Harry Ramsay Profile picture
Cultivating a sense of wonder through learning, science, music, understanding, language, truth, and beauty.
Dec 5, 2022 40 tweets 11 min read
Damn, OpenAI is really changing the game for language learning. A few weeks ago, I wrote this thread outlining how you can create free high-quality transcripts via Whisper.

Now you can generate high-quality, personalised L2 sentences instantly with ChatGPT! Here's how.

#langtwt Bonus: I'll show you how to generate personalised vocabulary, get it easily into Anki flashcards, and then use text-to-speech to generate sound files so that you can hear everything spoken with near-native inflection. This is so helpful in the early stages of learning!
Nov 10, 2022 14 tweets 6 min read
Language-learning Twitter !

I discovered a completely game-changing way to create interesting content to study in pretty much whatever language you want - at no cost.

tl;dr: You can use OpenAI's free "Whisper" tool to accurately transcribe anything in any language!

#langtwt I'll walk you through how to do it yourself, but I'll also explain why it's been so damn useful for me.

The single biggest problem that I've had during 20 years of learning languages is the following: there has been no reliable way of finding high-quality text & audio to study.
Oct 25, 2021 34 tweets 8 min read
Line-for-line, I'm pretty sure that Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach is one of the most thought-provoking books I've ever read. Here's a short thread about some of the ideas from Chapter XIX which I read yesterday! 1/ Hofstadter postulates a "Subjunc-TV", a TV that can show hypothetical alternatives to something that actually happened. He uses this to show that some of these counterfactuals seem completely normal to us, but some are bizarre to the point of being unthinkable.
Apr 30, 2021 12 tweets 4 min read
Wow, this was a wonderful @interintellect_ salon. Small and cosy, with enough time and space to really dig into the details of talent cultivation! ❤️ Image We discussed emotional talent (and the Emotional Olympics), opportunity cost of talent cultivation, the dangers of the growth mindset, discovering your (incorrect) assumptions, rejection training, "fake it 'till you make it"...
Apr 1, 2021 25 tweets 8 min read
Found myself thinking a lot about this tweet over the past week or so. (There are some *amazing* answers in the replies - definitely go and check them out!)

I realised that I actually do a lot more maintenance than I consciously realised. It might make for an interesting thread: 1/ In general, I feel that the healthiest way to think about maintenance is to get to the point of diminishing returns as soon as possible, and then stop trying to optimise further. You want it to be efficient without ploughing tons of time and effort into barely-necessary stuff.
May 20, 2020 37 tweets 6 min read
Yesterday I watched @david_perell 's interview with @jess_catorc, discussing "How To Crush It On Twitter". I found it to be so deeply thought-provoking that I took copious notes and summarised the best points from the webinar. I'm presenting them here for you! (David / Jess - if you're not comfortable with me posting this, please let me know and I'll take it down immediately.)