Local Anxious Queer Person

Here is the fudgiest brownie in a mug recipe I’ve found

Here are some fun sites

Here is a master post of Adventure Time episodes and comics

Here is a master post of movies including Disney and Studio Ghibli

Here is a master post of other master posts to TV shows and movies

*tucks you in with fuzzy blanket* *pats your head*

Here’s an emergency compliment

Here you can play 2048

Here’s a playlist of Bob ross

Here’s a website to watch movie’s and shows for free

Here’s a website to watch documentaries for free

Here you can to nothing for two minutes

Here you can break something. It’s good for anger

Here’s a button to press to make everything okay

Here’s a site to cut something up (TRIGGER WARNING)

Here’s a site that makes you a website depending on a song you choose

Here’s a gay comic. It’s adorable

Here you can spend Bill Gate’s money

Here you can draw your own island

Here you can learn about patterns website’s use

Here you can get your life stats

Here you can listen to the Tucker Zone (Headphones needed)

Here you can see how fast you’re moving

Here you can see the progress of time

Here’s the butterfly project

Here’s a snickerdoodle mug cake

Here’s a link to some free audiobooks

Here’s something to read when you feel like a burden

Here’s a secret

Here’s my playlist of some sea shanties 

Here’s another secret

Here’s a link to some cool websites 

Here’s a blog that gives you recipes for when you’re low on spoons

Here’s 100,000 stars

Here you can control the weather (TW FLASHING IMAGES)

Here you can weave silk

Here you can make a castle of your own

Here you can make a kaleidoscope drawing

Here you can explore recursion

Here you can draw with pasta

Here you can draw logo’s from memory

Here you can play this is sand, here you draw cool sand designs

Here you can play The Organ Trail

Here’s a customizable white noise website

Here you can simulate gravity

Here you can create your own guardian of the galaxy

Here you can make your own galaxy

Here you can have images of people point to where your pointer is

Here you can paint someone’s nails

Here you can grow a garden across your screen (Audio included)

Here you can try out all kinds of mind illusions (Trigger Warning: Flashing Lights)

Here you can see how many miles you have scrolled

Here you can watch a website load forever, although you might be getting enough of this on Tumblr mobile

Here’s a rickroll

Here you can remind yourself that you’re awesome.

Here you can throw trash into a dustbin only for it to bounce right back out (Audio included)

Here you can make sand dunes using sand (Audio included)

Here you can listen to a gentle rainstorm

Here you can make snowflakes

Here is a Line Rider feature film with relaxing music

Here is the entire script to the Princess Bride (many don’t need it but it’s fun to read anyway)

Here is an abbreviated script for the entirety of Book 1 of A:TLA that I made out of anger at the film that definitely doesn’t exist

Here is a playlist of the top 10 most relaxing songs ranked according to science

In the wake of my rant on the new hymnal, one of my friends asked me to clarify the difference between hymns written for the piano vs being written for the organ.

Our two examples for this explanation are going to be "Holding Hands Around The World," and "This Is The Christ." Both of these are not written for being played on the organ, but in different ways.

There a couple elements I want to highlight: bass lines and accompaniment flourishes. I'm assuming some level of experience with musical terms for this explanation.

1. Bass Lines

Organs are distinct from pianos in that while you're playing a note, it never fades. Pedal notes are longer notes (usually at least a half note, but typically a whole note or longer) that essentially ground the chord while other shorter notes are being played. You don't have to have a pedal note for it to be written for the organ, but it certainly helps. For a piece like "Holding Hands," there are no pedal notes in the bass line. It's evident that the sustain pedal is meant to carry the sound of the chord through the measures, and so playing it on organ without modifications can make the piece sound choppy and disconnected.

Another element of organs is that you typically play the lowest note of the piece on the pedals with your feet, while playing the other notes with your hands on the keyboard(s). For many inexperienced organists, playing anything shorter than a quarter note — especially at faster tempos — can be very difficult. Organists can use a shortcut: there's a button called a "bass coupler" that essentially fakes the use of pedals, but the cutoff point for when that pedal sound applies can be noticeable and hard to work with. Looking at the example from "Holding Hands" again, you can see the abundance of eighth notes that I personally would want to run through before performing it, just to be sure.

Finally, most pieces for congregational singing (and pieces written for organ pedals and keyboard) have two different notes in the bass line: one for bass, and one for tenor. On organs, the bass is typically played in the pedals, while the tenor is played on the keyboards. If there's only one bass line (like the above example), an organist will probably just end up playing the whole thing in the pedals, except for when there's a second note, which they'll play on the keyboard. "This is The Christ" is slightly better at supplying two notes than "Holding Hands," as you can see in the example below.

Most measures include a half note that can be played in the pedals, while the eighth notes are played with the left hand on the keyboard. This is much easier for an organist to play (fewer on the spot decisions about which limb is playing which note), provides us with pedal notes to carry the chord, and gives the hand on the keyboard more of the eighth notes.

Except, no one is singing those notes because this is supposed to be sung in unison (two-part harmony at most). Which brings me to my next point:

2. Accompaniment vs. Melody

Another distinction between the piano and the organ is that individual notes on the organ cannot be softer than other notes. Any note you play on a given keyboard is going to be the same volume no matter how hard or soft you play it as any other note on the same keyboard.

The biggest way to play with having loud and soft (or louder and softer) sounds at the same time is by adjusting the registration. Organ registrations are essentially a set of sounds that apply to a specific keyboard (or keyboards). If I set up a flute and violin sound on one keyboard, and a trumpet plus french horn sound on another keyboard, Keyboard 1 is going to sound much softer than Keyboard 2.

The reason for doing this in congregational singing is often to highlight a melody line. However, if you're going to do this, then you need to only be playing the melody line on the louder keyboard and all of the accompaniment notes on the softer keyboard. If the music isn't written for this, you have to recombine notes into different hands on the fly, which is extremely difficult if you aren't naturally skilled at it or have a lot of practice doing so. You can tell that both "Holding Hands" and "This Is The Christ" are not written for the organ because they don't separate the melody line entirely from accompaniment notes.

An organ-written version of the above music would combine the alto line and the tenor lines together, while leaving the soprano (melody) line on its own. (The bass line would also actually be on its own line apart from the alto/tenor notes, but we don't have to complicate this more.)

I will grant that the TabCATS did perform "This Is The Christ" with an organ accompaniment back in 2023, but I want to note two things.

First, the TabCATS are not your average Mormon congregation. (Your average Mormon congregation often struggles to sing at tempo even when given a competent organist.) They are not relying on the organist for their parts nearly as much as the average ward member is doing.

Second, they did actually have a lot of registration variation on the organ. (Not to mention that they probably had a custom score for organ!) Registration changes aren't natural to most amateur organists. Often times, a new organist will be shown "these are the buttons I use for sacrament hymns; these four buttons get increasingly louder," and then just use those options. Ward organists almost never change registrations in the middle of a hymn, and most of these setups don't have an intentionally louder keyboard vs intentionally softer keyboard because the organists will often only ever play on one keyboard (plus possibly the pedals).

In Conclusion

Playing the organ is a skill, and there are things you have to adjust if you want to play it skillfully and not everyone has time to learn those additional things. These pieces are adaptable for organ, but they are not written for organ, which is so much harder for the overwhelmingly amateur organists of the church. Most members and leaders think that playing the organ is just like playing the piano, and it really isn't. A pianist can play the organ, but it will not be the same experience as an organist playing the organ.

I've talked to a few different organists, and many of them have bemoaned the piano accompaniments they're being asked to play on the organ. Mike Carson is a musician who's rewritten the newly released hymns to work for organists, and I'm so glad that he offers them freely on his website. (A lot of his alternate harmonizations are also very good and I highly recommend them.) However, I don't think this should have had to have been a project taken on by an individual.

Organists are an overlooked and yet vital calling in the church. On one hand, they're asked to play all of the hymns on the organ (despite the fact that some would be better suited for the piano), but given very little support to learn how to do so. It's also clear that the church recognizes that people are less likely to experience the hymns through congregational singing with an organist, so they're prioritizing things that are not suited for organs. But if the church is going to fully transition away from organs, (or, honestly, even if they're going to be forever stuck in a limbo supporting both organs and non-organ accompaniments) the church needs to provide additional support to their remaining organists.

Honestly, I'd really love it if the church released (even just digitally!) an organist's hymnal that had three versions of the hymns where applicable: congregational singing in 4-part harmony; 4 part harmony, but with the bass line in a separate line from the tenor line (and possibly reworked to be slightly more organ friendly); and bass line, tenor/alto combined, with a melody line.

a woman is less likely to go "it's stupid that women are expected to be modest" than she is to go "there is nothing immodest about a woman going out without a chaperone" or even "i can go out without a chaperone because i am so modest"

In Jane Austen's novels, we see one very strict conservative family, the Bertrams in Mansfield Park, and one very permissive family in the Bennets in Pride & Prejudice. Not all families are treating their daughters the same. Every era would have this, fathers who spoil their daughters vs. fathers who are very strict with them. There have always been instances of fathers giving their daughters a full male education for example. If you want your historical fiction daughter to really struggle against her father, make her father worse than average. Have the other girls say that her father is the worst one, instead of imagining that every father is equally bad (which is dumb).

I have seen some stories that were more impactful than their transcripts, because the vocal tone, literal timing, and body language helped sell it. Text can struggle to replicate those things. Video stories have value.

I have read some stories that were more intense than their audio format, because the written tone, physical text spacing, and word choice helped sell it. Audio-visual formats can struggle to replicate these things. Written stories have value.

I also wrote a similar comment on this post before, but:

Their tone of voice, their facial expressions, their mannerisms. These are all thing that add to the story that would not be present in a simple transcript of it. There is value in verbal storytelling. It's not always about the speed in which you can take it in! (And having a video-only tutorial is a different conversation than the original post specifying a "story.")