Drops is free if you get the kids version. No ads and you can reset your allowance for free just by pressing the timer. It has less vocab though. Also be careful because their translations aren’t always accurate (it gave the word for a stuffed animal, as in taxidermy, for cuddly toy in European Portuguese. I reported it several years ago and it’s still not fixed) and they translate “how much” differently in different languages (eg in Arabic it translates to how much quantity, but in Portuguese and French, how much price). So I had a lot of fun thinking I was asking how much I need to pay for a bag of potatoes and the man kept telling me 500g.

I haven’t used duolingo since they brought in that stupid crown system years ago. I got my 600 day streak and then stopped using it. I heard it’s even worse now. It was a good starting point, but you’ll quickly have to supplement. Pre-crowns, duolingo was pretty good. Memrise was much better, but they’ve overhauled that now too. Also I dislike that duolingo has time for fictional languages, but refuses to do real languages like European PT, British English, etc.

That’s where the English word comes from, but I was taught piss-en-lit for French: https://wordhistories.net/2016/07/21/dandelion-pissenlit/

Piss-en-lit in French.

Pick the loneliest looking one. Then ask, mitä kuuluu?

How is that any different from what I experience here then? If I’m dealing with all that crap anyway, then I’d rather do it with people NOT sitting next to me when there’s a whole empty deck on the bus.

As an autist, Finnish culture sounds perfect.

This was the first time I heard (saw) someone say it to a Finn and I was like wow what the heck just happened?

This user was pretty chill and then BAM! Insta-rage!

Second way to make friends in Finland: tell them how much you’re enjoying your visit to Scandinavia.

inheritance tax avoidance scheme*

No, my budgie could always recognise me, even when I wore a hat or a mask or coloured my hair shocking pink. At the beginning he didn’t like when I wore stripes though.

He was scared of anyone else (except one of my sisters, even though he rarely saw her) until he got to know them. I don’t know if he was going by my voice or what.

The garden birds recognised me by my clothes though. I had hand tamed a bird with mealworms, and he’d ambush me every time I went into the garden. And my mum got ambushed once when she was dressed similarly to me.

I had the mastic ones once. It tasted like houseplant mixed with ointment. I just let the guys at work hate-eat it.

Other Turkish delight flavours are nice.

We have bus lanes here. But during a tube strike, my bus was stuck at a traffic light for about 20 minutes, I’m not exaggerating. This was central London, and yes, it was all because of the cars clogging up the roads.

Most on the main road in my area is one person. How many times have I missed the bus and had to wait 20 mins for the next one, because I can’t cross the road to the stop, because 4 people need to get by in their cars.

In London about 95% of the ones I see running reds are the uber eats etc riders, pretty much all the modded e-bikes don’t stop at reds. My colleague saw a woman knocked down by one ignoring a red light at a crossing, the woman had kids with her.

I’ve also had a cyclist effing and blinding at me because I stopped at a red.

A TFL-run rickshaw service is also something I’m hoping for. I used to see a lot of tuktuks when I worked in central London about 10 years ago. I think a lot of them weren’t licenced or something?

Every time I walk through that car park, half the vehicles are those awful 4x4s. And I always think how nice it would be if all that tarmac was replaced with grass and wildflower beds and footpaths and cycle paths and bike stands and trees. But instead it’s just a rogue’s gallery of these monstrosities.

I wish there was some sort of e-cargo bike taxi service or something so that the “but how will I carry my shopping home” crowd don’t have an excuse.

Ridiculous things.

I don’t need to. I’m a cyclist, I get it on a regular basis.

Actually, as much as I dislike imperial units, when it comes to body temperature I do think in Fahrenheit. Mostly because that’s how my mum would tell if we were too sick to go to school. 99 - just a little ill, but you can have the day off. 100 - pretty ill, probably at least 3 days off. 101+ - super mega ill, off all week.

When I think tonne, I think 1000kg. When I think ton, I just think of the vernacular “tons of stuff” type expression.