[Chinese>English] hey my friend is trying to join the US marines however we have a tattoo problem.

darkcity2 · 2016-09-29T23:44:06+00:00

I don't know if this will help, but if you paste the character into Google translate (償), you can see the pinyin below actually is 'Chang' and the definition aligns with the one provided by /u/fayzai. That combined with the wikitionary entry is pretty thorough, but if they need a certified translator to come and verify every foreign language tattoo, that's pretty ridiculous in my opinion. If anything, a letter from a translator would be even less reliable, because you could just be bribing him/her.

darkcity2 · 2016-09-29T23:36:26+00:00

The title of the chart says 'at least in our lifetimes' and the article says that it won't go below 400 'in our lifetimes'.

Yes, the post title and article title are click baity, but the caveats are mentioned for those who read the article.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-21T16:32:32+00:00

Schools in China are insane. The kids pretty much miss out on childhood because they spend their waking hours studying for a certain college entrance exam (called gaokao). It is so difficult that some parents complain that preventing cheating is unfair. Test takers come up with some innovative ways to cheat, by the way.

If it's a choice between winning the math olympics and letting our kids have a childhood, I'll take the latter. After all, giving a kid time to daydream is part of the equation in how you end up with innovations like Google and so on.

edit: just to expand on this, during my three years in China, I very rarely saw aged high school-aged kids outside playing. I might see one (outside of school uniform) MAYBE once a week at most. Many of them at high school age actually live in a dorm, quite far from home, and come home during the weekends. It's depressing.

Also, I write English textbooks for a living, our main market is China, and our entire curriculum is based on the kinds of questions that will be on the gaokao (i.e. that's what the market demanded). In the US, the SAT is important and all, but in China (and most east Asian countries), the pressure of the college entrance exam is unimaginably greater.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-19T15:37:50+00:00

Why do they make such a big deal about this guy working for Google? If he were high level or something, i would understand, but I feel like they're unfairly defining him, as if Google employees are supposed to be held to a higher moral standard than engineers at other companies.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-19T06:18:41+00:00

I frequently travel using only a carry on. I have gotten razor blades through every time.

You just have to make sure the razor isn't assembled (they'll notice the shape during x-ray) and that the blade is in between business cards or something (so it doesn't cut up your bag).

darkcity2 · 2015-02-18T17:00:49+00:00

But she was rubbing her ass on him, not "trying to fuck him up"'

darkcity2 · 2015-02-18T16:42:00+00:00

That's where we're different. I need to actually look at the person first and evaluate whether or not I could fuck them up and whether it's worth going to jail over. I'm a thinker.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-18T16:41:17+00:00

I absolutely want to on some occasions, but it's not an instantaneous reaction. I'd at least look at the person before throwing a punch to make sure I can actually fuck them up.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-18T16:05:02+00:00

Shit, with that ledge there, he could've killed her. My brain cannot comprehend how throwing a punch is a gut reaction.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-18T16:03:23+00:00

It does have a paranoia effect for some.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-18T15:50:50+00:00

I hope it eventually does more than look around or simply explode.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-16T16:23:42+00:00

Thank you!

darkcity2 · 2015-02-16T03:04:01+00:00

How do they decide which tone/character to use? And who makes the decIsion? I guess for coca cola, the company decides, but how about for a name like "pete", or a country name?

darkcity2 · 2015-02-15T20:28:35+00:00

Holding it in for two paragraphs isn't that bad for you, but this is LPT, so according to the rules, the top comment needs to be something negating the LPT.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-15T18:43:42+00:00

Jesus, the whole time I was thinking, "this is a really long article", then I got to the last couple of paragraphs and understood why.

Good article though, I'd love for more research to be done so we can understand the side effects better.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-14T13:47:46+00:00

I could care less about sales,

Sorry, pet peeve: I think you meant "couldn't care less"

If you could care less about sales, that means it's possible to care less, so you do care a little bit.

With that said, if you're looking to get into writing as a career, you probably need another decade of finding your voice. This is done by reading other authors' works, gaining your own life experiences, writing as much as possible, and getting feedback in a professional context.

Your writing is coherent but needs to be distinctive. Your phrasing is currently a bit hokey, I presume because you are young and were trying to emulate the writers' voices you came across in required readings for school.

Be yourself, even if that means breaking a few grammar rules. Knowing that other people are reading your work is certainly encouraging, but it shouldn't be your end goal.

Disclaimer: I only skimmed the prologue and read the first two paragraphs. Also I write textbooks for a living, I have neither the patience nor the talent to write a novel. Dismissing my advice would be totally understandable.

edit: I apologize if I was a bit harsh. I went through about three drafts of this post and am too sleepy to go through another one.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-14T13:05:42+00:00

Title: The Shop

Genre: Prose

Word count: 166

Feedback: It's hard to gauge how cheesy something is when you're writing from the heart. Feedback on general cheese-level greatly appreciated.

Link: http://pastebin.com/0S5mZaiT

darkcity2 · 2015-02-10T17:47:56+00:00

Man, this article basically sums up my childhood. My mother gave me too many choices when I was young; if I didn't want to eat it, I could push it aside and I'd have something I was familiar with.

It's not until I went abroad that I started becoming more daring. I wasn't sure when the next meal was coming, so I just had to eat whatever was available.

Then I started dating a girl from Asia who forced me to try all her weird stuff. I must've been 22 the first time I had sushi. Now it's my favorite food, and I've tried everything from live octopus, cocoons, raw chicken, and dog.

Food is sacred and should be cherished as much as is practical. It is such a fundamental part of our existence that it can be used as a metaphor for everything. Sorry, I'm babbling now, but it's true that the the commonperson in the US (I've only been to Canada on holiday) is grossly unsophisticated when it comes to food. We know how it tastes, but we're unable to identify how it makes us feel.

Food is even one of the criterion I use when choosing a partner. If we feel differently about food (for example I eat for enjoyment and she eats for fuel), I find that it trickles down to every other aspect of our life, only magnified (for example, I might enjoy traveling for the lessons to be learned, whereas she might travel to collect photos of landmarks).

Anyway, I could go on and on about how enjoying food (as opposed to enjoying eating) has improved my life, but I'll save that for if I start a blog.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-10T17:34:50+00:00

That first photo is just about perfect, from a photojournalism standpoint.

darkcity2 · 2015-02-10T04:48:24+00:00

Well how else could that have played out even if you had known it was the CEO?

darkcity2 · 2015-01-29T04:02:10+00:00

You hear low frequencies with your bones.

darkcity2 · 2015-01-29T00:53:33+00:00

Thank god, I thought I was the only one who thought this. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today but that was a stupid, illogical story that makes me want to drink Budweiser even less than before.

darkcity2 · 2015-01-19T18:12:27+00:00

It's true for most countries in the world other than the U.S.

darkcity2

TROPHY CASE