I saw a reddit post claiming the shooting was because the judge was fooling around with the sheriff's daughter. That also fits the stereotype I guess.
Excerpt:
In a letter sent to the National Shooting Sports Foundation on Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., questioned the legality of the “covert program” in which firearms manufacturers for years shared sensitive customer information with political operatives.
I think the $5 ones I'm using are unusually good for that price level, but in part, the industry is basically a scam. I actually had a semi expensive pair (Shure SE210) for a while. Don't know where they are now. Were they better than the $5 ones? Hard to say, maybe a little. The even higher end ones had multiway drivers and maybe that makes more difference. Do the wireless buds have that? Also some fancy buds are custom molded to your ear canals, which might help. I've never tried those.
I haven't had issues with the buds getting yanked by the cord. I do sometimes have to untangle the cord before using the buds. And I've lost a bunch, which makes cheap ones attractive.
I also found that as I became a more experienced music listener, I cared about audio quality less than before. Audio imperfections stopped mattering as much. I don't know if that is common.
15 minute video, I've watched about half, will finish it later, it's interesting. Basically the money was transferred from free software to the now trendier area of AI.
I use $5 wired buds and they are great, well worth the extra $ over the $2 buds that I used to use.
Airpod style buds have always seemed nuts to me. Three more tiny items (two buds and the charging case) to lose? Each with its own battery to fail? But there are lots of them now at under $20 that look perfectly fine. Are $200 ones really better? I'd need convincing.
A classic. Klaatu barada necktie!
A hosted services ad on c/selfhosted, maybe not the right thing, but I'll defer to others.
You can get right angle 3.5mm connectors that help with the cable durability, but yeah, serious full sized wired cans use 1/4" or XLR connectors still, I think. There are some lightweight bluetooth headphones that might not be BIFL but could hold up pretty well, especially compared to those silly airpod-like buds. You probably have more experience with those than I do though.
Oh I see. The Sansa Clip is an old school device where you transfer files by USB. There are certainly Android phones with 3.5mm jacks though.
There are what I'd call BIFL blueotooth headphones but they are full sized cans, not earbuds. I wouldn't want to ride a bike wearing them.
SanDisk Sansa Clip is the size of a matchbook. Not fancy but not a brick. Get the model with the micro SD slot and you have unlimited storage. With Rockbox it might even support sdxc so you can use a 2tb card. Otherwise 32gb limit.
It still has an internal battery (I hate those) but people have managed to replace it.
Don't bother with course materials I would say. Just speak Spanish with them as much as you can. Maybe watch a few Spanish-language tv shows, especially some intended for kids (Sesame Street?) since those usually have clear pronunciation.
Really the first important thing in a new language is to train your ear to break down the sounds of continuous speech, so it sounds like words instead of mush. That takes some tens of hours to get traction at all. So do lots of passive listening with your coworkers. Stuff like grammar and vocabulary come next and can be gradual. Course materials can help with grammatical subtleties but basic speaking and listening come first.
Also, try to quit speaking English quite early if your coworkers will put up with it. Speak Spanish and use a dictionary if you don't know a word. Don't bother with flash cards. You'll forget stuff and have to look it up again and that's fine. After a few repetitions it will stick.
Try to make your pronunciation very accurate. That will help in all areas. We think of phonetics, vocabulary (lexicon), and grammar as separate things, but they are all interrelated and mutually reinforcing.
You will find yourself thinking in Spanish instead of English pretty quickly. You are basically reformatting your brain so just roll with it.
Be aware that your English can actually get worse from this process. At least mine did. Decide if you are ok with that.