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  • Kate Bush – BBC article

    Kate Bush – BBC article

    By Dorian Lynskey published 15th June 2022

    Why are the enigmatic star’s mystical songs being constantly re-purposed? Because she is in her own unique, other world, writes Dorian Lynskey – and we all want to be there with her.

    « Why are people so interested in me when I just make an album every now and then? » Kate Bush asked a journalist in 1989. One reason why Bush is a lodestar for so many artists is that she appears to care deeply about her art and not at all about the attention it invites. She only returns to the public eye when she has something to promote. Given that she hasn’t released a studio album since 50 Words for Snow in 2011, and her 2014 concert residency (her first live shows in 35 years) sold out in a trice, that isn’t very often. « I don’t think my life is that interesting, » she said in 2016. « I’m quite a private person and I like my work to do the talking. »

    Yet to call Bush a recluse would be unfair because she appears to live a very nice, normal life with her husband Danny McIntosh and is always gracious when she does have something to say. Recently the 63-year-old resurfaced to acknowledge the extraordinary viral success of her 1985 single Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), after it played a crucial role in the latest season of TV’s Stranger Things. The song has entered the Top 10 in both the UK and US. Last week it was by far the most streamed song in the world, overtaking the likes of Harry Styles and Bad Bunny, and is heading for number one in the UK charts this week. At least one well-meaning teenager is murdering it on TikTok as you read this. « It’s all really exciting! » Bush wrote on her website while heaping praise on the show.The song Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is about uplifting, radical empathy (Credit: Alamy)

    The song Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is about uplifting, radical empathy (Credit: Alamy)

    Bush wrote the song in her house in the Kent countryside in the summer of 1983. The lyric is an expression of radical empathy: a fantasy about arranging with God to swap places with her lover so that each could fully understand the other at last. It’s no surprise that it has become a LGBTQ+ anthem (and in 2018 featured in the TV series Pose). Appropriately, it was Bush’s boyfriend and collaborator Del Palmer who programmed the urgent electronic drums that herald both the song and the Hounds of Love album. EMI nixed the original title, A Deal with God, lest it offend devout record-buyers and radio DJs, but the enforced alternative, as Graeme Thomson writes in his Bush biography Under the Ivy, was « a perfect analogy » for the album: « life is hard, but we’re getting somewhere ».

    Her work combines a peculiarly English mysticism with an equally English taste for absurd humour

    Some seasoned Bush fans are irritated by the current avalanche of latecomers but in the UK at least it makes no sense to be protective of a song that was a major hit in 1985, and was remixed for the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. So she’s not exactly buried treasure, yet she somehow retains the aura of a cult artist. « I have been quite surprised that a lot of my stuff, which isn’t particularly mainstream, has been as successful as it has, » she told me in 2011.

    It is very hard to explain where Kate Bush came from. Not literally, of course – the daughter of a doctor and a nurse, she had a pleasant, somewhat bohemian middle-class upbringing in the Kent suburbs. Through a mutual friend of the family, a demo tape of more than 50 songs reached Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, which led to a deal with EMI when she was 16. Famously, she wrote her fourth single The Man with the Child in His Eyes when she was just 13. She said that it was what she did for fun. Her friends did ballet or gymnastics after school; she wrote songs.Bush's persona is both avant-garde and down to earth – a charismatic combination (Credit: Alamy)

    Bush’s persona is both avant-garde and down to earth – a charismatic combination (Credit: Alamy)

    But where did the songs come from? Now that’s a mystery. She went to number one with Wuthering Heights in March 1978 during the heyday of punk and disco. For a 19-year-old newcomer to be outselling Abba, Blondie and the Bee Gees with a theatrical tribute to a novel from 1847 was really something. When we compare an artist to Joni Mitchell or Aretha Franklin, we are also invoking the broader traditions of the folk-rock singer-songwriter or soul music, but when we cite the influence of Kate Bush, we mean something unique. Her adolescent love of David Bowie and Elton John doesn’t do much to explain what she went on to do with words, images, melody and voice. Her affection for the films of Powell and Pressburger, the novels of John Wyndham, folk tales and ghost stories is more revealing. Her work combines a peculiarly English mysticism with an equally English taste for absurd humour.

    Entering a fantasy land

    Bush’s uncommonly risky decision to retire from touring at the age of 20 enabled her to concentrate on record-making, taking on the role of co-producer with 1980’s Never for Ever and experimenting with the latest technology. Her spectacularly weird and wild self-produced follow-up, The Dreaming, was a slate-wiper that made anything possible. « Going into the studio every day with her was like entering a fantasy land, » according to engineer Nick Launay. She developed a similar taste for creative control when it came to making music videos. For female artists who are used to seeing the credit for half their work go to male collaborators, her autonomy is an inspiration. « It’s so great, » St Vincent has said of The Dreaming. « She totally went for it. »

    Great female artists are often associated with the expression of emotional pain but Bush has a rare talent for joy, empathy and wonder

    After the shock of The Dreaming, the most unexpected thing Bush could make was a smash hit. Thanks to singles such as Running Up That Hill and Cloudbusting, Hounds of Love became the UK’s fourth biggest-selling album of 1985, right behind Dire Straits and Phil Collins. This is a record that draws inspiration from body-swapping, 1950s horror movies and the eccentric psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, and devotes its second side to a hallucinatory song suite about a woman lost at sea, but Bush’s sonic tastes chimed with the peak-80s popularity of Fairlight synthesisers and LinnDrum machines. It sounds both intimate and epic.The 1985 album Hounds of Love is widely considered a masterpiece (Credit: Alamy)

    The 1985 album Hounds of Love is widely considered a masterpiece (Credit: Alamy)

    It’s fitting that Bush recorded two duets with Peter Gabriel. It wasn’t unusual for artists in the 1980s to transition from art music to pop music (The Human League) or vice versa (Talk Talk) but Bush, like Gabriel, collapsed the distinction. While her vision sometimes overlapped with what the public wanted, she didn’t care when it didn’t. The new song she recorded for her 1986 victory-lap singles collection The Whole Story was Experiment IV, a bizarre number about a secret military project to develop a sonic superweapon, with a video deemed too gory for Top of the Pops. Yet not long afterwards she was perfectly happy to write a song for the John Hughes romcom She’s Having a Baby. The extraordinarily moving This Woman’s Work has since eclipsed the film, reappearing to great effect in TV series such as The Handmaid’s Tale and Extras. She is someone who will invent 50 exquisite synonyms for snow (shimmerglisten, mountain-sob) and ask Stephen Fry to narrate them, or put Prince on the same song as Lenny Henry. In her music the separation between showbusiness and the avant-garde simply doesn’t exist.

    If Bush has ever fallen out of fashion, then it was during the 1990s, when she retreated from music for family reasons after the disappointment of 1993’s The Red Shoes. That album was named after a film about a woman who is killed by her dedication to art. Her 2005 comeback, Aerial, resolved that tension by intertwining creativity, family life and nature in a more holistic way. Her music « comes from a quiet place, » she said.

    Her influence, however, has been constant, with disciples including Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Lady Gaga, Bat for Lashes, Goldfrapp, Florence Welch, Joanna Newsom, Tricky and Outkast. Some artists open the door to a new room in the house of music; Bush is one of a handful whose imagination revealed the existence of a whole new wing. For her, anything can be the germ of a song (inspirations on Aerial include laundry, bird song and the number Pi) and any perspective is legitimate: a child, a foetus, a cockney bank robber, a Himalayan explorer, a man watching his wife give birth, a ghost. She is an adventurer and an alchemist; a perfectionist and a dreamer.

    For a genius, Bush is unusually nice, with no reputation for tormented or difficult behaviour. The closest she has ever sailed to controversy is when she praised Theresa May, as a female prime minister, in 2016. From Joni and Aretha to Adele and Mary J Blige, great female artists are often associated with the expression of emotional pain – heartbreak is their engine – but Bush has a rare talent for joy, empathy and wonder.Bush's music has featured in TV series Stranger Things, The Handmaid's Tale and Extras, among others (Credit: Netflix)

    Bush’s music has featured in TV series Stranger Things, The Handmaid’s Tale and Extras, among others (Credit: Netflix)

    In interviews she is lovely, if deftly evasive, unable or unwilling to put into words why and how she makes music of such magical intensity. The more that she denies that there is any mystery to unravel, the more fascinating she becomes. She told me that she loves it when listeners mishear or misread her songs as long as they take something positive from the experience: « Whether you’ve understood what the artist felt is basically irrelevant. It’s how it makes you feel. »

    Running Up That Hill literally asks, « Do you want to feel how it feels? » – and tens of millions do. When I checked Spotify recently, it had clocked up 188m streams in its lifetime; by Monday the figure was 213m. Without lifting a finger, Bush is once again a pop sensation. So what more can we ask of her when the songs say so much?

  • ESA D.G. cannot see a return to cooperation with Russia

    ESA D.G. cannot see a return to cooperation with Russia

    Article by Eric Berger in Ars Technica on 9/6/2022.

    « We cannot work with a partner who is completely trampling on those values. »

    Josef Aschbacher had been director general of the European Space Agency for less than a year when Russia invaded Ukraine.
    Josef Aschbacher had been director general of the European Space Agency for less than a year when Russia invaded Ukraine.NASA

    Half a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the implications of this war for the European space industry have been profound. Most notably, Europe has severed all connections with the Russian launch industry and canceled a joint mission to place a European rover on Mars with the help of a Russian rocket and lander.

    The process of unwinding the deep links between Europe’s space program and the Russian space industry have fallen largely on the shoulders of an Austrian space researcher named Josef Aschbacher, who had been director general of the European Space Agency for less than a year when Russia’s tanks began rolling into Ukraine.

    Like most Europeans, he was aghast at what he saw. « Look at what is happening on the ground, » he said in an interview with Ars. « I’m really disgusted by the invasion of Ukraine. We see it every single day. What is happening there is not meeting our European values, and we cannot work with a partner who is completely trampling on those values. »

    Soon after the Russian invasion, relations between the two space programs broke down. Russian workers at Europe’s main spaceport in French Guiana walked off the job and returned home. A launch of OneWeb satellites on a Russian rocket, brokered by the European Space Agency, was scrubbed. Those 36 satellites remain stranded in Kazakhstan, and OneWeb recently took a $229 million writedown.

    Prior to the war, Europe had relied on Russia’s Soyuz rocket for its medium-lift needs—for payloads larger than its Vega rocket could accommodate but not large enough to necessitate the more expensive Ariane 5 rocket. That partnership had been expected to continue even as Europe brought a new generation of rockets, the Vega-C and Ariane 6, into service. But no longer.

    « I cannot see a rebuild of the cooperation we had in the past, » Aschbacher said. « I am speaking here on behalf of my member states. They all have very much the same opinion. And this is really something where the behavior of ESA will reflect the geopolitical situation of the member states on this point. And I think this is very clear. »

    This schism has left Europe with a short-term challenge, however. It had planned five Soyuz launches in 2022 and 2023 to carry European payloads into orbit. Because the new Ariane 6 rocket will not be ready to enter service until at least next year, Aschbacher has had to look for alternatives, including the continent’s rival for commercial launches, US-based SpaceX.

    « You have to see it from a very unemotional and business point of view, » he said. « We had five launches foreseen on Soyuz, and they have been scrapped. Right now I’m in contact with different operators. SpaceX is one of them, but also Japan, India, and basically we want to see whether in principle, our satellites can be launched on their rockets. Sometimes there’s a lot of emotion put into this. This is, for me, a very practical management decision. There is no financial offer on the table. We have just technically explored whether this is possible, but the exercise is still ongoing. »

    Ironically, it was an act by NASA that fostered deeper cooperation between the European Space Agency and Russia. In 2012, to help pay for cost overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA canceled its participation in the ExoMars mission that sought to land a European spacecraft on Mars for the first time. In the wake of this decision, Europe turned to Russia, which became a full partner in providing a Proton rocket and a landing module.

    Now, a decade later, ESA and NASA are discussing working together on ExoMars again. Given the political climate today, NASA has been far more amenable to helping get Europe’s rover, named Rosalind Franklin, safely down on the surface of Mars.

    Aschbacher was in Florida earlier this month for the Artemis I launch. Despite the tensions with Russia, he was bullish about the future and Europe’s partnership with NASA, which seems stronger than ever. As part of NASA’s Artemis program, Europe is building a Service Module for the Orion spacecraft, which is critical to providing power and propulsion to the capsule where astronauts reside. This partnership will likely extend to the surface of the Moon and should see European astronauts landing on the Moon later this decade.

    « Being a critical element of this mission is important, » Aschbacher said. « The European Service Module is on the critical path, and without it, astronauts cannot be brought to the Moon and back. That’s huge. During Apollo, there was only the US and only the USSR. Europe was watching from the sides, and of course being fascinated, but not involved directly. Today is historic for America, of course, but it is even more historic for Europe because we are a part of it. »

  • Humanity in radio

    Humanity in radio

    Post by Jeff Barrington on History of Independent Local Radio FB page posted 6/6/2022 – and exchanges on the subject.

    Is the automation of radio a good or bad thing? In my view it was always an inevitability. When Capital Radio installed the cartridge carousel system (seen on left) in the 70’s there was outrage from some and pressure from the union so it was never used.

    I am definitely old fashioned, I like driving a car and soon that will be done for us. Machines are doing more and more of what humans used to do and soon broadcasters could be replaced altogether by computers.

    The AI examples of DJ’s I heard the other day were impossible to differentiate from ‘real’ humans. Voice Tracking may be time saving, but it is also a route to perfectionism at a cost of humanness in my view. At some point the Turing Test will be completed and it will be impossible to tell the difference between a human and a computer.

    What a novelty it will then be to have a human being playing records and carts in a studio and human imperfections will have a new value…..

    Cartridges in a 70’s studio. Photo Paul Easton
    Gavin McCoy
     
    Here’s a little more about the Schafer systems installed at both (offshore) Britain Radio and London’s Capital Radio https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schafer_automation_system
  • Monarchy – Great BBC résumé

    Monarchy – Great BBC résumé

    Article by Jonny Dyamond, Royal Correspondent BBC, published 5/6/2022

    « What a strange thing is monarchy, » a noted diplomat once wrote, as the crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace a long time ago.

    And what long strange things are jubilees: barely rational, every-now-and-then excuses for a national party, suffused with military and religious ritual, and bound together by that most irrational of institutions, the Royal Family.

    Thursday saw a huge outpouring of love and larks around Buckingham Palace. When the crowd – penned 10-deep all along the Mall for hours – surged into the area in front of the palace, you could have parcelled up the joy and sold it around the world.

    They saw the Queen they had waited so long for. She, from that balcony again, saw the crowds, and could not have missed their love and respect.

    Once, also a long time ago – on the day the World War Two came to an end in Europe – she’d slipped out the side door with her sister, to party in the streets as the nation exploded with pleasure.

    This time she would stay on the balcony, and chat with her naughty great-grandson, and smile and wave.

    Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth II, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge watch a flypast from the balcony of Buckingham Palace as Prince Louis of Cambridge screams and holds his hands over his ears

    But the Royal Standard would not remain above the palace long. The Queen returned to Windsor. And she would not be present the next day at the Service of Thanksgiving in St Paul’s cathedral in London.

    The appearance instead of royalty-across-the-water, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, restored soap-opera intrigue to the day. Could they have sat any further from their immediate family?

    Who hasn’t struggled with where to place couples who really don’t get on? It was a touching reminder that though they have more military uniforms and palaces, the Royal Family’s problems are sometimes as banal as our own.

    The weekend was about the Queen, but everywhere was Prince Charles, who now serves as her representative at every public state occasion.

    And so it was also about his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. There was no discernible reason for her to stand silently next to Prince Charles as he paid tribute to his mother’s service on Saturday night. But as Harry and Meghan found out, who’s where is what a lot of royalty is about.

    Earlier that evening, Prince William called on people to save a world still consuming more than it could bear, grounding his urgent tone in three generations of royal environmental concern.

    Every big royal event is a drawing of a line, an ending of sorts – and with it a new beginning. It’s part of the magic – or strangeness – of an institution that, like Dr Who, gets to regenerate.

    This was also, alongside the partying and pageantry, a farewell to the Queen who after seven decades is withdrawing from public life.

    There’s no real way of judging the success of the weekend. A good proportion of Britons couldn’t care less about the monarchy.

    But over the weekend millions, perhaps tens of millions, have taken the opportunity to have a good time, after a couple of years of really bad times, helped by that strange thing from a long time ago, monarchy.

    And ever-dutiful, she performed another service to her people. It is good to know, at long last, what’s in that handbag.

  • Years later, same people

    Years later, same people


    In 1964, Ringo Starr snapped a photo of some high school students who had skipped class to see the Beatles during their first trip to the US. 50 years later, the group reunited and recreated the photo.

    Source Facebook author unknown.

  • Musk and Twitter : « freedom of speech? »

    Musk and Twitter : « freedom of speech? »

    Why Elon Musk has blocked me on Twitter (and now owns the joint)

    Article by Robert Reich on his site « https://robertreich.substack.com » published 11/4/2022

    Traduction en Français ci-dessous

    We begin another gut-wrenching week watching Putin’s barbarity in Ukraine. The Russian people know little about it because Putin has blocked their access to the truth, substituting propaganda and lies.

    Years ago, pundits assumed the Internet would open a new era of democracy, giving everyone access to the truth. But dictators like Putin and demagogues like Trump have demonstrated how naïve that assumption was.

    At least America responded to Trump’s lies. Trump had 88 million Twitter followers before Twitter took him off its platform — just two days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol which he provoked, in part, with his tweets. (Trump’s social media accounts were also suspended on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch, and TikTok.)

    Twitter’s move was necessary to protect American democracy. But Elon Musk – the richest man in the world, with 80 million Twitter followers – wasn’t pleased about it. Musk tweeted that U.S. tech companies shouldn’t be acting « as the de facto arbiter of free speech. »

    I would have posted that tweet for you right here, if I had access to it. But ever since I posted a tweet two years ago criticizing Musk for how he treated his Tesla workers, he has blocked me — so I can’t view or reply to his tweets to his 80 million Twitter followers. Seems like an odd move for someone who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist.”

    Musk advocates free speech but in reality it’s just about power.

    It’s power that compelled Musk to buy $2.64 billion of Twitter stock, making him the largest shareholder, with a 9.2 percent stake in the company. Last week, Twitter announced that Musk will be joining the company’s board of directors. After the announcement, Musk promised « to make significant improvements » to the platform. (He even changed his investment designation to clarify that he’s not simply a « passive » investor but one who intends to impact the way the company is run.) Yesterday evening, though, it was announced that — contrary to last week’s announcement — Musk would not be joining Twitter’s board. No reason was given but this is typical for Musk.

    It’s likely part of a bargaining Kabuki dance. Musk wouldn’t have plopped down $2.64 billion for nothing. He probably wants more control. If he is not on Twitter’s board, Musk is not bound by the “standstill” agreement in which he pledged to buy no more than 14.9 percent of Twitter’s stock. Musk now has no restrictions on how much of Twitter’s stock he can buy. I predict he buys more and takes an even more active role trying to influence the platform.

    By the way, what “improvements” does Musk have in mind for Twitter? Would Musk pressure Twitter to let Trump back on? I fear he would.

    Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an “uncontrolled” Internet. That vision is dangerous rubbish. There’s no such animal, and won’t be. Someone has to decide on the algorithms in every platform — how they’re designed, how they evolve, what they reveal and what they hide. Musk has enough power and money to quietly give himself this sort of control over Twitter. He talks about freedom of speech but his real power is freedom of reach – reaching 80 million twitter followers without accountability to anyone (including critics like me) — and enough money to buy himself a seat on Twitter’s board.

    Musk has never believed that power comes with responsibility. He’s been unperturbed when his tweets cause real suffering. During his long and storied history with Twitter he has threatened journalists and stolen memes. In March 2020 he tweeted that children were “essentially immune” to Covid. He’s pushed cryptocurrencies that he’s invested in. When a college student started a Twitter account to track Musk’s private plane, Musk tried and failed to buy him off, before blocking him.  

    The Securities and Exchange Commission went after Musk after he tweeted that he had funding to take Tesla private, a clear violation of the law. Musk paid a fine and agreed to let lawyers vet future sensitive tweets, but he has tried to reverse this requirement. He has also been openly contemptuous of the SEC, tweeting at one point that the “E” stands for “Elon’s.” (You can guess what the “S” and “C” stand for.) By the way, how does the SEC go after Musk’s ability to tweet now that he owns Twitter?

    Billionaires like Musk have shown time and again they consider themselves above the law. And to a large extent, they are. Musk has enough wealth that legal penalties are no more than slaps on his wrist, and enough power to control one of the most important ways the public now receives news. Think about it: After years of posting tweets that skirt the law, Musk was given a seat on Twitter’s board (and is probably now negotiating for even more clout).

    Musk says he wants to “free” the Internet. But what he really aims to do is make it even less accountable than it is now, when it’s often impossible to discover who is making the decisions about how algorithms are designed, who’s filling social media with lies, who’s poisoning our minds with pseudo-science and propaganda, and who’s deciding which versions of events go viral and which stay under wraps.

    Make no mistake: This is not about freedom. It’s about power. In Musk’s vision of Twitter and the Internet, he’d be the wizard behind the curtain — projecting on the world’s screen a fake image of a brave new world empowering everyone. In reality, that world would be dominated by the richest and most powerful people in the world, who wouldn’t be accountable to anyone for facts, truth, science, or the common good. That’s Musk’s dream. And Trump’s. And Putin’s. And the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue, and modern-day robber baron on earth. For the rest of us, it would be a brave new nightmare.

    Nous commençons une autre semaine déchirante en observant la barbarie de Poutine en Ukraine. Le peuple russe en sait peu car Poutine lui a bloqué l’accès à la vérité, lui substituant propagande et mensonges.

    Il y a des années, les experts pensaient qu’Internet ouvrirait une nouvelle ère de démocratie, donnant à chacun accès à la vérité. Mais des dictateurs comme Poutine et des démagogues comme Trump ont démontré à quel point cette hypothèse était naïve.

    Au moins, l’Amérique a répondu aux mensonges de Trump. Trump comptait 88 millions d’abonnés sur Twitter avant que Twitter ne le retire de sa plate-forme – deux jours seulement après l’attaque contre le Capitole américain qu’il a provoquée, en partie, avec ses tweets. (Les comptes de médias sociaux de Trump ont également été suspendus sur Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch et TikTok.)

    La décision de Twitter était nécessaire pour protéger la démocratie américaine. Mais Elon Musk – l’homme le plus riche du monde, avec 80 millions de followers sur Twitter – n’en était pas content. Musk a tweeté que les entreprises technologiques américaines ne devraient pas agir « en tant qu’arbitre de facto de la liberté d’expression ».

    J’aurais posté ce tweet pour vous ici, si j’y avais accès. Mais depuis que j’ai publié un tweet il y a deux ans critiquant Musk pour la façon dont il traitait ses employés de Tesla, il m’a bloqué – donc je ne peux pas voir ou répondre à ses tweets à ses 80 millions de followers sur Twitter. Cela semble être une décision étrange pour quelqu’un qui se décrit comme un « absolutiste de la liberté d’expression ».

    Musk prône la liberté d’expression, mais en réalité, il ne s’agit que de pouvoir.

    C’est le pouvoir qui a contraint Musk à acheter 2,64 milliards de dollars d’actions Twitter, faisant de lui le principal actionnaire, avec une participation de 9,2 % dans la société. La semaine dernière, Twitter a annoncé que Musk rejoindrait le conseil d’administration de l’entreprise. Après l’annonce, Musk a promis « d’apporter des améliorations significatives » à la plateforme. (Il a même changé sa désignation d’investissement pour préciser qu’il n’est pas simplement un investisseur « passif », mais un investisseur qui a l’intention d’avoir un impact sur la gestion de l’entreprise.) Hier soir, cependant, il a été annoncé que – contrairement à l’annonce de la semaine dernière – Musk serait ne pas rejoindre le conseil d’administration de Twitter. Aucune raison n’a été donnée, mais c’est typique pour Musk.

    Cela fait probablement partie d’une danse Kabuki de négociation. Musk n’aurait pas déboursé 2,64 milliards de dollars pour rien. Il veut probablement plus de contrôle. S’il ne fait pas partie du conseil d’administration de Twitter, Musk n’est pas lié par l’accord de « statu quo » dans lequel il s’est engagé à ne pas acheter plus de 14,9% des actions de Twitter. Musk n’a désormais aucune restriction sur la quantité d’actions de Twitter qu’il peut acheter. Je prédis qu’il achète plus et joue un rôle encore plus actif en essayant d’influencer la plate-forme.

    Au fait, quelles « améliorations » Musk a-t-il en tête pour Twitter ? Musk ferait-il pression sur Twitter pour qu’il laisse Trump revenir ? J’ai peur qu’il le fasse.

    Musk a longtemps prôné une vision libertaire d’un Internet « incontrôlé ». Cette vision est une poubelle dangereuse. Un tel animal n’existe pas et n’existera pas. Quelqu’un doit décider des algorithmes de chaque plate-forme – comment ils sont conçus, comment ils évoluent, ce qu’ils révèlent et ce qu’ils cachent. Musk a assez de pouvoir et d’argent pour se donner tranquillement ce genre de contrôle sur Twitter. Il parle de liberté d’expression, mais son véritable pouvoir est la liberté d’accès – atteindre 80 millions d’abonnés sur Twitter sans rendre de comptes à personne (y compris les critiques comme moi) – et assez d’argent pour s’acheter un siège au conseil d’administration de Twitter.

    Musk n’a jamais cru que le pouvoir rime avec responsabilité. Il n’a pas été dérangé lorsque ses tweets lui ont causé de réelles souffrances. Au cours de sa longue et riche histoire avec Twitter, il a menacé des journalistes et volé des mèmes. En mars 2020, il a tweeté que les enfants étaient «essentiellement immunisés» contre Covid. Il a poussé les crypto-monnaies dans lesquelles il a investi. Lorsqu’un étudiant a ouvert un compte Twitter pour suivre l’avion privé de Musk, Musk a essayé et échoué de l’acheter, avant de le bloquer.

    La Securities and Exchange Commission a poursuivi Musk après qu’il ait tweeté qu’il avait des fonds pour privatiser Tesla, une violation flagrante de la loi. Musk a payé une amende et a accepté de laisser les avocats vérifier les futurs tweets sensibles, mais il a tenté de renverser cette exigence. Il a également ouvertement méprisé la SEC, tweetant à un moment donné que le « E » signifie « Elon’s ». (Vous pouvez deviner ce que signifient le « S » et le « C ».) Au fait, comment la SEC s’attaque-t-elle à la capacité de Musk à tweeter maintenant qu’il possède Twitter ?

    Des milliardaires comme Musk ont montré à maintes reprises qu’ils se considéraient au-dessus des lois. Et dans une large mesure, ils le sont. Musk a suffisamment de richesses pour que les sanctions légales ne soient que des tapes sur ses poignets, et suffisamment de pouvoir pour contrôler l’un des moyens les plus importants dont le public reçoit désormais les informations. Pensez-y : après des années à publier des tweets qui contournent la loi, Musk a obtenu un siège au conseil d’administration de Twitter (et est probablement en train de négocier pour encore plus de poids).

    Musk dit qu’il veut « libérer » Internet. Mais ce qu’il vise vraiment, c’est de le rendre encore moins responsable qu’il ne l’est maintenant, alors qu’il est souvent impossible de découvrir qui prend les décisions sur la conception des algorithmes, qui est rempli les médias sociaux avec des mensonges, qui empoisonne nos esprits avec de la pseudo-science et de la propagande, et qui décide quelles versions des événements deviennent virales et lesquelles restent secrètes.

    Ne vous méprenez pas : il ne s’agit pas de liberté. C’est une question de pouvoir. Dans la vision de Musk de Twitter et d’Internet, il serait l’assistant derrière le rideau – projetant sur l’écran du monde une fausse image d’un nouveau monde courageux autorisant tout le monde. En réalité, ce monde serait dominé par les personnes les plus riches et les plus puissantes du monde, qui ne seraient responsables devant personne des faits, de la vérité, de la science ou du bien commun. C’est le rêve de Musk. Et celui de Trump. Et celle de Poutine. Et le rêve de chaque dictateur, homme fort, démagogue et baron voleur des temps modernes sur terre. Pour le reste d’entre nous, ce serait un nouveau cauchemar courageux.

  • Love and memory

    Love and memory

    Ritika Jyala. Excerpts from « The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire »

    He asked me when I fell in love with him and I knew it sounded dramatic to say the moment I saw him, so I told him this story of my grandma who had Alzheimer’s.

    She had forgotten her name and the words for fruit and food. She had forgoten her address and how to use the washroom, all her life lost to the disease. The only thing she remembered was her son’s name and when that began to fade, the one thing she always remembered was that she loved him, even in illness, even in insanity.

    She saw this 6 foot 2 man with a scrubby beard and she didn’t know him but she said she trusted him, she asked him to hold her hand when she died. When does memory end and love begin? All I know is : she loved him before she remembered him.

    Young poet of Hindou (?) origin, present on many social media. Not found a complete biography.

    There’ll be a moment when you realise you’re 27 when yesterday you were just 17; and you wouldn’t be able to tell how a decade passed away and your life got divided into before and afters.

    The fury of youth will subdue and nothing will really change but everything will feel different when you look at old photographs and blurry videos taken on cheap mobile phones. Scents will remind you of childhood and certain friends you don’t talk to anymore, hangouts will become reunions and mom’s burnt pie will become the best food you ever had.

    And I know on some days you won’t be able to show anything of those 10 years but I hope you remember to breathe, and let go of the knot in your chest. I hope you go out in the sun and live a little, because tomorrow is 37.

  • Protégé : 20220409-Tout Trescols Photos

    Protégé : 20220409-Tout Trescols Photos

    Cette publication est protégée par un mot de passe. Pour la voir, veuillez saisir votre mot de passe ci-dessous :

  • Leçon de l’eau

    Leçon de l’eau

    « L’eau ne résiste pas. L’eau coule. Quand tu y plonges ta main, tu ne ressens qu’une caresse. L’eau n’est pas un mur solide, elle ne vous arrêtera pas. Mais l’eau va toujours là où elle veut aller et rien ne lui résiste finalement. L’eau est patiente. Les gouttes d’eau usent une pierre. Souviens-toi de ça, mon enfant. Rappelez-vous que vous êtes à moitié eau. Si tu ne peux pas traverser un obstacle, contourne-le, l’eau le fait…“

    Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad – Margaret Eleanor « Peggy » Atwood, née le 18 novembre 1939 à Ottawa, est une romancière, poète et critique littéraire canadienne

    “Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge Your hand into it, all You feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop You. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember You are half water. If You can’t go through an obstacle, go around it, Water does…”

    Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

  • IRN news editors

    IRN news editors

    Mes années à LBC / IRN à Gough Square, Londres? Posts sur Facebook by Mark Easton – « Following on from my previous post (down below). Here’s another IRN News Editors’ conference – possibly Sheffield 1977 ». Collègues dont je me souviens bien en rouge.

    I’ve managed to identify – and confirm – everybody in this photo with the exception of two.
    L-R: Peter Thornton (IRN), Unknown (1), Phillip Bacon (LBC), David Addis (Radio 210), Bryan Wolfe (Capital), Trevor Curtiss (Swansea Sound), Ian Rufus (Hallam), Alan Brook (Pennine), Malcolm Carroll (Plymouth Sound), Ron Onions (LBC/IRN), Colin Livesey (IBA), Mike Best (Tees), Roy Saatchi (City), Unknown (2), David Maker (City), Brian Sheppard (BRMB), Maureen Hunter (Hallam), Tom Steele (Forth).

    Can anyone identify the two remaining ‘Unknown’ people (marked)? Unknown on left is Kevin Rowntree, News Director, Metro Radio .