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Arvo Pärt once remarked that with his tintinnabuli technique one could set the entirety of Mann's Joseph and His Brothers to music. That seems incredibly daunting, but if I ever get the opportunity of a lifetime, I'd like to try. I'll succeed if I do.
For everyone that gets a piano and is committed to learning it as their primary hobby, I will compose a new solo piano piece especially for you so you can start your piano journey with something special.
Robert W. Rust retweeted
Dobrze napisaleś "I don't know".
Tylko, że powinieneś dopisać, że nie wiesz nic. Lewica to gangrena, która niszczy każde jednorodne społeczeństwo, lewica to adozyt, który założył sobie zniszczenie każdego organizmu, który ma konserwatywny kręgosłup moralny i etyczny.
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This is a good example of how the pitch material of a work can impact one’s reception of a work. Tabula Rasa is as structured and orderly as any serialist work. It just makes use of a diatonic pitch collection rather than a chromatic one.
Looks interesting.
THE MOST INCOMPETENT WAR IN HISTORY: SARAH PAINE ON TRUMP’S IRAN DISASTER
Dr. Sarah Paine, a leading historian of great-power conflict and strategy, delivers a blunt verdict on the Iran war. She calls it one of the most incompetent wars in human history. The decision ignored basic principles of assessment, put maximum costs on America itself, and left permanent damage to the country’s power and alliances. This is not hindsight—it is the predictable result of hubris meeting reality.
THE CORE VERDICT
➡️ “The Iran war is probably one of the most incompetent wars in human history.”
➡️ A competent war puts the costs on the enemy and minimizes them for yourself.
➡️ This one did the opposite.
THE COST CATASTROPHE
➡️ It trashed the US economy.
➡️ It blew the US alliance system.
➡️ Iran is hurting, but the collateral damage is taking down the world’s economy.
➡️ That transforms the United States from a partner into an annoyance—and for many, a primary adversary—because it is threatening their economies.
➡️ “That’s breathtakingly incompetent.”
THE STRATEGIC BLIND SPOT
➡️ Any serious assessment looks at the enemy’s strengths and your own weaknesses, plus everyone else who might intervene.
➡️ That was absent.
➡️ The first thing Iran would do is shut Hormuz. Narrow seas close in wartime. Ukraine already showed this with the Black Sea.
➡️ Shore artillery, mines, and other tools stop traffic. There is no mystery here.
➡️ The big naval base in Bahrain becomes unreachable. The fallback is Diego Garcia, 2,500 miles away in the middle of nowhere. “That would be a mess.”
THE HUBRIS THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE
➡️ The people making the calls are historically unqualified for the job. That makes them profoundly dangerous.
➡️ Type A hubris assumes all decisions that matter happen in the United States.
➡️ Type B hubris assumes being good at one thing makes you good at everything.
➡️ Half-court tennis: you only watch your own side and never study the other team.
➡️ The Iranians understand Americans far better than Americans understand them.
THE UNFEASIBLE OBJECTIVE
➡️ Trying to “solve” Iran with 90 million people was never realistic.
➡️ Nazi Germany had roughly 80 million and required an occupation force of about 1.5 million just to hold it after the war—before counting everyone else.
➡️ The goal was unattainable. Pursuing it guarantees overextension and a bad ending.
➡️ The lesson the world takes is simple: get a nuke. The war incentivized proliferation.
➡️ This was a pivotal error. The choices that existed before are gone and will not return. “We will never be the trusted partner ever again. It’s done.”
THE BOTTOM LINE
The Iran war did not merely fail. It maximized American costs, destroyed trust with allies, and handed every rival a clearer reason to treat the United States as a threat to their own prosperity. Competence would have contained the problem at affordable cost. Hubris chose the opposite.
This is what permanent strategic damage looks like.
#IranWar #SarahPaine #StrategicIncompetence #HormuzDisaster #USHubris #AllianceCollapse #CatastrophicMistake
HT: YouTube The Diary Of A CEO
Hobbies being unaffordable is a really good reason for you to pick up a used piano on Facebook marketplace and start learning how to play. Infinite entertainment, and it makes you a better person.
Still misses the mark. AI has not matched the capabilities of artists. It's exposed most people's inability to 1) describe anything beyond the salient details of a work of art; and 2) cultivate a confident interior life.
I feel like the people who believe the singularity killed art vastly overestimate their aesthetic sense. I see this all the time with music, how people believe they are dramatically better at listening than they really are.
I don't really understand why anyone would support merging the College of Design with the School of Music and Dance. I guess it could create opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, but there's already virtually no collaboration between the music and dance parts of SOMD, so I don't really know what people are expecting there.
‘This Is the New Reality’: U. of Oregon Will Cut Programs and Lay Off Staff to Close Deficit chronicle.com/article/this-i…
Robert W. Rust retweeted
Good morning, friends!
Vibes in G minor and E major are out in the wild. Catch a vibe or two with your morning coffee.
This makes six of twenty four Vibes compositions. 25% done.
Robert W. Rust retweeted
I don’t understand why anyone in the West fundraises for missionaries to go overseas, when they are clearly much more urgently needed closer to home
Robert W. Rust retweeted
This is such a bleak story about what it's like to try to land a job right now. nytimes.com/interactive/2026…
Robert W. Rust retweeted
You also learned from him. Something new every time.
His last concert I was playing first on the Pines of Rome Banda. Before the first rehearsal he called me in his office and told me the trumpets needed to play fluegel, fine, but the first entrance needed to be muted.
I told him we don’t have fluegelhorn mutes, no classical player does, and we couldn’t get them in time for the concerts.
He told me “Yes of course. Ask you colleagues in the trombone section for Jo Ral straight mutes. They’ll have them and they’ll work just fine.”
He was right. I’d never heard of that. None of us had. But he was a straight and we’ve played it that way ever since.