Post on Ari Kast

How to Learn a Foreign Language for Free

Thu, 08 May 2025 11:26:33 -0400

Obviously, the best is to live in the target country. But assuming you don’t live there but still want to learn the language, or perhaps you do live there but want to learn faster, then I believe the techniques described herein are more effective than any paid product (Pimsleur, Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, etc). And what’s more, these techniques are free. I think they deliver superior results because they’re more natural, more closely matching the way we all acquire our first language. Here is the road map:

How To Cure Hiccups

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 14:08:41 -0500

Whether you spell them hiccups or hiccoughs, this method is the only one I’ve ever seen that works 100%, every time. It works for me, for my family, and for everyone I’ve ever shared it with, and it has never failed even once.

Since I’ve never seen this technique described anywhere, I’m sharing it here as a public service.

Follow these steps exactly and your hiccups will be cured (not permanently of course, but they’ll be gone until your next bout).

Economic Empathy Calculator

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 18:06:26 -0400

How it works

If you earn $30,000 annually and are considering a $1000 smart phone, then you know how expensive that phone feels: the price of that phone is 1/30th of your salary, so about two weeks of pay – a significant sum. But what would that same phone feel like for someone earning six figures? How about someone earning minimum wage?

To find out, this tool calculates what percentage of someone else’s salary that phone represents, and then applies that percentage to your own salary to show the phone as if it were priced at that same fraction of your own salary.

Icelandic English Similarities

Sat, 14 May 2022 09:09:13 -0400

The hard part

Icelandic is reputed to be a difficult language to learn, and grammatically it is indeed a beast. Every noun can be one of 3 genders, but nouns also change depending how they’re used in the sentence, with 4 main usages (subject, direct object, indirect object, possessive). But that’s not all, nouns can also be singular or plural, so you end up with 3x4x2 = 24 potential ways to say each and every noun (there can be some overlaps, but you still need to know when and for which words they apply).

Beatles Because: Bach Not Beethoven

Wed, 26 May 2021 13:26:53 -0400

I was surprised to read that the Beatles song Because was purportedly inspired by Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata. This surprised me because not only do I hear no resemblance to that piece, I also have always assumed that George Martin lifted the opening harpsichord solo from Bach BWV 999, with which I do hear a strong resemblence.

So I think we’re being hoodwinked on the provinance of this song, and people are exhibiting confirmation bias when they claim to clearly hear the influence of Beethoven’s song in the opening harpsichord riff – if anything it’s Bach, not Beethoven.

Bach Appreciation

Wed, 19 May 2021 00:01:04 -0400

In response to the question “where do I start to get into Bach?”, I gave this answer:

Phase one

Start with simpler pieces, like 2-part inventions, the gorgeous Air on G String, the driving Cantata 29 Sinfonia, the serene Largo middle movement from BWV 1056 keyboard concerto. At this point you might think Bach sounds gorgeous and writes some fine tunes on par with Mozart.

Phase two

You are now ready for phase two, the beginning of the real journey. I now suggest listening to one of the Schubler Chorales, eg BWV 645 or BWV 650, about 10 times in a row, perhaps several days in a row. This is your gateway. Notice how the piece starts with a pleasant melody, and is humming along when at some point this slow-moving hymnal tune intrudes in the background. Notice the relationship of that slow hymn (called the cantus firmus) to the rest of the piece: they’re almost totally unrelated! Yet somehow they weirdly fit together.

Art Will Save Us

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 14:01:30 -0500

Covid has given us a preview of life with nothing to do, a future that people like Andrew Yang warn is on the near horizon for most of us anyway after the automation revolution eliminates our jobs.

So that puts us face to face with the fundamental question: what the hell do I do all day?

But this problem was solved by the bourgeoisie long ago. After all, Covid life closely resembles life in the old days, when “boring” activities like learning an instrument or writing a great Russian novel seemed like interesting ways to pass the time.

Human ACK

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 23:15:51 -0500

An important life lesson for human interactions, brought to you by the world of computer communication:

in TCP communication there’s the ACK flag
in microservice architectures there is backpressure
in network calls there is the exponential backoff algorithm

Participants who ignore these feedback cycles may broadcast tons of info, but not much if any of it is ever received. Even in one-way communications like television and radio, there is feedback through ratings.

Piano Keys as Months

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 10:15:57 -0400

Noticed something at the piano today.

As a kid, I learned to map the months of the year onto my knuckles, whereby the peaks represent months with 31 days and the valleys are months with less.

It occured to me I could do the same thing at the keyboard: map the months onto the piano keys chromatically, starting at F. So:

Jan	F
Feb	F#
Mar	G
Apr	G#
May	A
Jun	A#
Jul	B
Aug	C
Sep	C#
Oct	D
Nov	D#
Dec	E

Now all the white keys have 31 days, while the black keys have less. Also makes month math super easy, given that I know my keyboard intervals pretty well. I could even remember my family’s birth months as a chord, or perhaps a melody to preserve birth ordering.

Tech Showdown: Mad-Libs Edition

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 13:44:43 -0400

String a few marketing factoids together with hackneyed tech cliches and you too can generate an SEO-friendly “X vs Y” technology post! Fully genericized to work with any pair of technologies – select below and enjoy your autogenerated, cutting edge, super relevant and utterly meaningless tech comparison!

Best of all, hit regenerate to get a completely new variation of the same non-informative content!

{{dropdowns.visible.tech_a.selected}} vs {{dropdowns.visible.tech_b.selected}}: {{dropdowns.invisible.f1.selected}}

Lately you’ve probably heard a lot about {{dropdowns.visible.tech_a.selected}} {{dropdowns.invisible.f2.selected}}. Maybe you’ve used it at work, or you’ve been eyeing it for a side project. After all, it’s a leading solution that consistently ranks among the top choices in developer surveys, and lives up to its motto: “A tool that doesn’t suck.”