macOS offers a variety of virtual keyboard layouts which are accessible through System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources. Because I spend about half of my time writing in Russian and half in English, rapid switching between keyboard layouts is important. Optionally in the Input Sources preference pane, you can choose to use the Caps lock key to toggle between sources. This almost always works well with the exception of Anki. Presumably Anki’s non-standard text management system thwarts the built-in Caps Lock/toggle mechanism for reasons that are not clear to me. Equally unclear is why this worked previously but now does not. I’ve not updated either Anki or the system software. It’s a mystery. Nonetheless, began to search for an alternative method for switching between keyboard layout switching. What I developed relies on several tools:

A method for stripping diacritical markings from Russian text.

In Anki 2.1, it’s practically impossible to get plain text from the web into note fields. A solution (on macOS, at least)…

“Being too self-centred can give rise to anxiety and depression. An effective antidote is to cultivate a sense of altruism, taking the whole of humanity into account.” - The Dalai Lama

Share of wealth held by 35 year-olds of different generations has declined strikingly.

He tells them every single day not to trust anyone, not to believe in the healing power of love and redemption and peace.

Zen and believing // ‘She didn’t hang my picture.’

Still working to boot and reboot a bunch of habits; but it was a productive month.

I’ve recently discovered the L-R system of language learning and have been setting up to learn it.

The idea is that you begin with long texts - novels, for example - in your target language (L2) and follow a systematic approach to reading and listening.

L-R system in a nutshell

Here are the steps:

1. Read the text in L1 (your native language) and become familiar with it.^[I rephrased this intruction from other sources that say “read the translation” because what if the text itself if a translation? For example, my first text to try this with is Гарри Поттер и философский камень which was originally written in English and then translated into Russian, among other languages. So, it’s best to say for the first step “Read the text in your L1 and become very very familiar with what it says.”]
2. Listen to the recording and simultaneously read the text in L2.
3. Listen to the recording while reading the text in L1.
4. Repeat after the speaker. But only do this once you truly understand the meaning of what you’re repeating. The goal is meaning, not only pronunciation.
5. Translate the text from L1 to L2 by covereing up one side while reading the other.

Tips

It is hard, very hard in fact, to find parallel texts. Even if you can find .txt documents online, the formatting is a challenge. Columns in Word or Pages simply don’t work, because the L2 and L1 doesn’t line up properly. So here’s what I did for formatting Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone^[Before you accuse me of intellectual property theft, I will mention that I own both the Russian translation and the English language original in book form. So no harm done to anyone.]: