There is so many ijits with big bucks. :confused:

Double digit ijits!!!!Attachment 65592

Art is...

People like music because they like *patterns*. If the patterns are too obvious, we say the music is lame. When the patterns are typical enough to recognize, but unusual enough to be surprising, we like it. When the patterns are too unusual and unrecognizable, we say the music is confusing.

We then apply meaning and story to those patterns, so we can recognize them and codify them. This is actually all because recognizing patterns is important to all animals' survival in nature. One beat is a predator's footsteps, coming for us. Another beat is our family's footsteps, or even our mother's heartbeat in the womb. The sounds of both danger and of safety are a deep part of our evolution and our understanding of the world.

People like songs with lyrics, because they present patterns that are already given meaning. Before the development of writing and printing, early humans advanced by creating stories, poetry, and songs they could remember across generations. By using sounds that were similar in pattern (i.e., rhymes) they could more easily remember them. This gave stories, poetry, and music much greater importance as knowledge and wisdom could now spread across generations more easily.

This is why art is a part of human evolution, why it is deeply spiritual, and why nobody much lives without some form of it in their lives.

The re-admission of middles and highs into my brain has reawakened my interest in different musical styles, it's been a blessing. I really think that losing touch with music and sound in general can have a profound impact on the brain and not in a good way.

From the department of familiar sounds: Paul Simon, who still has a beautiful voice, played two of his classics on SNL but with ymusic backing him. Honestly it looked pretentious and out of touch much like SNL generally, but maybe I'm a stick in the mud.

Blues. The standard form of the blues shuffle.

You'd think that people would get bored with a form of music that generally does the same basic patterns over and over. But...

ba Bump
ba Bump
ba Bump
ba Bump

It feels so good.

Coming Home by Leon Bridges is cozy as the womb.

So you take a mother's heartbeat, the most reassuring thing -- and maybe you attach onto that a melody and/or lyric of deep sadness. Now it gets complicated, what is our emotional reaction now?

Maybe each part of the music pulls at us from different directions and so maybe that is part of the spiritual reaction. Maybe we find it as complicated as our own emotions? So when it's complicated, like the above, we find different things in it?

~ and then they use it in ads (and films) and it throws all that meaning away for something spiritually cheap? ~

Everything in our lives-- even sadness, pain and misery rides on the rhythm of a heartbeat.

I often think about the idea that America is a cultural wasteland with nothing to contribute to the fraternity of distinguished nations with rich, historical traditions. But, Blues. --Jazz! America is a cultural powerhouse! Sure, it's all a "melting pot" of African rhythms, but if there's any bragging rights, it all happened here in the USA.

I've been playing shuffles a lot for the last three years, and nothing feels better. I lose myself in it, and experience peace and oneness. Once I get into shuffle mode, look out because everything is gonna be a shuffle.

The blues was born here 'cause we beat our slaves gooder.

The mother's heartbeat is the emotional armor that allows us to listen to the tales of pain and suffering in the blues.

Not my mother's.

I could tell something was there, but I can't tell what it is:

Attachment 66348

First one looks like maybe a Beatles or Queen poster, the other just looks like the back of a playing card.

IDK

You're not supposed to know, because if you did you wouldn't buy the trash.

Attachment 68906

A hammer head, made from hammer heads.

Koo-ky.

Dumb idea, brilliantly executed.

Now you do.

No, I don't.

I now know what the pattern is called...

This is knot art.

Attachment 69074

Link, w/video

Is that a Maplethorpe?

I was amazed the way he glued the sections together using scotch tape. He'd obviously beveled the edges but never mentioned that.

What is art?

Something that does nothing but look pretty, and is somehow still worth money.

Like those Kardashian people.

Gorgeous. The edges were beveled from the start; that's why at 2:00 he used two chopsaws.

I thought it was because the angle had to be dead nuts and he had to do so many, but I sure you're right that's where he did it.

Science article: The World in Song - summarizes new findings about music.

Scientists find that, first, music is universal. It's used in every known human culture. Not only that, but, it's used in similar ways in different cultures. There are lullabies, love songs, healing songs, dance songs. Not only that, but all these types of songs have similar musical features. Some of which you'd figure (dance songs are faster) some you wouldn't (ritual healing songs are "less melodically variable" than dance songs).

Musics seem wildly different across cultures - across some remote cultures, you can barely identify it as music. But the approach they used (Bayesian analysis) was able to find relationships we can't easily find. So, science confirms it, music is deeply built into humanity - may even be something we evolved.

(now I'll quote from the article just for fun)
Not gonna lie, I understood the first sentence (and I'm proud) but not the second one.

Does it mean all toes tap?

It just means humans instinctively prefer simple patterns. They went out of their way to use obtuse terminology because it makes them sound smarter. It's a stunningly common feature of (bad writing in) scientific papers--state the actual evidence, and then hit the reader over the head with what the evidence means in more general terms, except drag it out so it sounds like a brilliant conclusion rather than a derivative rehashing.

"Ketchup is available at 95% of American restaurants. This suggests people like ketchup. The widespread presence of tomato-based reductions demonstrates the successful incorporation of colonial agronomy techniques with modern ludic promotional functionality."