train.jpg

To help us get around this big world, we have trains like this one that I saw the other day. And that’s really cool.

A while ago, I was looking for podcasts to entertain myself, since my library was a little short and I wanted to branch out and learn about something new (until now, most of my podcast library has been technology-type podcasts). As a quick recommendation, I think that the weekly Linux news podcast from The Linux Experiment is pretty entertaining and informative and whatnot.

Anyway, I managed to stumble across another completely unrelated podcast that equally stole my attention, a podcast about Taiwanese history called Formosa Files. Considering that my two favorite areas of interest are science and technology and then Chinese language and history, I figured Taiwan wasn’t too far off (although I really don’t know that much about, you know, Literary Sinitic and Confucianism and dynastic rule and all those other key elements of Chinese history, since the classes at my school are really just the language part. They leave the culture minute to us, and so while I’m still unsure of what exactly the four principles of Confucius are, I’ve seen plenty of Genshin gameplay).

Those two podcasts are both pretty good and worth listening to (The Linux news one is really only for Linux enthusiasts, but Formosa Files makes a good attempt at being readily accessible and a good listen for anyone. Even if you don’t care about Taiwan, it’s human history. And if you’re trying to learn Mandarin, they’ve started putting out episodes in that every Tuesday—even putting out exclusive content as of late, instead of rewritten reruns—where one of the hosts interjects with English pretty often, which I think is supposed to be helpful for Taiwanese listeners trying to learn English, but is also helpful for listeners like me who, you know, are only really good at English). Then, today, they put out the long-awaited TSMC and Morris Chang history episode, where it was kind of funny when they had to read out the definition of “transistor”.

To everyone reading, thank you for staying with me, it always feels good to have Internet friends and a one-way channel for communication.