Chunks of German with the fabulous Anja

I'm pretty sure I blogged once before about Anja, who is teaching me German. The amount of equivalent English words makes German a natural for me.  Some sample Denglisch : Apfel, Baby, Ball, Blau, Boss, Buch, Bus, Computer, Eis, E-Mail, Ellbogen, Finger, Glas, Gras, Hobby, Hotel, Information, Job, Jewel, Knie, Kuh, Milch, Meeting, Mutter, Name, Neu, Park, Radio, Reporter, Radio, Ring, Schule, Sweatshirt, Taxi, Tourist, T-Shirt, Wasser, Zoo. Other words are available.

I'm in a regular German Stammtisch every week and we chat together and discuss German grammar und so weiter. They also make fun of my use of (for example) einchecken - for check-in. I guess you could say registrieren.

I'm always the one who protests at having to learn all of those tables of 'der, die, das' and so on and say it interferes with speaking to one another. I say I prefer a 'Lego block' approach to a language where I can assemble pre-formed phrases to make longer sentences. 

Well, it turns out that Anja agrees and she calls it 'chunking' - from the British Council origination of the word - although I can't help thinking about tinned carrot jokes. 

Anyway, yesterday was a case in point where I was on a one-hour 'party' call with Anja and then jumped off the call onto Zoom with my Stammtisch buddies. For personal reasons I've missed several of the Stammtisch calls and they were surprised to see me return. However, I was immediately asked if it was alright to be tested on definite and indefinite articles and found myself in a world of nominative musculine singulars and so on. 

Now I'm more of a bluffer, so I'll admit my word-endings can sometimes come out wrong, but on the whole I go for what I think 'sounds right'. Anja has the precision to know the grammatical underpinnings and will correct mistakes, but I think we both agree it's better to have a go at the sentence rather than to remain quiet. Here's an introduction...

a Rorschach of my crash - Rachel K.

Rachel's on the left with Emily, in a Photo Booth in Woolworth's. It's not now. 

I'm mad keen on Kushner's The Flamethrowers and also just read (I'll do it again) Creation Lake. I'll review it sometime, - spoiler- five stars. 

Because of Creation Lake, I also read The Hard Crowd, which comprises essays from Kushner on many topics from her life. Starting with the Los Cabos bike race, the Baja 1000, where she's injured as she crashes a 130-mph bike when someone pulls out in front doing 30 mph. The essay evokes the grit, oil and attitudes of the riders. Something of Reno's wipe-out on the salt flats in Bonneville. With a 20-year old's perspective, so not all-knowing.

The inspirations for The Flamethrowers crop up a couple of other times in the collection, notably when she describes some pictures, which I could recognise as the novel's cover art. Weirdly I checked the current cover and found it was something different. 

Kushner is one of the coolest friends you'll meet. From Eugene, Oregon, to San Francisco, working in nightclubs, with the biggest rock bands, mentored by Don DeLillo, time in Cuba, also Jerusalem,  New York, France and Italy. And an interior worldview packed with intelligent and provoking outlooks. 

Always on and challenging. High stakes.

The internet

It's becoming worse. 

More of the systems that I use are exhibiting faults. 

I listed the undeclared change to Microsoft email yesterday. They'll, no doubt, say it was fully documented. But I didn't get or read the memo. It's a more pervasive problem. 

In the days of programmers and analysts, there was a testing protocol for new additions which ran something like - code test, module test, integration test, system test, operational proving, live. Modern systems are rebuilt daily with all the new candidates slapped in. So the effect can be somewhat wobbly.

Breughel was prescient with his tower of Babel painting illustrating Genesis 11: 1-9. One of the earliest puns, too: “Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth.” - A play on Babel and Balal "to confuse". Whatever it is , there are daily bugs and mis-fires all over the system now. 

My typical morning as far as 10:05...

1. I see a friend pop up on Facebook - I'm alerted via email. I try to read his message, but it suddenly wants a recovery code. I request one, but nothing appears. I don't respond to my friend. 
2. I want to check something in my medical records, yet find that all the older ones have mysteriously vanished from the system. 
3. One email system stops working mid-September, yet doesn't issue an alert. 
4. My electricity supplier has recently installed two new smart meters but can't pick up their data in the internet control panel. I have a new home display but find it inscrutable.
5. I try to bookmark an article but the subscription service it is from tells me incorrectly I have used my free download limit. Yes, I'm signed on. 
6. A service that I use swamps me with marketing messages becasue it hasn't separated out tranactional responses.

I could go on but I think that's enough.  

I know, I should focus on all the other systems that do work properly.

As useful as...

So now Microsoft have sheepishly stopped the routine access of Outlook from MacOS. I had to search the internet to find a notification. I've had to reset everything using Exchange now. 

"The safety and security of your information is top priority for Microsoft. To help keep your account secure, Microsoft will no longer support the use of third-party email and calendar apps which ask you to sign in with only your Microsoft Account username and password. To keep you safe you will need to use a mail or calendar app which supports Microsoft’s modern authentication methods. If you do not act, your third-party email apps will no longer be able to access your Outlook.com, Hotmail or Live.com email address on September 16th." 

 Lucky I don't depend on Microsplot mail for anything. Modern authentication methods.

Cyber

Tesla have previewed the cybercab. One has to separate the technology from the personality histrionics of its chief advocate. I'm pretty sure it will work though. My own Level 2 car with its Full Self Driving is pretty cool. It does all the stuff that my old Merc did - intelligent cruise control, speed limit adherence, self parking, and so on. 

I realise it's more about my confidence to let it get on with the driving now. I'm still nervous when it's reverse parking in a close space, say to back up to a charger point. Or that it can do a kind of controlled overtaking where it puts a blue box onto the diagram of where it intends to position during the manouevre. 

It begs a question though. The cybercab is doing all of this in a form-factor hardly any different from a regular car. But then something like Waymo takes a Jaguar and adds enough gadgetry to make it a candidate for a robo-cop movie.

I guess I'd be more cautious around a tricked out iPace.