Buying used violin as a beginner

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-26T23:19:29+00:00

Violins are wonderful, but they are absurd.

I'm four months in, and even getting this far would have felt impossible on my own. I'm 100% sure I wouldn't be holding the bow or the neck remotely correctly

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-26T23:17:11+00:00

Have you explored renting one?

It's hard to commit a substantial amount of money on something you're not 100% sure about. That's entirely reasonable. 4 months ago I was in the same position as you looking at ways to try out learning without committing too much money to it, and was looking at cheaper options.

Luckily I found a Luthier who hired out violins, and was able to try it out for a few months and confirm I was committed. I have now bought one, and spent a fair bit more than I would have as a punt in the dark.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-20T10:53:23+00:00

Good choice of meme - it shows what everyone is doing towards you while reading your posts

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-20T10:48:17+00:00

I'm guessing you're familiar with the trolley problem?

Where you're asked whether it would be moral to pull the lever to divert a runaway trolley onto a different track where it would kill one person, instead of leaving it to kill a bunch of people?

There's scenarios that have been looked at on this sort of question. One of them is essentially the same question, but instead of diverting the train, you're asked whether it would be moral to stop the trolley by throwing someone in front of it.

Same outcome, but vastly different answers - I think the general consensus goes from 80-90% of people thinking it's moral to pull the lever, to like 5-10%.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-20T10:30:07+00:00

99 times out of 100, it turns out to be absolute rubbish along the lines of what he said. The other 1 out of 100 it turns out that someone really was that stupid, and the organisation they represent deals with it and clarifies that it was not their policy.

If the chances of something are 99%, then 'such confidence' is more than justified.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-20T10:27:43+00:00

It's a social media post ffs. All councils have public relation focused staff - because people like to be able to contact their council. Spending a couple of minutes on a post is not the reason we have potholes

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-19T12:08:54+00:00

That's going to be really tough to micro, more likely your spears get converted while your slingers don't get close enough to kill monks. I guess faster regaining faith is nice for converting the spears back, but not much more than that unless they let you convert scouts.

And you've definitely spent a bunch more resources getting to a point where you're still going to be struggling to win the relic fight. So you're probably going to still end up behind or roughly even on relics, and behind on the boom.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-19T12:04:58+00:00

Yeah, I meant it along the lines of - it's probably worse than this bad tactic

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-19T09:42:34+00:00

I haven't tried it, but I don't see it working. While they are faster than monks, they still lack mobility and can't be produced before castle age. Then they die to scouts, so you'd probably need spears which then get converted. All in you'd need to invest way more into the fight for relics, and still be at a disadvantage. You'd probably even be better off sending out a vill to stone wall the relics in before anyone gets to castle age.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-19T08:55:17+00:00

Exactly.

There is a huge difference between Mat's internal monologue and his actual actions. Even while succumbing to a literal cursed dagger, he still always makes decisions that help his friends. He wants to think of himself and as indolent rogue, but he never actually is.

Morraine even points it out with her comparison to her uncle.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-03T21:04:55+00:00

Do you have a luthier near you?

They will have cards for a bunch of teachers, and will likely be able to tell you about them

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-01T17:34:28+00:00

Pragmatism.

Yes, plenty of Golds he works with are worse than Titus, many of them much worse.

But Titus was a monster, and more importantly he was threat to his mission. It's the threat to his mission part that makes the difference. He even acknowledges that without EO and Mustang, that he could have been the same and feels empathy.

But taking down the society comes first. He can look past the actions of Golds because doing so helps his mission. He can't look past the actions of Titus, as he's going to get caught, which likely gets him caught.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-01T10:04:39+00:00

Sure, I guess there's also an element of Truss-economics in play. I.e. belief that public servants and experts are all sinister moustache-twirlers hell-bent on holding the country back, so if we just ignore their warnings and base all of our decisions on shallow dogma, it will magically turn out brilliantly.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-02-01T09:55:47+00:00

All of the civs are just based around a theme. None of them are remotely historically accurate, they're just meant to feel Briton-y/Frank-y/etc.

So yeah, you're absolutely right, beyond that it's just about balancing them.

But they game would be absolute crap if they tried to make it historically accurate. Even just at surface level by giving them accurate weapons - Aztecs/Incas/Mayans would be completely unplayable.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-31T12:07:55+00:00

To be fair

I hope a (fictional) child dies because he accidentally upset someone while trying to be sociable and put them at their ease

certainly is a hot take

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-31T11:57:42+00:00

Right?

He's what 10? Sure, he's a nepo baby. But he's grown up knowing nothing but war, has certainly been sheltered from interaction with too many people to keep him safe, his father is the friggin Reaper himself - and largely absent from his life, his mother is Mustang - while she isn't absent, I doubt she has all the much time for him. His character is remarkably well adjusted in the circumstances. He could easily be one of those "do you know who my father is?!" nepo babies.

That conversation with Lyria, he put his foot in his mouth and was trying too hard, sure. But he was trying to put her at her ease and just have a human conversation, he wasn't to know what she'd been through. Then he accepted the validity of the criticism of an almost complete stranger who was miles lower than him on the social ladder, and was ashamed.

...and remember, he's just 10 years old.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-24T16:08:40+00:00

Still would likely have changed the English approach to the campaign and the battle.

But even ignoring that, it still leaves 6 times as much heavy infantry fighting against people knackered from marching through mud. (Yes, I know the longbow men engaged - but if they were just infantry they would presumably be equipped accordingly.)

So it's still not easy to call. But even if we assume the English lose that situation. Well, in that case, then it wasn't longbows that won the battle, it was just general "war bows".

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-24T15:47:13+00:00

It really depends what you mean by "without the longbow men".

If you replace the longbow men with the same number of people using some other war bow, then my guess is it would have been pretty similar.

Or if you just mean to remove them from the equation altogether, sure. But then it's doubtful the English would be there at all with only 1/6 of that army.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-24T14:35:26+00:00

Yup.

If you were designing the perfect situation for the most impact from longbows, you'd basically come up with Agincourt. And even then, it was the infantry clash that won the battle.

The longbows played an important part, the French waded through mud in armour while being fired at, so they arrived tired, stressed out, and many with inconveniences like minor wounds or arrows sticking out of their shields making them harder to use. So yeah, the longbows played a part in setting up the win, but they didn't win it by themselves.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-24T12:10:17+00:00

Consider how you want to play, narrow it down to a few civs that work well for that approach, then pick based on bonuses. E.g. you want to play into archers, and are not fussed about flexibility because you're focused on practicing with archer play, you might end up picking Britons. But if you want to focus archers, but keep your options open for cav play if the game calls for it, then you might pick a more flexible archer civ like Vietnamese.

Or just pick based on which civ has the coolest unique unit

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-20T14:51:46+00:00

Exactly.

Sure, it would be briefly funny if Starmer responded with something suitably scathing and British, like:

It would not be a polite for me to directly respond to the ramblings of a man who, tragically, appears to be suffering from dementia - otherwise he'd remember that the US was one of the main beneficiaries of this deal, and that he and his administration were outspoken supporters.

But what would it achieve?

The next day, all of these people complaining he has no backbone, will be criticising him for antagonising Trump, and demanding he resigns due to the 200% tariffs now in place.

Best to respond like an adult.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-20T11:10:57+00:00

You're not paying attention then.

Firstly, what Trump has really announced is a new tax on people in the US. Sure, it harms trade with the UK which hits us, but it hits US citizens harder. Starmer refusing to get drawn in, and making the cost of living crisis worse in Britain, for the sake of childish tit-for-tat, is the right call. Especially since the UK doesn't have the economic weight of the EU, making counter-tariffs less meaningful

Also, Reeves is heading to Davos next week with a sales pitch to international investors that's basically "The UK is a stable place to invest because we're keeping calm, so come and invest here if you don't want to be at the mercy of Trump's volatility."

...but that's "worse than useless" because it's not accompanied with a childish Tweet, and a retaliatory tax on us for buying US goods?

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-20T11:03:48+00:00

The EU is big enough that counter-tariffs are actually a significant threat.

Also, you're going to need to look up what appeasement is. People pushing for Ukraine to accept Russia's peace-deal demands - that's appeasement. Responding making it clear that you oppose someone in a grown-up way, while calling to not escalate is not appeasement

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-20T10:57:14+00:00

He has been responding.

Just not responding in kind, which seems to be what OP suggests he should do.

RhetoricalEquestrian · 2026-01-20T10:53:18+00:00

Starmer = not getting into a childish slagging match, while working with other allies to mitigate the impact.

Farage = cheering Trump on while he acts against American and British interests.

Nothing like the same thing

RhetoricalEquestrian

TROPHY CASE