"Learn the fundamentals first" seems like really sound universal advice, and as a former classical musician, I can vouch for it. You will have a more solid foundation for increasing complexity if you put in the time to study in a structured way. If you don't, you'll have a lot of shit to fix later.

As a former music teacher, I can also say that "learn the fundamentals first" is the death knell for a vast percentage of beginners, especially adult learners.

I've run into this with drawing several times, where some well-meaning artist has lectured me on needing to study anatomy properly or not use shortcuts like CSP brushes. And oh, believe me, I know. I know exactly how to learn an artistic discipline in a structured way. I just...don't want to!

The thing is, I'm not aiming to be a professional artist. I want to draw my gay little anime guys. I would undoubtedly improve at art much faster if I approached every gay little anime guy drawing as a study exercise. But I would also have quit drawing a decade ago if I couldn't just let myself enjoy drawing imperfect fucked-up little guys with whatever shortcuts I needed to body myself across the finish line.

With my adult piano students, my approach was always "What's your goal?" If their goal was to learn exactly one Elton John songbook to play at parties, then...that's what we did. We'd put tape on the keys to label the notes, and just fuckin go for it. Learning exactly one Elton John songbook is a good and noble musical goal, full stop.

Some of my students needed and enjoyed a more structured approach to learning; if they wanted to be able to play classical music, then yes, scales were going to have to enter the equation at some point. And yet others would learn the Elton John songbook, catch their white whale, and realize they wanted to explore more of the ocean. The scales were still there for them to learn!

Often the choice isn't between "learn art well" and "learn art imperfectly" - the choice is between "learn art imperfectly" and "don't do art at all." To which I say, learn imperfectly! Or, what the hell, don't 'learn' art. Just do, and enjoy the doing of it.

You have official permission from your local pretentious classical music snob: fuck the fundamentals. You can always unfuck them later (but only if you want to).

i'm not normally one to make jokes about dialect or accent. but the way that British people pronounce "lieutenant" feels like an in-joke i'm not privy to

Aww, you're feeling lieut out?

Once upon a time there was the Latin word "locus", meaning "place", which had various different declensions, but somewhere along the line in the vernacular in the areas conquered by Rome it had a strong tendency to shift towards something that dropped the last syllable (so "loc" instead of "locus") and then fucked around with the vowel in all kinds of directions.

But then the speakers of Gallo-Romanic dialects went even further and they got rid of the "k" sound entirely and started just saying the l and the vowel, which eventually got us to the Old French "leu".

Now the thing is, right, that in the old languages the spelling is very much a sort of consensus thing. It's not perfectly phonetic, because it can't be: all of the languages in question had phonemes that weren't exactly the same as the Latin that existed when and where the Latin alphabet was formalized, right? So as people wrote down the Old French vernacular, they basically took the letters they were taught and they used them to represent the sounds they were making.

This happens with all the languages; there's a really neat thing where if you look at Visigothic manuscripts, writing in the area that would become Spain and the vernacular form that would eventually be Spanish, you can see the difference between the sound of "v" and the sound of "b" disappearing, so that there are manuscripts where "Ave Maria" is written "Abe Maria", because to the people reading it, b and v made the same sound.

This is relevant to the question because of a fun little fact about mediaeval orthography! Which is that the characters that we now feel are absolutely separate, different letters - that is u and v - were both used for both sounds. It's not that "u" and "v" were the same letter exactly - they weren't - but that the character you used was the same and which you used depended more (properly) on where in the word the letter came, than which one it was.

So the word "hut" would indeed be written with "u", but the word "university" might well be written "vniuersity".

But it gets worse from here, because the sound of the letter we now call "v" and the letter we call "f" were also often used interchangeably. So it might actually be written "vnifersity".

If your eyes are crossing, remember that we still randomly stick "qu" in places to be "kw" and there's quite complicated rules about when the character "c" says a hard back of throat sound the same as the letter "k" and when it says a soft sibilant like "s" and also sometimes when it does something completely different.

Now as it happens the point of writing is to be able to take words from your head, put them on paper (or parchment, in this case), and then send them much farther away in both time and space to someone who absolutely cannot hear you say these words, and then put those thoughts in their head.

Which meant that you have this sort of weird liminal thing where "leu" could be spelled "lev", because u and v were interchangeable, and then also this thing where v and f were interchangeable, and both were being sent around to various places and read to others who may, or may not, do a lot of reading as opposed to a little, or may be reading in a different dialect than they speak (because remember, we're talking about mediaeval France, which means we're actually talking about a country with two major language divisions - Langue D'oc and Langue D'oïl - which then inside of them have a reasonable fuckload of languages that are mostly mutually intelligible most of the time), and so on, which means that the noise for u and the noise for f meet in the middle and may both be represented by "v" and while we're at it they may all just be pronouncing the word differently, and as you saw in the whole move from "locus" to "leu" in the first place, that can involve ending up in quite a different place through a totally logical means.

We don't know for absolute certain if this is why the word "leu", ported over to English with the Normans and added to our language, changed its pronunciation and spelling to "lief" or "liev". You will note that along the way both to Middle English and to Middle French, it grew an "i" in before the "e" sound, because words do that.

We do have some records of Old French that are spelled "leuf" or "lef"; we also got our Frenchishness from the Norman Conquest, which is to say the brand of French very specifically spoken by a bunch of Francicized Scandinavians who spoke a very specific one of those Langues D'oïl. So we do know that the idea that this word ended in the sound we might associate with the letter "f" had already took up in a bunch of different places.

The original idea of "lieutenant" is quite literally a "placeholder" - it was someone you left in your place. So if you were your overlord's "lieutenant" you were the person who gave other people orders in his place, the person he delegated to. Much like "captain", when these words were first used they did not designate a specific rank in a highly developed system with rigid relationships, but rather were the names for roles that people occupied in relationship to the enterprise/activity/whatever.

This is why in the books, the Witch King of Angmar is referred to frequently as Sauron's "lieutenant" - Tolkien knew this shit preeeeetty well and liked using words in those contexts.

So in French, they moved along the path of saying "lieu" as the word is said in French today, with no consonant at the end. Their "lieutenant", their "placeholder", maintained that pronunciation. Americans then actively wanted to distance themselves from the British and were at the time buddy-buddy with the French, so they took that pronunciation on.

Meanwhile at some point Middle English - arising from Old English and Norman French - had shifted to the "liev", the one that had a fricative on the end, which was one of the pronunciations attested in the spelling shift to "leuf".

Et voila.

A hitman who advertises his services the way a commission artist does

“Um hey guys. I’ve been hit pretty hard with financial difficulty lately. I’d really appreciate it if you’d consider commissioning me.”

Stabbings: $45

Gunshots: $100

Poisonings: $200

Thanks you guys please share if you can!  ❤️❤️❤️

Commissions I will NOT take:

👎 Kids (Teens are fine tho)

👎 Bystanders

👎 Other Hitmen

If you want to know why, message me, but otherwise no hate pls ✨

hey guys, normally i try to keep drama off of my blog but this is really important. I just wanted to let you know that someone named WetWorkKing05 has been taking credit for MY kills over on redbloodle.com and is making money off of my hard work. When I messaged him directly he blocked me and threatened to kill ME >_> I’ve tried talking with the mods about getting his account taken down, but redbloodle has NO policy for this and they are no help at all. i don’t know what to do??

PLS signal boost if you can! And in the meantime, if you need somebody killed, do NOT hire WetWorkKing05! he is a THIEF!

repeat after me:

MURDER 👏 THEFT 👏 IS 👏 A 👏 WORSE 👏 CRIME 👏 THAN 👏 REGULAR  👏 MURDER  👏

Credits to the murderer

“Why are your prices so high???? I could kill him myself for free! whatever, ur not even that good at murder anyway”

Emergency Murder Slots available!

First Person - $450, additional bodies add $375 each

(Basically a steal still my normal rate is $650. Cmon guys it’s $200 off!)

Serious inquiries only. EXPOSURE IS NOT A CURRENCY!

Guys please support all these hardworking Individuals!

Good hitmen are hard to find so it’s up to us to raise awareness!!!!

Omg I love this guy’s work! He’s new and not so well known in the hitman community, but he’s so amazing and is appreciate it if you guys have him some love ❤️❤️

Support your local assassins

”um why would I pay a hitmen would I could just steal military ai and have it kill anyone I want for free”

Ai military robots can not murder like real hit men, they’re messy and lack the spirit that involves murder

I’m never leaving this fucking app.

Autistic men are extra vulnerable to becoming misogynists.

But it's not because they're predisposed to be. It's because they're raised to be.

Think about it. Since before you can even remember, every move you make is heavily policed. Fail to make eye contact? Punished. Use the wrong tone? Punished. Can't say sorry and "say it like you mean it"? Punished. Can't eat a food without gagging? Punished. Fail to show appreciation in the way that's expected? Punished. Flinch when something causes you sensory pain? Punished. Ask for clarification? Punished for arguing. Your life is full of walking on punishment land mines at all times.

Then, when you make a girl in your class uncomfortable, maybe because you failed to accurately read her boundaries, or because another girl liked something and you thought this girl would too, or because you got bad advice telling you that being mean to a girl is how to show that you like her, you're not punished. You're given a free pass because you're autistic and don't know better. The girl you make uncomfortable is expected to put her comfort aside and prioritize protecting your feelings. This child who you're causing actual harm to is expected to show you compassion that no adult authority figure has ever shown you even once.

You grow up being taught that nonconformity is a capital offense but misogyny is normal. You grow up being taught that an authority figure feeling undermined is a tragedy but a woman feeling dehumanized is acceptable collateral damage.

They still use these

i think the crux of human misery stems from the fact that our skeleton just wants to sit around and accumulate dust in an ancient barrow (that is the innate imperative of all skeletal remains in-case you didn’t know) but our meat has its own agenda which creates this fundamental conflict of interests

good traits gone bad

pro tip for the real ass world: if you have self esteem issues and/or a well-developed sense of cynicism and are asked to describe yourself (say, in a job application), find your flaws on the right and say the corresponding phrases on the left. it's all about reframing that narrative, baby. take those sticks and stones people have been throwing at you and build a used pre-owned car lot out of them.

your strengths are harder to see than your weaknesses because the problems you're good at solving don't appear as problems, because you're so good at handling them before they become problems... unlike the relatively rare problem that becomes a crisis, which demands undue attention. it's sort of like a reverse survivorship bias. the problems that become noticed as problems, the moments where you notice your capacity has a gap, are only the ones that aren't cut off at the pass by your strength and capability, before they become problems. so if all you focus on is problems then all you'll see is your weaknesses. which isn't accurate

it's such bs that the whole guilt-ridden stoic self-sacrificing martyr thing doesn't work outside of fiction. repressing all your emotions and neglecting your physical wellbeing should make you god's most tragically beautiful morally unassailable little soldier of righteousness but all it does is give you bad skin and gastrointestinal problems

you were born in 2006? what are you? a Honda Civic?

can i fucking help you?

maybe the single funniest twitter comment I've ever seen

had to share this

In every way this is set up to be a joke like any other short video, it even uses the trope of main character in a wig to represent their mom, but it isn't funny at all. It's just sweet and nice

squidward really was such a dramatic faggot we don't talk about it enough. he bought a cemetery plot with a tombstone that said "here lies squidward's hopes and dreams". and he quietly yet tearfully laid flowers at it. and like he was doing that for no known audience. he didn't know mr. krabs was watching. faggot hijinks that make rupaul look masc.

What's that poem about the cockroach and the moth where the cockroach is like "I wish I've ever wanted anything the way that moth wanted to burn itself up in that lantern" because we had to read that in high school and it still fucks me up to this day

Ok I found it it's called "the lesson of the moth by archy" and it's by Don Marquis

it’s not too late, because you’re alive right now, reading this

“i do not dream of labor” yes u do. labor is fulfilling. u dream of a world where ur labor isnt exploited and its that or starvation. i guarantee u dream of labor. labor is a necessity and in and of itself is a good thing.

if u dream of having a garden, of painting murals, cooking or baking for people, researching in a lab, or writing stories, u dream of labor. which is good! we all jus hate having our labor exploited and being underpaid for the value of our work. nobody wants to just sit at home and do NOTHING as quarantine proved! in and of itself labor is fulfilling and contributes to the betterment and advancement of society, too many people are just barred by arbitrary divides (class, education) and unable to perform labor they’d be best suited for, or that type of labor (arts, service industry) is undervalued and underpaid.