then have the director work with the actor to tease out the best possible performance. But, for a smaller budget, you have to deal with tighter margins so every second in the voice over booth counts.

One thing I love doing is to learn to say “I don’t speak <language>” as well as possible in a language I don’t speak. If you’re good enough at it, people will assume it’s a joke and try to speak to you in that language you don’t actually know. Apparently I’m pretty good at saying it in Portuguese, but I wouldn’t know.

I always read emphasis as “em-FASS-is” just for fun.

The only way to learn what something sounds like as a non-native speaker is to look it up or listen to someone pronounce it. There are no rules – or at least no useful rules, because any rule will have many exceptions. Even different English dialects differ in how to pronounce words. There’s simply no making sense of it.

For example, in many British English dialects, the “a” in “can” and the one in “can’t” are pronounced completely differently, despite “can’t” being a contraction of “can not”. It’s literally the same word, just with a different word afterwords, and yet the two get different pronunciations. There’s no way to guess at that being the case, or come up with a logical reason why. You just have to accept it.

How do you pronounce gnocci, gnat, etc? They may start with a ‘g’ but the proper pronunciation is just /n/.

And then there are the cases where two consonants combine to form another sound entirely: ph, ch, sh, th.

I remember back when my mom was just anxious. That was bad enough, and meant that I’d avoid sharing any problems with her because she’d worry too much. Since then she’s gone off the deep end, believing just about every conspiracy theory that exists. So, now it’s not just that I avoid sharing any problems, or any deep things. I actively have to watch everything I say around her to avoid triggering a rant involving a conspiracy theory.

I think the anxiety fed into the conspiracies. IMO many conspiracy theorists feel a complete lack of control over their lives, and conspiracy theories make them feel better because they can blame “the powers that be” for their problems. And, even if they still feel out of control, they at least feel like they know the hidden truth of what’s happening. Knowing that hidden truth makes them less anxious. The world is still scary and they have no control, but someone has control, even if it’s someone evil. It’s not just random things happening with no plan.

Anyhow, I hope your mom just stays anxious and doesn’t go nuts like mine.

I’m continually amazed that my mom manages to function in the world with all her crazy beliefs and issues.

It was 100% of the TVs that RTINGS had reviewed, which was 501 different TVs, but apparently no SCEPTRE TVs at all.

Unfortunately, it looks like the SCEPTRE TVs don’t get very good ratings:

HD picture quality was only decent. It did an excellent job displaying the finest detail of HD content. Color accuracy was acceptable, but below that of most models…

This model has fair sound quality with below average performance.

https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/tvs/sceptre-c550cv-u/m393713/

So, I guess there is one manufacturer who still makes dumb TVs, it’s their low-end line and doesn’t get good reviews, but it is a dumb tv, which is nice.

The price ranges can take you anywhere from the low hundreds

So, the price of a TV. If I had lots of money to spend I’d love to have one, but realistically it’s not worth it when it’s that expensive. I’ll just get a TV with multiple inputs.

Just don’t connect your TV to the internet? I

Some TV models start to complain if they’re not connected to the internet, interfering with your use of them.

Ok, so that isn’t a suitable recommendation.

PiHole let’s the ad servers think they’re doing exactly that

PiHole blocks the ads by manipulating the DNS entries of known ad servers. So, the ad servers don’t get any traffic. It’s the ad clients that are affected. The ad servers never get any traffic.

Do the PiHole block lists work for TVs? Probably. But, the block lists are mostly built for web / app clients. It probably works if your TV uses Google TV. But, it’s possible that other TV operating systems like Tizen use a different source for its ads that isn’t on the blocklist. The worst case would be if the ads came from the same domain as the updates for the TV OS. You could block that domain, but then your TV couldn’t get updates. And some TVs, if they can’t get updates will start to complain and interfere with your use of them.

I wouldn’t want to risk it, so I’d prefer to get a dumb TV that still had all the standard TV features: a TV tuner, multiple inputs, a high refresh rate, decent speakers, etc. But, failing that, I’d be OK with a smart TV that didn’t have ads built in. But, apparently neither of those things is easy to find anymore.

How much is a nice receiver going to cost me?

Unfortunately, even fixing a smart fridge without the manufacturer’s consent is a crime punishable with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and possibly prison time.

Here’s what RTINGS says about one of the Hisense TVs:

Ads Yes

Opt-out No

Suggested Content in Home Yes

Opt-out of Suggested Content No

Unfortunately, like most TVs on the market, the smart interface contains ads, and you can’t disable them.

And someone on another site has a video showing an ad playing as soon as their Hisense TV is turned on. The person posting says it doesn’t happen every time. And, maybe it’s disabled if you have it set to turn on using “input 2” or whatever your USB stick is connected to. But, an unskippable ad on start-up means I’m not going to risk buying a Hisense TV.