The skew function allows you to influence (“skew”) the nature of the cards that are shown you. At this writing, there are three possible skew modes: old, new and off.  All pertain to card age.

• Off = no skewing, will give you a statistically balanced mix of old and new cards.
• New = will skew exclusively towards new(er) cards — those recently added to the deck.
• Old = will skew towards old(er) cards — cards that were added a long time ago and/or have been waiting a long time for their rep ¹.

Thus spake Hangul Fangirl (‏@HangulFangirl):
“[Dear Khatzumoto,
You are handsome beyond comprehension. And also very slim. Your delicate, schoolgirl figure is an inspiration to us all.]
How do you get past the feeling that you’re not progressing and end up forgetting to keep going? Self-study is hard for me :[["

"...don't believe a thought you think." ~ T. Harv Eker

A lot of actual psychologists and proper New Age people have talked about these ideas in a much more detailed, accurate and elegant fashion than I am about to, so you might want to take their advice instead. All I can offer you is my personal, very anecdotal experience.

To be honest, I think my advice is crap; it's just infinitely better than the mindless, unintentional defaulting to social convention that many people do, but then that's not saying a lot considering how wrong conventional wisdom might be.

For the record, there's nothing automatically wrong with defaulting to social convention; we can't be original in all things. The problem comes when that default setting doesn't work or even causes harm. Which is definitely the case with languages. The problem isn't so much that language classes suck as it is that they have no intention or mechanism of improving themselves; they are so blindly arrogant that they're not even aware that they suck.

So, back to you, and the feeling you're not progressing.

Feelings can be like having an emotional drama queen attention whore friend living inside you who thinks she's clairvoyant.

Don't feed the inner troll. Pay it no mind. It'll run out of steam. It's kinda like how paying attention to a baby or toddler sometimes makes them start crying or (if they're already crying) makes them cry harder. I don't have children or even younger siblings, so don't take my childcare advice. But I've heard and observed that sometimes ignoring the kid helps them get over it, while getting attentive and freaked out simply escalates the emotion out of all proportion.

Sometimes your feelings are wrong and they need to STFU. Ignore them and move forward.

Almost by definition, your feelings are illogical. So, sometimes I find it helps to illogical-ize (?) your motivations, to NOT have a good reason for things you do. So your new reason is "coz I feel like it" or "coz it's there". You can't argue with that because there's nothing to argue with. It's openly reckless. Reasonless. It's like when you tell a guy his mother's a whore and he goes "I know, right? She totally is -- when can I pencil you in for an appointment? Oh, and she said to ask you not to cry afterwards because it's a real turn-off.".
No traction.

Some research I read about appears to show that people with no emotions (due to brain injuries and stuff) can't make decisions. So perhaps the problem isn't having emotions, but tuning into the wrong emotions. Tune into happiness and boredom and interest and happiness and curiosity and I don't know if all those count as emotions, but they are mental states...

Scour your memory. Become aware of repeating patterns in terms of what gets you going, and look to amplify those patterns. It could be a certain type of situation or a certain type of media, or a certain auteur ¹. Mere “progress” pales in comparison to “oh sweet, this looks cool”.

“…if you’re not satisfied with the little successes, you’ll never be satisfied with the big successes.” ~ Anon. (quoted by Barbara Sher)

Being fluent in Korean is not going to make you happy if the process didn’t. Because you’ll be there and you’ll find something to hate about it. Something to put yourself down on.
Maybe you’re fluent in Korean, but you only know Standard Korean, not a cool dialect.
Maybe you’re fluent in Korean, but…what about these other languages. Mandarin. Japanese.
Maybe you’re fluent in Korean, but…you can’t write like the best Korean author of all time.
There’s always a reason to feel bad, the key is not to play along.

If you want to win the long game, stop playing it.
Stop running the marathon and start sprinting instead.
Start running and playing and winning short games instead.

Don’t learn Korean.
Learn the chorus of this song.
Don’t learn Korean.
Play this movie. Don’t just watch it. Play.

Shameless plug: These tiny, (sub-)atomic, so-small-it’s-insulting activities are, incidentally, central to what Neutrino is about. Neutrino gets you hooked playing short games so you can, as Werner Heisenberg might put it, forget about your position and focus on your momentum.

Play the short games.
Be sensitive to the little things. The tiny, winnable games. The small victories. Immerse yourself in them.
What does it matter whether or not you’re making progress? You don’t need to be making progress in Korean; you like it anyhow; you like it because it’s there. You’re winning right now. Not in some nebulous fluency future.

Call it the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of learning languages: you can’t have any momentum if you’re busy worrying about your position.
The reason you seem to have no momentum in Korean is because you don’t, because you spend way too much time worrying about your position and whether it’s changing. How far could a car drive if its occupants stopped every five minutes, took out a tape measure and ran back to their destination to make sure they were progressing? You’re thinking: “that example’s belabored and stupid, Khatz”. Well your constant freaking worrying’s belabored and stupid. You should be too busy moving forward to be worrying about this.

And if you were really serious about making progress in Korean, you would be making progress in Korean, not worrying and Twittering about it in English. What you’re doing right now is the equivalent of asking your friend, every five minutes: “Hey, bro! Are we friends? Are we bros? Are we besties?!”. Shut up and just be friends. Enjoy your time together. Enjoy the moment. Get lost in it.

Imagine being on a couch, making out with someone, and every two minutes they go: “hey, so are we making out?”, “what base is this?”. You would have to conclude that this person was crazy and/or uninterested. Korean…feels like that about you right now .

Anyway, that’s all from me for now; I didn’t expect to resolve this question in one post and I don’t think I have. But hopefully you’ve gotten some use out of this rampage of metaphors . I leave you with the emphasis-added words of Norman Lear:

“Success is how you collect your minutes. You spend millions of minutes to reach one triumph, one moment, then you spend maybe a thousand minutes enjoying it. If you were unhappy through those millions of minutes, what good is the thousand minutes of triumph? It doesn’t equate… Life is made of small pleasures…Happiness is made of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. If you don’t have all those zillions of tiny successes, the big ones don’t mean anything.” ~ Norman Lear

Tanks fer readin’. Do you have a special way of dealing with feelings of suckage? Enlighten us with your technique !

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“The practice of sungazing is dangerous. Looking directly at the sun for even brief periods of time may cause blindness or severe damage to the eye.” ~ Wick Her Pedia

We don’t look directly at the Sun — even during a total eclipse — without special equipment.

One of my favorite things to do is go to high or wide open places and look at stuff. I love looking at planes, helicopters, far-off buildings, women getting dressed inside said buildings wait…

No, don’t worry. I don’t even like women. Liking women is for poofters.

Wait…

OK, no, so, I was playing frisbee in the park the other day, frisbee play being interspersed with breaks to look at helicopters flying overhead. And it occurred to me how beautiful the day was and how much I was enjoying and benefitting from the sunlight (I take my Vitamin D intake very seriously). And it also occurred to me how, while I was enjoying the sun and it was (and is) directly or indirectly powering all life on Earth, I wasn’t looking at it. At all.

I was looking at what it shone upon; I was looking at discs and dogs and kids and couples making out. But I wasn’t looking at the Sun.

One doesn’t simply look at the Sun.

You enjoy the sun. You know it’s there. You’re unsure whether or not to capitalize it. You feel it. You’re bathed in its warmth — even at night.

But you don’t look at it. ¹

So, yeah, I love looking at stuff. Recently, I even purchased a “fieldscope” to aid in the purpose. The warning label on my fieldscope (which is optical geekspeak for a monocular/portable telescope) reads (in Japanese): Do not look at the sun because you may go blind, you raving poof.

A welcome, if excessively homophobic warning. I don’t know about you, but I’ll be writing a stern letter of disapproval to the poofs at Vixen who manufacture the scope, and tell them to get their act together.

You need the sun. You love the sun. If you’re of English ancestry, you gladly risk chronic illness just to get some more of it. But even then, you don’t look at it.

Big goals are a lot like that. Big goals like, oh, native-like fluency.
Just as looking directly at the sun can cause visual blindness, looking directly at big goals can cause schlep blindness.

It’s nice to know that the big goal is there, but often it’s too big and shiny and 93 million miles away and overwhelming in its awesomeness to be gazed at directly, certainly without safety gear.

The big, central goal, the sun around which our actions presumably orbit, can overwhelm and disorient us with its size and power and magnitude. We wonder, rightfully, “how could we possibly get there from here?!”. It’s just too much to take in. Our minds, our bodies, cannot process it, cannot fathom it. We reel at the mere idea and coil up like a little centipede; we seek refuge in mindless TV, cigarettes and alcohol, because — despite their concomitant disadvantages — these escapes are so doable. They make sense. We can win at them.

The Sun is too bright to look at. It can literally, physically hurt to look directly at the big goal. Looking at the metaphorical sun can throw you into a dizzying tailspin of despair and avoidance.
So don’t. Look, that is. Enjoy the biggie ², but don’t look at it.
Focus back here.
This one word.
This one action.
This one click.
This is all that exists. This is all that matters.

Do not look directly at goal. May cause schlep blindness. Unless you have special tools (e.g. a lifetime calendar — analogous to eclipse-viewing glasses) and a specific reason, do not look at the Sun. You must not if you want to keep your mental vision intact and thus keep being able to see that paths and opportunities that are right in front of you, right underfoot. Call it the “Solar Principle” ³.

And this “Solar Principle” is probably why you’re better off not sharing your goals with people ⁴. Not necessarily because you can’t deal with it — although that’s often true ^^ — but because they can’t…handle the (whole) truth. So if you want their cooperation, or simply non-interference as the case may be, don’t blind the poor bastards.

Perhaps you now have the mental equipment to look directly at the psychological sun, but they don’t, and you’re hurting them by shining it in their faces ⁵. And this doesn’t make them bad people. They’re not “dream stealers”; they’re not “energy vampires”; they’re not “monsters”; they’re just…not ready to look right at the sun; it’s too much of a shock to their fragile systems and that’s fine; they can still enjoy the light and warmth. Work them through it, baby steps, like a frog in progressively warmer water, and before you know it, you can have them in a compound in Guyana committing mass suicide with you and their children…

Too soon?

No, but, seriously, like blinders on a racehorse, you can take yourself and other people to any extreme of excellence or lameness if you merely narrow the mental focus away from the debilitatingly magnitudinous core goal and towards productive, forward-moving, helpful minutiae ⁶. In other words: don’t even try to brush your teeth, just put the toothbrush in your mouth. Let the full truth be something that emerges — something you allow to emerge — rather than something you go out and declare.

It is neither possible nor necessary nor helpful to tell the whole truth. Not to yourself and certainly not to other people (who, I assure you, have immeasurably little interest in you and your life ⁷). It can’t be done. You don’t even know the names of the chemicals that are in your body. You don’t introduce yourself by your full, government name. When I ask you what time it is, you don’t give it to me in seconds, let alone nanoseconds. You probably even round up the minutes, you mendacious knave, you! ⁸ Many things are true, but that doesn’t mean they need be said, noted or acknowledged regularly if at all: ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat.

In politics and espionage and stuff, they talk about things being on a “need-to-know” basis. Well, let me hit you with some knowledge, sister: when it comes to you and your goals, not only do people not need to know, they don’t even want to know; knowing would simply harm and annoy them. Don’t be fooled by the questions. It’s small-talk ⁹. No one actually wants to know; they want to feel important and included; they want the privilege of being privy, but this is a thirst for love, status and acceptance, not knowledge. If they truly wanted to know something, they would read a book, not ask you idle questions.

To recap: don’t look at the sun unless and until you have the equipment to do so, and don’t show it to other people until they do as well (but feel free to enjoy and share little rays of sunlight here and there). So, you’re not learning Japanese any more, you’re just here learning this one word. You’re just tinkering. Maybe the next word will be a Japanese one, too, but that’s neither here nor there.

Avert your eyes!

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• You can't specify target table 『xxx' for update in FROM clause | Memorandum t.co/n0c0snYj3y #database #programming #japanese 21:53:44
• チョコレート（ショコラ）　ジャン＝ポール・エヴァン JEAN-PAUL HÉVIN JAPON – t.co/OuCifUbG0G 22:00:07
• 【看板】かんばん ①商店などが，店名・業種・商品名などを通行人の目につきやすいように掲げたもの。「薬屋の━」「━を出す」 ②劇場または興行場などで，俳優名や演目を書いて表に掲げるもの。 ③人の注意をひいて，客寄せや自慢の種となる人や事柄。「山菜料理を━にして… #daijirin 23:40:22
• You Have Three Hours to Live | Samurai Mind Online t.co/eadOG6l1jN 00:00:20
• Do Not Look Directly At Sun. May Cause Schlep Blindness. | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time t.co/t7I4y4agtk 00:27:19
• "Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity."
  Louis Pasteur 02:00:15
• Best of Family Guy German – YouTube t.co/95N4zPVbOL 04:00:08
• A Master Class in Jazz Performance and Creativity with Pianist Kenny Werner – YouTube t.co/Mjbckkxa68 06:00:20
• RT @taijuando: these days I'm like a black widow spider…I study a card then delete it @ajatt 08:00:13
• ももいろクローバーZ「Neo STARGATE」MV – YouTube t.co/T4xFXuuQqm 10:00:38
• ゲームセンターCX 有野の挑戦「MOTHER2 ギーグの逆襲」 – YouTube t.co/zwBaXkT8TF 12:00:22
• 天才と変人　解き放たれた知性 | 日経サイエンス t.co/6YswivcXW5 14:00:07
• 《明天記得愛上我》Will you still love me tomorrow? 正式預告 HD 4月3日 愛你所愛 – YouTube t.co/cKqFHuiKWK 16:00:11
• 《中國合夥人》定檔4月16日 首支預告曝光土鱉創業傳奇. – YouTube t.co/lqwDlbr7jF 18:00:09
• 特集：天才脳の秘密 | 日経サイエンス t.co/Bzr8jS43VE 20:00:14
• 都市の力 古代から未來へ | 日経サイエンス t.co/YBkNq5S1Z0 22:00:11
• 【祠】し ［音］シ ①まつる。神や祖先の霊をまつる。「祠官」 ②ほこら。やしろ。「祠宇・祠堂・淫祠（いんし）」 #daijirin 23:04:36
• 【分祀・分祠】ぶんし （名）スル 本社と同じ祭神を他所の新しい神社にまつること。また，その新しい神社。 #daijirin 23:04:50
• 日経サイエンス編集部 の 都市の力 古代から未来へ (別冊日経サイエンス 189) を Amazon でチェック！ t.co/F1SPKHu4tO @さんから 00:00:19
• 孝 – 維基百科，自由的百科全書 t.co/4RxT36ut2c 02:00:23
• t.co/0X4iSOGypS： 感染症 新たな闘いに向けて (別冊日経サイエンス 188): 日経サイエンス編集部: 本 t.co/RuxMYP3vNY 04:00:12
• It's always people who *haven't* done the thing who know how it "can't" or "shouldn't" be done… 06:00:10
• 孝 – Wikipedia t.co/DGn0sRcYvl 08:00:07
• Any idiot can reach a destination. The genius is in enjoying your way there. #immersion 10:00:10
• 手機漫畫 – 手機用戶最喜愛的在線漫畫網 t.co/tle3p3EUfq #mobile #webcomics #manga #chinese 11:00:11
• RT @zhongruige: Pomodoro 浮動式 Google Chrome 番茄鐘工作法常駐套件 t.co/B6rJ5Y8HTh 12:00:21
• Some Frightening, Frightening Math – i'm (not) a motivational speaker : i'm (not) a motivational speaker t.co/ezjt2F8ilO 13:00:13
• RT @kenrickchien: Wow, thanks to RTK and @ajatt, I can actually understand this! #kanji t.co/nVOtqc5zok 14:00:22
• 【風雅】ふうが （名・形動）［文］ナリ  ①上品で優美な趣や味わいのあること。俗でなくみやびていること。また，そのさま。「━を解する」「━な住居」 ②詩歌・文章の道。また，文芸・書画など芸術一般。「慈鎮和尚の━にも越えたり／太平記1」 ③蕉門で，俳諧。また，… #daijirin 14:20:15
• RT @ta132: I'm currently adding MCD-style cards for corrections I get via lang-8's website. I no longer make mistakes for those sentences 15:00:35
• "Love the talk to your pet bit – I sometimes use an imaginary friend for the same purpose" t.co/GoBDXZBb9U 16:00:11
• You won’t learn Chinese simply by living abroad | Hacking Chinese|揭密中文 t.co/wD2lcr0YcN 17:00:10
• RT @funnyav: @ajatt during a meal, the phrase "いただきます" popped into my head. I had no idea what it meant. Input hypothesis ftw! 18:00:10
• Deletion is a first resort. "If in doubt, throw it out". #SRS #cards #delete 19:00:36
• Don't do your best. Do something. Make the best of it. #immersion 20:00:10
• "When you play a game that feels like work, it's no longer serving its purpose."
  ~ Hicks #immersion #SRS 22:00:09
• The problem isn't so much that classes suck as it is that they have no intention (mechanisms) of improving themselves. #arrogance 00:00:22
• "How you use your minutes is a clear preview of how you are using your life." ~ Anon. #immersion #SRS #crack #time 02:00:15
• RT @rtse999: @ajatt: Thanks for the updates to Nutshell- Brilliant – You're the man Khatz 04:00:18
• English is Just Another Language: Studying for the GRE | Jeff弁 t.co/3gn8xINPBX 06:00:08
• A (Slightly) Different Approach to Kanji | Jeff弁 t.co/ScSyVAvNDC 08:00:36
• Is An SRS Really Worth The Effort? | Jeff弁 t.co/ERldovy8vQ 10:00:16
• The Heisenberg uncertainty principle of learning languages: you can’t have any momentum if you’re busy worrying about your position. 12:00:11
• "…learning Japanese isn’t linear. The important thing is not to get stuck or stop." t.co/F57dLZu2kT 14:00:15

The attentive will recall that Jamie (an AJATTeer) came up with what I still consider to be the greatest analogy in the history of learning languages about a year ago. The attentive will also recall that a photo of Sarah Silverman on the pot was involved, something which totally wasn’t my idea by the way, plus you have no proof and you got nuffink on me and I have plausible deniability.

Well, through the magic of the AJATT Facebook page, Jamie is back, this time with her very own German success story (as well as a couple of awesome new analogies):

Hey Khatz,
[You have such gorgeous thighs, and I don't know how you do it. The ThighMaster may be a machine, but you are truly the master of thighs. Women love you and men respect you. It pains me to even shift the topic from you, but...]
I’ve been “immersing” myself in German since December 2011. At first, it wasn’t pretty. I couldn’t understand much from films, videos, music, etc and my output was simply horrible.

But after 3 months of immersion and SRS Vanilla sentences, I was able to hold basic IM chats and write emails in German with German and Austrian people. 99.9% of the Germans and Austrians thought that I was a language “Genie” ¹ and said that it was amazing that I learned German so “quickly” without any tutors or classes. I still believe that input (reading and listening) is still more important than output (writing and speaking) but once in a while I practice output.

I like writing German emails with my friends from Germany, Austria and Switzerland and I’ve had about 5-7 voice conversations over Skype in German. It wasn’t hard for me to understand what the native German speakers were saying. and most recently during Spring break 2013 in New York City, I heard a couple talking to each other in German and I just approached them by asking them in German: “Are you from Germany?” (kommen Sie aus Deutschland?) My brave action allowed us to have a short but good conversation — all in German. The couple said my German was very good especially considering “the short amount of time” I spent learning it, and not once did they try to switch the conversation to English.

So, how did all this “magic” happen? It ain’t magic. It’s just listening and/or watching to >90 minutes of audio in German during my waking hours and playing audio throughout my sleeping hours and making and doing SRS reps from time to time.

It’s about making it fun, doable, and practical to one’s OWN schedule. I learned Spanish from 2nd grade – 10th grade, but my Spanish input and output was NEVER was good as my German. The more I think about it, some of this AJATT stuff is really foolproof. “You are what you eat” and “You speak what you hear”…DUH!!

• You are what you eat.
• You write what you read.
• You speak what you hear.

• "Anyone who doesn't believe in the impossible is not a realist" ~ Horst Teltschik 16:00:13
• "…every single hearing baby on Earth somehow managed to learn every single language on Earth…" t.co/tIZyZP3q2u 18:00:13
• 手機漫畫_海賊王漫畫第704話第1頁閱讀 t.co/Q2YUTdlu02 #onepiece #chinese 20:00:14
• RT @ItsKimLianne: Neues Video schon gesehen? t.co/qAltwwNz1f 22:00:11
• Don’t be snobbish. Do be picky. #immersion 00:00:40
• Refuse to struggle. #immersion #SRS 02:00:11
• BHAGとは？人生を賭けた大膽な目標を持とう｜30代の人生戦略ノートと成長日記 t.co/4eSHjqBzni 04:00:24
• Japan Rule # 371: Every gaijin has at least one friend named "Junko". 06:00:41
• "You can’t be afraid to spread your wings just because someone close to you might get a faceful of feathers." ~ J. Gillies #immersion 08:00:34
• RT @AetherLift: Procrastination as a force for good: You can always give up later 10:00:20
• "The book you're embarrassed about being seen reading is the book you most need to read." ~ NAKATANI Akihiro 12:00:11
• The trick is not to get good at Japanese but to get good at learning Japanese. 14:00:04
• "You are constantly barraged by your native language…" t.co/CD3dQ8jjqR #immersion 16:00:14
• "you have been so exposed to your mother tongue that you can *only* say…everything correctly" t.co/0Ss7HOxgod #grammar 18:00:11
• 緒方恵美 の ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版:Q EVANGELION:3.33 YOU CAN (NOT) REDO.(初回限定版)(オリジナル・… を Amazon でチェック！ t.co/qblIR5YtoP @さんから 20:00:12
• 【遠洋】えんよう 陸地を遠く離れた海。⇔近海。 #daijirin 20:00:49
• 【近海】きんかい 陸地に近い海。⇔遠洋。遠海。 #daijirin 20:00:58
• らいおんの隠れ家 : ポール・グレアム「面倒な仕事の無視」 – livedoor Blog（ブログ） t.co/whiBxZUGuw 22:00:20
• Chapman To – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia t.co/8kYJkkttyI 00:00:10
• 當小貓遇上刺蝟 – 88DB Focus t.co/BtpWCcBkwn 02:00:12
• Immersion in two words: Make do. 04:00:22
• 乳癌、輻射、化學劑關係大披露3 (Cantonese dub) – YouTube t.co/fRJn1H0PuD #random #documentary #oncology 06:00:22
• Keroro軍曹 176 Cantonese dub Malay sub Part 2/2 – YouTube t.co/auiSaVdGkO 08:00:10
• Sailor Moon ep 9 (Cantonese Dub) – YouTube t.co/IZY6ZRuetb 10:00:13
• 【鳩摩羅什】くまらじゅう 〔梵 Kumārajīva〕（344〜413）中国六朝時代の仏典漢訳者。インド人を父とする西域僧。国師として長安に迎えられ，竜樹の思想を紹介した。「中論」「百論」「大智度論」「法華経」「阿弥陀経」「維摩経」「十誦律」などを漢訳し，ま… #daijirin 10:53:54
• 【六朝】りくちょう ①中国で，後漢滅亡後，建業（南京）を都として江南に興亡した六つの王朝。三国の呉，東晋，南朝の宋・斉・梁（りよう）・陳の総称。時期は魏晋南北朝時代に並行する。 ②六朝時代に行われた書風。 #daijirin 10:54:38
• 【六朝文化】りくちょうぶんか 中国，六朝の文化。江南の貴族文化が爛熟し，仏教が広まり儒教・道教と融合して清談が流行，文章は四六駢儷（べんれい）体が行われ，書画・詩文が栄えた。 #daijirin 10:55:17
• 【爛熟】らんじゅく （名）スル ①果実が熟し過ぎること。「柿の実が━する」 ②物事がその頂点にまで達すること。「天平文化の━期」 #daijirin 10:55:40
• 【清談】せいだん （名）スル ①中国，魏晋代に貴族社会に流行した老・荘・易を中心とする虚無的・超世俗的論議をいう。後漢末以来の政情不安と関連する。「竹林の七賢」が有名。 ②俗世間を離れた風流・高尚な話。また，それを談ずること。 #daijirin 10:55:54
• 【択伐】たくばつ （名）スル 林業で，林内の伐期に達した木を適量ずつ数年から数十年おきに抜き切りして，林内での更新をはかること。→皆伐 #daijirin 11:26:26
• 【皆伐】かいばつ （名）スル 林業で，森林などの樹木を全部または大部分伐採すること。→択伐（たくばつ）・傘伐（さんばつ） #daijirin 11:26:32
• 【卓抜】たくばつ （名・形動）スル［文］ナリ  他よりもはるかにすぐれている・こと（さま）。卓出。「━した技能の持ち主」「━な発想」 ［派生］━ さ（名） #daijirin 11:26:46
• 【魏】ぎ 中国の国名。 ①戦国時代の七雄の一。晋の有力世族魏氏が韓・趙両氏とともに晋の領地を三分し，今の山西省南西部から河南省北部を領有，文侯が周王より諸侯に封じられて成立（前403〜前225）。李悝（りかい）らを重用し富国強兵に努めたが，秦に滅ぼされた。 … #daijirin 11:26:59
• 【拓跋珪】たくばつけい （371〜409）中国，北魏の初代皇帝（在位386〜409）。廟号（びようごう）は太祖。諡（おくりな）は道武帝。拓跋部を統一し，平城（大同）に都し，中国的王朝を創始した。 #daijirin 11:27:13
• I Will Make A Man Out Of You (Cantonese Movie Version) – YouTube – t.co/NgM3DYsULu 12:00:12
• Kung Fu movie dubbing – Cantonese vs English dub.-YouTube t.co/e7eObtKtbN 14:00:05
• 博客來書籍館>塑身女皇教你打造完美曲線（附贈完美曲線操DVD） t.co/yCbN6rOrvE 16:00:04
• Jing Wu Men Cantonese – YouTube – t.co/vQ2LtCJbbQ #bruce #lee 18:00:12
• Never be perfect. Always be improving. #learner #paradox 20:00:11
• 【藪から棒 】〔藪から唐突に棒を突き出す意から〕 だしぬけに物事をすること。前触れや前置きのないさま。 #daijirin 21:02:32
• 【藪】やぶ ①草木が群がり茂っている所。特に竹の群がり生えている所。 ②「藪医者」の略。 ③「藪入（やぶい）り」の略。 ④「藪蕎麦（やぶそば）」の略。 #daijirin 21:02:55
• 【藪医者】やぶいしゃ 〔「野巫医者」の意〕 診断・治療の能力の劣った医者。下手な医者。藪薬師（やぶくすし）。やぶ。 #daijirin 21:03:10
• 【藪医者の玄関 】藪医者ほど玄関だけは立派にして患者を信用させる意で，見かけだけ立派にすることのたとえ。山師の玄関。 #daijirin 21:03:57
• 【山師】やまし ①鉱山の発掘や鉱脈の発見・鑑定をする人。 ②山林の伐採や立木の売買に従事する人。 ③投機的な事業で金儲けをたくらむ人。また，儲け話を持ちかけて他人を欺く人。 #daijirin 21:04:18
• 【山師の玄関 】〔山師が玄関を特に立派にすることから〕 みかけばかり立派なたとえ。こけおどし。 #daijirin 21:04:36
• これが本場ロンドンで味わうイギリスの伝統的な朝食「イングリッシュ・ブレックファスト」 – GIGAZINE t.co/egW2lP7bMA 22:00:14
• Googleのメガネ型PC「Google Glass」はどう使うのかわかる公式ムービー、タッチパッドでタイムラインを左右に操作 – GIGAZINE t.co/p4LX3igBwQ 00:00:14
• [Japanese movie]Fool Proof – YouTube t.co/DQ2uKSX84I 02:00:09
• 《百星酒店》電影預告 – YouTube t.co/ORzboLIxVj 04:00:30
• Chinese TV – Chinese films, TV shows and dramas t.co/uS9axZQ7PY 06:00:11
• "Two college hosts from Taiwan present you with a two-hour hilarious talk show in Chinese!" t.co/nAkHcGesVz #podcast #mandarin 08:00:03
• Podcast list / MyAudioCast t.co/bDHFO76eY3 #chinese #podcasts 10:00:08
• Anthony Wong speaking Mandarin with a HEAVY Cantonese accent – Full Movie-YouTube t.co/dhpVeITVrq #lol 12:00:14
• Don't choose what to do. Just choose what to do first. It's not "either/or", it's "which first?". Don't select: sequence. #language #choice 14:00:08
• 英語で楽しく雑談できるフレーズ５０ – 英語のまぐまぐ！ t.co/Gjp2mlb80m 16:00:07
• 英語で楽しく雑談できるフレーズ５０ – 英語のまぐまぐ！ t.co/jhpw9p1Whc 18:00:16
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown – Elite Edition – t.co/I2GeOAaJLL #MacAppStore 20:00:17
• Infernal Affairs [Cantonese-Eng Sub]

  Found at t.co/g0bvkdUIpm via @minitubeapp t.co/NWJdqV1IXr 22:00:12

• 無間道 Infernal Affairs (2002)〈粵語〉[cantonese - cht & eng subtitle]

  Found at t.co/3Jub16mHO1 via @minitubeapp t.co/GzzGrMiRYj 00:00:22

• Running Out Of Time (Full movie with English subtitles)

  Found at t.co/QAIVIswSrb via @minitubeapp #cantonese t.co/CFPJmBL1yL 02:00:20

• Love Me, Love My Money – Full Movie with English subtitles t.co/6Fl24GpxRv @minitubeappさんから #cantonese 04:00:15
• カンヌ國際映畫祭 － 2013年5月15日から26日まで t.co/6NHNnnYzkO 06:00:10
• His Name is Nobody (1979) [Cantonese, English Subs] [] – YouTube t.co/vdAQ0rt6Wl 08:00:08
• ゲームセンターCX 有野の挑戦「MOTHER2 ギーグの逆襲」 – YouTube t.co/ykEe8HEyOE #earthbound 10:00:12
• 爆嗆玩家首選 acer送Samsonite精品電腦背包 -Yahoo!奇摩購物中心，由Yahoo!奇摩經營 t.co/2eKw4VYvCY 12:00:13
• 花草植物_百度圖片 t.co/kaqM0gjQim 14:00:07
• 5/2-5/12百分百母親節 10在懂你。過母親節的100種提案 t.co/s49dkoQopA 16:00:23
• Yahoo!奇摩超級商城-女裝,3C,手機,電腦,精品,包包,鞋,商店優惠促銷最便宜 t.co/1nfCPgoFSJ 18:00:10
• the most popular blog and album service in Taiwan t.co/qfqUl7ds6t 20:00:10
• 【旅遊。住宿】外拍。北方札特木屋建築愜意第二天小記錄❤ – ♫ ░ 蘋果 Apple 林檎 りんご ringo(!?)░♫-無名小站 t.co/sVRtk7a02y 22:00:16
• [夏晴]小資正妹理財術 – 無名愛正妹-無名小站 t.co/6DvjQfN92r 00:00:04
• "Don't make the right decision, make your decision right" ~ Anon. #choices #language 02:00:11
• 《家嘗便梵》TVB USA 宣傳片（粵語） – YouTube t.co/qHyOJ0HKmV #cantonese 04:00:10
• RT @shizukada: saw someone doing reps with surusu today at Newark airport. Mad props, but he didn't have his J headphones so – 1 06:00:13
• "I actually think that's one of the secrets of life…just lower what you will pat yourself on the back for." ~ Pete Holmes #neutrino 08:00:15
• "Easy is not to be underestimated. Easy is liberating." ~ Chris Anderson #immersion #SRS #neutrino 10:00:10
• Hercules (icelandic) I Won't Say I'm In Love +subs&transl. – YouTube t.co/51L1De2qtZ 12:00:04
• Mulan (Icelandic) I'll Make a Man out of You – YouTube t.co/d3wbad9UO4 14:00:09
• Mulan – I'll make a man out of you (Finnish)-YouTube t.co/d4kLOhL3M0 #totally #elvish 16:00:12
• "Without memory, we can't keep what we learn." ~ Monisha Pasupathi #immersion #SRS 18:00:13
• "…without memory, there would not be learning." ~ Monisha Pasupathi #immersion #SRS 20:00:19
• 「邊個做㗎？我數三聲。一・・・二」
  "Who did this? I'm going to count to three. One…two –"
  「係我做嘅！」
  "I did it!"
  #kungfu #Cantonese #stephenchow
  #周星馳 22:00:27
• 「能力越大，責任就越大！你避不了的！」
  "With great power comes great responsibility. You musn't run away from yours!"
  #kungfu #Mandarin #stephenchow
  #周星馳 00:00:12
• 「你睇佢！俾人打到阿媽都唔認得！」
  "Look at him (sob), he's been beaten beyond recognition!"
  #kungfu #Cantonese #stephenchow
  #周星馳 02:00:21
• 「幾好呀。嚟呀！」
  "Not bad. Let's see what else you've got. BRING IT!"
  #kungfu #Cantonese #stephenchow
  #周星馳 04:00:37
• "If you don’t have all those zillions of tiny successes, the big ones don’t mean anything." t.co/Jv1LSflV29 06:00:11
• 【御茶を挽く 】芸者・遊女・女給などが客がなくて暇でいる。〔昔，遊里で暇な遊女が客に出す茶を挽く仕事をさせられたことからという〕 #daijirin 07:38:51
• 【御茶】おちゃ ①茶を丁寧にいう語。「━をいれる」「━をたてる」 ②茶道。「━を習う」 ③仕事の途中でする小休止。茶菓などの飲食をする。「三時の━にしよう」 ④紅茶・コーヒーなどの飲み物。また，それを飲むこと。「━に誘う」 #daijirin 07:39:26
• Did I mention I love comics? #random 08:00:10
• Mark Millar の Wanted を Amazon でチェック！ t.co/IAsYt2JgVF @さんから #german #edition 10:00:17
• "Somos los Borg. Prepárense para ser asimilados. La resistencia es inútil." t.co/On4Cloukrn 12:00:11
• "我們是博格人・・・反抗無用。" t.co/sVutfLhMB0 14:00:07
• It's not hard, it's just poorly structured. #volume #presentation #learning 16:00:09
• Kanye West – Stronger-YouTube t.co/T3xfLZzZmO #katakana #shibuya #roppongi 18:00:12
• Russian rap Timati – YouTube t.co/r2OptlZYPg 20:00:11
• 龍咁威 Dragon Loaded (2003)〈粵語〉[cantonese - cht & eng subtitle]-YouTube t.co/IDNgfcXtbq 22:00:19
• #aircomics_jp t.co/H7Z3cUlNq4 23:34:08
• #aircomics_jp t.co/AbmN6FG03h 23:52:23
• 龍咁威 Dragon Loaded (2003)〈粵語〉[cantonese - cht & eng subtitle]-YouTube t.co/bsO7cBrkq6 00:00:20
• ニュージャックスウィング – Wikipedia t.co/bThicw66EU 02:00:13
• ジェムハダー – Wikipedia t.co/aUvSY3YMXr 04:00:14
• 朗文的標語翻譯比賽 | siu82english on Xanga t.co/vPO0BnDzSp 06:00:27
• Always Learning t.co/tVySmIKtNP 08:00:36
• 「伙計，我說過我愛你嗎？」
  "I ever tell you I love you, man?"
  #badboys #mandarin #dub 10:00:15
• "蘇GOOD" t.co/PIvqsKPyDv 12:00:24
• So Far 蘇 Good – YouTube t.co/5pCuCvL4M9 #Cantonese #cooking #show 14:00:12

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” ~ Walter Elliot

You rarely get instant full victories, everybody gets that, even optimists.

But what almost no one gets is that you can and do and will get instant partial victories. All. The. Time.

And guess what? THEY COUNT! These count!

If you count them, that this. If you will let them count.

Life is full of these little wins. Every day, we’re winning.
The trouble with us is that sometimes we don’t let them count. Indeed, some of us never let it count.

The world is not being a jerk to you.
You are being a jerk to you.
The world is not being hard on you.
You are being hard on yourself.

You sit there, and you’re like “I only know one Japanese word.”

Well, isn’t that more than zero? That counts, buttface!

“Well, maybe I’m learning this Japanese word, but there are so many I don’t know.”

And?
Your point is?

Is this one word you’re learning right now, is it or is it not a part of the Japanese language?
And will knowing it mean that you know more Japanese now than you did earlier?
And those other words, are they or are they not also single words?

…

How many words are you supposed to learn at a time anyway? You have 2 hands, 2 eyes, 1 mouth, ~1000 minutes in a day (only a few hundred once you deduct “maintenance” activities).

“Well, maybe I’m learning this Japanese word, but there are so many I don’t know.”

So what you’re saying is this word doesn’t matter, right? Because there are so many thousands of others. OK. There are over 7 billion human beings alive today: many more than there are, ever have been or ever will be words in the Japanese language. Let’s go kill your parents. What? What, that’s less than 0.000000014% of the total population. 2 in 7 bill, bro. Don’t be so stingy! What’s 2 bucks to a billionaire, son?

See?

It counts.

There are more people than kanji in the world. Yet you would never kill a person because they “don’t count”. So why denigrate your learning progress because it goes one or two words or kanji at a time?

There is no such thing as large victories. The late Stephen Covey used to talk about the private victory that precedes the public victory. What he really meant was that there are no large victories. Just jillions of tiny ones that we lazily sum up and call a single, large victory.

When you accept that, you win. You’ve already won. But if you don’t accept it, you’re screwed, because nothing will ever be good enough. And when nothing is good enough, nothing is what you’ll get. Yeah? You like that? It’s a little pun I picked up from an Archie comic in the 1990s…

No.
Don’t go.
We’re not done yet.
Because I don’t think you get it yet.

Let’s take track and field. 5000m. Or, the marathon. Take the marathon. Hmm…I dunno, temperamentally, I’m more of a sprinter myself, but…whatever. Take any race in track and field. Any distance.

Guess what? It takes more than 1 step to win or even just finish the race. Even the short ones. Even the 100m dash. Even the indoor 60m dash. Even the long jump, which isn’t even a race, takes more than one step.

But which step counted? Which step won it? The last one, right? So, let’s just take out all the steps like we did your parents a few paragraphs ago and case closed, right? Trim the fat, skip the foreplay, straight to DVD and ownage, right?

Oh, what’s that?

All the steps counted? All the steps helped? All the steps brought you closer to the goal? At no point would it helpful to be go “I’ve taken all these steps but I’m still not done; this race is unfinishable!”?

Oh.

Nature, the Universe, “the Situation”, Snooki, whatever you wanna call it…is always…conspiring to help you. Trying to throw you a bone. But it only throws you cells because it doesn’t wanna crush you. And because people who can’t appreciate cells…I mean, would you give a grown dog to someone who was mean to puppies? Golden retriever puppies? That are so cute you just…nnnnrrrgh. Not pet owner material, right?

Events are like that. They have a way of not being events. Instead, they tend to drip out — BTW, Tuvok’s voice in Spanish “Star Trek: Voyager” is awesome — rather than coming in a torrent. And it’s just as well because people are pretty bad at handling a torrent; even a thirsty man doesn’t actually want to drink from a firehose. In fact, it would actually be rather cruel to violently hose down a dangerously thirsty person instead of giving them water in drinkable amounts. What’s that? Am I speaking from an experience I had one summer in Canada? Oh, no, no, no…

The whole system seems set up to almost always only give people what they can handle ¹. Or maybe it isn’t, but it’s cool and useful to think of it that way — in a Douglas Adams Feng Shui sorta way. It’s almost as if there’s a rule that says: if this joker can’t appreciate one Japanese word, then don’t give him any more. Now, a part of you is going: “I’d feel much more appreciative if I had 10,000 Japanese words”. No ya wouldn’t. You’d find something to hate about it. Just like most lottery winners find a way to replicate their exact pre-lottery problems but with bigger numbers.

Ironically, I learned a lot more kanji a lot faster when I abandoned my whole “100% retention or nothing”, “anything less than 25 new kanji a day is a sin punishable by death” attitude. When I let 1 new kanji count, or even 0 new kanji and just reps count, I almost always got that and more. It must have something to do with the winning feeling; it must be self-reinforcing and thus ultimately self-fulfilling.

…Just like the losing feeling — self-loathing.

Self-loathing can always find a way. Not because it’s intrinsically powerful but because we can empower it; we can inject it into any situation, into any condition, no matter how wonderful.
If only you knew how small millionaires feel next to billionaires ². Or billionaires next to deca-billionaires. Or RTK1 graduates next to RTK3 graduates. Or freshly minted PhDs next to tenured professors. Or Everest summitters next to K2 summitters because Everest is for tourists and posers and pansies — real playaz are on that K2 shiz, son.
There is always a way to not appreciate where you are and what you’re doing and where you’re going.
Now, going that way never helps, but it’s always available for you to take, if you choose to.

People are weird. Always complaining about “the pace of change”, and “things are happening so fast” and “I just need to slow down” and “we just met, why are you touching me like that?”. And then when they’re going slow enough, they’re too slow. Well, maybe things are happening at just the right pace and you need to get with the program. Enjoy the ride. Maybe every stoplight is a chance for you to chill, check out hot people, read a book (I once read a very dense political science tome cover to cover exclusively at stoplights).

Current cosmology tells us that our entire universe was once a cosmological singularity; that’s a fancypants way of saying it was really small. Infinitesimally small. Infinitesimally dense. But this universe…it didn’t give up like a little b###h. It didn’t quit. It didn’t whine about how the other universes had better constants. It just chugged along. Kept expanding. Apparently, it’s even expanding now. 15 billion years later, it’s still doing it’s SRS reps. Because, WTF, why not, right?

Now, take all that with a grain of salt because my knowledge of cosmology hovers around zero, and our collective knowledge of cosmology can change like an unstable woman (IS THERE ANY OTHER KIND? EH LADS? EH??)’s moods…lol…naw, woman and minorities are great. No, but…you get the idea.

Be grateful, you smelly orifice . Smile that goofy smile of yours. What you’re doing? It counts. It helps. It adds up. Every little bit. Every cell. Every molecule. Every photon. Counts. So keep adding. Keep helping.

You want a whole pizza. But you only seem to be getting it one slice, no, one bite, at a time. I feel your pain.
But how big is your mouth anyway?

Inside your own mind, be like a guy talking to other guys about his exploits with the ladies. If you made eye contact, you spat game at her. If you brushed hands, you made out. If you made out, you did it. If you did it, you did it 10 times…That’s a sucky example. But you get it, right? After all, how much dirt does it take to make a white shirt dirty? Not much, right? You can have a 99.9% surface area clean white shirt…but one stain and we say that that shirt is stained. Well, as soon as you stain the white shirt of reality with a bit of progress, you’re winning. Already.

It counts. It works. Let it count. Work it. Count it (mentally, if nothing else).
Don’t let’s turn this into a Scott Tenorman thing with your parents…

The Moe Dictionary is a monolingual Chinese dictionary. I think it’s relatively new and it’s pretty cool. I like it so far. Here’s a bookmarklet for it:

• MoeDict/萌
• Source code:javascript:(function(){var%20w=window,d=w.document,s="";;if(d.selection){s=d.selection.createRange().text}else%20if(d.getSelection){s=d.getSelection()}else%20if(w.getSelection){s=window.getSelection()}window.open("https://www.moedict.tw/#"+encodeURIComponent(s),"_blank");})()

So, apparently, a Batman movie came out last year and it was a big deal? Haha. No, I watched it and loved it. I wish Christopher Nolan were in charge of the recent Marvel Comics movies as well, because he did such a great jerb.

Growing up, iconoclastic as they were, I always preferred Marvel heroes to the DC ones (and the Brian Singer X-Men movies were great). But between the Chris Bale Batmans and (judging by the trailers) the new Superman/Man of Steel, DC are clearly winning hands down at the movies.

And, to be fair to DC, they were smart enough to have both Frank Miller and Alan Moore working with them in the 1980s, so… ¹

For me personally, Nolan’s work stands as art that is intellectually satisfying to my putatively ² adult mind, as well as being entertaining and just infinitely rewatchable; I watch Inception in Mandarin for fun about once a month. I also read that he brings in his projects on time and under budget so…yeah…smiles all around.

Anyway, this Batman movie had some good lines, so I transcribed some of them for your upliftment, edification and educational use.

You’ll note that I haven’t bothered put down the character names next to the lines because, honestly, I can’t be bothered and what really counts is that you have the words. It adds a lot of extra work without adding concomitant value. You like the new, lazy me, don’tcha? Yes, you do! Also, no sound clips this time. Again, laziness. Maybe when I get a Mandarin research assistant that’ll change.

Use a tool like MDBG dictionary or MoeDict to get the (character) readings and translations of words as necessary.

要看情況。
That depends.
甚麼情況？
On what?

這個不是車。
This isn’t a car.

你是誰？
Who are you?
我是誰不重要。我們的計劃才是重點。
It doesn’t matter who we are. What matters is our plan.
Lit: It doesn’t matter who I am.

你幹嘛不直接・・・殺了我？
Why didn’t you just…kill me?
你不害怕死亡；你求之不得。我得給你更殘酷的懲罰。
You don’t fear death; you welcome it. Your punishment must be more severe.
你要折磨我？
Torture?
對。不是你的身體。而是你的靈魂。
Yes. But not of your body. Of your soul.
我在哪兒？
Where am I?
家裡。我在這裡懂得了甚麼是絕望。你也會的。
Home. Where I learned the truth about despair. As will you.
得 děiㄉㄟˇ 副 應該、必須、需要。 如：「你總得讓我把話說完。」

要我不開槍，不殺人？我還是沒有辦法同意你的觀點！
About the whole no-guns thing…? I’m not sure I feel as strongly about it as you do.

它在哪兒？引爆器在哪兒？在哪兒？！它在哪兒？！告訴我引爆器在哪兒。然後，我會准許你去死。
Where is it? Where’s your trigger? Where is it?! Where is it?! Tell me where the trigger is. Then…you have my permission to die.
引爆器 = detonator

你回到這裡，是想和你的城市一起滅亡？
So, you came back to die with your city.
不。我回來阻止你！
No. I came back to stop you.

你已經給了他們一切！
You’ve given them everything!
不是一切。還不夠。
Not everything. Not yet.

抱歉。一直讓你失望。
Sorry to keep letting you down.

你的女朋友真酷啊。
I like your girlfriend, Mr. Wayne.

恐懼會讓你失敗。
Fear is why you fail.

還是不相信我？
Still don’t trust me, huh?

不這麼做，他們就會殺了我！
I had to find a way to stop them trying to kill me!
你犯了一個大錯。
You made a serious mistake.

你犯了一個大錯。
You made a serious mistake.
再大也沒有你犯的錯大。真遺憾。
Not as serious as yours, I fear.

不這麼做，他們就會殺了我！
I had to find a way to stop them trying to kill me!
你犯了一個大錯。
You made a serious mistake.
再大也沒有你犯的錯大。真遺憾。
Not as serious as yours, I fear.
#catwoman #batman #bane

• 蘇施黃 – 維基百科，自由的百科全書 t.co/6YG0JFJzcy 16:00:09
• So Far 蘇 Good S1 EP22 – YouTube t.co/GugBPJmtJ8 #croissants #cantonese #牛角包 18:00:19
• Band of brothers (兄弟連.諾曼地大登陸)不完全觀後感 – 將將國-無名小站 t.co/SyLbV1INDF 20:00:42
• Get moving first, change direction later. #immersion #language 22:00:38
• AJATT Hall of Fame | Essays in Idleness t.co/g1AVTe6sFp 00:00:27
• AJATT Hall of Fame | Essays in Idleness t.co/UwdRhsPLZB 02:01:14
• Take off first. Correct course midair. #immersion 04:01:15
• RT @4hour_Workweek: パーキンソンの法則というものがある。いくつものバリエーションがあるが、私が好きなのは、これである。「仕事の認識の上での複雑さと重要性は、割り當てた時間の長さに比例する」#4hww 06:01:13
• Native-like pronunciation is not a skill, it's a choice. #output #speaking 08:00:23
• Native-like pronunciation is not a skill, it's a choice. Most people choose not to sound native because of shame. 10:00:07
• AJATT Blog currently down (server overload: too popular, yo ), expect it to be back up within the next 48 hours. 10:50:44
• RT @jsvilla: @ajatt it's the strangest thing when you understand exactly what was said but you didn't understand every word that was spoken. 12:00:31
• RT @AetherLift: "take off in whatever direction the runway faces, then turn towards the destination" 14:00:11
• RT @haru_aiu: @ajatt Sounding native is overcoming frequent private & public failure. The more private failure you choose the less will sho… 18:37:54
• Rejoice. PORAB ("Plain Ol' Regular AJATT Blog") is back up and running again. #main #blog 18:40:00
• "The more private failure you choose the less will show in public." ~ @haru_aiu #shadowing #output #speaking #pronunciation 22:00:08
• 【咄嗟】とっさ 〔「咄」は舌打ちをしてしかること，「嗟」は嘆息の意〕 きわめて短い時間。あっという間。一瞬。「━の間の出来事だった」「━の場合に役に立つ」 #daijirin 23:04:23
• 【咄嗟に】とっさに （副） 瞬時に反応するさま。すぐさま。「━身をかわした」 #daijirin 23:04:53
• 做愛上癮症 t.co/yvkYRYFgWI 00:01:15
• Levottomat – Wikipedia t.co/0FEAnmn4ab #finnish #film 02:00:16
• CiNii 論文 -  併存する他動詞 : 「つなぐ」と「つなげる」の意味 t.co/zt18Ncj6Dy 04:00:19
• 【回忌】かいき 〔「年回忌」の略〕 人の死後，毎年まわってくる祥月（しようつき）（当月当日）の命日。また，その回数をいう語。満一年目を一周忌または一回忌，満二年目を三回忌，以下，七・十三・十七・二十三・二十七・三十三・五十・百の各回忌に法事が行われる。年忌。… #daijirin 06:09:24
• 【命日】めいにち 故人の死んだ日に当たる日。毎月のその日，あるいは毎年のその日。忌日（きにち）。 #daijirin 06:10:08
• 【忌日】きにち ①毎年または毎月の，その人が死んだ日と同じ日付の日で，回向（えこう）をする日。命日。きじつ。忌辰。 ②初七日より四十九日に至る七日目ごとの日。 #daijirin 06:10:18
• 【祥月】しょうつき 人の死後一周忌以降の，故人の死んだ月と同じ月。 #daijirin 06:10:37
• 【祥月命日】しょうつきめいにち 人の死後一周忌以降の，故人の死んだ月日と同じ月日。正忌。 #daijirin 06:10:47
• 【当限】とうぎり 長期清算取引で，受け渡し期日が売買約定した月の末になっているもの。当月切り。→先限（さきぎり）・中限（なかぎり） #daijirin 06:11:43
• 【先限】さきぎり 限月（げんげつ）を立てて行う清算取引で，目的物の受け渡し日が最も先の月のもの。先物。せんぎり。→中限（なかぎり）・当限（とうぎり） #daijirin 06:12:07
• 【限月】げんげつ 先物取引における受け渡し期限。 #daijirin 06:12:21
• A paper on the difference between 繋ぐ and 繋げる
  CiNii 論文 -  併存する他動詞 : 「つなぐ」と「つなげる」の意味 t.co/bQUqLvTXw7 12:00:21
• 【聖】ひじり 〔「日知（し）り」の意〕 ①高徳の僧。高僧。また，一般に僧の敬称。 ②寺院に属さず，遁世（とんせい）して修行に励む仏教者。また，特に妻帯しない修行者。 ③高野聖・遊行聖・勧進聖など，布教や勧進を行うため，各地を遍歴する僧。多くは下級の僧で，民衆… #daijirin 14:03:37
• 【囃子・囃】はやし 〔動詞「囃（はや）す」の連用形から〕 ①日本の各種の芸能で，演技・舞踊・歌唱（謡・唄）の伴奏のために，あるいは雰囲気を出すために，楽器（主に笛と打楽器）や人声（掛け声・囃子詞（ことば））で奏する音楽。㋐能楽の囃子では，笛・小鼓・大鼓・太鼓… #daijirin 19:16:25
• "Nothing" is not less than "something". They are fundamentally different in character. They might as well be in different universes. 22:02:48
• Speaking a language is nothing but an exercise in doing impressions…writ large. 00:00:13
• There are no large victories. Just jillions of tiny ones that we lazily sum up and call a single, large victory. t.co/jricy2iHVz 02:00:21
• 第39章 – 邂逅·愛 邂逅·愛漫畫-烤米網 漫畫網 t.co/AVFi1CErn9 #korean #webcomic #chinese #translation 10:00:31
• Chinese translations of Korean (+Japanese/Western/etc.) webcomics: 韓國漫畫 日本漫畫 歐美漫畫 港台漫畫 原創漫畫 同人漫畫 高清漫畫 在線漫畫 – 烤米網 t.co/YypYZW2rfH 12:00:22
• Keroro軍曹 粵語 97 – YouTube t.co/E2qdLtmsIn 14:00:18
• An apple isn't a small orange. "Nothing" is not less than "something". #immersion 16:00:23
• 十字架陰毛扮教宗 女大生半裸遊行挨告 | 蘋果日報 t.co/7KeM4d0Asm 18:00:37
• "原子と空間と、それ以外は意見があるのみだ" t.co/OwMhqBl5D1 20:01:28
• "原子と空間以外は何も存在しない。それ以外はすべて意見だ。" t.co/UScG4iwwBM 22:01:14
• 占士冧莊常規賽MVP 杜蘭特又做阿二 – 太陽報 t.co/iZ89fQyqfx 00:00:12
• 「這個不是車。」
  "This isn't a car."
  #batman #TDKR 02:00:12
• 「這個不是車。」
  "This isn't a car."
  #batman #TDKR #mandarin #dub 04:00:27
• 「要看情況。」
  "That depends."
  「甚麼情況？」
  "On what?"
  #batman #tdkr #mandarin #dub 06:00:21
• t.co/vQqloLj78V: エドワード・W. サイード – 単行本: 本 t.co/WA9jx4ZkxL @さんから 12:00:22
• 「萌典」Free ChineseChinese Dictionary (iOS/Android) | En Route To Fluency t.co/7WnFKYWB6X 14:00:06
• Definition of excrescence: abnormal outgrowth.
  t.co/Zy3fa5RiQ0 19:40:44
• Definition of sessile: attached by the base, or without any distinct projecting support, as a leaf issuing dir… t.co/ObrsDApSbV 19:41:08
• Definition of pelagic: of or pertaining to the open seas or oceans.
  t.co/ElXpdDOOVa 19:41:32
• Definition of neritic: of or pertaining to the region of water lying directly above the sublittoral zone of th… t.co/dqiwk4tHB8 19:41:53
• You don't "speak" a language. You use it. Language is software. Want more features? Install them. #geekiestmetaphorever 22:00:13
• 物書堂「ウィズダム英和・和英辞典 2」 t.co/WFuhjjV53V 22:51:17
• t.co/SM2YDpdnYs 23:43:40
• "對不起，我沒有辦法同意你的觀點" t.co/7FFWX899vl 00:00:17
• 【雑作】ぞうさ【造作】（名）スル ①手間や費用のかかること。面倒なこと。「なんの━もない」「━をかける」 ②もてなし。御馳走。「飛んだ御━を頂きます／高野聖鏡花」 ③技巧。装飾。「まさしく━の一もなく，風体心をも求めず／遊楽習道風見」 ④作り出すこと。「大悟… #daijirin 00:39:17
• 【造作】ぞうさく （名）スル ①家を建てたり，手を入れたりすること。「両親の隠居所を━する」 ②建物の内部の仕上げ工事。天井・床板・建具・棚・階段などを取り付けること。また，そのもの。 ③顔のつくり。目鼻立ち。「顔の━がまずい」 ④つくること。また，つくられ… #daijirin 00:39:58
• 【造作無い】ぞうさない （形）［文］ク ざうさな・し 手間がかからない。簡単だ。やさしい。「子供でも—・く作れる」 #daijirin 00:40:49
• 【造作魔】ぞうさま 戦争などのように，平穏を害し仏道修行の邪魔となるもの。「この時天狗共力を得て，━の心をぞ付けたりける／太平記18」 #daijirin 00:41:05
• 【挿げ替える】すげかえる （動ア下一）［文］ハ下二 すげか・ふ ①新しいものに取り替えて，すげる。つけかえる。「鼻緒を—・える」 ②指導者や役員などをかえる。「監督の首を—・える」 #daijirin 00:42:20
• 【左〈団扇〉】ひだりうちわ 左手でゆっくりと団扇を使うこと。転じて，安楽な生活を送ること。左おうぎ。「━で暮らす」 #daijirin 00:46:32
• 【〈団扇〉】うちわ 〔「打ち羽」の意という〕 ①あおいで風を起こす道具。普通は，細く削った竹の骨に，紙・絹などを張る。形は円形・角形などさまざま。もとは貴人が自分の顔を隠すために用いたものという。「━であおぐ」［季］夏。《月に柄をさしたらばよき━かな／宗鑑》… #daijirin 00:46:54
• 【御曹司・御曹子】おんぞうし 〔「曹司」は部屋（へや）の意〕 ①名門の子弟。「社長の━」 ②公家の子息でまだ独立していない者。 ③（平家の「公達（きんだち）」に対して）源氏の嫡流で，独立していない子息の敬称。特に，源義経。 #daijirin 00:49:34
• 【名門】めいもん ①由緒のある家柄。立派な家柄。名家。 ②有名な企業や学校。「私学の━」 #daijirin 00:49:56
• 【子弟】してい 子供や弟。転じて，年若い人。年少者。「━の教育に当たる」「良家の━」 #daijirin 00:50:19
• 【素気無い】すげない （形）［文］ク すげな・し 同情や思いやりがない。愛想がない。冷淡である。つれない。「—・い返事」「折角お頼みになつたものを—・くして恩を仇で返すやうな事は／社会百面相魯庵」 ［派生］━ げ（形動）・━ さ（名） #daijirin 00:52:50
• 【冷淡】れいたん （名・形動）［文］ナリ  ①関心や興味を示さないこと。熱心でないこと。また，そのさま。無関心。「あの両親は子供の教育に━だ」 ②同情を示さないこと。不親切なこと。そっけないこと。また，そのさま。「━な態度」「━な応対」 ［派生］━ さ（名） #daijirin 00:53:07
• "無論如何，我都沒有辦法同意你的觀點" t.co/Qb3HXX6fdB 02:01:17
• "我沒辦法同意你的觀點" t.co/H4qqKdbUv7 04:00:21
• 王力宏 – 在梅邊mv-YouTube t.co/ndvpHCGJE2 06:00:59
• BSマンガ夜話 051「機動警察パトレイバー」 ゆうきまさみ—在線播放—優酷網，視頻高清在線觀看 t.co/B7XYoXNdVF 08:01:09
• マンガ夜話 – 搜庫 t.co/DcUAl6AWeb 10:00:19
• SoundHoundからのSuper Junior-Mの华丽的独秀 t.co/25sIAQJDWX 10:12:39
• Gaki no Tsukai║Haunted Hotel║01║VOSTFR – YouTube t.co/M8SrUMdWQZ 12:00:19
• Gaki no Tsukai║Haunted Hotel║02║VOSTFR – YouTube t.co/EZzbWsNiyJ 14:00:41
• No Laughing High School H – YouTube t.co/DllRreg0qf 16:00:12
• No Laughing High School O – Extra Scenes-YouTube t.co/WgRJ1sQiUp 18:00:15
• 50 moments de la télévision japonaise – YouTube t.co/27PKRITxcp (via Adrian S.) 20:00:33
• BSマンガ夜話 – 搜庫 t.co/3ZAYFErOtK 22:00:16
• 【オタべり！】#11 厳選漫畫30選！in 桜[桜H23/6/21] – YouTube t.co/7BMDub6hgi 00:00:25
• 【アニメ夜話 in 桜】魔法少女まどかマギカを語る[桜H23/6/23] – YouTube t.co/FoDylKvmdr 02:00:48
• 童夢 – YouTube t.co/UFuQTnTevp #大友克洋 #BSマンガ夜話 04:01:09
• SakuraSoTV オタべり – YouTube t.co/g9zfP9Agou 06:00:22
• アニメ夜話 – YouTube t.co/4BbWnXWDyU 08:00:16
• お見事と言うしかない…いくつものミッションをクリアして家を脱出する猫（動画） t.co/LKAW8ZDvm7 @lbqcomさんから 08:56:35
• ウコンマーンアホ社長だけじゃない…フィンランド人は珍名ネタの宝庫 t.co/nzDOGu1JHR @lbqcomさんから 08:57:08
• 岡田斗司夫「火垂るの墓」と「おおかみこどもの雨と雪」 t.co/f65ReoxqsN @minitubeappさんから 09:04:44
• 【長丁場】ながちょうば ①仕事などが完了するまでに長い時間のかかること。また，長い時間のかかる物事。「━の仕事」 ②演劇で，幕が開いてから閉まるまで，長い時間のかかるもの。 ③宿場と宿場との距離の長いこと。また，旅程の長いこと。 #daijirin 09:41:36
• マンガ夜話 – 搜庫 t.co/CTQ1zbVmmQ 10:00:36
• BSマンガ夜話 051「機動警察パトレイバー」 ゆうきまさみ—在線播放—優酷網，視頻高清在線觀看 t.co/mXRvlsBpt7 12:00:16
• 說日本語 | All or Nothing t.co/lLxC4sBofE 14:00:18
• PSマンガ夜話 予告編 t.co/IO1GI6yRC1 @minitubeappさんから 16:00:28
• 【せっかち 】（名・形動） 〔「せきかち（急き勝ち）」の転か〕 落ち着きがなく，先へ先へと急ぐ・こと（さま）。また，そのような性質の人。性急。 ［派生］━ さ（名） #daijirin 17:03:34
• 【ちぐはぐ 】（名・形動）［文］ナリ  対になるべきものがそろっていないこと。物事がくいちがって調和がとれないこと。また，そのさま。「━の靴下」「話が━になる」 #daijirin 17:16:45
• ニコニコアニメ夜話＃２２『攻殻機動隊STAND ALONE COMPLEX』1/10 t.co/0YlkdLjGvq @minitubeappさんから 18:00:07
• みどりのマキバオー t.co/kRLwIEpUcI @minitubeappさんから 20:00:20
• イデオン　AnimeYawaSpaceRunawayIdeon t.co/oEEcdhs3A6 @minitubeappさんから 22:00:09
• t.co/noQpvJtjsZ 23:21:21
• Webコミック 『取田家の日常』　第7話 t.co/QpddkPCogu 00:00:30
• 快盜天使ツインエンジェル 公式サイト t.co/HrK8xj6hBn 02:00:20
• "ジェムハダー(Jem'Hadar)はアメリカのSFテレビドラマ『スタートレック』シリーズに登場する架空のヒューマノイド型異星人。ドミニオンに屬する。" t.co/7H3huxRHby 04:00:37
• 龍咁威 Dragon Loaded (2003)〈粵語〉[cantonese - cht & eng subtitle] – YouTube – t.co/JNwmfdITXG #comedy 06:00:04
• "a hilarious mix of Billy Madison and Police Academy" t.co/mIFt8E9qmq龍咁威 Dragon Loaded #cantonese #comedy t.co/JdVrr8Op4P 08:00:34
• 岡田斗司夫のひとり夜話vol.6大阪 #02(10/02/13) マンガオタク話 t.co/dHzakkctNs @minitubeappさんから 10:00:20
• 【青田買い】あおたがい ①青田の時期に収穫を見越して先買いすること。 ②企業が，学生の採用を早い時期に決めること。青田刈り。 #daijirin 11:54:10
• 【青田刈（り）】あおたがり ①実らないうちに稲を刈り取ること。青刈り。 ②→青田買い②に同じ。 #daijirin 11:54:35
• 【青田売り】あおたうり 経済的に困った農民が青田の時期に収穫を見越して先売りすること。 #daijirin 11:54:52
• 【青田】あおた ①田植えをしたイネの苗が生長し，一面に青々としている田。［季］夏。《山々を低く覚ゆる━かな／蕪村》 ②葉が青く実の熟していない田。 ③近世，京坂地方で，代金を払わないで芝居などを見物すること。また，その人。「いよ大根などと━がわるくしやれ／誹… #daijirin 11:55:09
• RT @finalvent: 「痛いニュース(ﾉ∀`) : 日本人女性が見せた神技に世界が衝撃！「完全に言葉を失った」「これこそアート だ」 – ライブドアブログ」 t.co/2DRFBmFLMD 12:00:13
• 岡田斗司夫のひとり夜話「vol.1オープニングトーク」(4/6)マンガの1 t.co/SyFCfcKZ2X @minitubeappさんから 14:00:15

1. Stop not reading things because they’re popular
   Is it popular? Read it!
2. Stop not reading things because they’re unpopular
   Once you get through that clusterhump of negation, you’ll understand: Is it unpopular? Read it!
3. Stop trying to agree with everything the author says
   This isn’t medieval Europe and that book isn’t the Bible.
   Every book, and I literally mean every book, has some value in it.
   And also some crap. You decide which is which, not the glances of strangers or ignorant acquaintances.
4. Stop trying to disagree with everything the author says
   There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of an author of a book with those of the reader. That term is “idiot”. With apologies to Mr. S.M. Stirling .
5. Stop justifying your reading choices to the mainstream
   Tell them to justify your (girl-)nuts. Anyone who would presume to cast aspersions on your reading choices can go perform incestuous acts with a female parent.

   “A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.” ~ Jo Goodwin

6. Stop trying to read every word
   Skip it. The book’s not running away.
7. Stop trying to read every page
   Stop trying to force yourself to read every page/sentence/section. If the book is actually any fun (for you right now), it’ll make you read it unconsciously; it’ll make itself get read. The only thing you need to do is consciously skip the boring parts, the hard parts, the parts where you get bogged down and stop moving. Reading is a sport, a physical act, and that means motion is key. Move. Reading is turning pages. So skip. Skip it! If it matters, you can come back another time, another day.
8. Stop taking reading seriously
   Seriousness leads to worry. Worry to impaired cognitive function, AKA stupidity. The act of reading doesn’t require you to be smart, but it does require you to be not-stupid .
9. Stop trying to read in massive chunks of time
   Most of life is waiting. Most of life is disjoint snippets of time: two, three, five minutes here or there. That’s when you read. Life is fast cuts, like a Michael Bay/J. J. Abrams movie. The reason you “don’t have time to read” is because you’re expecting the cut size to change at some point, for that massive lull to come. Well, it’s not gonna. Stop trying and waiting for some golden multi-hour block: Assume that you’re not gonna get it, because even if you did get it, your powers of concentration wouldn’t hold up. Read books like you read the phone book or the Internet or SMS messages (cellphone texts). Skip all the boring bits without guilt or shame. Reading is skimming.
10. Stop judging other people for what they read
    

    “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard

    Cut the Gestapo crap. They — other people– have rights, too. You have no right to impugn their choice of books or otherwise unduly influence their reading. People talk a whole lot about freedom of speech, but what’s really at stake here is something even more precious, even more sacred: freedom of thought. Freedom of mental association. Most grownups wouldn’t make fun of a person’s friends, why make fun of their books?

11. Stop being afraid of being judged for what you read
    

    “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not” ~ André Gide

    Show what you read with pride, or at least without shame. You’ll repel haters and attract kindred spirits. I have a friend living in America who’s made a lot of Japanese friends just because of her habit of shamelessly reading Japanese manga in public. They come to her. I myself started being more open about the books I read and started to meet people that I actually like (rather than merely tolerate). In Japan, bookstores offer to put a cover on the books they sell you. Lame. Sure, it prevents the derision of haters, but it also prevents the admiration of fans and future friends.

    We talk a lot about standing up for rights and protests and all that righteous stuff. People risk their lives to save other people. And that’s great. But arguably, the greatest courage is in these small daily acts of defiance against conformity. Social risk is objectively less dangerous than impending biological/physical risk, but (ironically) it takes more guts to take a social risk than to put your life on the line.

    Any book can be good because the true value of a book isn’t in the words on the page but in the thoughts and associations it sets off in your head. So anyone who tries to limit what books you read and why is ultimately trying to limit your thought — your mind. This is s### of the bull persuasion. It doesn’t matter that they mean well. DO. NOT. ALLOW. IT.

12. Stop thinking/whining that books are expensive
    

    “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” ~ Derek Bok

    Books are by far the best value for money you will ever get on information. If anything, books are too cheap. Considering what you get in a book, they are far too cheap. Some of the most wonderful, life-changing books cost the exact same as what can only politely be described as literary feces.

    Seminars? That’ Swahili for “paying money to have someone say a subset of the stuff that’s already in the book”

    Videos? It’s all in the book.

    Classes? That’s Sanskrit for “paying money to have someone read books to you out loud in a monotone voice and/or tell you what books to go buy and read so you can be tested on them”.

    All of which is not to say that non-books have no value: they totally do. The volume and presentation of information can be a total game changer; classic example: you’re far more likely to replay an audiobook than to re-read a book. It’s just that pound for pound, bit for bit, in terms of raw information, a book will basically never lead you astray.

13. Stop acting surprised that that one book isn’t the only book you’ll need on the subject until the end of time amen
    Jon Biesnecker, who has a habit of building brilliant blogs and then letting them get deleted, once called this “the tyranny of a single source of information”. There’s a reason we have jillions of books and counting. Every book is incomplete. Every book. To my knowledge, even the major religions don’t rely on just one book.
14. Stop complaining that that book is incomplete
    Of course it’s in-com-freaking-plete, bee arch! See above.
15. Stop expecting agreement
    In fact, stop expecting, period. Stop expecting agreement. Stop expecting disagreement. Stop expecting to agree with everything in the book. Stop expecting the author’s statements to agree with all his previous statements. Stop expecting respect and praise from other people for the books you read. Stop expecting derision from other people for the books you read. Stop expecting any form of unanimity in any direction, towards or from anyone. There is always a mix of agreement, disagreement and indifference. Now, like Juba and Maximus, you’re free. Cue Enya song. You can thank me later.

PS: Yes, #9 is the most important.

• 岡田斗司夫ゼミ最終回(4月号)~オタクな嘘と都市伝説SP t.co/uadCea1TZX @minitubeappさんから 16:00:10
• 【近年最好港漫封神紀2】52天有多高 – Acfun-天下漫友是一家 t.co/L9xSlD6YCa #hk #comics 18:00:20
• 港漫，在臺灣永遠都受到岐視 – ace0824的創作-巴哈姆特 t.co/vLIECDZFeW 20:00:11
• 岡田斗司夫×川上量生 初対談 「ニコニコ・評価経済・オタク」 t.co/Ck17lmpebF @minitubeappさんから 22:00:34
• "川上 量生（かわかみ のぶお、1968年9月6日 – ）は、日本の実業家。株式會社ドワンゴ代表取締役會長、株式會社スタジオジブリ所屬。愛媛県生まれ、大阪府出身[1]。" t.co/ZAP03LMCIl 00:00:15
• "海軍の父親の元で橫須賀で育ったため、日本語英語両方に堪能である。" t.co/hqf0i51vx3 02:00:23
• 岡田斗司夫×川上量生 初対談 「ニコニコ・評価経済・オタク」 t.co/gbIFoPb9L8 @minitubeappさんから 04:00:24
• RT @Birgens: 特集：日本人が知らない村上春樹 2013年5月21日号 | 本誌紹介 | ニューズウィーク日本版 オフィシャルサイト t.co/yC7moVQfMa via @Newsweek_JAPAN 06:00:30
• "2ちゃんねらーは敵に回すと恐ろしいが、味方につけると頼りない " t.co/BxO6vOFtL7 08:01:17
• "匿名同士で敵も味方もないわ。" t.co/hqqOtrrntT 10:00:14
• Ronald Cheng – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia t.co/Wtymv6hboP 12:00:12
• "鄭中基（Ronald Cheng，1972年3月9號—）係一個香港歌手同埋演員。喺香港出世，鄉下喺台灣新竹。" t.co/umKQQ41O14 14:00:18
• 岡田斗司夫の海賊生放送４月１８日「シンクタンク放送直前！」 t.co/2OHN5f66RY @minitubeappさんから 15:18:14
• 飯氣劇場: 2005/09 t.co/ThxlXMnGCC 16:00:09
• "你犯了一個大錯。
  You made a serious mistake.
  再大也沒有你犯的錯大。真遺憾。
  Not as serious as yours, I fear." t.co/P1EF85lFRg 18:00:07
• "你是誰？
  Who are you?
  我是誰不重要。我們的計劃才是重點。
  It doesn’t matter who we are. What matters is our plan." t.co/xh5diuaEki 20:01:17
• 岡田斗司夫　同志社大学講演「私たちは生涯、働かないかもしれない」 t.co/YL9UMw8qyT @minitubeappさんから 22:00:27
• 岡田 斗司夫 の なんでコンテンツにカネを払うのさ？　デジタル時代のぼくらの著作権入門 を Amazon でチェック！ t.co/RaDVBEx1Pp @さんから 00:00:10
• 居合道 – Wikipedia t.co/WJPJ7yoro9 02:00:15
• 明治神宮奉納　居合抜刀道　第八回全國大會（Meiji Shrine dedication） – YouTube t.co/pneK3Vfb5A 04:00:13
• 小學生女の子による　試斬試合　藁斬り – YouTube t.co/hM124L2wOX 06:00:43
• 居想會・居合・両車・廻剣 – YouTube t.co/wkKP5z1Drq 08:00:13
• アニメやゲームソフトの違法コピーで私は幸せです。どう思いますか？ t.co/LF9dcqbF1i @minitubeappさんから 10:00:13
• 岡田斗司夫が語るAmazon、Google、Apple、そしてドワンゴ。 t.co/tnjX2qt5Wr @minitubeappさんから 12:00:14
• 岡田斗司夫さんのスマート読書・本はやっぱり面白い！ (ブックオカ2011) – YouTube t.co/3qBvkJteEz 14:00:07
• 【鈿車】でんしゃ 螺鈿（らでん）の装飾を施した車。 #daijirin 14:17:34
• RT @4hour_Workweek: どうでもいいことは、
  どうでもいいことでしかない。
  それをどんなにうまくやってのけても、
  どうでもいいことには変わりないんだ。#4hww 16:00:09
• 【縦覧】じゅうらん （名）スル 自由に見ること。思うままに閲覧すること。しょうらん。「選挙人名簿を━する」 #daijirin 17:52:36
• RT @MattBonder: @ajatt My Japanese book collection: t.co/WyCb33B5rv #OwnToPwn 18:00:17
• 月は無慈悲な夜の女王 – Wikipedia t.co/5eTqAETL7Z 20:00:17
• "[你.......你幹嘛不直接殺了我........]" t.co/QHN7jmWEZd 22:00:07
• "你這個瘋子，你幹嘛不直接殺了我？" t.co/OrpPRF5m9U 00:00:25
• "你幹嘛不直接殺了我" t.co/oO48sv2oSf 02:00:07
• Do not be proud of how hard you're working. If it hurts, you're doing it wrong. #immersion #SRS 04:00:14
• A man-made system you can’t change is a cult.
  t.co/nansXUsJMu 06:00:13
• Any sufficiently successful learning method seems like talent.
  t.co/dlHAxquiiJ 08:00:10
• pelagicの意味 – 英和辭典 Weblio辭書 t.co/8M3WKVhbA0 10:00:10
• 浮游生物界 – 維基百科，自由的百科全書 t.co/ktbRt9C1T1 12:00:12
• pelagicの意味 – 英和辭書-goo辭書 t.co/SJrNTKc4IW 14:00:09
• sessileの意味 – 英和辭書-goo辭書 t.co/UytONaU2Ag 16:00:18
• gambolの意味 – 英和辭書-goo辭書 t.co/o3H5wIMgt3 18:00:20
• castellatedの意味 – 英和辭書-goo辭書 t.co/EubXQcvszs 20:00:17
• nephriticの意味 – 英和辭書-goo辭書 t.co/xhWeFzpw67 22:00:18
• One doesn't translate between Japanese and English. One reimagines, recreates. 00:00:29
• Advice from Khatzumoto's mother: If human beings made it, then you can understand it. 02:00:08
• 【おれんじガール】 t.co/TDjplUFWtH #japanese #webcomic 04:00:25
• Why? Coz it works, that's why. "It works" is the only why you need. That's the only thing that matters. #methods 06:00:40
• Why? Because it works, that's why. Don't waste your time debating: run experiments. t.co/EnnYsEVfZ2 08:00:30
• Suck less and eventually you'll be suckless. You will never stop learning but you will stop sucking. #punny #改善 10:00:18
• All that matters is whether or not the method works, not how much sense it makes. Fun matters because fun works. Fun gets done. 12:00:17
• 【饒舌】じょうぜつ （名・形動）［文］ナリ  口数が多い・こと（さま）。おしゃべり。多弁。「━な人」「━家」〔「冗舌」とも書く〕 #daijirin 12:30:44
• 【しみったれる 】（動ラ下一） 〔「しみたれる」の促音添加〕 ①金品を出し惜しむ。けちくさい。「さう—・れた真似も出来まいし／こころ漱石」 ②考えや気持ちなどが狭い。「—・れた了簡（りようけん）」 ③見ばえがしない。貧弱である。また，貧乏でみすぼらしい。「外… #daijirin 12:38:34
• 【しみったれ 】（名・形動） 〔動詞「しみったれる」の連用形から〕 ①金品を出し惜しみすること。けちくさいさま。また，その人。「田舎者は━だから五円もやれば驚ろいて眼を廻す／坊っちゃん漱石」 ②考えや気持ちが狭いさま。 ③見ばえがしないこと。貧弱なさま。また… #daijirin 12:38:42
• All that matters is whether or not the method works, not how much sense it makes. Many sensible things don't work. Many dumb things do. 14:00:08
• 【《息吹》・気吹】いぶき 〔上代は「いふき」〕 ①息を吐くこと。また，吐いた息。呼吸。息。 ②（活動を行う前の）気配。生気。きざし。「春の━」「新時代の━」 #daijirin 15:55:56
• 【息吹く・気吹く】いぶく （動カ四） 〔上代は「いふく」〕 息を吹く。呼吸する。「根の国・底の国に—・き放ちてむ／延喜式祝詞六月晦大祓」 #daijirin 15:56:16
• RT @ChrisLabby: Dreaming in Japanese. #SleepImmersion
  @ajatt @Awesome2thaMax 16:00:11
• "don’t come to Taiwan for a year, you’ll just leave with half-baked Chinese. Give it two years, at the very least." t.co/HaQ5hUVZib 18:00:27
• 岡田斗司夫の海賊生放送４月１８日「シンクタンク放送直前！」 t.co/DNBHAFW8PO @minitubeappさんから 20:00:19
• "Kids don’t learn more easily than you, they just have no choice." t.co/PpDPg1t1Nv 22:00:05
• 集団行動 – YouTube t.co/cyKH2Vl1eV 00:00:27
• WORLD ORDER "Permanent Revolution" アシアナスペシャルバージョン – YouTube t.co/BhnbDfveVm 02:00:35
• It's not hard. You just don't know (or can't recall) an easy way yet. 04:00:20
• "…being a kid sucks; you just don't remember."- Pete Holmes #language #learning 06:00:42
• "Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will" ~ via @Lainbox #mindset #intermediate #angst 08:00:05
• It's not a foreign language, it's your language. When it started living in your mind and coming out of your mouth, it became yours, too. 10:00:11
• Any sufficiently advanced habit is indistinguishable from talent.
  t.co/Bvh2r9Tp7o 12:00:22
• Any sufficiently advanced habit is indistinguishable from heredity. t.co/Jnega8mch3 14:00:09
• 『スター・トレック イントゥ・ダークネス』|オフィシャルサイト t.co/uLHBKWqBlK 16:00:10
• Languages aren't for taking tests in, they're for playing in. Of course, if tests are your idea of fun, then… 18:00:12
• 導火線 Flash Point 2007 (Cantonese for sure!) – YouTube t.co/8wC1aZwGRo 20:00:22
• 陰陽路3之升棺發財 粵語 – YouTube t.co/VEMaTPOsD4 22:00:39
• 陰陽路–撩鬼條命 hk movie (cantonese) – YouTube t.co/yhirhNzyUF 04:00:32
• 我要做Model SUPER MODEL (2004)〈粵語 – 正體中文字幕〉-YouTube t.co/guCW0zBia9 06:00:18
• 大偵探福爾摩斯2:詭影遊戲(BD50 藍光碟)(首批限量隨碟附贈原版蘋果手機背貼, 送完即止)-影視-亞馬遜 t.co/oYaziDdWQO 08:00:22
• 大偵探福爾摩斯(DVD9)-影視-亞馬遜 [神探夏洛克, sherlock] t.co/IWLALuA8k1 10:00:16
• Sherlock Holmes Mandarin Dub: 大偵探福爾摩斯1&2(2DVD9 電影版套裝)-影視-亞馬遜 t.co/LxFULiWf9a #RDJ 12:00:08
• 都是瑪麗惹的禍(DVD)促銷品-影視-亞馬遜 t.co/A4StF02nOa 14:00:09
• Mortal Kombat VS Gangnam Style ((강남스타일) – YouTube t.co/TLNjmk8baD 16:00:42
• Inglourious Basterds, Mandarin Dub: 戴罪立功(DVD9)-DVD-亞馬遜 t.co/vJ6myhcF7k (NB: only the English dialog is dubbed) 18:00:08
• "fewer hits are traveling with subtitles in a bid to boost foreign returns." t.co/WlxvCUQTtF 20:00:25
• "Dubbing has been popular in countries such as France, Italy, Spain and Germany since the '30s" t.co/4DDjYr893k 22:00:26
• "DUBBING STARS' CAREERS RISE WHEN THEIR AMERICAN COUNTERPARTS' DO" t.co/kfFPN6roia 00:00:43
• "In Japan, Koichi Yamadera is the go-to voice for pretty much every big African-American star" t.co/nq0uB2yyR3 02:00:24
• You will never stop learning but you will stop sucking in general, although you may still suck at specifics, as everyone does. #language 04:00:20
• "At the speed we can read, the dollars per hour of entertainment ratio is practically zero." t.co/E2xQvlCrUT #books #are #cheap 06:00:21
• Advice from Khatzumoto's mother: If human beings made it, then you can understand it. #kanji 08:00:09
• Yes, even fiction has boring bits. Like the all-text parts of the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" comics. Skip those. 10:00:14
• Know less. Try more. Experiment more. Help more. t.co/W4rPpWwDWJ 12:00:12
• Boredom is boredom, and it doesn't know or care what caused it. Skip the boring bits. #books #reading #fiction 14:00:13
• 【筆〈忠実〉】ふでまめ （名・形動）［文］ナリ  手紙や文章を書くことを面倒がらない・こと（さま）。また，そのような人。⇔筆不精。 #daijirin 14:11:11
• 【万年筆】まんねんひつ 携帯用のペン。軸の中にいれたインクが，毛管現象によってペン先に伝わることにより字が書ける。〔fountainpenの訳語〕 #daijirin 14:13:22

Often enough, a comment puts it much better than I ever put it. This was one such situation. Handsome AJATTeer Pingfa brings us back to basics, urging us to focus on what we can do, on what we can control, on our point(s) of maximum power and traction.

There’s a quote I read once that I really like (big aphorism collector here). It goes something like: ordinary people try to do what they can’t do; the true hero simply does what he can do. Once you stop whining and complaining and worrying about what you can’t do, you realize that there’s far more that’s within your power than you give yourself credit for. You become resourceful, like MacGyver with his Bisquick. You don’t necessarily become MacGyver; he had his tools and you have yours (plus he’s fictional). But you do become like him, which is the point really.

How do you get where you want to go? By moving in that direction. How do you move in that direction? By using whatever means of locomotion are readily available to you at that particular place and time. Ancient people didn’t refuse to walk until horses had been tamed, or refuse to ride until cars had been invented. Stop wanting to know whether or not it works. It works. It’s working. Move already.

Pingfa on April 27, 2013 at 20:58:

The best way to do get over doubts about a language is to put aside the doubts and break down what you know you can do for sure.
You can learn words. That’s a guarantee. Maybe you won’t always understand the context, but it’s easy learning a word. Look it up, look it up again, win.

Even if you know absolutely nothing about the sentence structure, one thing anyone without a significant mental retardation is guaranteed to be able to do is learn a word. Learn all the words within a sentence and you can piece them together. Even if you know all the words within a sentence but don’t know the context of that specific sentence, there’ll be sentences you can piece together that further clarify those sentences.

So keep being exposed to words. Keep absorbing words, and eventually you will be able to piece those words together to form a coherent sentence. It’s like many pieces of a puzzle, once you’ve figured out how one piece fits with another and another piece fits with that, you’re on your way to making a bigass puzzle.

If on the other hand, if one has doubts not so much about their capability but about their motivation, I believe the best way to maintain motivation when you are lacking comprehension is to seek out media you enjoy as is without the need to understand it. Enjoy some pretty visuals. Watch dubs of movies you already know the dialogue to. Don’t concern yourself with learning if you don’t want to, put your feet up and enjoy the ride.

You might think at some point, ‘I really should learn more’, but that’s really not necessary to maintain exposure. As long as the language continues to surround you, you will solidify what you’ve learned even if you don’t actively learn any more.

The journey of getting used to a language is so psychologically long that it can’t merely be a means to an end. It must become an end in itself. It must become its own joy, its own reward. And this perspective, this mental state, doesn’t require too much imagination or discipline or training to reach. Anyone who’s been on a road trip with friends knows: the destination is almost incidental.

Important things deserve restatement. TV news repeats the same unimportant (but urgent and scary) crap to you all day. Well, this is much more important than the news, so:

“If you’re going to spend most of your time experiencing rather than accomplishing, then perhaps it makes sense to focus on the quality of your daily experiences and not merely on the heights of your accomplishments. ” | Steve Pavlina

“…if you’re not satisfied with the little successes, you’ll never be satisfied with the big successes.” ~ Anon. (quoted by Barbara Sher)

“Success is how you collect your minutes. You spend millions of minutes to reach one triumph, one moment, then you spend maybe a thousand minutes enjoying it. If you were unhappy through those millions of minutes, what good is the thousand minutes of triumph? It doesn’t equate… Life is made of small pleasures…Happiness is made of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. If you don’t have all those zillions of tiny successes, the big ones don’t mean anything.” ~ Norman Lear

Nacest:

In my opinion the biggest obstacle while doing RTK is not the amount of colors or realizing that you must do it no-matter-what. It’s the approach. If you are anxious to complete the book soon, if you are keeping count of how many kanji are left, then you will have to suffer the pains of hell to really finish them. There’s a LOT of them. It’s a four digit number. Every kanji is a mere 0.04% of the total. It’s not gonna be a quick process, IF you await the end of it. It’s like boiling water: I don’t know about the other places, but in Italy they say that the water will take longer to boil if you stare at it expectantly. I’m amazed at how well this applies to your (khatzumoto’s) metaphor.

Just enjoy the trip. Forget about finishing the kanji. Do them every day, and get used to it. Feel the flavor of the chinese characters. Every one of them is extraordinarily beautiful. If you are a philosopher, you may even seek enlightenment in their ancient shapes. Eat them like they are a fourth (fifth?) meal in your day, necessary for your good health. While you do this, one day, when you are least expecting it (more or less) you will hit kanji #2042 (or 3007 if you want to). Then you will be unable to believe how fast you were. I know it because it happened to me, even though it took me 11 months to complete the book! (don’t worry, it will take you much less, I was just using too little impetus with the first 1000 kanji. I finished the second half in about a month (after finding this site, by the way))

True story: once, a journalist on a trip to Egypt met a desert Bedouin. The Bedouin was used to traveling huge distances in the Sahara with his camel, taking weeks at a time. When the journalist told him that in the West there were airplanes that could cover the same distances in a few hours, he answered, perplexed: “And then, what do you do with the rest of the time?”.

The time you spend while aiming at something, no matter how long it is, is still part of your life. There is no reason to not savor and enjoy it in relaxation like the rest of your days.

Incidentally, nacest’s Japanese is AMAZING now. Frankly, I think it’s better than mine ¹ and I get confused for a Japanese person all the time on the phone and sometimes in real life ² (“so, you’re from Okinawa, or…?”). Getting there is also your life. The journey is your life. That’s how big it is. Think of yourself as, I dunno, a roadie, a sailor, a traveller.

Which is not to say that you’re like Oswald Spengler’s Faustian man, doomed to not “get there” ³. Not at all. You will get there. Somehow. But in order to do so, you need to almost forget that there is a “there”. As far as you’re concerned, all that exists is your current point and your current direction.

• "藏身之所(DVD9)演員: 丹澤爾•華盛頓 (Denzel Washington), 瑞安•雷諾茲 (Ryan Reynolds) " t.co/xhUTYFMdma 16:00:40
• It's not hard. You just don't know an easy way. Yet. 18:00:16
• You don't get what you put in. You get either a lot more or a lot less, but either way, input of some kind must precedes output. #8020 20:00:14
• "じゃあ學校って、なんのためにあるのですか？それの答えは、安い賃金で文句も言わずに長時間働く、使い捨ての奴隷労働者を作るためです。" t.co/1DvgP1C2Uj 22:00:14
• 義務教育は従順な消費者や労働者を作る装置か？: のらの資格取得日記 t.co/SXFRz2dZDY 00:00:27
• "學校は、ただ使い捨ての労働者を排出する施設なのです。" t.co/FWdX0rxcbW 02:00:22
• "これはもっと評価されてもいい・・・・・・ｗｗひもんや教授思い出したな" t.co/OSHr4dwqHj 04:00:26
• Two girls arguing over a guy t.co/oiHZ56Vbig #japanese #comedy 06:00:14
• 岡田斗司夫なう。 t.co/KMsceNWrrD 08:00:22
• "文字をずっと見ていて「こんな形だっけ」と感じる現象の名前は「ゲシュタルト崩壊」" t.co/7lYl6LOSIL 10:00:14
• "間の感覚はいつも全てに反応するのは大変なので、特に変化があるものに反応するようにできています。同じ文字をずっと見続けたりすると、変化がないのでその文字を認識する力や知っていると言う感情が薄れてきてこの現象が起こります。" t.co/8FjhxDtlIv 12:00:22
• "ゲシュタルト崩壊は「意味飽和」とも呼ばれ、意味のない記號のような感じがする第一段階、こんな時でよかったかと感じる第二段階、初めて見る字のような新鮮な感じがする第三段階の３つの順序で起こります。" t.co/MqmgnB58n2 14:00:11
• RT @crazypuce: 6 week Challenge update : refusing to speak English t.co/hRc2Q9SC29 @ajatt #Japanese #environment #learning #language 16:00:10
• "のっぺらぼう（野箆坊）は、一般的に外見は普通の人間だが、顔には目も鼻も口もない日本の妖怪である。" t.co/Nv4GRu9ykz 18:00:11
• 「オセロ」 ［チケットぴあ｜チケット情報・販売］ t.co/gSW7VytBvq 20:00:16
• Trying to read every word/page/section in a book is like trying to read every website on the Internet. Reading is skimming. 22:00:13
• Mohd Rafi : Na Jhatko Zulf Se Pani from Shehnai (1964) – YouTube t.co/l7bROge5Xw 04:00:24
• ダイ・アントワード – Wikipedia t.co/sEqjqBOa3V 06:00:19
• Jan Pehchan Ho – Mohammed Rafi, Gumnaam Song-YouTube t.co/q2iGoVBGtg 08:00:18
• RT @MikeyLovesRock: Been plugging away at my Korean reps. I never thought I would say this, but I think I miss kanji. @ajatt 18:00:42
• There are no adults, just large-bodied children with bank accounts and legal rights. #mindset #environment 18:47:51
• RT @emk_langs: I started pretending to be native (like an actor). It's now easier to speak quickly with a good acccent. Hmm. @ajatt … 20:01:15
• You're not an adult; you're just a large-bodied child with a bank account and legal rights. #mindset #environment 02:01:06
• Even when you were a younger, you already thought you were too old. #mindset #environment 04:01:18
• "It’s all about the tiny building blocks! " t.co/Cc6Yj35Djf 06:00:13
• Macの英數・カタカナ変換はファンクションキーではなくControlキーを使う｜mattintosh note t.co/mYBXW0ewjy 08:00:13
• "C-kF7 相當 全角カタカナ" t.co/GDmWvqdVfS 10:00:12
• 【檜・檜木】ひのき ヒノキ科の常緑針葉高木。日本特産種。福島から屋久島に分布し，また広く植林される。樹皮は赤褐色，葉は鱗片（りんぺん）状で密につく。雌雄同株。四月に開花し，のち径約1センチメートルの球果をつける。材は淡黄色，緻密（ちみつ）で芳香があり，建築・… #daijirin 11:35:53
• "My favorite new timeboxing tool: the microwave oven. " t.co/grlkvRIUtG 12:00:16
• "working on something a little bit at a time will build your ability to work on it in greater chunks" t.co/CyiUgwuKh4 14:00:14
• 【ノンストップYOUTUBE】好みの音楽を自動で連続再生するWEBサイトまとめ – NAVER まとめ t.co/GlNOiXk9DZ 16:00:38
• 「お住まいの國では公開されていません」の動畫が見たい時に便利なサイト – K'conf t.co/U2kAgmVGdE 18:00:27
• 地域限定のYouTubeやHuluコンテンツをアンブロックする拡張機能 : ライフハッカー［日本版］ t.co/BwCMoIc2Je 20:00:23
• 【碓氷峠】うすいとうげ 群馬県安中市松井田町と長野県北佐久郡軽井沢町との境にある峠。中山道第一の険所で，中央高地と関東平野を結ぶ重要な峠。 #daijirin 21:14:21
• お京のITクリップ::YouTubeの地域別視聴制限の解除法 t.co/Ihb9KiZ69B 22:00:34
• "If you want to learn Japanese, you have to change your mindset. You have to change your very lifestyle even" t.co/fwKPna1FZj 00:01:03
• RTHK 1 – 香港電台 第一台 92.6 FM Kowloon-Listen Online t.co/TbtjKJCCwo 02:01:08
• 餐廳門面相大召集 t.co/OLoop2xtuC 04:00:18
• "『リアリティ・バイツ』（Reality Bites）は、1994年のアメリカ合眾國の映畫。戀愛映畫、青春映畫。ベン・スティラーの初監督作品。" t.co/4r5zleDf9i 06:00:27
• "1978年にバーミンガムで結成、1980年デビュー。メンバーは白人黒人の混成" t.co/ThGDhbGgQf 08:00:24
• "レゲエといえど音はポップで親しみやすく" t.co/t9TFrv5d0h 10:00:20
• "人生のほうはまだ、あなたに対する期待を捨てていないはずだ" t.co/vPVfj0h9Om 12:00:15
• "fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better" t.co/MF5DEgfQkg 14:00:14
• The Lion King Hakuna Matata (Cantonese Version) – YouTube t.co/79Xwnwt8Qh 16:00:07
• 圓神書活網>閱書>吊床上的成功學 t.co/7NNvj9tDWn 18:00:23
• "songs aid in all four major language-learning areas – in listening, speaking, reading, and writing" t.co/SN0SF3HpII 20:00:40
• How I Pick What to SRS | Liz Learns Japanese t.co/DKSeliCJib 22:00:18
• No one's thinking of you or about you. It's just you thinking of other people thinking of you. #output #shadowing #speaking 00:00:26
• "Rather than crash, try failing gracefully. If you can’t do 100%, your next option is not 0%." t.co/tIXSc4S7zl 02:00:31
• "OCHR (Other Choices Helicopter Rescue) @ Guiltback Mountain" t.co/OUQUJQ84nv 04:00:18
• RTHK 2 – 香港電台 第二台 94.8 FM Kowloon-Listen Online t.co/0k2UtqNc9r 06:00:14
• "The number one mistake people make," says Fogg, "is not going tiny enough."" t.co/c8a8bLOFRX 10:00:18
• "Think Smaller Than Small " t.co/ICLhjcxqki 12:00:12
• "大家要有破釜沉舟的決心，才能戰勝一切困難，完成任務。" t.co/rjpmACOZZF 14:00:06
• "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant." t.co/jh2HlRPexX 16:00:08
• "The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." t.co/XXLdpoDyU4 18:00:15
• "成功和努力工作是背道而馳的，唯一與工作和苦力成正比的是疲勞。" t.co/TKG0tV5tDU 20:00:21
• "これは私の偏見かも知れないが、「お前らバカ」型の人は、他の学問と比較すると経済学に著しく多いように感じる。" t.co/CDUowEOYoz 22:00:20
• It's always too late. Do something anyway . #immersion 02:00:26
• "watching movies in Chinese is the fun and easy way to learn Chinese" t.co/XcNNmDcvj1 04:00:25
• "テレビ作品では『Père et Maire』、『Femmes de loi』、『Equipe médicale d'urgence』などに出演している。" t.co/BqxFjJMgsL 06:00:23
• Fun, well-written Japanese math test prep books: t.co/gAMHTULa8z: 広瀬 和之: 本 t.co/ruzJteJe1y @さんから 08:00:18
• gintama mirai he – YouTube t.co/jtxvMIEkhe 10:00:15
• Red Balloon – t.co/2a6SRfhg6O 12:00:19
• "遠く遠く100萬年の未來へ君が好きな優しく淡い愛の歌聞こえてるか さあ涙を拭いてほら立ち止まらず 明日を目指して" t.co/HyHQMQxDua 14:00:14

“…the yeoman work in any science…is done by the experimentalist, who must keep the theoreticians honest.”
~ Michio Kaku

Every so often, perhaps twice a year or so, some kid comes up to language bloggers like me and Ramses and Benny and tries to get us to mudwrestle I mean debate each other. And we generally refuse. And they’re like “why are you shutting down the debate, I just want to make sense of things; I want to understand why XYZ method works etc. etc.”.

Now, it may well be that all these kids want is to see a fight, a sort of Jerry Springer-esque voyeurism. But that would be an unfairly cynical view of things. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, and say that they honestly think a debate like this helps. Why, then, would we refuse?

Because we know it doesn’t help. We know it’s a waste of time. We know that not only will no good come of it, but that — in fact — a lot of bad might result. What, you don’t think we’ve had conversations and discussions with people before? You don’t think we know how that ends? In orgasms of enlightenment and insight? Paul Graham was right: the Internet is funnier than TV sitcoms.

But here’s the biggest, deepest reason we don’t debate. Because, in my humble opinion, nobody — not even Noam Avram Chomsky, perhaps the greatest living linguist — actually, definitively knows why any of this stuff works. We know some of what works and definitely that it works. But we don’t really know how or why. And we definitely don’t know everything. Nobody does. They try. But they don’t know. All they’ve got are hypotheses, theories, guesses. Don’t let their authority, erudition and gentility cow you into assuming that they do know, because they actually don’t, and they know they don’t: that’s why they keep studying it. After all, what would be the point in studying something you already had totally figured out? It would be about as stimulating as a conversation with an upper-middle-class person about their family problems.

Does that mean we’re all useless? Yes. It does. We’re useless for debating purposes. That time Daniel Everett (also a great linguist) debated Chomsky? Useless. From where I was standing, all it created was unnecessary mutual venom. Maybe they’re besties now; I don’t know . Fortunately, though, it turns out that that doesn’t matter. Because…

All that matters is whether or not the method works, not how much sense it makes. Many sensible things don’t work. Many ridiculous things do. Many true things make no sense. Indeed, that’s the whole point of science, and (as a scientist I read once pointed out), it’s the only thing that makes science worth a damn: science is only valuable when it’s counterintuitive. Anything our intuitions can tell us, we don’t need science for. It would be like boiling water on a stove and then immediately microwaving it…Redundant, confusing and maybe even destructive.

The logic of an idea, and the effectiveness/veracity of that idea are mutually exclusive properties. They have nothing to do with each other. If sounding good and making sense were all that mattered, then Communism would work and women would respond to reason; neither of these things are true. Communism is comically bad at working: it can’t even keep people fed (in fact, Communism has a deliciously ironic history of causing major famines, arguably the very thing it was supposed to prevent: basic, 0-level, ground-floor human suffering). But it sounds awesome — like having the Care Bears run a country. Sharing and caring and singing kumbaya around campfires? It’s kindergarten all over again — sign me up!

But then you’ll hear people say of Communism: “it would work if people would do it right”. Well, that’s even worse! An idea that needs everybody to be on board and acting perfect in order to work is a bad idea. An idea that calls for any improvement of individual character, let alone the character of masses of individuals, in order to work, is a bad idea. That’s like a plane that won’t fly unless every passenger is also a highly trained, highly skilled pilot. That’s like saying: “the Internet would work just fine if only every computer in the world were turned on at the same time and running the exact same version and service pack of the exact same operating system”. Bad.

Methods should be like an AK-47: light and adaptable, robust and relentless. They should work even when they shouldn’t work, even when they’re broken and scratched all over and filled with sand and water. The method should work even when the entire outside world seems to be conspiring against it and FUBAR and SNAFU and tofu and pear-shaped. And that’s why immersion is so cool — you don’t even have to be in-country! All you need are working headphones and battery power to transform your 3-foot-radius personal world into Japan.

Whenever someone says “if only everyone thought/acted like this, the world would…”, my eyes want to…whatever a good joke about rolling is. I dunno. Swiss pastry. Work with me. If only everyone thought/acted like this? Well, they haven’t and they don’t and they won’t, so what’s the new plan, Stan? I bet you when there only two people in the world, they thought and acted differently. Good luck with that times 3.5 billion. You can’t even get individuals to be internally consistent over time: I went from being an Apple hater to having a Mac and 4 iPads (some were free, long story).

An idea that needs all external factors to be perfect in order to work is a bad idea. An idea that needs to be timed right is a bad idea. An idea that needs celestial bodies to form perfect geometric patterns is a bad idea. You want your idea, your method, your technique to work right now, with or without Bisquick, while naked European teenagers in dreadlocks are having screaming tantrums in your face (true story, I might tell you about it sometime). In your face, blud. In other words, despite whatever else is going on.

Away from guns and my right wing politics, back to science. Arguably, the whole point of science is to be surprising. The earth is spherical (“it’s an ellipsoid, Khatz, flatter at the poles” — yeah, shaddup!)? That’s weird. And it’s spinning? I notice myself spinning; I notice my car spinning; why wouldn’t I notice an entire planet spinning?! It clearly seems to be standing still — flat and stationary, thank you very much. And quarter-mile-long boats made of steel can float? Are you kidding me? And gigantic planes made of metal can fly? Not glide, but fly? With wings that don’t flap? Whaaaat? All of this is extremely counterintuitive. It can’t be true. It doesn’t make sense. Oh, you’re used to it now; we grew up in a world where these things are normal. But trust me, those ideas would get raped and left for dead in a debate. Aristotle would have unerotically asphyxiated those ideas. Repeatedly. Only experimentation has borne them out and made them mainstream.

The value of the work of, say, a Newton, wasn’t in telling us that apples fall (apparently that’s an apocryphal story anyway): We already knew apples fall! We had that one largely under control; your housepets know that apples fall. The value was in telling us that the same simple set of rules, the same gravity that works on Earth also works in the heavens. Or something to that effect, I dunno. Either way, that’s kinda weird — i.e. counterintuitive — if you think about it for more than a couple of minutes, because when you throw rocks into the air, they don’t keep moving in a straight line forever, nor do they start orbiting each other and stuff. So it would seem as though different rules apply. But, no, them laws of motion apply to everything from pebbles to planets and we can reduce that junk to equations that are so simple that the term “rocket science” is in reality quite woefully malapropos as a metaphor for something difficult.

So don’t reason it out too much (now, I realize that that sounds funny coming from someone who just spent a paragraph praising the work of someone who wrote a theoretical Latin book called Principia Mathematica ¹. But the point is that ultimately experiments bore out Newton’s work; to my knowledge, he didn’t win a flamewar about it on 4chan with superior sarcasm). And definitely don’t waste your time debatin’. Don’t argue, don’t complain, don’t explain. Run experiments instead. If you want to create light and insight instead of heat, then try stuff out and see how it works for you. All that matters is whether or not it works. Not why. Fun matters because fun gets done, and experiments can only work when (get this) something gets done. So have fun with it. Play. You can’t lose, you can only win or learn.

For the record, I think all language learning methods are in fact just…different facets of each other ². In the same way that sports cars and minivans are both just different types of car. At some level, Benny’s Fluent-In-3-Months systems is a sports car, optimized for speed; AJATT is an RV, fully loaded with practically your whole life in it, optimized for distance. A Ferrari…is not a misdesigned RV. Even a Lambo is not a Ferrari that’s been “built wrong”. Remember, metaphors break down quickly, so there’s more to it than that, but that’s one way of looking at it.

If I were you, I would not be attached to any one “school of thought”. Because school sucks . Also, good ideas are like dust — they’re everywhere. All over the place. Every goose has at least some nice feathers. Pluck that junk. Use it to weave your own patchwork quilt, your own unique combination of other people’s ideas. Are quilts elegant and smooth? Maybe not. But they work and they’re cosy and personal. What? I like quilts!

As I’ve mentioned previously, I started off reading books like A. G. Hawke’s The Quick and Dirty Guide to Learning Languages Fast. A book written by a former American Green Beret. American, as in “the monolingual laughingstock of the world”. Note that the book was not called “The Long and Deep Guide to Learning a Language So Well That People Think You Grew Up In The Country”, but that did not stop me; I had no ideological opposition to the work. I happilly used the techniques from that book, just for a longer period and focussing only on a single language. I drilled deeper and longer, but it didn’t matter to me who had made the drill or why and how he had used it. It was a good drill. It worked.

When two people debate (which is an adult euphemism for “say mean and snarky things to each other”), the best orator wins. Not the best idea. The best argument. If you want to know who the smartest is, have a debate. If you want to know what works, try stuff out. The truth does not matter; all that matters is what works. Because what works is “the” truth.

PS: Personally, if I’m ever trying to get functional in a language fast, I’m going straight to Benny’s house for advice.

• "涙に濡れても笑顔枯れても 怖がる事はないよ僕らは弱い生き物なんだから 手を取り合おう" t.co/7GX8kU6MqE 16:00:06
• Telling yourself to do something hard is the same thing as telling yourself to do nothing at all. t.co/ndAUhpK0Ot 18:00:15
• Stop kidding yourself. You’re not gonna do that hard thing. So do something easy instead.
  t.co/BVK2wooXwV #immersion #SRS 20:00:11
• "it’s so much easier to do something when it’s fun" t.co/8ooOZC8GoY 22:00:15
• ゼンハイザーコミュニケーションズ の 【国内正規品】 ゼンハイザーコミュニケーションズ Bluetooth ヘッドセット MM 100J を Amazon でチェック！ t.co/5VtLSUOe9Q @さんから 00:00:40
• ネックバンド型高音質Bluetoothステレオヘッドセットゼンハイザーコミュニケーションズ の 【国内正規品】 ゼンハイザーコミュニケーションズ Bluetooth ヘッドセット MM 100J t.co/UABDnwu2R9 02:00:27
• "what might be most helpful is to adopt a philandering, slightly-abusive role model towards books" t.co/C0KhKjEek7 04:00:24
• "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." t.co/gBkvUZizAE 06:00:22
• "Detective Conan. I love the anime, but some episodes just suck. I skip them" t.co/nSxAfCxVMW 08:00:14
• I'm so used to reading comic panels in manga order that I go "backwards" even with American comics translated into Japanese… 10:00:12
• 【庵・菴・廬】いおり ①僧侶や世捨て人などが住む粗末な小屋。庵室（あんしつ）。いお。「━を結ぶ」 ②小さな家。粗末な家。また，自分の家を謙遜していう語。 ③農作業などのための仮小屋。「秋田刈る旅の━にしぐれ降り／万葉集2235」 ④軍隊の宿営地。軍営。〔和名… #daijirin 11:37:49
• 【筆〈忠実〉】ふでまめ （名・形動）［文］ナリ  手紙や文章を書くことを面倒がらない・こと（さま）。また，そのような人。⇔筆不精。 #daijirin 11:48:40
• 【感慨】かんがい 心に深く感じること。しみじみと思うこと。「━を覚える」「━にひたる」 #daijirin 12:58:22
• 【感慨深い】かんがいぶかい （形） しみじみと深く感じている。「—・い面持ち」 ［派生］━ げ（形動）・━ さ（名） #daijirin 12:58:25
• 【感慨無量】かんがいむりょう はかり知れないほど身にしみて感じること。感無量。 #daijirin 12:58:48
• 【感傷的】かんしょうてき （形動） 悲哀の感情に動かされやすく，涙もろいさま。感慨にふけるさま。センチメンタル。「━になる」「━な文章」 #daijirin 12:59:42
• 【悲哀】ひあい （名・形動）［文］ナリ  かなしく，あわれな・こと（さま）。「人生の━を感ずる」「━が漂う」「一種の━なる新音階を作れり／希臘思潮を論ず敏」 #daijirin 12:59:56
• 【抒情・叙情】じょじょう 感情を述べ表すこと。→叙事 #daijirin 13:01:12
• 【抒情詩・叙情詩】じょじょうし 作者の思いや感情を表す詩。元来は楽器に合わせて歌う詩。→叙事詩 #daijirin 13:01:24
• 【抒情文・叙情文】じょじょうぶん 自分の感情を表現した文章。 #daijirin 13:01:31
• 【奔出】ほんしゅつ （名）スル ほとばしり出ること。「地中から温水が━する」「情熱の━に身をまかせる」 #daijirin 13:03:55
• 【不問に付す 】取り立てて問題にはしないでおく。 #daijirin 13:05:24
• 【不問】ふもん 問いたださないこと。 #daijirin 13:05:45
• 【義足】ぎそく 足を失った人が，代わりにつける人工の足。義肢。→補装具 #daijirin 13:09:35
• 【義肢】ぎし 手や足の一部を失った人が，失われた部分の機能を補うためにつける人工の器具。義足や義手。→補装具 #daijirin 13:09:46
• 【堅実】けんじつ （名・形動）［文］ナリ  ①手がたくあぶなげのないこと。しっかりしていて，確かなこと。また，そのさま。「━な商売」「━な研究方法」 ②果実が堅いこと。また，その果実。→地道（補説欄） ［派生］━ さ（名）・━ み（名） #daijirin 13:16:46
• 【健実】けんじつ （名・形動）［文］ナリ  考え方・方法などがしっかりして確かな・こと（さま）。「誘惑に打勝つ，志操の━な新婦人／一隅より晶子」 #daijirin 13:17:04
• It is very difficult to force yourself to do anything. That's why you need to use finesse — fun — not force. 16:00:20
• 19世紀から生きている最後の人物…世界最高齢の日本人男性に対する海外の反応:らばQ t.co/FFIqPmTZik 18:00:17
• 驚愕することまちがいなし…自転車の概念をくつがえすほどのトリックプレイ集（動画）:らばQ t.co/ApXrhhGGHZ 20:00:36
• 【姶良】あいら 鹿児島県中央部の市。薩摩半島と大隅半島の付け根に位置し，南部は鹿児島湾に臨む。鹿児島市や霧島市に隣接し，交通の利便性にも恵まれ，住宅地としての開発が進んでいる。 #daijirin 12:46:29
• 【四親等】ししんとう 親等の一。四世を隔てた関係にある親族。高祖父母・いとこ・玄孫など。 #daijirin 22:07:01
• 【寝巻・寝間着・寝衣】ねまき 寝るときに着る衣服。 #daijirin 22:07:10
• 【不行き届き】ふゆきとどき （名・形動）［文］ナリ  注意が行き届かないこと。気がきかないこと。また，そのさま。「監督━による不祥事」 #daijirin 22:07:43
• 【腹】はら ［一］ （名） ①㋐動物の体で，胴の下半部。哺乳類では胸腔（きようこう）と骨盤の間にあって，胃や腸などの内臓を収めるところ。背の反対側となる体の表面をもいう。おなか。「━が痛い」「━をさする」 ㋑消化器，ことに胃腸。「━がすく」「━が減る」「━を… #daijirin 22:10:06
• 【年端・年歯】としは 〔「年歯（ねんし）」の訓読み〕 年齢のほど。年の端。 #daijirin 22:13:10
• 【年端＝も（＝の）行かぬ 】年若い。幼い。「まだ━◦ぬ子供」 #daijirin 22:13:24
• 【蝟集】いしゅう （名）スル 〔「蝟」はハリネズミの意〕 ハリネズミの毛のように多くの物が一時に寄り集まること。「僕の頭脳には万感━して／思出の記蘆花」 #daijirin 10:26:06
• 【万感】ばんかん 一時に心に浮かぶ種々さまざまな感情。「━胸に迫る」「━の思いを託す」 #daijirin 10:26:23
• 【蝟】い ［音］イ ハリネズミ。また，（ハリネズミの毛のように）群がり集まる。多い。「蝟集」 #daijirin 10:26:48
• 【獰猛】どうもう （形動）［文］ナリ  強く，荒々しいさま。凶悪で乱暴なさま。「━な顔付き」「━な犬」 ［派生］━ さ（名） #daijirin 10:28:31
• 【獰悪】どうあく （名・形動）［文］ナリ  性質や姿かたちが凶悪で，荒々しい・こと（さま）。「━な人相」「━なる夜叉の顔を／幻影の盾漱石」 #daijirin 10:28:39
• 【凶悪・兇悪】きょうあく （名・形動）［文］ナリ  性質が残忍で，悪いことを平気でやる・こと（さま）。「━な犯罪」「━犯」 ［派生］━ さ（名） #daijirin 10:28:57
• 【残忍・惨忍】ざんにん （名・形動）［文］ナリ  むごいことを平気でするさま。「━な仕打ち」「━な性格」 ［派生］━ さ（名） #daijirin 10:29:03
• 【律義・律儀】りちぎ （名・形動）［文］ナリ  ①ひどく義理がたいこと。実直なこと。また，そのさま。りつぎ。「━な人」「━にあいさつをして回る」 ②健康な・こと（さま）。「お━で重畳（ちようじよう）〳〵／浄瑠璃・山崎与次兵衛寿の門松」→りつぎ（律義） #daijirin 13:23:09
• 【律義・律儀】りつぎ ［一］（名）〔梵 sa〓vara〕 〘仏〙悪を防ぎ，善に導く正しい行い。また，そういう行いを定めた戒律。禁戒。「故笠置の解脱上人如法の━興隆志深くして／沙石集3」 ［二］（名・形動）［文］ナリ  →りちぎ（律義）①に同じ。「風俗━に／浮… #daijirin 13:23:17
• 【律義者・律儀者】りちぎもの 義理がたく実直な人。 #daijirin 13:23:26
• 【実直】じっちょく （名・形動）［文］ナリ  まじめで正直な・こと（さま）。律義。「誠に━な好人（よいひと）たちなので御座ります／小公子賤子」 ［派生］━ げ（形動）・━ さ（名） #daijirin 13:23:35
• "I have my own triumphs that when I really think about it didn’t justify the unhappy road to them." t.co/A2wdFXTIgb 16:00:18
• Just returned from a trip in rural Japan. People really do have strong accents, just like in "Trick" #鹿児島 18:00:22
• 「これはどう考えてもアイデンティティの危機だろう？」というコスプレ写真:らばQ t.co/I7pOPKawUm 20:01:09
• 【嘱目・属目】しょくもく （名）スル ①人の将来に期待して，目を離さず見守ること。「万人が━する人材」 ②目に入れること。目を向けること。「宜しく注意━せざる可からず／民約論徳」 ③俳諧で，即興的に目に触れたものを吟ずること。嘱目吟。 #daijirin 20:07:33
• タカラトミー の タートルズ バトラクション ミケランジェロ MT-03 を Amazon でチェック！ t.co/iMBxe5HAWV #TMNT #action #figure 22:00:11
• この差はいったい…野球の観客席にバットが飛んできたときの比較:らばQ t.co/gAldoXwZaN 00:00:12
• Typhoon Club / 颱風クラブ (Full movie with English subtitles) – YouTube t.co/Zo7yr0iKro 06:00:25
• Nobody thinks well of you. Nobody thinks ill of you. You are the top story in just about nobody else's mind. #speaking #output #shadowing 08:01:09
• 【格下】かくした 地位や格式・力量が下であること。⇔格上。「━の相手には負けられない」 #daijirin 09:56:04
• RT @crazypuce: I'm supposed to sleep but I can't stop watching Bleach #immersion #anime @ajatt 02:01:57
• Any idiot can be hard on themselves. The trick is being nice to yourself. #mindset #motivation #immersion 04:00:29
• Blood is no advantage, because (wait for it)…there's no language in your blood. Nobody bleeds kanji. 02:01:43
• Brute force works on things (sometimes); it doesn't work on people, definitely not when "people" is just you. #funoverforce #immersion 16:07:31
• The truth does not matter; all that matters is what works. What works *is* "the" truth. #language #acquisition #method 20:01:18
• If you want to know who the smartest is, have a debate. If you want to know what works, try stuff out. t.co/FJhGUcK2RT 14:00:10

The problem with learning an ancestral or “heritage” language is that it takes just as much effort as learning any other language, except that you get no credit whatsoever for doing it well (and it’s happily assumed that you basically got it “for free”, effortless, in a native or semi-native childhood environment), only derision for the slightest error or weakness ¹. And then, as if to add fly flakes to the maggot noodle soup, any errors or weaknesses in your actual native language are presumed to be due to interference from your supposedly native heritage language. Wunderbar.

So next time you meet a Japanese-American who speaks Japanese, give her a hug and a medal. She didn’t come into this game with any advantages; she wasn’t “born into” anything; she deserves it just as much as you. She deserves all the condescending praise that you do. That her family name is “Kobayashi” is virtually meaningless — just listen to the way she says it: “Coe-ba-YAH-shee”! Remember that the poor creature is an American first; she was born in America, as were her grandparents and their grandparents.

Most native speakers of English today do not have any significant English ancestry. But they generally suck painfully hard at any of the languages to which they actually have an ethnic connection. Have you heard guidos (is this a bad word? I hope this isn’t a bad word) speaking Italian? Asian languages are no different. Blood is no advantage, because (wait for it)…there’s no language in your “blood”. Nobody bleeds kanji. Every language is learned from scratch; no Goa’uld genetic memory for you. So, in a way, no one has a birthright to any language, and so everyone has an equal birthright to every language.

Cards you’re ambivalent about are worse than cards that you hate. Cards you hate get acted on instantly, but the ones you’re ambivalent about are allowed to accumulate until they outnumber the ones you love, and then the whole language, your whole life just becomes one big “meh”. So recast ambivalence as hate. If in doubt, throw it out. Delete that card.

Don’t let the cancer of ambivalence overrun your language experience.

Yesterday, I bought like ten books. Pretty much a daily occurrence for me lately. But I also threw away like 3, two of which were from the new ten. They sucked and they weren’t gonna get better and it would literally cost me more to sell them than to bin them. This is Japan; that’s how things work here.

At the time, I felt guilty about it all. The books in question had even gotten good reviews from people I trust. But they simply weren’t a good fit for me. No blood, no foul.

Now I feel free.

Freak thyself not to the out, though: I’m not asking you to start throwing books away; you’re prolly not there yet; you’re probably around places that take book donations. For better or worse (mostly for better), we have enormous cultural resistance to simply discarding books, and I would just as soon see things stay that way.

Paradoxically, my library is happier now; I am happier now. Because subtraction adds value: removing things that are a “meh” makes everything better — it raises the level of all that remains. Few people in our time understood this better than the Syrian hippie who made the mobile phone that you and all your friends use. If in doubt, look to his example.

Ambivalence is like cigarette smoke. It gets everywhere, on everything. I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life (those unignited Q-Tips in the QRG movie aren’t cigarettes ), but people know for days when I’ve “been out” with smokers. The smell gets everywhere.

Don’t let ambivalence get (stay) on you and your stuff. Ambivalence is hate by another name. And deletion is just another form of rep. Delete those SRS cards with extreme prejudice.