is your learning curve a horizontal line?

please do not perceive me

[clestroying]

What's your fav part about sucking dick

the fact that god is watching

[thestuffedalligator]

I used to think “soupçon” was a French word for crouton and I used it as the French word for crouton for a long time and nobody stopped me.

Soupçon actually means “suspicion” and the reason nobody called me out on this is because I would use the word to imply the idea of something sprinkled on top of something else ala croutons. If someone said, “A soupçon of homoeroticism,” I thought it meant “Someone sprinkled homoeroticism on this story like croutons on a delightful Caesar salad.”

I wrote multiple essays that used soupçon as a noun with this translation in mind and I got a degree and this haunts me.

There’s no point to this post, it’s just very important to me that you know that I can be quite stupid

[sturionic]

"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).

[igorafvckassbowlcut]

there are days where NO ❌️ video games are played and there are days where video games are played for 10 or maybe 14 hours straight

[odekirk]

[odekirk]

two sides of the same story

[gyrovagi]

the problem with employment is it gives you money to purchase video games but it takes away your time to play video games. Mao spoke of this

[perfectday1972]

i do wonder how mamdani would have solved a problem like the green goblin

[softieskywalker]

i think the key difference between george lucas’s star wars and disney’s star wars is that lucas is a man with an ideology. someone with a point of view, and all that entails. which comes with ideas of revolution, anti-imperialism, challenging the status quo, cultural appropriation and racist stereotypes. complex and contradictory ideas because that’s how artists are: complex and complicated people. disney is not. disney is a corporation. a corporation can’t have ideology, because ideology defeats the purpose of profit. and when the only thing you do is to turn on the movie manufacturing machine before you sit down and plan what ideas are you trying to convey to the audience, then your results are going to be washed out corporate garbage. and because when you’re a giant corporation who only cares about selling to the widest audience possible, you can’t take sides. you can’t decide on an idea. because you want to sell your product to people who are on the entire political spectrum. which results in movies without ideology, without purpose, without soul.

[david-talks-sw]

I have been looking for this post for years after I came across it and it’s finally here and I need to reblog this because it is absolutely and entirely accurate.

[comebackali]

#as I always say: lucas was making a samurai film and a ww2 flying ace film and a western film and adding laser swords#because he fundamentally LIKED samurai films and dambusters films and westerns and 40’s adventure serials#but disney are making a ‘star wars film’ and adding nothing because it already had laser swords and they have nothing else to say#xerox of a xerox baybeeeee (via harrietvane)

[lastoneout]

I love when people try to gotcha me on my stance that all sports should be gender integrated with "even American football???" because I can instantly come back with "oh lmao, no, I don't think ANYONE should play American football at all, it's way too dangerous" like nice try but I know no amount of testosterone is going to protect you from the profound, life ruining health issues caused by getting repeated severe concussions over the course of several years. No one should play this sport.

[lastoneout]

Like do you really think muscle mass or gender/sex can protect you from CTE?? You think men are naturally more resistant to concussions?? Because idk how else you square this sport being too dangerous for cis women and people afab but perfectly safe for cis men and people amab. Having a testosterone dominant endocrine system isn't gonna do shit in the face of traumatic brain injury. Be serious. This sport should not exist.

[lastoneout]

Honestly it's pretty weird to me that people dismiss the harm football players go through as fine because they're men, especially when so many players are black men. Always remember the argument that women are weaker than men is also an argument that men are stronger than women and can withstand more injury and abuse which isn't true, and absolutely ties into eugenicist beliefs about black bodies while obscuring their suffering as not existing because they're men and football is only dangerous for women, so how could they be hurt?

Systems can exploit men too, especially non-white or otherwise marginalized men who also deserve to be defended and liberated from said system's devaluation of their humanity and mistreatment.

[lastoneout]

@lunammoon over here saying what I tried to way more eloquently, thank you o7 no one should be subjected to the Hell Spiral 3000!!!!

[saulwexler]

how to explain to non-americans that the better call saul ads aren’t exaggerated for comedic effect they are super normie

[queenofnots]

[queenofnots]

[2urban2fantasy-deactivated20241]

Morgan & Morgan. For the people.

[mornington-the-crescent]

Fieger Law: All We Do Is Win

[crownedpatriot11]

What do you think he does

[red-faced-wolf-deactivated20251]

How you know you’re in the great state of Alabama

[theodoretheninja]

I don't have a picture, but our area is flooded with a dude holding a comedically large hammer and looking to sue the shit out of any truckers that have injured you.

[wanderer-chronicles]

[wanderer-chronicles]

[serregon]

🤨

[proship-fictionkin]

THE TEXAS HAMMER

[nanitecitys]

Alexander Shunnarah is such a big meme in Alabama that people got this man to attend anime conventions multiple years in a row as a special guest that furries and cosplayers can take pictures with and get autographs from. He's on nearly Every billboard in the state.

[elphabaoftheopera]

don't forget these jungle law billboards i have to pass every day

that doesn't even scratch the surface there are so so many of them

[therogueduchess]

[knightofiris]

I remember my friends and I laughing our asses off when we saw this billboard.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Sweet James

[nada-nothin-nil]

used to pass this every day

[brightside-brigade]

This is just how lawyers are.

[rabbitmotifs]

morris bart is practically a state celebrity in louisiana

[skippyisntfunny]

[superioronion]

[tiredbtw]

*spends all of my time alone* perfect! but why am i crazy

[guerrillatech]

[darlingofdots]

ten years ago as part of my creative writing degree we had a class on professional development where we learned how the publishing process works for different mediums and how to choose an agent and what the role of a publishing house is and back then, the advice was "self-publishing has its advantages but a traditional publisher will provide editorial support and market your book and if your book sells well enough they want to invest in your future" and now basically none of that is true anymore. books make it to shelves with noticeable errors and structural issues that could be addressed with one or two more rounds of developmental editing, authors are expected to do more and more of the marketing themselves to the point that they are expected to be social media influencers in their own right, and publishers appear to be prioritising flashy debut novels with huge advances they don't outsell, which means the author is less likely to get a follow-up deal.

Obviously a publisher is a business and a business needs to make money, but the idea used to be that you'd have a couple of very successful authors who bring in so much cash that they subsidise the new kid who is building a back catalogue of books that sell okay until they get name recognition and pay for themselves. I was told back then that a couple thousand pounds was very reasonable for a debut novel because you want to get royalties for the sales exceeding your advance and that way the publisher sees you as a profitable investment. The last couple of years I keep hearing about six figure book deals for debut (!) literary fiction (!) novels, what on earth?

I'm not saying that the publishing industry is uniquely awful or that it's worse than it's ever been or whatever, but especially in a time when reading and talking about books is trendy and there is so much money in books, it feels very, I don't know, symbolic? Prioritising flashy one-time projects over sustained and sustainable growth. Investing only enough resources to make your product fit for sale but not enough to make it good because people will buy it anyway. It's frustrating to me as a reader and as an aspiring writer and as a person existing in a capitalist system.

[poorshadowspaintedqueens]

One of the tags referred to people thanking their editorial teams in acknowledgments, and I want to point out the growing prevalence of people thanking beta-readers and writing groups, both of which usually rely on a pre-existing community or relationship and, just as importantly, are unpaid.

My day job is as a freelance editor for nonfiction books, and I can safely say that if the publishing industry were operating as intended, I would either not have a job at all or be working for a specific press. Authors pay me directly to do the work that a press editor used to do as part of publication contracts. This is because so many presses have started outsourcing all their editorial work to either third-party contractors or, even worse, to genAI.

In short, venture capital has broken the publication industry the same way it's broken the retail, restaurant, and travel industries.

[darlingofdots]

I didn't go into this side of it in my original post but YES! Fuck! I know this is a huge issue for translators too because they're being asked to do more work in less time for less money and I've heard rumblings about human translators being brought in only to essentially proofread work done by AI, which is so disrespectful to the sheer skill and artistic abilities of (literary) translation...

Anyway, I love editing. I think I love editing almost more than writing, and I'm pretty sure that I'm better at it. Last year I edited an academic article from 11k to 9k words for my supervisor and I felt like a god when I finished it, but when my supervisor asked if I'd thought about doing this professionally, I had to tell her that there's just not a viable career in editing anymore. Publishers used to employ! editors! Several different kinds of editors for different stages of the process! That used to be my dream job!

Editing is so essential to making a text good. It doesn't matter how talented or dedicated you are as a writer, you cannot achieve the level of quality by yourself that you could achieve by working with a skilled editor. That's normal! The lone genius who comes out of the cave with the perfect novel does not exist! The manuscript that gets sold to a publisher is supposed to be handed off to an editor who tells you to tighten up that plotline and reminds you that every day can't be Tuesday and sharpens your prose so your voice really shines. Skimping out on that part of the publication process takes money out of the hands of skilled professionals, leads to consumers (ew) receiving subpar products (ew!), and is such an injustice to the writers whose work can't reach its full potential (and the writers who won't get published because they can't afford to pay an editor out of pocket!).

It drives me up the wall. I hate reading a mediocre book and knowing that a skilled editor could have easily raised it from 3 stars to 4. We should all be way angrier about it, frankly.

[homunculus-argument]

Playing magic the gathering and someone's whole entire deck is just spells that make you discard your cards but now your hand is empty and you're just playing straight from deck to table dealing -1 damage every single turn with one sickly little one-point-value runt of a creature that they failed to kill at the start and you're whittling them down from 38 health because they removed your only weakness and they can either concede or stay here trapped in the hell of their own making.

[gravityjunior]

Starting a collection

[wizardarchetypes]

i know i encourage people to learn tree ID and bird ID and love the world around them but the one thing i never warn ppl about is how dramatically it narrows your suspension of belief when you’re watching a tv show filmed thousands of miles from where it’s supposed to take place.

was going bananas watching a show set in Oregon but they didn’t edit out a constant chorus of eastern pheobes in the background, but i persevered. bc one i don’t care THAT much and 2 it’s kinda a fun part of the je ne sais quoi especially if the show sort of sucks

but i do have my limits and when i was watching a show set in northern Ohio, filmed in BC I actually quit it permanently when the characters walked into a stand of coastal douglas firs.

[wizardarchetypes]

frustrated further when i complained about this and someone from the PNW was like “yeah Ohio is so flat and nothing that was too obvious.”

☝️northern Ohio sits on one of the great lakes and was once home to one of the largest wetlands/swamps on the continent. colonial agriculture devastated it but its remnants have persevered. my issue was not that BC was too beautiful to be Ohio. It’s that Ohio’s beauty was not showcased.

[gallusrostromegalus]

STORY I NEED YOU TO READ THIS ARTICLE THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST INSANE EXAMPLES OF THIS PHENOMENON AND I LOVE HOW THE AUTHOR DESCENDS INTO THE DEPTHS OF MADNESS OVER IT.

It’s One of the Weirdest Mistakes in Movie History. I Spent Months Investigating How It All Went Wrong.

The story behind cinema’s most mysterious bird.