Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

Happy Valentine’s Day, Gorgeous Malchken. Has it really so many, many, years ago? I’d do it all over in a heartbeat.

The Valentines' Day message at work:
'Dear all,
Your absence/late arrival/early leave this Friday will be reported to your spouse.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Meeting online has become the most popular way U.S. couples connect, Stanford sociologist finds.

Second-language learners perceive their own accent as better than that of their peers

Mitterer H, Eger NA, Reinisch E (2020) My English sounds better than yours: Second-language learners perceive their own accent as better than that of their peers. PLoS ONE 15(2): e0227643. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227643
“Second language learners are often aware of the typical pronunciation errors that speakers of their native language make, yet often persist in making these errors themselves.
We hypothesised that L2 learners may perceive their own accent as closer to the target language than the accent of other learners, due to frequent exposure to their own productions. This was tested by recording 24 female native speakers of German producing 60 sentences. The same participants later rated these recordings for accentedness. Importantly, the recordings had been altered to sound male so that participants were unaware of their own productions in the to-be-rated samples. We found evidence supporting our hypothesis: participants rated their own altered voice, which they did not recognize as their own, as being closer to a native speaker than that of other learners. This finding suggests that objective feedback may be crucial in fostering L2 acquisition and reduce fossilization of erroneous patterns…”

... chorus: Happy Valentine’s Day, Gorgeous. Has it really so many, many, years ago? I’d do it all over in a heartbeat.

It’s almost Valentine’s Day! Has an enthusiastic partner ever asked you about your “love language”? They’re basically asking what matters more to you—kisses, chocolates, or maybe a nice dinner together. What if it was your employer asking you the same question (in a totally HR-friendly way)?

The famous 5 Love Languages—Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Quality Time, Physical Touch, and Gifts—were originally laid out by Gary Chapman, a philosophy PhD, author, and talk show host. Less famously, Chapman also wrote about the 5 Love Languages at work, the same 5 concepts—but office appropriate.

The top Love Languages at work—based on the data