Why I Quit Genesis
Gabriel writes why he left the band in Melody Maker:
I had a dream, eye’s dream. Then I had another dream with the body and soul of a rock star. When it didn’t feel good I packed it in. Looking back for the musical and non-musical reasons, this is what I came up with:
OUT, ANGELS OUT – an investigation.
The vehicle we had built as a co-op to serve our songwriting became our master and had cooped us up inside the success we had wanted. It affected the attitudes and the spirit of the whole band. the music had not dried up and I still respect the other musicians, but our roles had set in hard. To get an idea through “Genesis the Big” meant shifting a lot more concrete than before. For any band, transferring the heart from idealistic enthusiasm to professionalism is a difficult operation.
I believe the use of sound and visual images can be developed to do much more than we have done. But on a large scale t needs one clear and coherent direction, which our pseudo-democratic committee system could not provide.
As an artist, I need to absorb a wide variety of experiences. It is difficult to respond to intuition and impulse within the long-term planning that the band needed. I felt I should look at/learn about/develop myself, my creative bits and pieces and pick up on a lot of work going on outside music. Even the hidden delights of vegetable growing and community living are beginning to reveal their secrets. I could not expect the band to tie in their schedules with my bondage to cabbages. The increase in money and power, if I had stayed, would have anchored me to the spotlights. It was important to me to give space to my family, which I wanted to hold together, and to liberate the daddy in me.
Although I have seen and learnt a great deal in the last seven years, I found I had begun to look at things as the famous Gabriel, despite hiding my occupation whenever possible, hitching lifts, etc. I had begun to think in business terms; very useful for an often bitten once shy musician, but treating records and audiences as money was taking me away from them. When performing, there were less shivers up and down the spine.
I believe the world has soon to go through a difficult period of changes. I’m excited by some of the areas coming through to the surface which seem to have been hidden away in people’s minds. I want to explore and be prepared to be open and flexible enough to respond, not tied in to the old hierarchy.
Much of my psyche’s ambitions as “Gabriel archetypal rock star” have been fulfilled – a lot of the ego-gratification and the need to attract young ladies, perhaps the result of frequent rejection as “Gabriel acne-struck public school boy”. However, I can still get off playing the star game once in a while.
My future within music, if it exists, will be in as many situations as possible. It’s good to see a growing number of artists breaking down the pigeonholes. This is the difference between the profitable, compartmentalized, battery chicken and the free-range. Why did the chicken cross the road anyway?
There is no animosity between myself and the band or management. The decision had been made some time ago and we have talked about our new direction. The reason why my leaving was not announced earlier was because I had been asked to delay until they had found a replacement to plug up the hole. It is not impossible that some of them might work with me on other projects.
The following guesswork has little in common with truth: Gabriel left Genesis 1) To work in theatre 2) To make more money as a solo artist 3) To do a “Bowie” 4) To do a “Ferry” 5) To do a “Furry Boa round my neck and hang myself with it” 6) To go see an institution 7) To go senile in the sticks.
Iraq op-ed
Webb’s op-ed piece entitled Heading for Trouble: Do We Really Want to Occupy Iraq for the Next 30 Years? runs in The Washington Post.
The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years. Those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade and stay…In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets.
‘Who Writes Wikipedia’
Swartz writes an article examining the contributions to Wikipedia articles written during his candidacy for the Wikimedia Foundation board election in 2006. In the article Swartz disproves JimmyWales notion that the encyclopedia was created by 500-1000 core writers, and shows it was mainly created by occasional writers, many of whom did not register. He says this knowledge should inform Wikipedia policy:
If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. Unfortunately, precisely because such people are only occasional contributors, their opinions aren’t heard by the current Wikipedia process. They don’t get involved in policy debates, they don’t go to meetups, and they don’t hang out with Jimbo Wales. And so things that might help them get pushed on the backburner, assuming they’re even proposed. Out of sight is out of mind, so it’s a short hop to thinking these invisible people aren’t particularly important. Thus Wales’s belief that 500 people wrote half an encyclopedia. Thus his assumption that outsiders contribute mostly vandalism and nonsense. And thus the comments you sometimes hear that making it hard to edit the site might be a good thing.
TIME 100
Huffington profiles Arrington for the magazine:
[He] is the quintessential blogger: intense, passionate, consumed with his subject, opinionated, sleep-deprived, forward-thinking, easy to irritate and apt to air his grudges in public.
Publishes ‘Guerilla Open Access Manifesto’
Swartz, while in Eremo, Italy, releases a “Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto,” calling for activists to “fight back” against the sequestering of scholarly papers and information behind pay walls.
It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file-sharing networks.
I Am TOM. I Like to TYPE. Hear That?
Hanks writes an Op-Ed in the New York Times about his love for typewriters, and the sounds they make:
In 1978, the proprietor of a Cleveland business machine shop refused to service my mostly plastic typewriter. “A worthless toy!” the man yelled. Yes, yelled. He pointed to shelves full of his refurbished typewriters — already decades old yet all in perfect working order. A typewriter was a machine, he yelled, which could be dropped from an airplane and still work! He gave me a deal on a Hermes 2000 (“The Cadillac of typewriters!”)
I confess that when real work has to be done — documents with requirements equal to a college term paper — I use a computer. The start and stop of writing begs for the fluidity of modern technology, and who doesn’t love choosing a new font like Franklin Gothic Medium, Bernard MT Condensed or Plantagenet Cherokee?
The sound of typing is one reason to own a vintage manual typewriter — alas, there are only three reasons, and none of them are ease or speed. In addition to sound, there is the sheer physical pleasure of typing; it feels just as good as it sounds, the muscles in your hands control the volume and cadence of the aural assault so that the room echoes with the staccato beat of your synapses.
Vanity Fair article
The magazine profiles Arrington including a Berkeley talk where he discusses women in tech, how TechCrunch has a female CEO and almost half its employees are female, how the blog started, and Allen’s sexual assault allegations against him. Arrington:
Women in my world are respected as much as men.
‘Betrayed and gravely mismanaged’
Gaga writes a message on her site, apologizing for the delayed Do What U Want video, saying she has been betrayed by management.
It is late because, just like with the Applause video unfortunately, I was given a week to plan and execute it. It is very devastating for someone like me, I devote every moment of my life to creating fantasies for you. All my my most successful videos were planned over a period of time when I was rested and my creativity was honored. Those who have betrayed me gravely mismanaged my time and health and left me on my own to damage control any problems that ensued as a result. Millions of dollars are not enough for some people. They want billions. Then they need trillions. I was not enough for some people. They wanted more.
Please forgive me that I did not foresee this coming, I never thought after all the years of hard work that those I called friends and partners would ever care so little at a time I needed them the most. Give me a chance to show you the meaning of seeing art all around you. There are always ups and downs. my heart breaks from the people i have trusted and loved who i’ve worked so closely with, who have used me, lied to me, worked me into the ground for the personal gain. When i woke up in the hospital after my surgery there were many people that were not there. my health did not matter. I did not matter unless i could perform. This is a very hard lesson. I have lost love ones to the greed of money. It is not Interscope. They in fact love me very much and will see ARTPOP to the end.
‘No more business trips’
In a LinkedIn article Feld explains how he increased his productivity by replacing business travel for videoconferencing.
‘Most companies’ talk about transparency is BS’
Feld, who is on the board of Moz, a Seattle-based provider of search-engine and social-media optimization software, writes about the company’s commitment to openness:
Lots of people talk about being transparent. Lots of companies espouse principles of transparency. Lots of statements start out with “I like to be transparent” or “I’m being transparent when I say …” And several years ago the notion of transparency became the new in thing, especially around the VC and startup worlds. Most of it is bullshit.
Feld points to Moz’s Moz’s 2013 Year in Review, which gives insider-level numbers of the company’s operations, despite the company managment’s disappointment with their results.
…when you talk about being transparent, it’s often useful to have a standard of ‘real transparency’ to compare yourself too. I’d put Moz at the top of that list in my book.
Beyond Affirmative Action
In an article for Townhall.com, Carson says he believes that affirmative action helped provide him with opportunities he otherwise would miss.
I believe that I benefited from affirmative action. When I applied to Yale University, I thought my chances of being accepted were favorable only because I was somewhat naive about admissions requirements for a high-powered Ivy League institution. In my mind, I was pretty hot stuff. Only after I got to Yale and became cognizant of my classmates’ many accomplishments did I realize that the admissions committee had taken a substantial risk on me and that I had been extended special consideration. My early academic experiences were traumatic, and but for the grace of God, I would have flunked out.
And calls for “compassionate action” to account for difficulties that college applicants have faced in their upbringing:
Such a strategy demonstrates sensitivity and compassion, as well as recognition of substantial achievement in the face of difficult obstacles. The groups who benefit from compassionate action will probably change over time, depending on which ones have the greatest number of obstacles to overcome. The point is, it’s time to be more concerned about the content of character than the color of skin when extending extra consideration.
‘My Rapist is Still on Campus’
In an article written for Time, Sulkowicz talks habout the alleged rape, the circumstances of the hearing, and her criticisms of Columbia’s processes:
Every day, I am afraid to leave my room. Even seeing people who look remotely like my rapist scares me. Last semester I was working in the dark room in the photography department. Though my rapist wasn’t in my class, he asked permission from his teacher to come and work in the dark room during my class time. I started crying and hyperventilating. As long as he’s on campus with me, he can continue to harass me.
I’ve lost friends because some people just don’t understand what it means to be raped. One friend asked me if I thought that my rapist would be expelled from school. I said, “I really hope so.” And he said, “Poor guy” because I think many men see rape as kinky sex that went wrong. They say girls are confusing and it’s hard to tell when you’re supposed to stop. When I was raped, I was screaming “no” and struggling against him. It was obviously not consensual, but he was turned on by my distress.
I think the school is pressured to find him not guilty because up until now Columbia could just push these things under the rug and no one would know. But that means the Columbia administration is harboring serial rapists on campus. They’re more concerned about their public image than keeping people safe.
WSJ op-ed
Swift writes opinion editorial piece for the Wall Street Journal. Swift covers her opinion on where the music industry be decades from now, album sales and the power of fans. Swift says she is very optimistic about the industry overall.
There are many (many) people who predict the downfall of music sales and the irrelevancy of the album as an economic entity. I am not one of them. In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace.
Daily Mail op-ed: No conflict with mother-in-law
After The Daily Mail reports George Clooney’s future mother-in-law does want Clooney to marry her daughter, Amal, because of religious differences, and the actor responds in an op-ed:
First of all, factually none of the story is true. Amal’s mother is not Druze. She has not been to Beirut since Amal and I have been dating, and she is in no way against the marriage, but none of that is the issue…The irresponsibility, in this day and age, to exploit religious differences where none exist, is at the very least negligent and more appropriately dangerous.
After the op-ed was published, The Daily Mail removed the article from its website, The Mail Online, and issued a statement:
The MailOnline story was not a fabrication but supplied in good faith by a reputable and trusted freelance journalist. She based her story on conversations with a long standing contact who has strong connections with senior members of the Lebanese community in the UK and the Druze in Beirut. We only became aware of Mr. Clooney’s concerns this morning and have launched a full investigation. However, we accept Mr. Clooney’s assurance that the story is inaccurate and we apologize to him, Miss Amal Alamuddin and her mother, Baria, for any distress caused.
Nashville preservation editorial
Urban writes a 368 word editorial that encourages the historic preservation of country music landmarks:
The past, present and the future are ALL still here — but the Row is currently under threat from developers. Nashville has exploded as a music town, and not just country music. Musicians from all genres, all over the world are making the pilgrimage here to immerse themselves in the kind of creative center that so many other cities have lost but that Nashville still maintains
Nashville’s growth is exciting, but not at the risk of losing the creative epicenter that is Music Row and that truly makes Nashville Music City.
I sincerely hope that those who have made Nashville their home over the years, and those who have recently discovered our fair city, will come together as a united front and continue to be vocal about preserving and fortifying our beloved Music Row.
New York Times op-ed
McCain and Graham criticize Barack Obama’s approach to the conflict:
The president clearly wants to move deliberately and consult with allies and Congress as he considers what to do about ISIS. No one disputes that goal. But the threat ISIS poses only grows over time. It cannot be contained. It must be confronted. This requires a comprehensive strategy, presidential leadership and a far greater sense of urgency.
A comprehensive approach would include military actions in Syria:
But ultimately, ISIS is a military force, and it must be confronted militarily. Mr. Obama has begun to take military actions against ISIS in Iraq, but they have been tactical and reactive half-measures. Continuing to confront ISIS in Iraq, but not in Syria, would be fighting with one hand tied behind our back. We need a military plan to defeat ISIS, wherever it is.
The U.S. must support Kurdish peshmerga, Sunni tribes, moderate forces in Syria and effective units of the Iraqi security forces with arms, intelligence and military assistance, but avoid supporting Iranian troops. Supplying more assets, troops, resources and time could involve revising the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and employing an Afghanistan-like approach. They say other presidents successfully changed their tactics in response to the Soviet Union, Balkans and Iraq:
ISIS presents Mr. Obama with a similar challenge, and it has already forced him to begin changing course, albeit grudgingly. He should accept the necessity of further change and adopt a strategy to defeat this threat. If he does, he deserves bipartisan support. If he does not, ISIS will continue to grow into an even graver danger to our allies and to us.
New York Times commentary
Kerry calls for a global coalition against ISIS in a New York Times op-ed:
No decent country can support the horrors perpetrated by ISIS, and no civilized country should shirk its responsibility to help stamp out this disease. Coalition building is hard work, but it is the best way to tackle a common enemy.
The group’s foreign recruits pose an international threat:
ISIS’ cadre of foreign fighters are a rising threat not just in the region, but anywhere they could manage to travel undetected — including to America […] They have already demonstrated the ability to seize and hold more territory than any other terrorist organization, in a strategic region that borders Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey and is perilously close to Israel.
The U.S., which takes over the UN Security Council presidency in September, should lead the coalition but its contributions – including airstrikes – are not enough on their own:
In this battle, there is a role for almost every country. Some will provide military assistance, direct and indirect. Some will provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance for the millions who have been displaced and victimized across the region. Others will help restore not just shattered economies but broken trust among neighbors. This effort is underway in Iraq, where other countries have joined us in providing humanitarian aid, military assistance and support for an inclusive government.
Manning: Focus on containment
Manning writes a commentary in The Guardian stating that military strikes play to ISIS’s strengths, and recommending four areas that a containment strategy could focus on. She suggests countering ISIS’s online presence to curb recruitment. The coalition should then set clear, temporary borders in the region to discourage ISIS taking territory where humanitarian issues could result. It should place a moratorium on ransom payments for hostages and cut off other sources of ISIS funding such as oil trade and artefact theft. Finally, it should allow ISIS to succeed in setting up a failed ‘state’ – in a contained area and over a long enough period of time to prove itself unpopular and unable to govern.
Eventually, if they are properly contained, I believe that Isis will not be able to sustain itself on rapid growth alone, and will begin to fracture internally. The organization will begin to disintegrate into several smaller, uncoordinated entities – ultimately failing in their objective of creating a strong state.
Lesnar editorial
Ross pens editorial on Lesnar’s career from the first day he signed him to WWE to his current status in the company for Fox Sports.
The South Dakota native is arguably the most naturally gifted athlete to compete in the genre. The former NCAA and UFC heavyweight champion has the physique of a Greek god, moves like a large cat, does what he says and has a legit, animalistic intensity seldom seen in his profession.
Why Silicon Valley Works
In an op-ed for the Financial Times, Altman describes how Silicon Valley supports startups.
Silicon Valley works because there is such a high density of people working on start-ups and they are inclined to help each other. Other tech hubs have this as well but this is a case of Metcalfe’s law – the utility of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes on the network. Silicon Valley has far more nodes in the network than anywhere else.
He also says that Silicon Valley can be replicated elsewhere and is “probably doable with a few thousand people and a reasonable amount of capital.” He says would-be Silicon Valleys should focus on two things: an area where the majority of people care most about start-ups and technology, and on long-term compensation.
A focus on making a lot of money in the long term at the expense of short-term opportunities is essential to building companies that have a huge impact – they take a long time.