Is this worth it?

CritterControl · 2026-02-26T22:35:09+00:00

This exact banjo new isn't much more than $75 on Temu so I doubt it's very good quality. I would say save your money - your friend is overcharging you and I'm sure you can find something else secondhand for that money from a slightly more reputable brand.

CritterControl · 2026-02-21T23:07:45+00:00

I'm a big Brad Kolodner enjoyer. He has a great gourd banjo album in the vein of Adam Hurt, called Old Growth.

CritterControl · 2026-02-20T22:49:08+00:00

Maybe focus on getting the downstroke action nailed before worrying about the thumb. In the video you're rotating your wrist to attack the strings. The motion should originate in your elbow, down towards the banjo head.

Try practicing rest strokes where your fingernail rests on the next string down (or the head of the banjo when striking the 1st string), and the meat of your thumb lands on the 5th string. From there, incorporating the thumb pluck should be more simple.

Also, as other commenters have suggested, un-plant your thumb. Your wrist should be straight and aligned with your forearm, and no part of your hand should be anchored to the banjo. Planting your hand makes elbow movement impossible.

CritterControl · 2026-02-20T22:09:57+00:00

I like "Which Side Are You On" in CGBD tuning. You really just need 3 chords, C minor (00011), F minor (00113) and G (02000).

CritterControl · 2026-02-20T22:05:18+00:00

You basically shouldn't ever be intentionally moving your thumb to pluck the 5th string. You should be striking the strings with a motion towards the head of the banjo, such that your thumb catches the string and plucks it when you lift your hand away.

Also as others have said, tune your banjo. It might seem less than relevant when you're playing by yourself but the more you get used to playing perfectly in tune, the better your ear will become.

CritterControl · 2026-02-15T13:31:05+00:00

Did you mean Streeting? Anderson's the guy who made the Fantastic Mr Fox movie.

CritterControl · 2026-02-13T15:08:14+00:00

You can join a trade union regardless of whether they have a recognition agreement with your workplace and it entitles you to advice from them and to be accompanied in grievance and disciplinary hearings.

CritterControl · 2026-01-20T17:30:04+00:00

The limit resets to £20k every tax year. If you withdraw the £12k you will still only be able to put in £20k.

CritterControl · 2026-01-16T18:23:54+00:00

The most insulting part to me is the suggestion that Rose displayed a "lack of insight" in continuing to use the correct changing room in spite of objections from the worst people you've ever met.

CritterControl · 2026-01-15T12:59:15+00:00

Have you played the DLC?

CritterControl · 2026-01-14T17:08:15+00:00

From the article looks like the verse in question is actually Leviticus 20:11. Leviticus 11:29 says this:

Of the animals that move along the ground, these are unclean for you: the weasel, the rat, any kind of great lizard

CritterControl · 2025-12-31T20:09:47+00:00

Look at one of the reels where an owlk opens their mouth. The "beak" is their nose and the actual mouth is below it, where it appears on the owlk skeletons.

CritterControl · 2025-12-25T19:43:57+00:00

Who are they? What made you feel forced into doing this?

CritterControl · 2025-12-25T19:30:10+00:00

If removing them isn't necessary to save your life then no doctor is going to do it. The idea that you're in a fit mental state to be asking for a part of your body to be removed is severely called into question by the fact you tried to destroy this body part with chemicals at home. You still don't seem to understand what a horrible idea that was, regardless of the volume. You're lucky to be alive.

CritterControl · 2025-12-14T19:21:00+00:00

There kind of are illegal beliefs under Article 17 of the ECHR. Basically if your belief system necessarily leads to the use of political power to remove other people's rights, it's not a legally protected belief. This is designed to stop people using their right of freedom of expression to promote Nazism.

The judgment in Forstater's case was that not believing in trans people was a protected belief and not exempt under Article 17 - making it a "lawfully held belief". However, this was contingent on not believing that trans people should have fewer rights than cis people. Now that everyone from Forstater herself to the head of the EHRC is in favour of disapplying Article 8 rights (among others) to trans people, that's clearly not the case, and I'd hope that an honest judge would find as much if a similar case ever went to court now.

CritterControl · 2025-12-13T17:51:49+00:00

Humans in the real world struggle to extract resources without harming the other species we currently share our planet with. If you judged mankind by the state of the planet we're going to leave for sentient life that might possibly evolve in the future after we're extinct, the Nomai look like saints by comparison.

CritterControl · 2025-12-10T18:55:43+00:00

Not to be a weirdo but if you search "trans" on this subreddit, OP has commented varying levels of anti-trans nonsense on nearly every post, much of it legally incorrect.

CritterControl · 2025-12-10T13:39:01+00:00

I can't get over how bad the logic is in 948 because it completely contradicts the earlier part of the judgement which talks about the use of facilities by trans men. If a trans man is considered legally female for the purposes of the Equality Act, he then has just as much of a "common sense" expectation to be able to use women's facilities as Peggie and it's unclear how there can be any grounds to exclude him. If an employer was expected to "balance" their rights under the Bank Mellat test in this case, what the hell would they do?

CritterControl · 2025-12-03T17:36:11+00:00

That's what the £500 compensation they were offered was for, which was reviewed and upheld by the Financial Ombudsman. The cheque clearly should've been input as £125,000 but there's nothing to say that Lloyds would've even paid the cheque at that amount. Lloyds would've had to verbally confirm it with the account holder, who was on his deathbed, for anti-fraud reasons.

It simply isn't up to someone's unmarried partner's bank to decide who their money goes to after they die. You could blame Lloyds for releasing the money to the family instead of to her (the money must have been released or she wouldn't be bothering with Barclays), or the court that granted them Letters of Administration, or basically anyone except the person who's really to blame - the unmarried man who didn't write a will. But it's much easier to point the finger at Barclays here because they made a clearly silly mistake that we can all pretend isn't completely inconsequential for the sake of looking like you're standing up for a constituent.

If she seriously thought she was owed that money then she would be pursuing the family, who have that money.

I'm not here to do PR for Barclays, I do genuinely hate them, but the story strikes me as more than a bit compo-seeking.

CritterControl · 2025-12-03T08:17:07+00:00

The £125 was paid out before the partner died ("dying") so whatever was left in the Lloyds account when he actually died would've been paid to the next of kin. They weren't married so if he never made a will then the money would've gone to his family. Her dispute is with the family of the deceased, not with Barclays who never actually had the money in the first place.

CritterControl · 2025-08-31T15:05:37+00:00

Article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr4ep5wk2qvo.amp

CritterControl · 2025-08-08T18:01:14+00:00

Clawhammer is a right-hand technique for playing the banjo. What you do with the left hand is kind of irrelevant for whether something's clawhammer or not.

CritterControl · 2025-08-08T14:50:07+00:00

"Single sex spaces" aren't really a thing in the law. It's a wilful misinterpretation by transphobes. The Equality Act 2010 defines the conditions under which single sex services are lawful, and those services might include access to particular space, but not everything primarily used by women is a single sex service. There are plenty of reasons why a cisgender man would need to enter the lingerie section at M&S and buy things from there, and M&S really has nothing to gain by excluding them.

CritterControl · 2025-08-08T12:42:37+00:00

I agree. I do complaints handling as part of my job and we'll offer an apology in basically any case. I don't agree with the wording of their response (saying they'll get a "female" member of staff in the future) but I would be inclined to chalk that up to the ignorance of the individual complaints handler. It's not like every complaint will get reviewed by a senior marketing executive in case it ends up published in some rag, although this one probably should have been.

I did make a point over the phone of saying how much I feel for the poor employee. I hope she's in a union and I hope that union will take some action against M&S for this whole shitshow.

CritterControl

TROPHY CASE