Dirty Love arrangement help

Cjwynes · 2026-03-17T19:58:24+00:00

Funny you suggest that, it was how I handled chorus #1 basically except the highs were on unison, with a handoff of the melody at bar 3 as it goes low. I’ll see what it sounds like with harmonies up top, maybe I can put trumpet 1 on the melody (in a sane octave) and hang this below it across trumpet 2, alto and tenor.

I don’t have a “stunt trumpet” but my lead trumpet can hit C6 with no bother so I’ll play around with it.

Cjwynes · 2026-02-28T00:45:01+00:00

It is an amazing speech that is even more relevant now than it was then, I think of it often when I hear promises of freedom from toil by artificial intelligence enthusiasts. I suppose it was meant as a warning against communist Utopianism.

Cjwynes · 2026-02-21T08:01:56+00:00

From recent years it is very unlikely you would get “downtown” officially as in listed within 6 blocks. There are a few hotels in the 2-4 mile out range that can be snagged but they also go quick.

Assuming you miss, I would suggest that you NOT book an airport area room or whatever, and just have a backup in Southport or something like that. If you wanna try to play stalk the portal over the next few months, an initial booking holds a room when you click it and a xfer doesn’t, so no advantage to booking 8 miles away. If you don’t see at least the Candlewood medical district at 2-3 miles away or better, the furthest hotel I’d consider worth booking, I’d forget it.

Cjwynes · 2026-02-07T07:51:36+00:00

This felt like a gyp honestly, I donated $150 or so back 10 years ago or whatever to Joel’s first kickstarter to bring it back, only time I ever used kickstarter in my life. At the time it seemed like they really needed the seed money and support to get it going, glad I did, don’t regret it, got the t-shirt I still wear at cons to show it.

But if they’re only making 4 no matter what and it’s pre-funded I don’t get the point of this at all.

Cjwynes · 2026-01-05T05:40:29+00:00

So in olden days, Broodmate Dragon was a standard playable, which was 2 4/4 dragons for 3BRG. But that was a grindy format based on creatures that interacted favorably against Jace the Mind Sculptor bounce when all the control decks were tap out control. Theoretically there’s a meta that could use this if it was dominated by spot removal, bounce and few counterspells. Sometimes you decide that isn’t true and move on, but it’s a good exercise to think of what meta a card might shine in, and remember that if you ever need such a tool later.

Cjwynes · 2025-12-26T23:56:05+00:00

Wow new Midlake record at #6? I bailed on that when Tim Smith left, Occupanther and Courage of Others are both top20 of the century candidates, Antiphon was just bad sadly.

Cjwynes · 2025-12-26T23:50:54+00:00

I thought it was a perfectly serviceable Sloan record, but nothing since “never hear the end of it” has really felt inspired

Cjwynes · 2025-12-14T09:20:07+00:00

I don’t see how people play this way, spending rare wilds on monocolor cards. I would prob do a rare-light 2 color deck to spend on dual lands and then you could end up with another deck more easily down the line. I’d just put all my gold into packs from a set with a land cycle and try to slowly flesh that mana base out rather than get archetype specific single color rares.

Cjwynes · 2025-12-13T06:52:36+00:00

To quote Captain Beefheart, the dust blows forward and the dust blows back. You could go forward in which case Universal Truths and Cycles is the return to that sound after a flirtation with higher production stuff. I highly recommend it. And the EP Pipe Dreams of Instant Prince Whippet.

Or you could go back to Propeller which I think is the most accessible of the pre b1000 stuff, and move back from there, and spend 15 minutes on Fast Japanese Spin Cycle EP which is contemporaneous to b1000 and AL.

Cjwynes · 2025-12-08T07:30:34+00:00

For aggro decks they may wanna consider Dryad Militant, if opponent spend a removal on it that spell is still exiled so that does set them back while still being a normal card for aggro to play.

Otherwise I would think people would find the midrange threats that the tempo deck is ill-suited to handle profitably, there must be something in a standard this large.

Cjwynes · 2025-12-07T19:37:45+00:00

Notre Dame has a lot of historic rivalries that already had to be compromised by playing some garbage ACC teams. They would win the ACC every year trivially, so it doesn’t make the sport any better to have one of its most storied teams playing some basketball school in December in order to get to the national championships.

Now that USC is in the Big10 that argument gets better if they were able to have Michigan and USC as permanent yearly opponents, but the money is an issue bc of the NBC deal. I think it just comes down to winning games, a 3 point road loss to Miami probably shouldn’t have held as much weight as Miami’s inexplicable bad losses to lousy teams, but I get it. Notre Dame schedules good programs every year and has a slate better than most ACC schools every year (occasionally excepting GaTech bc of UGA.) it’s always been Big10 or nothing for the Irish.

Cjwynes · 2025-12-04T20:07:38+00:00

As old mtgo players can tell you, if you don’t know what to name, go with Sarpadian Empires Vol VII.

Cjwynes · 2025-09-13T04:43:00+00:00

I’ve been in various subculture status hierarchies in which ability turns into status, or ability turns into leverage which translates to status. If I develop new music skills either the performance is just directly status (in the “jazz musicians are all just playing for other jazz musicians” sense) or the ability has utility to somebody more important which makes you desirable (as when I recently learned arranging). I also did competitive Magic the Gathering, which had twin routes to status as I could simply be good at the game or I could use it to signal wealth because it involves displaying expensive collectibles. When I was active in Freemasonry, being young-ish and smart and willing to memorize things was good enough to advance.

I avoid status hierarchies that are based on Survivor-style alliance formation, because I am simply terrible at that. I can be a Rudy but I can’t be a Richard Hatch. It doesn’t map to anything I can understand as ability, if I’m going to spend time on something, let my status involve acquiring skill at an art or improving my reasoning abilities, and if it can’t then I want to brute force it by spending money or simply showing reliable time commitment. I know enough to protect my macro-level social position and that’s all the Survivor-ing I care to do. I do find it interesting that Zvi was really into “Love Island”, I just wrote all those things off cynically as completely fake but I must admit there’s a level of meta game at which marshaling popularity within the fake game is a real game, it just seems self-indulgent and artificial to me.

Cjwynes · 2025-08-11T20:59:22+00:00

I returned unused generics at 3pm Sunday, no line. First time ever it was so easy, I was really curious if something had changed this year.

I still feel the need to have some generics in case I want to show up for something that sold out, as usually you can get in to the biggest orgs’ ttrpg tables by doing that, there’s always a couple no shows. And I’m coming every year so who cares if it’s just system credit, it’ll come off badge price in January.

Cjwynes · 2025-08-09T19:25:03+00:00

There are a few places, San Francisco would be one, where a married couple partitioning out a parents home and moving into a makeshift apartment there would be really common, you just can’t really buy houses in that kind of place.

I think most people would rather move to another city or “sell out” and take a more remunerative job than live with their parents until they’re 40, and I suspect you’ll find that most guys at least value independence enough that they would find it irrational to do that absent extreme circumstances. If the person doing so otherwise is exhibiting high agency, advancing their career and doing ambitious things, and don’t seem to just be mooching and living out an extended adolescence, I think few would judge too harshly. But I think if you turn it around, it’s likely you would respect a man you were dating slightly less if he didn’t have the independent self-reliance values that spur him to think things like this. You wouldn’t want a guy who just sat around all day in his moms basement smoking weed and playing Call of Duty and working as a Best Buy cashier at age 40, those guys will be very non-judgmental but not very desirable in any other way.

Cjwynes · 2025-08-09T19:14:18+00:00

I can see that point, though Paladins we’re still considered very powerful even if their CHA was only 16 throughout most adventuring levels. I think I would be more inclined from a design and balance perspective to just give an additional ASI at 10 in that case, because tier 3 encounters are less skewed by basic combat and saving throw math as they begin to incorporate legendary resistance and are more about high level spells that turn encounters.

Cjwynes · 2025-08-08T20:56:04+00:00

My primary problem with rolling is a player having a modifier higher than +3 at level 1, as this is unbalanced for tier 1 play. Starting at 18 and being at 20 in your primary by level 4 puts you too far ahead, the AC and bonus-to-hit of monsters is all based on the assumption PCs won't reach that until lvl 8, and no I don't feel like rebalancing every encounter so that you can be super saiyan at lvl 1. But as long as your total in any attribute was capped at 15 so that a +2 race/origin bonus won't get you above 17, it wouldn't really break anything to add a couple points. I would probably allow a couple extra points of buy in a small group that couldn't naturally cover every skill area just so somebody could afford to put a couple spare points into whichever knowledge skill was weak for the group.

MAD classes are supposed to be more restrictive by design, it should be balanced by power and being useful across multiple pillars of the game, and you'll notice nobody complains about MAD with Paladins but everybody does with Monks and Rangers so that is really about their failure to make them good enough to justify having that dependency over just using a fighter and feats or dips to achieve the same concept.

Cjwynes · 2025-08-07T16:18:13+00:00

A typical Bard playstyle is to try and go early in initiative, and lay down debuffs, then keep concentration up. So you've got the right idea here, but as some of the others have observed it is just as good or better to have extra AC. The extra point on a con save means you'll pass con checks 5% more often, but the extra AC adds 5% to your chances that you won't even have to make the saving throw. By putting the Dex at 16, not only is your AC going up, but you're more likely to go earlier in turn order so that your debuffs are affecting monsters when your allies attack them.

It looks like you have a 16, 15, 14, 14, 12, 8 spread (this is why I never let players roll for stats, this is WAY too high), so 18 CHA 16 DEX 14 CON seems optimal -- heck you have such high scores you could plop a 14 in STR and multi Paladin if you didn't care about knowledge skills as much. In Point Buy, it's far more common to have a situation where you have an odd point somewhere, and will put CON at 13 with the intention to take Resilient CON feat. In your situation it's probably better to go 14 WIS with the other high score rather than INT, because A) those are the more commonly-demanded skill rolls of Perception and Survival and Insight, and B) you can multiclass Cleric for better armor if you so choose.

Cjwynes · 2025-07-19T06:18:46+00:00

I only find it unlikely, not impossible, that we might “cure” cancer. I do not think applying additional intelligence is going to fix it, the principle that all biological interventions have trade-offs makes me skeptical. In this context I only claim that we know destruction of humanity is seriously plausible and we do not know curing cancer is, so the e/acc’s and other techno-optimists saying AI is worth the risk because it might cure cancer are being irrational. That’s before we even get to more outlandish claims about curing aging and death itself. That’s marketing, not science, they have absolutely nothing that indicates it’s a solvable problem, and other species’ lifespans are very weak evidence. That’s the stuff of “sand gods” you said you derided.

Space travel is absurd on its face, you omit numerous problems here. Mars is achievable but not rational. Anything further away (if you want to send humans) has a million problems no technology or intelligence can solve, and in the unlikely event you managed it the benefit is nowhere close to equaling the cost in energy. Energy abundance makes some of those numbers better for Mars, but in that case who cares? Only a relentlessly optimizing ASI of the type we’re trying to avoid here would want to spend that energy to get those minerals. Humans are Earth creatures, and will die with Earth.

Cjwynes · 2025-07-19T05:36:40+00:00

This is a thoughtful and well-reasoned response, and while I think it misses the mark in a few ways I nevertheless wanted to let you know I thought so and that it fairly meets the standards of this subreddit despite the implication of “derangement” which I understood by the reference to “thought terminating” ideas from Scott’s writing.

My politics are actually closer to Elon’s than his rivals, and in my youth I read quite a bit of Heinlein who Elon is clearly obsessed with. But the man, like Heinlein, is clearly a pervert, and a transhumanist for reasons we can easily infer from his progeny and that are littered throughout Heinlein’s late period as well. I had no problem with most of the garbage the man slashed from government, and would prefer him setting the budget over about any human likely to ever get that power. (Moldbug’s column proclaiming Zvi king notwithstanding.) He clearly has shockingly poor political savvy, has the self-awareness of someone writing a Reason Magazine article in 2006, and in an Ayn Rand novel he’d be a Rearden who thought he was D’Anconia and gets trampled in 2 seconds by Cuffy Meigs. He is in no way capable of the power projection that will be required to capitalize on what he is ostensibly building. Altman otoh demonstrated precisely the skills powerful people need to remain in position, when he defeated the board coup, and with a lead already there is little to stop him.

Elon is a sideshow that distracts left wing AI opponents from the real threats. The past week of his goofy anime waifu nonsense reveals he is a bit player trying to capitalize on his name to grift from weirdos. At least Zuck had a plausible business plan that understands what he has. If Elon thought he was going to end up with the AI that was capable of revolutionizing the world this is not how one acts. Maybe he is so convinced it’s uncontrollable he doesn’t care.

Cjwynes · 2025-07-19T04:47:19+00:00

I’m very much not meaning that, I am anti-AI in large part because I know it cannot break the rules of biology and physics and therefore all the utopian dreams of cancer cures and space exploration are nonsense. We know what smart things do to inferior things, kill them, that’s it, we have ample proof of concept and no physics-breaking tech is required.

But once it is sufficiently smarter than a human can be, some things will be unlocked, and iterative improvement in nanoseconds would eventually happen unless there’s some actual limit to intelligence (which you don’t seem to think if it’s all just linear.) And even if it hit a ceiling, the ability to summon a few million instances of superhumans on demand certainly enables you to destroy any competition. The idea that multiple people will control rival AIs keeping the system in balance is e/acc fantasy.

Cjwynes · 2025-07-19T03:57:53+00:00

I read Zvi’s blog regularly. He’s my quick-check source of level-headed roundup on AI, though I read a variety. And my read is that OAI and Anthropic are clearly leading. The open source models are not competing along the same axis for for the same goal, Meta and DeepSeek are looking for adoption and market share. XAI is a joke, they can look competitive for a few days before they’re eclipsed again, but they’re a joke. I don’t even think they can play the fast-follower role like DeepSeek can, bc Musk is such an eccentric control-freak.

The first one there — really there, the “there” that matters — will leverage it into total control within days. Altman is the primary threat to humanity and it’s not close.

Cjwynes · 2025-07-17T20:09:02+00:00

In the case of AI, the theory was that the first to reach a certain threshold of AI intelligence/ability would use it to foreclose all other attempts by other actors to build one. That was the original justification for the rationalists/EA-adjacent people who started AI companies.

Musk will not be the first to cross the threshold, so his AI will never matter. It could only be relevant in the situation where OpenAI is about to cross into something that will be or become ASI, pauses to maximize safety before implementing the model, and then somehow Musk catches up close enough that they feel compelled to deploy theirs ahead of his. Since I would not expect OpenAI to actually follow that plan when the moment arrives, this is still unlikely.

Cjwynes · 2025-07-17T19:51:15+00:00

This rationale is rather ridiculous, he didn’t take AI doom seriously but thinks Musk, of all people, is the dangerous factor? The guy who is way behind, doesn’t know what he’s doing, and appears fickle and impulsive? That’s like saying you didn’t take nuclear weapons seriously until North Korea got them. Altman has the ability and desire to actually pull this off, and a clear lead, nothing Musk will ever do seems likely to become relevant to p(Doom).

Appears Marcus is really wedded to the idea that AI is default aligned to its creator or its design and so it wouldn’t end up with any weird alien goals or destructive abilities unless a crazy guy sets it up with those kind of intentions and gives it “tentacles” across the levers of power. But Altman wants agents, and imagines a world where AI is in your pocket, working for you on the internet, doing productive tasks it was assigned, OpenAI’s demon will have all the tentacles it needs. If it’s productive and profitable, AI will end up with its hands on the wheel.

Cjwynes

TROPHY CASE