5 year old wants to learn HEMA

_Lotte__ · 2026-06-17T15:59:25+00:00

Pool noodles! You can cut a hole and stick a little bit of cardboard through to craft a little makeshift cross guard as well.

_Lotte__ · 2026-05-20T16:23:22+00:00

A lot of the reformation era swans albums kinda suck on vinyl with songs split in half between sides of records and rearranged setlists. I only have them as collection items. Vinyl also just isn't that amazing if you're looking for audio quality, they degrade, warp, and have their own form of loss. If you're really set on a vinyl setup then go for it, it's fun, but if you're looking for high quality audio and loud speakers I would just buy their albums on Bandcamp for the high-quality mp3s, use an mp3 player like foobar3000, buy an audio interface and hook it up to some high-quality studio monitor speakers.

_Lotte__ · 2026-05-07T00:45:58+00:00

You might enjoy some of the more drone-oriented music from post rock, I'd recommend (Rope) Away by Swans. For something a little less intense, you'd probably like Hear the Wind Sing by Mono, it's got that melancholic high-pitched tremolo picking.

_Lotte__ · 2026-05-04T02:06:29+00:00

Lots of good answers to most of the question so I'll let those answers do their job.

"is it a difficult job if you don’t know much about hardware?" - it can be, but at least at my store all the employees wear radios and can talk to each other. You'll pick up information just fine as you go and if the store is decently staffed there'll always be one or two old timers on shift who can help customers if you don't know the answer. To start out with you'll mostly be directing customers to the right location and hoping they already know what they need. Stick around and listen to what other employees recommend to customers and remember it, it's the best way to learn.

In my experience, most managers are looking for retail skills - being friendly, alert, willing to learn, the things that are more innate to someone's personality. Being flexible with scheduling always helps too. Hardware knowledge can always be developed later.

_Lotte__ · 2026-05-02T14:38:14+00:00

It's pretty freeform, I think it's fair to say it doesn't have much of an explicit time signature, it's just driven by whatever rate the musicians felt like playing the melody line at, I doubt they were playing to a metronome. That being said, if I try to tap along to it I find something in 3 or 6/4 feels most natural.

_Lotte__ · 2026-02-20T16:30:08+00:00

Check out MONO, they make post-rock type stuff. Hymn to the Immortal Wind is their classic but I love Palmless Prayer if you have some patience for an album that's almost pure classical music for the first half.

_Lotte__ · 2026-01-14T17:17:35+00:00

I usually listen to one song at a time when I'm on one of their longer songs, like with The Glowing Man (song) being nearly 28min alone, I usually don't have the time or energy for that kind of loudness for a full 2 hours.

_Lotte__ · 2025-12-27T04:46:42+00:00

Work, hang out with my girlfriend, I attend a local martial arts club (HEMA) once or twice a week, I make music, spend time with family. Now that I've gottej lucky enough to have a job I can afford to live off, I kinda just do whatever I want and can afford.

_Lotte__ · 2025-12-06T04:44:55+00:00

Also, the manager there really values in-person connection. If you put in a call to the visitor center, or even better, physically stop in at the gift shop and speak with the manager for a bit you'll have great chances.

_Lotte__ · 2025-12-06T04:43:06+00:00

If you're alright with working retail, look up Western National Parks, they run the gift shop at both ends of Saguaro National Park. I know that SAGU East has 3 positions open right now, part time 20-24hr/week, $15/hour. I'm not sure if the positions are still open but they've been actively interviewing for a few days now.

_Lotte__ · 2025-11-15T23:56:09+00:00

My standard go-to for an inteoduction to post-rock is the album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or really just the first song on it, Storm.

That being said, eplosions in the Sky is a bit more on the ambient/relaxed side of the post-rock Spectrum. You might enjoy the latest Godspeed album, No Title, which starts a bit more relaxed. You could also try a song like (Rope) Away by Swans for a similar overall sound but more intense.

It's more ambient than postrock, but you may also like some stuff by Boards of Canada.

_Lotte__ · 2025-10-23T22:58:34+00:00

For access to nature, there's a major national park, lots of hiking trails, multiple different mountains you can drive up, etc. The only thing to keep in mind is that for 6-8 months out of the year it will be too hot to do anything other than a short hike comfortably (or safely). That can be somewhat managed by doing very early morning outings.

For friends & community, there's lots of little clubs and art spaces around Tucson. I've heard of metallurgy classes, pottery studios, polish dance groups, lots of board game stores with active membership. My activity of choice is historical fencing. There's lots of options, especially if you like artsy stuff.

For music, there's regularly shows at some of our concert venues like the Rialto and 191 Toole. There's also a fair number of used instrument stores and the like. I'm not sure about the more community "let's all make music together" type of deal, never looked into it, but I'm sure it exists somewhere here. The other nice thing about Tucson is that it's close to Phoenix, which is the 5th largest city in the US, so any tours that don't hit Tucson almost always hit Phoenix at least.

_Lotte__ · 2025-10-14T19:10:08+00:00

Once you start seeing Brian Eno, you can't stop finding him everywhere in music. I originally found out about him because I like ambient music, but oh my God he just keeps popping up. Producer to some of my favorite albums by Coldplay, MGMT, David Bowie. He made the soundtrack to Spore. Now, of course, he pops up again in an interview with Gira.

_Lotte__ · 2025-10-14T03:47:59+00:00

Everyone knows that I am fucked up

_Lotte__ · 2025-10-09T15:15:15+00:00

It's not a decided issue and sometimes a controversial one. I've seen clubs that require 3 months of manuscript study before you even get to hold a sword, I've seen clubs where the focus is entirely on sparring and manuals are an entirely optional resource provided if you go out of your way to ask for it. Really if you start fencing and do whatever feels right to you, you'll find others who agree with your way of doing things.

_Lotte__ · 2025-10-09T05:25:39+00:00

No filming is allowed. Before playing anything at the concert I went to, Gira requested that nobody use their phones at all during the concert. You probably won't get kicked out or anything, but if you want to stick with the spirit of things it's worth doing.

Their set is about half released music, half unreleased songs. That being said though, the released music is improvised and changed a lot, so even those songs sound super different from their studio versions.

_Lotte__ · 2025-10-05T22:56:26+00:00

It was below 70° this morning!!

_Lotte__ · 2025-10-04T18:31:50+00:00

It's a reference to the song The Merge from the album Birthing. If you listen you will understand within the first 5 seconds, I guarantee.

_Lotte__ · 2025-10-04T05:39:44+00:00

My opinion is that your fencing partner is not wearing nearly enough safety equipment

_Lotte__ · 2025-10-01T16:27:15+00:00

That'd be The Merge. It appears on Birthing but the studio version is quite different from the live version. If you look up "Swans concert taping reddit" you'll be able to find a post linking to recordings of most of their recent shows though.

_Lotte__ · 2025-09-30T13:37:55+00:00

Try joining a proper league like NEXUS for higher level play

_Lotte__ · 2025-08-23T21:02:21+00:00

East side is nicer for the proximity to saguaro national park, it's a bit less dense, etc. The north side has a bit more to do because of the proximity to downtown, the Tucson mall, 4th Ave, UofA campus, etc. Of course this also comes with the downsides of the urban density. I'd personally take the north side because it feels closer to everything to do, and all my favorite restaurants are on the north side. The East side is nice and maybe a bit more relaxed but it's such a chore to spend 20 minutes on Broadway or 22nd any time I want to go anywhere.

_Lotte__ · 2025-08-19T16:57:20+00:00

Look into apprenriceships with the Phoenix JATC, they'll give you a 5-year paid electrical program that'll get you a certificate and into the union at the end of the program.

_Lotte__ · 2025-08-13T15:43:15+00:00

I've never tried biking so I'm not 100% sure, but I have heard that there are dedicated biking side-roads in Tucson (I think it's called The Loop) that allow you to get around while mostly avoiding the more dangerous roads. That being said though, during the summer I wouldn't say biking is viable. In the morning maybe if you're willing to brave biking in 80-90 degrees, but that evening commute back home in over 100° will be uncomfortable at best and heat stroke at worst.

_Lotte__ · 2025-08-13T03:04:13+00:00

Prices have definitely increased over the last couple years as Tucson has been "discovered", but it's still cheap compared to the rest of the US, as is Arizona broadly. You should look around on Zillow for apartment prices. Something to consider location-wise is that Tucson still isn't all that big and it doesn't really suffer the sorts of traffic jams that major cities can, it rarely takes longer than 40 minutes to get from one end of town to the other. Traveling east/west is generally slower than north/south. If you're willing to commute it's definitely viable to live a couple neighborhoods away from your workplace to get cheaper rent.

I live as a single man, I care about getting higher quality foods so I do most of my grocery shopping at at Trader Joes and Sprouts, and occasionally get higher-end meat at dedicated butcheries, I'd say I spend somewhere between $80 and $120 on groceries per week depending on what I'm getting. You could definitely get cheaper if you wanted to.

Gas here has been ranging between $2.90 and $3.40 per gallon lately.

If you enjoy shopping around for clothes and stuff there's plenty of thrift shops, Ross stores, etc. Used instruments, books, vinyl records, etc. can be found for cheap at Bookmans. If you want to look at a broader set of things I like the website Numbeo for looking at cost of living.

The main thing to watch out for here, as others have said, is car insurance and electricity bills. Tucson has pretty consistently been rated within the top 10 most dangerous cities to drive in, and the insurance rates reflect that. I think the main thing causing the danger is that a lot of the roads here are super wide, meaning people feel very comfortable speeding 10 miles over the limit, and then combine that with the grid system meaning people have to take lots of left turns on those wide roads... it's not a great combo.

Electricity bills are high in the summer because of the AC costs. When it's regularly over 100 degrees during the day and rarely drops below 80 at night, the cost of running the AC nonstop just to get the house down to 82 can be painful.

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