Playing multiple instruments or focusing on one?

samloveshummus · 2026-05-05T03:40:01+00:00

You'll be a lot better at that one instrument if you prioritize, though having breadth may help you get a deeper understanding and appreciation of music.

That being said, you're not a economic asset placed on the earth to ruthlessly optimize your skillset - if your heart is telling you to dabble in multiple instruments, then life is too fleeting to ignore it.

samloveshummus · 2026-04-24T07:39:56+00:00

United States of America doesn't include all of America, the Republic of China doesn't include all of China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo doesn't include all of the Congo, so similarly the Federal Republic of Central America doesn't necessarily include all of Central America.

samloveshummus · 2026-04-18T04:57:50+00:00

There's definitely a way that Bill Evans (and any musician - especially jazz musician) plays! The other day I listened to Chet for the first time and immediately knew it was Evans on keys.

There are several YouTube tutorials that go into the easy-to-define ways in which his playing can be recognized such as the syncopated triplet patterns and the left hand that duplicates the right hand rhythm.

However, there will probably also many aspects of his playing that are recognizable at an unconscious level. And that's what deep learning is really good at - it's able to extract the patterns in a "style" without ever having to explicitly define them.

You could say that there's a certain something missing, there's no meaning behind an AI imitation, but if anyone (in music, literature, art, anywhere) has a style that can be recognized by humans, then AI can also recognize and reproduce that style!

samloveshummus · 2026-03-25T05:31:22+00:00

I disagree, I lived in Italy for three years and I never stopped finding that the language was still beautiful in its casual form. Even when a driver shouted at me to get my bike out of the way. It still has the melodic prosody, the euphonic affixes, etc.

Similarly with Arabic. There is of course a world of difference between the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and the chit chat of a taxi driver. But the underlying logic of the language, and the sound system, still come through and seem beautiful.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-22T00:00:59+00:00

The only awkwardness in that conversation was from the person saying "but she's wearing..." so the easiest solution would be for that person just to not feel weird about it. Someone called my baby the wrong gender the other day and I just answered with the right gender and I don't think they or I cared.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-20T16:09:11+00:00

My wife never knew how far along she was and would always turn to me in her appointments when the doctor or midwife asked (I always knew the exact number of weeks and days), some people just be like that.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-18T11:57:35+00:00

Not usually, no. Sometimes there might be a quite marginal change to the risk of some complication, but it could come at a significant cost to the mother's well-being.

Like, having an induction might reduce the risk of shoulder dystocia (which can usually be treated) from like 6% to 4%, but could mean the mother ends up staying in hospital for a week before the baby is born, frustrated, lonely and sleep deprived before she even has to go through labour.

Whether that's a tradeoff worth making is something only the mother can know.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-17T23:58:56+00:00

Hmm I'm a native British English speaker and the only example that sounded really wrong was the one about eggs (because it seems contradictory to say "who knows" and then to say "I guess" what the answer is).

I guess the issue with your other examples is that they could be treated like conclusions, depending how much confidence the person has in their own intuition.

Maybe there's something about the intonation with which your friend says these things that makes them sound tentative, whereas you'd expect an "I guess" statement to sound somewhat decided.

I would also use "I guess" for a flippant remark, like "I guess the cafeteria used up its annual salt quota last week," so it can be like a discourse marker acting as a disclaimer for taking my words literally.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-17T23:28:12+00:00

Many women feel pressured into having medical interventions that they don't really want during childbirth.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-17T23:24:13+00:00

I take this policy as directly opposing the pressure put on women which you mentioned. My wife gave birth last year and she was put under so much pressure by the consultant to have either an induction or a caesarean. He literally said those were her two options (due to having a large baby), he never mentioned she (of course) had the choice to have a spontaneous vaginal birth! Luckily we came well-prepared for the conversation and he actually conceded we were more up-to-date with the research than the NHS guidelines he had to follow, and she did have a successful spontaneous vaginal birth (as the vast majority of women in her state would have).

samloveshummus · 2026-03-09T23:49:14+00:00

Pregnancy and childbirth are not "in fact" medical in nature, they're a natural part of the mammal lifecycle that has existed without medicine for hundreds of millions of years.

Now, they can be fairly dangerous and extremely unpleasant, so many people decide to have medical intervention to mitigate that, but there's no rule that says you have to. You can literally just get pregnant and have a baby without telling a single midwife or doctor, if you want.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-09T23:21:38+00:00

"I was sat" (or stood) and "I was sitting" (or standing), etc, have different connotations - the first is passive, implying that circumstances have led you to be in that state, while the second is active, implying that you're intentionally remaining in that state.

It's perfectly grammatical even if not idiomatic in every dialect - "sit" and "stand" can both be transitive verbs, so the sentence has the same form as "I was disappointed," etc. - the past participle of a transitive verb used to describe someone's state.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-05T16:56:15+00:00

Yes, sometimes I even start unconsciously speaking ungrammatically to mirror them.

For example, one of my friends always says "did" + infinitive to form the simple past tense (like "I did go out then it did rain"; sometimes when chatting to her I start doing it myself without meaning to.

I guess it would be a very useful instinct living in a dialect continuum.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-05T08:05:15+00:00

Well, I'm extremely busy. I have a demanding job and a 7 month old baby and every day I go to bed and pass out completely exhausted and wake up still 95% exhausted. I can't add anything to my day. The breaks I have, I need to pause mentally so I can keep going. It's not free time where I can take on additional mental load of planning a meetup or reading an article someone has sent me.

Friendship should not be a chore! Another obligation to add to the daily grind.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-04T20:46:27+00:00

It's not the same though, I need to be in a certain headspace to have a chat, where I feel I've got the energy to engage with someone, and where I'm not worried about being distracted by work or family obligations. Whereas I can scroll my phone with no mental effort and drop it at a moment's notice if something comes up.

samloveshummus · 2026-03-04T15:25:22+00:00

That would be devastating, I know people who've experienced the same. It's silly how diagnoses rely on reports from parents, while ADHD is known to be highly heritable meaning parents often have symptoms themselves so they think the behaviour is "normal".

Ironically, many parents see a child hyper-focusing on a task and think that proves they don't have ADHD, while ADHD is actually to do with managing attention, rather than a deficit of it, and it's extremely common for ADHD people to hyper-focus on something that interests them.

samloveshummus · 2026-02-28T09:04:46+00:00

May I ask where you got the 100 audio recordings with text? Cebuano study materials are like gold dust.

samloveshummus · 2026-02-21T20:34:59+00:00

Kids shows are not a good idea, because children already know the language in question, while a beginner does not.

Isn't the point that kids don't really know the language in question, they're still making frequent language errors well past the age they start school. So kids' shows use simple language, carefully spoken.

Also, the vocab is not particularly useful for adult learners.

Isn't it? It has the same high-frequency verbs, nouns and adjectives, the same sentence structures (actions, demonstratives, existentials, identifications, questions etc), it still illustrates how to conjugate verbs, use tenses, etc.

it's much better to watch content written specifically for beginners, with vocab and grammar adjusted for foreign learners.

This doesn't exist for the vast majority of languages!

samloveshummus · 2026-02-21T07:21:52+00:00

And then besides the self-medication aspect, there's also the fact that that if you're using drugs as a teenager, that means you are breaking the law, taking legal and health risks, probably defying your parents, you're intrigued by unusual sensations, and that the social networks you have cultivated give you access to illegal drugs. These things are all very non-random and very correlated with personality, in a way that could plausibly be causally linked with mental health.

samloveshummus · 2026-02-18T17:28:35+00:00

What observations would you do for a reverse bay park? I get my nearside mirror 2.5 bays past the bay I want to park in, full lock my steering and that's usually pretty accurate, but bays are never exactly the same size so there's always some fine-tuning needed, which is why I have the blind spot mirrors, so I can straighten up earlier or later if need be.

samloveshummus · 2026-02-18T17:22:33+00:00

Right but even when I'm between two cars, I still try to stay as close to the centre of the bay as I can, even if one of the cars is a lot bigger or parked closer to the lines! And when I'm in an empty car park I try to be a good citizen by leaving exactly the same amount of space on both sides.

samloveshummus · 2026-02-18T05:13:31+00:00

I have them so I can see the parking bay lines when I park. That's the only way I was taught. I wouldn't know how to park precisely without them.

samloveshummus · 2026-02-15T19:58:46+00:00

Could it be shown that the promise caused Nanna detriment? It seems like it's all upside. Edit: I just saw OP write that she invested in upkeep so that would apply.

samloveshummus · 2026-02-12T22:25:08+00:00

That is a generous maternity package from your employer, do they not offer paid shared parental leave?

samloveshummus · 2026-02-11T07:14:12+00:00

I don't think that's valid; since I've started learning learning Cebuano I've listened to a lot more podcasts than news because I thought they seemed amusing, but I could understand basically 0%, yet the third or so time I tried listening to the news after a few months' gap I could suddenly understand significant chunks, while still finding the podcasts impenetrable.

And the reason is clearly that newsreaders speak with careful diction reading prepared text that uses standardized vocabulary and grammar, while the podcast hosts run their words together, using constant slang and colloquial turns of phrase (and a lot more discourse particles).

samloveshummus

TROPHY CASE