Posted here for your amusement...

Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress (1745)

June 25, 1745

My dear Friend,

I know of no Medicine fit to diminish the violent natural Inclinations you mention; and if I did, I think I should not communicate it to you. Marriage is the proper Remedy. It is the most natural State of Man, and therefore the State in which you are most likely to find solid Happiness. Your Reasons against entring into it at present, appear to me not well-founded. The circumstantial Advantages you have in View by postponing it, are not only uncertain, but they are small in comparison with that of the Thing itself, the being married and settled. It is the Man and Woman united that make the compleat human Being. Separate, she wants his Force of Body and Strength of Reason; he, her Softness, Sensibility and acute Discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the World. A single Man has not nearly the Value he would have in that State of Union. He is an incomplete Animal. He resembles the odd Half of a Pair of Scissars. If you get a prudent healthy Wife, your Industry in your Profession, with her good Œconomy, will be a Fortune sufficient.

But if you will not take this Counsel, and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:

1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.
2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.
3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.
4. Because thro’ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin’d to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.
5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.
6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.
7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.
8. [thly and Lastly] They are so grateful!!

Thus much for my Paradox. But still I advise you to marry directly; being sincerely Your affectionate Friend.

A post over in the musical theater sub got me to thinking on techniques to make sure a play can be enjoyed by someone who is blind? Perhaps giving them a headpiece and having someone read off predetermined additional narration to describe what's going on, but trying to keep that to a minimum to avoid distracting them.

In general?

For someone experienced with Finale and Dorico, but next to no DAW background?

I could google this, but would like some human input on the question please.

I want to create demos with lyrics, something Dorico can't do without an AI plugin (which is in turn disqualifying to potential clients so is not an option).

This is upsetting - I'm guessing this is to push people to shell out another $500 for Cubase. I'm working on a musical theater project - this is a pretty crippling weakness.

And before anyone hawks an AI VST like Cantai - nothing will get a demo track to a theater shit canned faster than an AI vocal track right now. The industry is just extremely sour on AI use in this area right now.

So now I need to figure out a solution because I don't have the budget at the moment to buy yet another audio program.

POST ENTIRELY REVISED

Ok, listen, I know there are problems with the plot. I wouldn't make the post if I though otherwise. I'm not looking to make major revisions to a plot I've been working on intensely for the last 6 months and 20 years before that on and off basis. I'm just looking for something that can plausibly explain what happens and close up an unanswered question at the end that I don't want to leave unanswered even though it's not critical to the main plot - which is the escape of Catherine (the protagonist) from her abusive husband Jake, who is a very high ranking member of the police force having been on the force 20 years.

The first act ends with the murder of Lisa Allen, who is a friend of the family and all but Catherine's adopted daughter. She's an orphan that lives next door under the care of a stepmother who really doesn't want her but is stuck with her. The audience sees Jake point his gun at her, then aim it at her which prompts his stepson Jerry (Cat's son from before their marriage) to try to disarm him. The gun goes off.

The beginning of the second act establishes that immediately after the shooting the family was taken in for questioning individually. Cat, Pam, Susan (her grandmother) and Jerry all state the gun went off just as Jerry touched it. Jake held that it only went off after Jerry toggled the safety as he was grabbing for it and that it's all his fault. Cat relates part of this to remind her grandmother at the beginning of the second act and fill in the audience. She also states that Jake learned of her and Pam's testimony and beat them for it. Jerry was arrested and eventually bonded out then the charges where dropped after 6 months. Jake was also able to learn she'd called the National Domestic Violence Hotline because the local women's shelter they referred the case to called the police...

That brings us back to the moment I'm trying to solve at the end of the play, answering quickly but soundly what the consequences are for Jake. Catherine will apply for a PPO. I know those can be granted ex parte if there is clear and present danger. Given the fact the subject is a police officer I don't think it's unreasonable that the sheriff overseeing him be charged with serving the order. I would think that the sheriff may even read the order before serving it. I don't know for certain what happens next. Could the PPO set off a chain reaction that gets him jailed? Or would Catherine have to file a complaint with the state police (the play states it is set on the French Gulf Coast, meaning Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama)? All this really changes is a few lines.

There's loads of plays and movies that just make shit up. I'm trying to avoid that, but being abused by some members of this sub that I've blocked inclines me to do what a lot of other authors have done - just say fuck it and write it in.

I think this is the right sub for this, looking over the post titles. In the last year I've had multiple people independently ask me if I was autistic. The answer - I don't know. But those questions and some observations by coworkers and my psychiatrist have prompted me to undergo a full neurological test out of pocket ($3000 or so) later this year to find out for sure.

Why poking around I ran across a YouTuber Kaelynnism and many, not all but many, of the things she and others point out are behaviors I still have or once had.

I'm not a fan of self-diagnosis so I'm in wait and see mode, but at this point - 51 years of age - I just would like some form of closure on why things went so wrong. And maybe, just maybe, save what little future I have.

If you have enough gravity, particularly from a rapidly spinning massive object, will gravitational force lines be created? Electromagnetism works this way, but it's far easier to detect as that force is hundreds of times stronger than gravity.

I just was thinking, galaxies have "dark matter haloes" but they also have supermassive black holes - that are more often than not spinning. Is it possible that spin at those masses is creating additional gravitational effects?

Could this be modeled and tested?

Maybe public shaming is in order for certain bad behaviors. Display a crybaby count for each player. Gain points for disconnecting instead of resigning, stalling out instead of resigning.

Players with a high enough crybaby score won't be eligible for tournament play and have to play other crybabies.

Also, when they log in, rub in some salt with a "Welcome back Crybaby!" message.

Same play as before. I'm wrapping it up, but also laying groundwork for if ever I want to write a sequel.

My protaganonist has finally fled. She had to hold him at gunpoint with his own gun while her daughter dragged her drugged and unconscious brother out to the car and then grabbed the suitcases she'd packed but they're out. And down the road.

The bastard is a member of the police. He uses his connections to put out an Amber alert stating she's kidnapped her children.

By the time of the next scene she's two states away and has to rest before continuing on. Since this is fiction and I'm the author I can control if she's caught at all, but that's a story for the next play to work on - this one is over - she's escaped.

What happens when she turns up at a women's shelter with such an alert having been raised? Can she fight extradition back to a city where he has the connections necessary to literally get away with murder - something she intends to file charges about with the FBI if necessary because of the coverup.

I have a few loose ends here, and I'm curious as to how they'd fall in real life.

So the will puts all the inheritance money in trust that will only be released if her daughter divorces him. At that point some of it will be released so she can escape, but the remainder won't be released until she stays divorced for a year.

Would this fly or would this make all the lawyers in the audience groan with "That would never pass muster."?

(She's also doing this to disinherit him entirely)

EDIT: It was pointed out to me twice now that this would be unnecessary as inheritance isn't shared marital property.

Okay so.. ive always had a passion for acting, but ive never went to any classes..only school plays.... the thing is i think of myself as a more witty, comical type of interpreter, is really hard for me to get serious..i think that might be exactly the reason why i was given this role, as to kind of challenge myself? but im finding it hard to tame.

For context im 17, this year i decided to try out musical threatre, surprisingly, this year's play is one i know very well, Heathers! when the auditions were announced, i expressed my interest on playing ram or kurt, but i was the only one approached specifically by the teachers and told that they really wanted me to do JD, so they straight up gave me the role even after auditioning.

Its a bit funny because JD is actually my least favourite character of the play, i know that to be good at threatre u gotta let yourself be a little cringe, but for jd i just cant take him seriously and its becoming an issue because we had practice last week and i just kept laughing and cringing at all the lines, i think this can be fixed with time, but my main problem is that, due to the way i percieve jd, i feel like im overexaggerating his body language and speech, as i present very smug and ''badass'' when im acting as him, a bit like the movie jd, but i cant really.. decypher or understand the musical's jd.. hes like serious but also chill? kind of monotone in a way(?

I guess what im asking for is general tips from people who have played him, aswell as tips from people with experience in musical threatre.. i love acting but to be honest im lacking a lot of info on how it works when doing a play..thank you!! i really hope this post is appropiate, i dont use reddit much either ):

In particular I'm looking for the old typewriter like font used on Lost Dogs. I had a copy a long time ago - hell it might still be on my computer but I have like 4000 fonts on my machine (I work in web production with graphic designers - they pile up over the years).

Think about it. Some of us are here after years of marriage that ended. That breaks you. Or worse, the partner died. That breaks you. And those of us who are single after all this time - those moments of silence when ask ourselves why - that breaks you.

No one lives to 50 without fucking up. Not making a mistake, I mean flat out, fucking up. Those mistakes break you.

In Japan though, there is this tradition of rejoining broken pottery with tree sap lacquer mixed with powdered gold or other precious metals. It's known as Kintsugi. The break becomes part of the art piece, and the object becomes functional again.

We can do that too. It's hard, but it can be done.

An old Catholic lady taught me this lesson, which I consider one of the most important of my life. She pointed out to me, that "perfect" has two definitions. The first one to come to mind - flawless - no person can sanely aspire to, and to demand it of anyone is grossly unfair. But the second definition is "not lacking essential quality". A hammer is a perfect tool for driving nails. So long as the handle and head are sound, the build up of rust and the pits from years of use do not matter.

That we can aspire to, but for everyone the answer is different. What is essential in me, and what is essential in the person I am looking for?

Good luck all.

I was hired into my current job to do React and Angular development and, by the way, we have this WordPress site so we need someone who can do that too. And I told them in the interview that I'd worked with WordPress for 7 years, but that was 5 years ago and I'll need time to get back up to speed. So I was hired, and the WordPress site in question has pretty much become all I do.

I'll be honest, I don't like WP that much. But, we all have to work so I set about trying to make it enjoyable and I hit upon the Timber library. The appeal to it was I've done work with Drupal, I actually have contrib credits in that project, and as of Drupal 8 it uses the Twig templating system. Timber is a binding library to allow Twig to be used seemlessly in WordPress.

First question - why do this? Answer, full Model/View/Control architecture. WordPress out of the box muddles control code with view code in it's endpoints. Another pain point, for me at least, is "The Loop". I hate it. Functions with state are notoriously hard to unit test. Having to be careful not to switch up critical post variables while parsing a block is just a headache. I will grant, these are statements of programming philosophy and I fully expect disagreement. But if I'm going to be maintaining a website for the next several years I need to be able to be comfortable with it.

I walked into a nightmare theme base. The design firm handed off a site with a broken search feature and several blocks misbehaving. The code... oh the code. I'll give one of the worse example - there's a service directory block that displays every letter of the alphabet to allow a fast hop to the section of the page with services starting with that letter. The block file for this was 1200 lines long. The coder had copy pasta'ed every letter of the alphabet. After refactor the control code was 40 lines long - the twig template is 60 lines. 100 in total.

It was during this refactor I ran into the newer block.json pattern and fell in love - that makes sense. ACF blocks also make sense.

Eventually I converted the site over to using twig templates, and with that in place I wrote a test system to test those templates and their attendant CSS and JavaScript. See, the twig templates just need data loaded into them - they don't care where it came from. In my test system I can load "lorem ipsum" to my heart's content and not worry about the test breaking if someone edited the test page.

I test my site using Playwright ( r/Playwright ). The PHP side stands up one block at a time - and it's guarded to only respond if WP_DEBUG is on so in production the code is inaccessible. Playwright then iterates through the result. It can also provide data to be displayed, or change variables resulting in different color schemas being applied. The 200 (at the time of this writing) tests scan for the correct colors being applied and reference screenshots are taken to see if the rendering is correct. Each test is ran through 10 different device profiles, so 2000 runs occur. Takes my Mac about an hour to run the whole suite, which I do before pushing a change such as the upgrade to WP 7.

It takes away a lot of headaches, but it creates some. Timber is reliant on composer, and WordPress doesn't natively support composer. I use an mu_plugin named "00_autoload.php" to load composer ahead of all other plugins and it works, but it does mean my themes and plugins are not portable to other sites.

That's sad to me. I looked over on trac and there is a discussion on composer's inclusion I've joined - https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/47256

I've also given some thought as to why this situation arose, and it's largely due to the inability of PHP to alias namespaces to allow plugins the ability to run different incompatible versions of the same library where necessary. Hence I've been active on the PHP-DEV list to try to come up with an RFC for such functionality.

For the moment I'm seated in on this. I'll keep an eye out on things I can help with, and if anyone has any questions fire away.

Both Microsoft Word and Google Docs allow you, and people you've shared a file to, to leave comments in the file. Since I work alone on my plays for the longest time I haven't paid attention to it, but recently I've started using it for the following:

• Structural Beat marks: I started with the "Save the Cat" blueprint (though I've diverged) so comments allow me to mark when I'm starting major beats.
• Reveals: Tracking what I'm revealing, when and why.
• Research Notes: Some of my play deals with medical procedure. Lines drawn from my research are linked back to the research in the comments. If I feel a need to change the line I need to check those resources to see if I'm remaining consistent with reality.
• Reminders to Self: Why is this here? Why is it important?

I'm beginning to think I may want to prepare different versions of the script:

• A reading script: This is characterized by fairly detailed stage directions for the theater of the mind's eye of readings.
• A production script: Characterized by the removal of said stage directions except the absolute minimum.
• An annotated script: Containing comments, research notes, etc.

Thoughts?

This is the correct sub for this. In the last month or so we've seen several lost programmers posting in here with questions about Microsoft's Playwright testing suite. I professionally work with it, and I thought it might be fun to explain where it got it's name. I'll stay away from programmer jargon as much as possible.

First off, what is it? It's testing software - specifically in lets a programmer take control of a browser and perform user actions programmatically, stuff like moving the mouse around in the window, mouse clicks on links, etc. It can take screen shots of the what is being displayed and compare those against reference images to insure a recent code change has not had an unexpected effect on the website. It can let the programmer monitor the network traffic between browser and server. It can replace server responses for a test. And a lot more but the jist of it is - this is how complex web applications - like the one you're using now (Reddit) - are tested.

Now, we programmers love our patterns and give them names. Object Oriented Programming is one such name that is somewhat known outside our industry. In this approach the code is organized into objects like we see in the real world. You might have a block of code that prescribes what a car is for the purposes of that program.

Playwright's name comes out of the predominate way its tests are written. They follow this pattern: GIVEN a scenario WHEN an action THEN an outcome. Some programmers go so far as to program the computer to execute the test based on the plain language description of how it must behave - this is known a Behavior Driven Development.

One way of organizing these tests is known as the Screenplay Pattern. This pattern organizes the test by Actors, who have Abilities and need to perform Tasks and/or Interactions. And yes, some programmers cheekily call their test scenarios scenes.

"Screenplay" because all this testing does happen on a screen. The test is likened to a play. An Actor for the purpose of the test is the human user - but in a complex application they'll have different abilities. Take Reddit as an example - A guest user can only read this post. A redditor can reply. I'm just a redditor too, but as the writer of the post I can edit it. As can a moderator, or an admin. Different tests for different actors.

So, with the above in mind, the developers named their testing software "Playwright." At the end of the day, it's another awful programmer pun.

EDIT: I made this post to explain why something is happening. Some people like to be informed. Others love to revel in their ignorance.