u/anabolicbob

First, the languages I've studied to at most fluency or at least conversational proficiency, and are thus my basis for nominating Japanese, are English (native), Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin and German.

Grammar:

Japanese seems to be the most consistent and grammatically explicit language I've studied. Once you understand what particles delineate and how a sentence is constructed, everything learned thereafter is pretty much all based on and builds upon the same logic with few exceptions.

Chinese and English are probably the worst for having a myriad of independent exceptions with no grounding in the language's own system. German is very elegant when it comes to precise and orderly grammar that is as solid as a rock, however conjugating adjectives and nouns is something that a global language probably could do without.

No grammatical gender:

While those who are fluent in or natively speak languages with grammatical gender might have convincing and perhaps valid arguments why it can be beneficial, for a global language I can't see any possible merit being worth the extra memorization required when learning it as a second language.

No articles:

While Japanese does have the nuances of "wa" and "ga" that while semantically unique can present the learner with a similar hurdle to understanding definite and indefinite articles, nouns are just nouns.

Vocabulary:

Unlike English with its wide adoption of both Germanic and French words, or Chinese with its many regional variations that act as a vocabulary/phrase multiplier, Japanese pretty much sticks to a core set of words. That's not to say Japanese doesn't have a deep and varied vocabulary, as you'd discover as soon as you read literature or any historical texts, but common, everyday Japanese doesn't have too many words that also have synonyms of significant and frequent usage.

Writing system and pronunciation:

Katakana and hiragana are relatively easy to learn, and the pronunciation has fewer sounds than most languages, making it ideal when you're trying to speak and listen to someone else who might also be speaking Japanese as a second language.

Problems:

All that being said, I think the major obstacle to making Japanese the global language is having your own societal position relevant in an explicit way when you speak. This was even mentioned, even though the language was Korean, in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, showing how the humble or superior use of language can have undesired results when direct communication is necessary.

Kanji is also a "problem," because admittedly even if the system works very well once learned, the time required is much more than an alphabet based language. I've never spoken Korean, but have heard it is similar to Japanese, so perhaps it would be a contender for global language assuming the honorific problem could be solved.

Anyway, I know this would never happen, and my selection of languages is but a tiny fraction of all languages, but I have thought "if I had to teach Japanese or English, I'd much rather teach Japanese." The students wouldn't constantly be asking "why is it like this then?" to which I'd answer "I don't know, just memorize it." It's just... a better designed language IMO.

I'm not a linguist or anything, so feel free to tear apart my attempts at arguing for Japanese. Also, my favorite language is Mandarin, so I'm not simply picking it for that reason either.

I kind of view their albums from CFH to GSTK as an upside-down pyramid in this regard, so my answer is CFH. It goes hard in so many directions:

Complexity (riff amount,tempo variation, solo amount, etc)- Heresy, Shattered, Clash with Reality, The Art of Shredding, Message in Blood

Groove (more rest notes, funkier riffs, swing) - Psycho Holiday, The Sleep (verse riff), Domination (especially last part), Primal Concrete Sledge

Simplicity (less riffs, more focused)- Primal Concrete Sledge, Cowboys from Hell

Melodic- Cemetary Gates

Experimental/moody- many tracks but especially Medicine Man, Message in Blood, The Sleep

Thrashy- Heresy, The Art of Shredding

Not to mention guitar solo time, maybe not absolute but as a % of the song, is the highest on this album with Dime soloing over more soft/hard slow/fast dynamic changes than later albums.

Of course this isn't to say it's better, GSTK and FBD are my two favorite albums, but I get the biggest sense of going on a vast tonal and thematic journey with this album, where as on the opposite end with GTSK it's a much more focused, brutal, and emotionally deep experience.

This could have been posted in r/petpeeves if I didn't honestly want a way to maneuver through these situations with possibly more tact.

The catalyst was when one of the old guys at my gym just wouldn't let it go today. He said (while I was mid-set mind you) "...and look at (my name) over here, showing off." I don't know why "showing off" and "enough weight for you?" seem to be the go to jokes(?) for these older guys who IMO should focus more on their own workouts, but after hearing them verbatim way too many times I just stopped responding at all.

They're not questions, launching points for any meaningful conversation- just throwaway comments and often while I'm in the middle of lifting too. I even got the "showing off" one when I was jumping rope- is that really so conspicuous or noteworthy at a ...gym?

Anyway today's event was a little different and he repeated it to me when I was done as if I didn't hear. When I still didn't respond he said
"Didn't mean to offend you."
I replied "It's all good."
Then he asked "Are you ok?" and I thought to myself "fuck, just chill old man and let me workout," but I said "I'm fine" and he said
"Well I'll leave you alone" in a passive-agressive tone.

I thought, I can't fake smile/fake laugh at these comments. I'll be happy to actually talk (in between sets ffs), spot you, answer a question, whatever, but I really am at a loss for responding to what I would consider low hanging, not even dad-joke level junk comments.

Often the people making them are actually people you've had decent conversations with, or maybe they're coworkers so you just want to keep a nice neutral rapport without ignoring them so bluntly.

I don't want to tell them how I honestly feel because a ton of old people do it and I don't want to have heart-to-hearts with 5 boomers before I get to my first set.

I used to be the hoodie+headphones guy who didn't talk to anyone at the gym, and overall I'm very glad I've opened up and allowed myself to socialize and meet new people, but I think the onus is on me to solve responding to these comments because I'd prefer not to be too uncouth.

This ~3 minute daily news kicks my ass. Forget full comprehension, even figuring out what all the (usually 5) topics are is a struggle. I usually can get 2/5 by default as one will be the weather and another something about an ongoing international story (war, virus outbreak, etc) but have a pretty bad hit rate for catching the other topics (there's no way hearing words like 苯駢芘/Benzopyrene will clue me in for example).

Even if I cut myself some slack for not catching politician names or Taiwanese geography, the speaking speed and 1-2 sentence window for catching the context before more information is dumped on you makes me feel like I'm a complete beginner.

I usually listen once alone, read the mostly 1:1 translation out loud, then try to read out loud along with her at 0.5 speed and once more at 0.8 speed, but even that gets pretty sloppy. Then I listen to it a few more times throughout the day.

I'm curious to hear what listening material other advanced level students get humbled by.

EDIT: I forgot to mention I'm referring to what could be thought of as "general" Chinese, not 文言文 or some other speciality.

Like many people I almost stopped using Pinterest with all of the AI influx, but occasionally I attempt looking for drawing references. I noticed the option to drag a "marquee" box around a section of the image to search for visually similar images has been also replaced with the dreaded AI sparkle symbol, and even using that and dragging a box in AI mode, it doesn't work 1/100th as well as the older function that existed for years prior. Is there any way to still use the older version of box search?

Up until I got addicted myself, I had a pet peeve hearing people say "MY coffee" in all its permutations ("If I don't have MY coffee...", "Don't even talk to me until I've had MY coffee"). It sounds so jarring because you don't often hear people refer to "my water" or "my breakfast" even- it's usually rare to use possessive determiners like "my" with such things where no diliniation is required. Of course we say "my desk" to let the listener know which desk, etc.

"I like to have a good breakfast to start the day." This is the kind of sentence I would typically hear.

With coffee:

"I need MY coffee to start the day."

I caught myself saying "my coffee" too as I got more addicted instead of "a coffee" or "some coffee."

For me once I heard it I couldn't un-hear it, and it gives really me strong addict vibes from anyone who says it (me included). I think it's a clue to just how hopelessly addicted most regular coffee drinkers are.

The irony is owndership really isn't described by "my coffee" but from coffee's point of view it's actually "my addicts."