Duolingo

Over at covidcoffeecorner, today's discussion question is about what games people are playing right now, in person or otherwise, and one of the examples liv used was gamified self-improvement stuff like Duolingo, and I wrote:

I'm mostly, and deliberately, ignoring the gamified parts of Duolingo, at least for now. "Maintain your streak" is gamified talk for "do at least a little every day," and I want to keep that up, because it's easier to maintain that sort of habit than "I will do French at least four days a week" or the like.

I was looking at the "league promotion" bit when I first started, because I had a bunch of free time, and found the early lessons extremely easy. Right now, I'm doing intro French as much for listening practice as vocabulary. It's still at the point where I know most of the words before Duolingo "teaches" them to me, many via Spanish cognates or borrowed English (it has me practicing that the French for "weekend" is "week-end") or picked up from menus and signs in Montreal. But I can't go too fast right now, because typing can strain my left hand.

I suspect the gamification would work better for me if I was doing this with people, friends or in a class, or if all those "lingots" I earn for things like meeting my daily goal were usable for anything I remotely wanted.

covidcoffeecorner is for anyone who wants to chat/have some more social interaction during the pandemic. Drop by if that sounds interesting.

what can stay open in Massachusetts

This is an incomplete list, as of March 23. The Somerville Community Alert System sent it out, and since I can't find it on the city website (at least not yet) I'm pasting it here for reference:

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hair color

I ordered a sample/travel size of a purple color from Overtone, and tried using it on most of my hair, and the red I got ages ago on part. I didn't get a two-color effect--that probably requires more effort to separate the hair, with clips or similar, but I have a nice purple, a bit more to the purple end of the spectrum than the purple I get using their blue color.

I have just ordered more of both the purple and the blue coloring conditioner, plus the purple "daily conditioner" to maintain the color. I am rushing a little, because I have no idea how long they'll be open, given current circumstances.