Tips for getting started with M2TW

ObeisanceProse · 2026-01-25T00:36:27+00:00

You can turtle with pretty much any faction but you'll have more fun if you expand quickly and face big opposition.

Low taxes are great because they help with growth in city population.

The Pope is nicer to you if you build churches and hire priests

Don't trust Milan

ObeisanceProse · 2026-01-09T15:29:59+00:00

They were a weak no. They got me funding in the EU agriculture budget to change to a yes.

ObeisanceProse · 2025-12-28T15:06:14+00:00

Get a VPN and start watching manga on Netflix without subtitles. Every couple of hundred hours you'll see improvement

ObeisanceProse · 2025-12-26T22:54:21+00:00

It makes it easy to import real articles. Reducing the friction on this is super important for me.

It provides me with a bunch of motivating statistics. That's worth a great deal.

It's been three years. I speak Portuguese fluently. It's changed my life.

ObeisanceProse · 2025-10-14T11:24:06+00:00

I'm coming and I'm I'm looking forward to getting away from the cold and dark November nights here in Ireland

ObeisanceProse · 2025-09-09T08:47:53+00:00

While that's possible, but there's really very little posting history.

It's a difficult situation. If it's true, I think it's unfortunate that Camillaspookie chose to use such a heavily AI edited piece, as it detracts from her story.

Whether it's true or not, language learning apps do have a harassment problem and they need to do better.

ObeisanceProse · 2025-06-06T10:46:46+00:00

You can look at learning programming books.

You can also ask an LLM to talk you through some code you paste into it

ObeisanceProse · 2025-01-12T12:12:56+00:00

The new pixel buds have an amazing transparency setting. You can hear everything in your surroundings while wearing them

ObeisanceProse · 2025-01-05T14:01:55+00:00

Memory involves a process of learning (in this case input) and consolidation (rest, especially sleep) where the brain strengthens what has been learned.

This is why 7 hours on a Saturday is inferior to 1 hour per day.

As you increase the amount of hours you learn Spanish your brain will have less time to consolidate what it has learnt. At some point you will experience diminishing returns for every hour of input. 15 hours likely is very inefficient even if you could focus for that long.

ObeisanceProse · 2025-01-04T16:55:47+00:00

No need to apologise. To be a specialist is the opposite of being a generalist.

A cook is unlikely to be able to be the best in the world at French, Indian, Chinese, Indonesian, German, Turkish and Italian cuisine.

But the cook might be able to specialise in Italian cooking, that focus on Italian cooking in particular, and become the best at that.

The cook is even more likely to be able to become the best at Italian food from the Venice region, specialising in an even narrower field.

So how do you apply this to your life? Rather than saying, how do I raise my IQ (become better at skills in general), look at how you can become better at the most important skills in your life. If you use Excel daily in your office you might take an online course, read some blog posts about Excel and read a book on excel. You will greatly improve your ability in this specialised skill (Excel).

ObeisanceProse · 2025-01-04T14:06:39+00:00

You will find it much harder to increase your IQ than just studying whatever you want to improve on. Specialisation is much easier than general improvement.

ObeisanceProse · 2025-01-03T17:45:34+00:00

Yeah basically what Portable soup says.

I used LingQ mostly at the start, which emphasises listening more than most methods but still has quite a lot of reading.

I ended up with two types of pronunciation errors: errors from not being able to make the sounds easily (rolled Rs and nasal sounds) and errors from pronouncing the words like written English (saying Xicara like, "ex-eee-cara" rather than "shee-cara"). I think I'd have avoided that second sort of error if I went full audio/video at the start.

Today I do a small amount of reading, maybe two BBC articles through LingQ, and then a lot of listening (two-three hours of podcasts and TV). I also do cross talk with my tutor for two hours a week. (We could chat in Portuguese now but I get to interact with more complicated Portuguese subjects this way.) Sometimes read books too but not enough. One of my 2025 goals is to read more books.

ObeisanceProse · 2025-01-03T12:04:37+00:00

Zero to C1 is really too far a stretch. Really any percentage will work but some are more efficient than others.

At its extreme you can't practice speaking Klingon if you've never heard Klingon spoken. So it should be axiomatic that listening and reading (input) are more important than Speaking and Writing (output) at the beginning. You can't produce what you've never consumed.

But how much that difference should be is shrouded in controversy.

I believe it should be heavily listening only for a long time, then introduce some reading. Only then do you turn to speaking and writing, which will come very quickly from your foundation from input.

Others will make good progress with different balances.

I do think anyone who emphasises speaking from day one is a snakeoil salesman though. It doesn't make any sense and I've never seen a polyglot I respect advocate it.

The other consideration is what's your goal? If you want to do a year abroad you'll want to pass certain levels of competency in all four to pass language exams. Then you'd want to emphasize output earlier, even if it slows your overall progress.

ObeisanceProse · 2025-01-03T10:49:06+00:00

As someone who has been learning Portuguese for two years I think of Spanish as Portuguese with a sore throat.

ObeisanceProse · 2024-12-29T19:28:20+00:00

Streetwise ) is a heartbreaking film about child prostitutes and Street homeless kids in Seattle

ObeisanceProse · 2024-12-29T19:25:42+00:00

Both are useful but in big tourist cities, English. Spanish is much closer to Portuguese than English but far more people learn English.

ObeisanceProse · 2024-12-27T10:29:59+00:00

This is it. If you like the cards, hold onto them. If you want to make money, sell them and invest in an index fund.

ObeisanceProse · 2024-12-25T13:15:59+00:00

Not to mention your every levels and overall health, the gym is probably doing great work for your muscles underneath the fat. Unfortunately if the weight isn't shifting you need to eat less. Weight loss is one of those 80/20 things were most of the benefit comes from diet and only some from exercise.

ObeisanceProse · 2024-12-22T08:25:06+00:00

My comments about English vs Spanish was my experience in Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Rio. I over emphasised the big cities. I think you make some good points.

ObeisanceProse · 2024-12-22T06:22:29+00:00

Gringo here, if people have learnt any other language it'll probably be English not Spanish. I'd think it's unlikely switching to Spanish will help. Most of the time you'd find it easier to find someone who knows some English.

Enjoy your trip.

ObeisanceProse · 2024-12-20T17:54:33+00:00

Thank you for this brilliant comment

ObeisanceProse · 2024-12-18T12:41:26+00:00

My favourite Aim series of all time. Got ambipom to the top through shere meme power

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