Short Attn Span Theater: Strange

Short Attention Span Theater: Photos

• Eds., Wisdom Quarterly, Sept. 29, 2024

Kneecap, Olivia @ Glastonbury Fest '25

Kneecap performance at Glasto 2025 was all livestreamed thanks to Wilson

BBC reprimanded for [not showing Kneecap and] "Death to the IDF" chant at Glastonbury

UK's Glastonbury Festival 2025 opens gates amid Kneecap controversy • FRANCE 24 English

Kneecap: Backstage with the Irish rap group (rollingstone.com)

Based on a true story: Kneecap movie | official| Sony Pictures Classics (kneecapfilm.com)

Who'll speak for voiceless in Gaza? Kneecap’s legal rep after plea hearing

• What's the big deal about the Glastonbury Festival?

The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts

• What's the big deal about Gaelic rappers Kneecap?
• Irish (Gaelic) rappers Kneecap: 'witch-hunt'
• Zionist lobby fears Kneecap-Bibi backlash
• Irish rappers who rap in Gaelic? (Kneecap)
• TOP VIDEO: Kneecap’s Gaza film (See It, Say It, Censored) ignites Glastonbury: Netanyahu’s LIES exposed! (stopthegenocide.info) Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) Israel
• How Kneecap is pioneering Irish-language rap - Celtic revival (The New York Times)

Commonly referred to simply as Glastonbury Festival and known colloquially as "Glasto," this five-day festival of performing arts is held near Pilton, Somerset, England, most summers. It is the biggest open-air festival in the world.

Will you behave this year, Boys? And don't cuss.

In addition to contemporary music, the festival hosts dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret, and other arts. Leading pop and rock artists have headlined, alongside thousands of others appearing on smaller stages and performance areas.

Kneecap rocks Glasto

Films and albums have been recorded at the festival, and it receives extensive TV and newspaper coverage. Glastonbury takes place on 1,500 acres of farmland [3] and is attended by about 200,000 people [4], with extensive security, transportation, water, and electricity-supply infrastructure (stuff built on the ground).

Will Olivia Rodrigo swell gatecrashing?

Olivia Rodrigo and Lilly Allen sing "F*ck You" Glastonbury 2022 to the crowd's delight

We need to heal stoned in a circle, a stone circle

While the number of attendees is sometimes swollen by gatecrashers, a record of 300,000 people was set at the 1994 festival, headlined by the Levellers, who performed on the Pyramid Stage [5].

Most festival staff are unpaid volunteers, helping the festival to raise millions of pounds for charity organizations [6].

Ireland's Kneecap "H.O.O.D" (official music video)

What kind of hippie festival?

Woodstock, New York, changed the world

Regarded as a major event in contemporary British culture, the festival is inspired by the ethos of the hippie, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the free festival movement. [It's the British version of Woodstock.]

Vestiges of these traditions are retained in the Green Fields area, which includes sections known as the Green Futures, the Stone Circle, and Healing Field [7].

Michael Eavis hosted the first one, then called the Pilton Festival, after seeing an open-air Led Zeppelin concert in 1970 at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. More: Glastonbury Festival

• VIDEO: Countdown to Glastonbury with festival facts
• Let's all become gay/bi Catholic priests: Defying decline, a U.S. diocese ordains its largest class of priests in decades

Terrible lineup for this year's fest before hiatus? - Will the Morris dancers be around for Beltane?

Isle of Wight Music Festival comes alive

Rare photos of the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival brought to life [with AI]

(Fusion Kidd) June 16, 2025: As Glastonbury 2025 opens, what is the history of other open-air festivals akin to Woodstock? Here are some rare photos of the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival, but in this case they are colorized and brought to life with animated motion (1968–1970). How the ChatGPT or AI modeling is able to project what happened after these photographs were taken is the mystery of something going into AI's black box and something else coming out with no one able to explain what happened in between.

• STOP THE GENOCIDE

What are Buddhist monks? (video)

How to become a monk: Why or why not?

Can girls join? - Yes. Bhikkhuni Sangha lives!

Casual practitioners of the Dharma, the Teaching that Leads to Liberation, is a lot like that of a Buddhist monk or nun only more intensive, unrelenting, not easily hidden from. In our ordinary life, we can take a break and get away from ourselves (turn on and drop out), so progress is slow but easier than having to be at it, keeping our nose to the grindstone all the time. By the way, women are not "female monks" (bhikkhus). They are nuns (bhikkhunis). In referring to both simultaneously, we call them monastics. They are all samanas, "wandering ascetics," in the ideal; in practice, many have become temple priests and priestesses like the Brahmin priests of the Buddha's day.

Strive to see ultimate reality (mentality-materiality)

so "letting go" (nekkhamma) happens all by itself,

Pa Auk Sayadaw would say, agreeing with Ajahn Chah

How to become a monk: Why and why not?

(English Buddhist Monk) THAILAND. MAN GIVES UP EVERYTHING. In 2015, aged 47, an English (British) businessman gave up everything and travelled Asia to find true happiness.

Now a Buddhist monk (bhikkhu, samana, bhante), living a simple life in Buddhist Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka, he shares the continuing story.

• How does one become monastic? Ordination (pabbajjā)

ABOUT: Phra Dan (Ven. Dhammarakkhita, Bhikkhu, not yet tens years in the robe to be an Ajahn or official Thai "Teacher") is a Theravada Buddhist monk who lived in India from 2020, Thailand, and now Sri Lanka.

Dan was born in Sussex, England, in 1967. Educated by French Catholic monks, he was a successful businessman in estate agency and financial services during the 1980s and 1990s, married, divorced with three adult sons.

The year 2000 marked change and travel, including a visit to South Africa, returning to the UK in 2003 to continue different work and business activities until 2012.

Gradually materialistic values turned to renunciation (nekkhamma), intentional simplicity, and meditation, living nomadically in an old Ford Transit van full-time for three years.

This sort of van life and meditation led to Theravada Buddhism and to the ancient (back to basics movement called the) Thai Forest Tradition, a Theravada Buddhist monastery in the UK.

During 2015, travelling the Buddhist Circuit, the holy sites in India, deep faith (saddha, confidence, conviction) reinforced a zeal for Buddhist ordination.

In 2020, after five years of intensive meditation practice between Thai Forest monasteries in Thailand and England, Dan was ordained in India, where he lived for three years, until returning to Thailand in 2023, and now living in Theravada Buddhist Sri Lanka.

Sabe Satta Sukhi Hontu. Please subscribe and be HAPPY, too. #englishmonk

Phra Dan, Bhante Dhammarakkhita, English Buddhist Monk (YouTube) July 12, 2023; Pat Macpherson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Short Attn Span Theater: Levitation

• Eds., Wisdom Quarterly and (ReligionforBreakfast) Goddess Isis Mystery Cult

Short Attn Span Theater: Moon, Cats

Closing: Some advice from Eckhart Tolle

• Is it doom scrolling, TikToking, too much screen time? Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Final week FREE Shakespeare in Park, LA

Cousins, chased from home, run to the forest

Los Angeles has culture. Sort of. We have Shakespeare in the Park thanks to ISCLA.org (the Independent Shakespeare Company of Los Angeles) FREE in Griffith Park on a new stage set more deeply in the woods, over a brook, in a kind of natural amphitheater in the round. The stage is open on all sides, and the players play to the entire audience arrayed on blankets, eating and cheering, laughing and sometimes participating. The production of As You Like It includes masked wrestling. Raise a hand and get on stage during the pre-show at 6:00 pm. But beware, anyone who does faces the wrath of the masked wrestler! Runs nightly until September 1, 2024. DETAILS: Independent Shakespeare Co. (iscla.org)

Short Attention Span Theatre: Egypt Area 51

• TOO MUCH TIKTOK, Editors, Wisdom Quarterly

Short Attention Span Theater (viral videos)

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention — and How to Think Deeply Again

The Middle (listentothemiddle.com)

The Middle with Jeremy Hobson is a weekly, live national call-in talk show aimed at elevating the voices of people in “the middle.”

[It is heard in Los Angeles on laist.com (kpcc.com, 89.3 FM, Thursdays at 10:00 pm), and tonight's show closed with an amazing segment by Johann Hari (johannhari.com) on cellphone and Internet addiction.]

• Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention - -and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari (barnesandnoble.com)

Stolen Focus: Pay Attention (stolenfocusbook.com)

Americans who are geographically, politically, or philosophically in “the middle” are crucial in our politics, yet they are often ignored.

In the US, teenagers can focus on one task for only 65 seconds at a time, and office workers average only 3 minutes. Like many of us, author Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live.

He tried all sorts of self-help solutions — even abandoning his cellphone for three months — but nothing seemed to work.

So he went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention. He discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.

We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: Our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for their profit.

He found that there are 12 deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention.

In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD.

He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where they lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers’ productivity.

Crucially, he learned how we can reclaim our focus — as individuals and as a society — if we are determined to fight for it.

Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back. More

ABOUT: The Middle is a non-partisan, non-judgmental, non-condescending space where all can feel comfortable sharing their views and being part of the conversation. Veteran public radio host Jeremy Hobson is joined by two panel guests each week along with DJ Tolliver spinning tunes. Hosted by Jeremy Hobson Thursdays 10:00-11:00 pm.

THIS WEEK (July 11, 2024): ADDICTION TO PHONE, INTERNET, CONNECTION, SOCIAL MEDIA, COMPUTER SCREEN? IF SO, WHAT ABOUT IT? CALL (844) 4MI-DDLE (themiddleshow.radio@gmail.com) to talk to Host Jeremy Hobson, public radio journalist and former host of NPR’s Here & Now and Marketplace Morning Report. He grew up in the Midwest, where people don’t spend every waking minute thinking about politics -- but do have a lot of sway in American politics.

• Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; guest Johann Hari wit host Jeremy Hobson, The Middle, July 11, 2024 via laist.com