Weekend Listening post

[highlyeccentric]

Music: Hmm. Nothing revelatory. I picked up, with my habit-reward-budget, a couple of CN Lester (better known as the author of 'Trans Like Me')'s albums. I haven't glommed onto any track yet, but the albums are nice background noise.

Watch on YouTube

Podcasts:

Audio Fiction: Since last post, I...

Finished the first four Anne books via Radio Canada's Oh!Dio app. They were good! I feel like my French improved quite a bit!

Listened to a bunch of Megan Arkenberg short stories: Lessons from a Clockwork Queen at Glittership; All the King's Monsters at Clarkesworld; A City of Kites and Crows at Glittership.

Plus listened to a couple of other short stories: In September by Aimee Ogden, at Podcastle; and Tiger lawyer gets it right by Sarah Gailey, at Escape Pod.

Various news and current affairs: After finishing the Anne books I made a solid stab at more FR and DE listening. So far I'm enjoying:

A couple of RTS (swiss public radio) streams - Le Journal Horaire, most mornings (often it's the last update from the previous night, but never mind that); random short news or discussions from 'Le 12h30' and 'Forum: Le 1iere'. One of the latter does a periodic 'revue de presse Allemanique', which is useful for...

SRF (swiss public radio, German) 'Heute-Morgen'. I actually find i can understand most of this! My class level is just at the beginning of B1, but I find this _much_ easier to understand than I did even 'français facile' from RadioFrance when I first arrived in Geneva. Unsure if it's because my aural skills are much stronger due to immersion, or something about Francophones having way too high standards.

Possibly the latter, because I'm ALSO listening to a couple of German easy-German news podcasts, and one of them, the one from Deustsche Welle, is actually *too slow* for me; for comparison, I'm also occasionally listening to RadioFrance's 'journal en Français Facile' and, like, yeah, it's not pushing my comprehension skills but it's still work.

SBS Australia's 'wir sprechen Deutsch' podcast, which does a mix of news and discursive episodes. Doesn't explicitly say it's for learners, but I'd guess that high school and university students make up a chunk of the audience. In terms of the details covered in the discursive episodes it's got to be B2 level, but I'm finding it pretty easy to follow. And useful! I could now talk about the premier of NSW and the Prime Minister, separately, if I needed to! (The premier is Minister Präesidentin, while the PM is Premier Minister; the Chief Minister of the ACT is just 'Chief Minister' in a German accent because fuck it. I look forward to the day they need to talk about Governors and Governors-General).

Discursive Podcasts:

Productivity Alchemy by Kevin Sonney with Ursula Vernon. Okay so I put this on for showering background noise (I've figured out that I'm less likely to lose time if I have noises on for the morning food / meds / shower / cat / dress / minor chores routines), having done so a couple of times before, but instead of just puttering around I got FUCKING OBSESSED i'm binge-listening to it now. The episode I happened to land on had a whole preface talking about Ursula's one-year-post-diagnosis ADHD coping mechanisms and it was really cool and affirming (I actually noped out of the rest of that episode, because military interviewee). And then I went back to 137 where she got diagnosed, and have been alternating March 2020> with recent stuff. The March 2020 experience is wild, because useful (if also enviable- damn you Ursula with your simple meds process!) ADHD content, but like, the interviewees, even the one who was a doctor, were just... way too optimistic about the pandemic prospects, huh? And I've now gone back to episode 1>, where they didn't KNOW Ursula was diagnosed but were trying to figure out an organisational strategy that might work for her (none of them do, but the ways they fail are interesting).
This is so great! Affirming neurodivergent content! Nerd background noise! Mostly fascinating interviewees, too. I think listening to Kevin nerd out played a part in finally galvanising me into starting a Data Oriented subproject. And listening to many many interviewees bang on about reviewing your progress prompted me to, er, review my week and write a list of hanging threads on Friday. Hooray!

I have listened to some others (Two Bi guys, and... some other stuff, gendery, I think?) but I gotta go do a thing now. No more content for today, no links today, but hey, you get Listening Post, at least.