Link to tweet

It is as if we live in one world, and the anesthetized masses live in another.

Approximately half the country believes an alternate reality that is completely untrue. Their reality is fed to them daily by some combination of AM radio, Fox News, their Facebook feed, Twitter, Reddit, Russia Times, columnists and bloggers who are really Russian plants, Stormfront, the people they play Minecraft with, the people they play Call of Duty with, etc. Left and right, they are brainwashed.

The rest of us struggle to make sense of things.

It is fantasy, imagination and lies.

When I was growing up long ago, the idea that reality was a personal construct was considered insanity.
Now it is a wing-nut political goal! Emphasis on "nut"

Best thing I ever did.
I still see sets on: at the gyms, or Airports.
Amazing that people just accept it as background noise.

approaching dystopia at lightning speed.

Personally, I love silence....bird songs....or just listening to a gentle wind, or music.

His contention was that silence - being bored - was where creative ideas are born. I totally agree with that. There are no good ideas emerging from constant noise, particularly if it is mindless noise.

I actually agree, from what I've found - if I get aimless, and settle down, my creative juices flow. Not that I am bored often at all - the contrary is the issue...more I want to do than time to do it!

But yes, even the music I listen to most has lots of spaces - either ambient, or European jazz (ECM label) - superb use of space.

In an orchestra, or any group, or as soloist, when one has complete attention and is in the moment, there is silence and time stops. It can stop for a complete Mahler symphony...

When the 80-100 people in an orchestra are in this state......... and all "know....".......

My favorites tend to be the even numbered ones for some reason - the finale of the second, slow movement of the 4th, slow movement of the 6th (maybe one of the most beautiful, heart rending things I've ever heard), finale of the 8th (that last 5 minutes is other worldly), and the entire 10th - the last movement again just rips my heart out.

Also a big Shostakovich listener - and some (but not all) Bruckner.

You are lucky - I've always envied those who play in an orchestra and get to experience the beauty first hand - as a contributor/creator of such amazing notes.

Yes, I feel I was so fortunate in what I did 'for a living..

To spend so much time sitting up there in the back of an orchestra was what I was born to do. When those 8 horn players stand up at the end of Mahler 1 and let rip in your face with trumpets and trombones blowing their brains out to your left... It can just lift you right off your stool! (Or as we timpanists sometimes call it, THE THRONE!)

Ok for fun. My favorite quick timpani clip of all time...Here is Wieland Welzel, one of the 2 principal timpanists in Berlin. This guy just freakin gets it.. great musician, timpanist and person..

Beginning of last mvt of #1, but you know that.

The look on his face just after 1:20 is priceless... "heh, heh, here it comes..... guys.. watch this!" LOL.. Actually he is watching the other timpanist and cymbal player as they all have that note in unison.

Haven't seen that yet......

Guess it's the next thing....

I live in a rural area, had been enveloped in silence all day, just busy stuff at home, go for errands, pull up to the pump. And blaring as loud as it would go, this mini monitor comes on complete with commercials, the local stations celebrities. Egads! Can’t get away.

BUT, it doesn't tell you can MUTE it OR WHICH of all the buttons is the MUTE one... Just keep hitting the buttons, You may get lucky.

for TV there are option a click away

at a cheap $1000/hr x 15hrs/day x 5 = $75,000/wk x 1200 stations rw talk radio is worth $18MIL/day or 390MIL$ /month or 4.68 BIL$/ year FREE for coordinated global warming denial, pro republican free market deregulation and wall st think tank propaganda, swiftboating, privatizing public education, passing voter suppression legislation, and the hate and fear used to get people to vote republican.
that's the only medium capable of doing the repetition needed to sell this crap to enough people that bush palin and trump are even acceptable.

and it only works because it is totally ignored by those whos interests it is used to attack

we even let 88 major universities endorse 257 limbaugh stations and do nothing

News became a profit center and lost its "public service" reason for being. So we get the sensationalized and superficial crap we have now.

Add to that people's short attention span and reality TV mentality, and you get the mess we see today. I remember a time when people leisurely read the newspaper every morning and then watched the evening news to catch up on what happened during the day.

This allows the flavors to percolate and infuse, leaving lasting memories for millions and sharpening their responses like Pavlov's dogs

here at DU.

If you say no let’s not move on just yet you are attacked by the herd.

I place a lot of blame on Sesame Street, which everyone else in the free world thinks is fabulous. When I first noticed it (I was already an adult) I was very bothered by the short segments. Two minutes here, one minute there. I am probably the only mother who had a tv in the house who didn't turn that show on for her kids.

I also only ever had one tv, and don't have one these days, not since 2008, nearly ten years. I can't imagine ever having one again.

The book is a good but disheartening read. Written in 1985, things have only gotten worse with PCs and smartphones.

From Wikipedia
SNIP
Poe's law" is based on a comment written by Nathan Poe in 2005 on christianforums.com, an Internet forum about Christianity. The post was written in the context of a debate about creationism, where a previous poster had remarked to another user "Good thing you included the winky. Otherwise people might think you are serious".[4] Poe then replied, "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article".[1] The original statement of Poe's law referred specifically to creationism, but it has since been generalized to apply to any kind of fundamentalism or extremism.[3]

In part, Poe was simply reiterating common advice about the need to clearly mark written sarcasm or parody (e.g. with a smiling or part, Poe was simply reiterating common advice about the need to clearly mark written sarcasm or parody (e.g. with a smiling or winking emoticon) to avoid confusion.

Learn something new every day here.

i often said during the election that hillary's biggest mistake was only having done one "wrong" thing. cheato's misdeeds changed daily, always bumping the day before off the front page.
hillary's emails were the only false equivalence they had, so that ran every day, day after day.

That's why every time you click on it - "Breaking News!" Same story for days at a time.

They really get it all with the mediocre TV celebrity they promoted into the presidency. Love him or hate him, he draws eyes! Now he is on at least 18 hours a day.

We really should turn off the cable news as they search for the most profitable confirmation bias and then spit out propaganda in support.

We'd be better off watching the 3 minute synopsis on free broadcast network news - or PBS news hour. It's all liberal anyway!

What were we talking about???

Are usually the only intellectual conversations of my day...sigh...

He planted this seed that is now bearing this bitter fruit.

smile on a corporate takeover of the country. Drumpt is but a logical extension of Raygun.

both sides do it blathering.

I think a relatively recent uptick in this has to do with smart phone technology.

Everything moves and cycles so fast.

Also, I think people glued to their phones is a rel problem. Humanity is slipping away.

"We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us the truth about anything, serving their corporate masters who have other plans to dominate us." That was in 2004, but it has held true for decades before that.

At least a dozen people will see.