Unecessary questionerrr

[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).

[pankendev]

i like to order a lot of various evil import shit online and then spend the next week eating various evil import shit

[pankendev]

currently trying

[pankendev]

i think more things should be illegal

[lakevida]

when youre inadvertently 1% too nice to a straight guy you can usually pinpoint the exact moment where he decides you must be acting that way because you want to fuck down on him crazy style and it is at this point that one would be well advised to have a cyanide capsule under a false tooth or an equivalent fast acting response

[oak23]

One of my marie kondo tidbits is that one time she really did throw out everything that didnt spark joy including her screwdrivers and thought she could get away with tightening a screw with one of her favourite rulers but instead ended up snapping it in half

So when she tells people to consider how an item helps you not fuck up your shit and thats how you find joy, just know its from experience

[juunipupu]

Knight and a Second chance

[juunipupu]

long in-depth lore breakdown under cut

Now, bear in mind that I’m struggling to put into the words many of the concepts discussed here. So sorry in advance if some parts feel nonsensical...! And as a disclaimer: my knowledge is mainly acquired as an interest and hobby – it does not hold water as actual, completely accurate information of a historical period. It’s my interpretation, my fantasy of sorts. First things first, song inspiration: Vilma Jää – Manalan mailla  (if you know Finnish and like to read these, you might see the connection  lol) Kauno’s story in nutshell: Kauno is a nobleman knight, who suffered a mortal wound to his neck when he was pinned in combat and stabbed between his armour plates. By all logic he should’ve succumbed to such a wound, but he was rescued and nursed back to health. The nuns who took care of him did not have high hopes for the feverish nobleman to make it through, and yet eventually he woke up in perfect health and spirit. Kauno remembers little of the time from sickbed but has clear memory of vivid dreams of birds… Visually Kauno’s pose is heavy nod towards Botticelli’s painting ‘Birth of Venus’. I’ve always associated this piece with rebirth and beauty, both which are at the heart of Kauno’s character. His name quite literally means ‘beauty’ and rest we’ll get to…! So now, the most complex part is to acknowledge the co-existence of Christianity and folk religion in Finland during Middle ages. While it’s hard to point out how folk religion exactly died (I’m not read enough on the topic), there are still letters to be found from church officials pointing out that some of the folk religion or the traditions persisted even till late medieval period and to renaissance. This period of time where beliefs melded and changed is something I’m extremely interested to depict. Now, religion facts: There are quite a few nods towards Christianity here, the number seven motif with the birds, rebirth etc. However, the story revolves even further to folk religion’s concept of lintukoto (birds’ home). It was believed to be a physical place just outside the edge of the world, where birds went during winter. Everything was small in lintukoto to accommodate birds and sometimes souls could wander there. Notable is that lintukoto is _not_ heaven/afterlife in folk religion, but rather it seems one might get lost there by accident? Terns: I thought terns are great way of marrying both religious imageries together. They dive almost completely into the water and rise anew, signifying Kauno’s almost rebirth-like experience. There also rather many hymns describing angels and dead loved ones visiting earth as birds! And lastly, they are also bird that are more typically seen in southern Finland, as a reference towards lintukoto being to the south of the world’s edge. Armour: Yep, that’s Kauno himself! Kauno is showing his neck, which has only the scar left from the combat, but he’s also gripping at the sinking armour at the same spot.

Fun fact: Kauno is literally shorter and slimmer ('smaller') than my other knights as a nod to lintukoto! So, is he an angel, rebirthed man, or just very lucky guy? Who can say for sure, but all these motifs are part of him.

[fadingfolklore]

I’m raising funds to catch up on overdue rent before Aug. 16. Any support will help cover my remaining July rent and August rent so my cats and I can stay in our home.

July: $248.85/$950

Aug: $0/$950

CA: $ Thecatqueenxo

PP/V: Thecatqueenxo

ko-fi.com/pandavillemeow

[argentsunshine]

well you know what they say. when you've invested billions of dollars into hammers every problem looks like a nail and you keep handing these hammers to your users and they go "i don't really think i needed this hammer" and "but i don't have any nails that need hammering in right now" and "this is not a nail this is a glass vase that will break if i hit it with a hammer" and "didn't you used to have, like, other tools avaliable that might be better suited to this job" and you tell them to suck it up because you've replaced all your screwdrivers and wrenches and box cutters and crates and ladders and paint with hammers because your shareholders need to see an increase in value from your hammer investments

[ot3]

its crazy how in a world where you have access to an amount of art and literature so vast that you could spend several lifetimes back to back combing through it all without making a dent in it, even under those conditions of bountiful excess, people still feel compelled to blog about axis powers hetalia

[ot3]

even with stuff like hazbin hotel or south park or slop shonen that i think is terrible i can at least understand what it is about these properties that people latch onto and where the appeal comes from but with hetalia im like. based on literally zero direct interaction with the source material ever i still feel confident enough to say i do not believe there is a single thing on offer in hetalia in terms of like artistry or interesting ideas or narrative and character writing that could be unique or compelling enough to explain its continued popularity. i just categorically can not believe it.

[ot3]

i actually don't think the original canon is "important at best and irrelevant at worst" regardless of what you or anyone is actually doing with or saying about these character. like the "sandbox" you are playing with your "dolls" in is a japanese nationalist's woobified caricature of world war II era fascism. no amount of disavowing the source material counteracts the implicit approval of being an active and vocal fan of it and i think nostalgia is a pretty spineless reason for doing all that too. kind of seems it might be poison in small doses too from where im sitting if it makes you feel compelled to put yourself on blast like this lmao but you're not wrong about it getting you stupid at least

[yume-fanfare]

windows movie maker on the internet archive we are so back

[vulturevanity]

I think we need to kill the sentiment that people lose their right to personhood once they do something bad enough

[vulturevanity]

I don't know who needs to hear this but you need to stop dehumanising people even if those people are "abusers" or "creeps" because you need to understand that you are not immune to doing something equally as bad

Abusers and creeps are not some species of especially heinous animal or alien or monster wearing the face of a human. They're people. And you NEED to drill it into your head that they are people because you NEED to remember that people are capable of doingn heinous shit. And you are a person. And your loved ones are people.

By emotionally classifying people who have done heinous things as subhuman filth incapable of thinking and feeling and acting just like you and me, and by using that emotional dehumanization as a reason to deny those people any compassion or support on a systemic level, you risk becoming blind to abuse/violence perpetrated by someone close to you or even yourself. Because if "abusers don't deserve rights", then you won't ever want to admit or accept that you or a loved one is perpetrating abuse, and that makes stopping the abuse or preventing further abuse much harder. This is how you end up excuaing abusive behaviour on the grounds that, since you don't see someone as a disgusting subhuman pile of garbage therefore they can't possibly be An Abuser, Trademark

[vulturevanity]

And here'a the even harder pill to swallow: since the world isn't split into "abusers" and "good people", in the same way you or someone you love can inflict abuse/violence on others, the people who HAVE inflicted abuse/violence on others can, in fact, change and become better people

There is no bottomless chasm of moral uncleanliness that someone can run off and fall into and get stuck in forever. People can do better. Yes, even those people. You HAVE to accept this. Otherwise not only is there no motivation for anyone to try and do better (which is when people become stuck in a cycle of violence and abuse they don't want to escape), but your idea of a perfect justice system doesn't look any different from Literal Christian Hell. And I HOPE you understand that Literal Christian Hell is, to put it very lightly, not a good justice system.

[trickedsparrow]

Unchecked and fear-driven dehumanization is the brick foundation for fascism.

[prettyboyharrington]

Please take the term “porn addiction” away from booktokers

[copias-foreskin]

Can we take it away from everyone? Bc it's not real, Evangelicals made it up

[prokopetz]

The way some people react to the Monty Hall problem is a good illustration that correctly identifying that you're being tricked and correctly identifying how you're being tricked are two separate skills. Some folks immediately intuit that there's a statistical sleight of hand in play, but because they have no insight into how it works, they interpret any attempt to explain what's really going on as further trickery. It's like showing someone that the rabbit was inside a secret compartment in the hat the entire time and having them respond "haha, you won't fool me that easily!"

[prokopetz]

(And, of course, while hypotheticals like the Monty Hall problem are a relatively harmless way for this to happen, they underline a very important fact: going in against a scammer without fully understanding how the scam works can easily have you doing exactly what they want you to do while totally convinced that you're beating them at their own game.)

[puppygirldick]

Viktor Lyapkalo Artwork: 'Blowing bubbles' & 'Evening' Painted 9 years apart.

Same woman

[asteroidtroglodyte]

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Yooo I went and looked up the Artist responsible for these masterpieces and holy shit did this guy love Big Women:

[nudity under the cut]

A man of excellent taste, I dare say!

[json-derulo]

Whenever they gave us one of those "read through ALL the instructions before you begin!" trick assignments in school where the steps lead you on an increasingly ridiculous goose chase until the final one tells you to just put your name on the paper and turn it in without doing anything else, I was always like, "Okay, but what's the point? Surely the REAL world won't be anything like this." And then I grew up and discovered that not only is the real world often exactly like that, some people won't even read the first line of the instructions even if they make perfect sense. And these people are called "co-workers"

[key-pair]

in case folk outside the UK aren't abreast of our news, the British press just hounded a black academic to death

[key-pair]

a rough timeline of events (from memory, there may be inaccuracies, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)

Cambridge professor of sociology Jason Arday is accused of plagiarism by another academic

the accuser is a "race realist" who believes that in a true meritocracy all university professors would be white. this is somehow not acknowledged much during the entire ordeal

this leads to several days of media coverage demanding an investigation, or that Arday is expelled from his post immediately

somehow this accusation that has no effect on the lives of 99.99% of the population becomes FRONT PAGE NEWS in all the newspapers for multiple days, above anything else happening in the UK or the world at large

following intense media scrutiny, Arday resigns his post as a Cambridge professor

today, august 14th, days after resigning, Arday is found dead at his home in Battersea

the British tabloid press remains, and will always be, fucking evil

[warceline]

[born2love]

yo i made rhis into a sweater

[not100bees]

"if somebody gave birth in your house would you let them stay there?" Well first of all America is a bit bigger than my house. Like if there was a person who was proportionate to the Continental United States like I am to my house I feel like we have bigger problems than birthright citizenship.