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Attempts to call Jose Calida 'Joe' and 'Demonyo' on Wikipedia do not pass muster against established Wikipedia editors

Published 3:05 PM, May 08, 2020

Updated 3:40 PM, May 08, 2020

Attempts to make alterations to the Wikipedia page of Solicitor General Jose Calida appeared to fail this week, following his successful push to have the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) order media giant ABS-CBN to cease operations. Lawmakers, media, and ordinary citizens alike have called the network's closure unconstitutional and an attack on press freedom.

The Wikipedia edit history for Jose Calida's page points to attempts to add a nickname to his profile there.

At least 3 different IP addresses were used to try to make anonymous mobile edits pertaining to Calida's nickname.

On May 5, attempts were made to add "Joe" to his name, but these were reverted, also by what appears to be a separate anonymous mobile edit

On May 6 and 7, attempts were then made to call him Jose "Demonyo" (Demon) Calida instead.

DEFACEMENT ATTEMPT. Wikipedia defacers try to nickname Jose Calida as 'Demonyo.' Screenshot from Wikipedia edit history.

However, these attempts were also quickly reverted by editors named Jollibinay and PlumeKnight. Plumeknight wrote down with the most recent edit on the history that "a derogatory word is added to the name of this government official."

Jose Calida's Wikipedia page is currently nickname-free as of May 8 Rappler.com.

Inside Track is Rappler's intelligencer on people, events, places and everything of public interest. It's a take-off from Newsbreak's Inside Track section. Contributions are most welcome. Just send bits of information to investigative@rappler.com.

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Jose Calida given 'demonic' nickname on Wikipedia, but it doesn't stick - Rappler

Screenshot: Catch Me If You Can, based on the life of Frank Abagnale (YouTube)Wiki WormholeWe explore some of Wikipedias oddities in our 5,664,405-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

We explore some of Wikipedias oddities in our 6,070,641-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

This weeks entry: List of Impostors

What its about: From Mrs. Doubtfire to Don Draper to Nicolas Cage in Face/Off, pop culture is full of people who are not what they seem. Disconcertingly, there are also a lot of real-life Armin Tamzarians out there, pretending to be someone theyre not.

Biggest controversy: At least in the 21st century, the most controversial impostors are ones who lie about their ethnicity. From Rachel Dolezal, the misguided white lady who ran a branch of the NAACP while claiming to be black, to Iron Eyes Cody, the crying Native American in the famous anti-littering ads of the 1970s, who turned out to be Italian-American. Other fake Native Americans include Grey Owl (Englishman Archibald Belaney); The Education Of Little Tree author Asa Earl Carter; Cherokee writer Jamake Highwater (actually Jewish journalist Jackie Marks); and Red Thunder Cloud (born Cromwell West, a black man who falsely claimed to be Catawba, but genuinely learned the Catawba language and was its last fluent speaker). There was also Helen Darville, who drew on nonexistent Ukrainian heritage for her novel The Hand That Signed The Paper, about a Ukrainian family that collaborates with the Nazis. (She was in fact Australian.)

Strangest fact: Theres a whole separate category on papal impostors. Antipopes were rival claimants to the Holy See, usually with the support of some faction within the Church, or of either the Roman or Byzantine Emperor. One of the earliest antipopes, Hippolytus, held that distinction for nearly 18 years in the early 200s, opposing the reign of three separate legitimate popes, and was later canonized. Clement III had the support of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, and as such was antipope for over 20 years, concurrent with four different popes in Rome. However, some antipopes reigns were as short as one day. In 1124, Celestine II won a contested papal election, but violence broke out during his investment ceremony, and he resigned before officially being enthroned to avoid further violence, thus setting a record for shortest papacy at negative several hours.

Thing we were happiest to learn: If youre a fan of royal impostors, Russias got you covered. Nicholas II Romanov, the last Tsar, abdicated during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and was killed the following year, along with his wife and five children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei. But some Russians refused to believe the children were dead, and a wave of impostors cropped up to confirm those beliefs. Marga Boodts claimed to be Olga; Maddess Aiort and Michelle Anches both claimed to be Tatiana; Granny Alina claimed to be Maria; Heino Tammet and CIA agent Michael Goleniewski both claimed to be Alexei; and Anna Anderson not only claimed to be Anastasia, she tried to prove it in court, in a legal battle that ran all the way until 1970, when a judge finally decided she hadnt presented enough evidence. (Long after her death in 1984, DNA evidence proved she wasnt related to the Romanovs.) Anatoly Ionov claimed to be Anastasias son (conceived after she escaped execution and went into hiding, naturally). And Larissa Tudor made no claims whatsoever, but looked so much like Tatiana that rumors dogged her throughout her whole life that she was in fact the Tsarina under an assumed name.

Another fake Anastasia surfaced as recently as 1990. Then-90-year-old Natalya Bilikhodze claimed to be the Grand Duchess, in hiding for 70 years, and at age 100, traveled to Russia to lay claim to the Romanov fortune, which almost certainly no longer existed.

There was also epan Mali (Stephen The Little), who pretended to be Peter III, who was Tsar for six months in 1762 before his untimely death. Mali turned up five years later in Montenegro, claiming to be Peter, and his claim was so good he ended up ruling Montenegro until his death in 1773.

Weve also previously covered not one, but three False Dmitrys, who each pretended to be the son of Ivan The Terrible over the span of a dozen years, each with some amount of short-term success.

Thing we were unhappiest to learn: People are apparently pretty easily fooled. Moviegoers know of scam artists like Frank Abagnale and David Hampton, whose stories were told in Catch Me If You Can and Six Degrees Of Separation, respectively. But theyre just part of a larger tradition of con men (and women) pretending to be someone else for personal gain. Michael The Great Impostor Sabo had over 100 known aliases in the FBI database. Cassie Chadwick passed herself off as the daughter of Andrew Carnegie. Gerald Barnbaum stole a doctors identity and used it for 20 years. And James Reavis used his real name, but created a complex, fictitious history, to back up his claim as the rightful owner of Arizona.

Also noteworthy: Theres also an unfortunate category of military impostors, who lied about their service. Former Fox News analyst Joseph A. Cafasso dined out on his experiences with Special Forces during the Vietnam War, which turned out to be entirely fabricatedhe served in the Army for just 44 days in 1976. Likewise, historian Joseph Ellis claimed to have served in Vietnam; he in fact taught at West Point during the war. British historian Jack Livesey claimed 20 years of service with the Parachute Regiment; he had at least served in the army, but only for three years, as a cook. And Erich von Stroheim, whose Hollywood career stretched from D.W. Griffiths 1912 film An Unseen Enemy, to directing a string of films in the 20s including Foolish Wives, Greed, The Merry Widow, to a supporting role in 1950s Sunset Boulevard, claimed to be an Austrian aristocrat who had served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In fact, he was the lower-middle-class son of a hatmaker and a lifelong civilian.

Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: Related to the impostor is the charlatan, who claims not to be someone else, but to have some area of expertise (usually medical) that they do not in fact possess. Notable charlatans Wikipedia mentions include Bernie Madoff, who ran an $18 billion Ponzi scheme; Charles Ponzi, inventor of said scheme; anti-vaxxer Joseph Mercola; and Grigori Rasputin, because this list just cant stay away from the Romanovs.

Further Down the Wormhole: That Fox News analyst may not have been in the Special Forces, but if he had, he may have been involved in an invasion of Americas most recurring enemy: The Peoples Republic of Pineland. Well look at repeated invasions of this fictional country in central North Carolina next week. Stay safe, everybody!

Original post:
These Wikipedia subjects are not who they claim to be - The A.V. Club

By: Phyllis Chesler

Occupation is a word that dominates most debate about Israel, but the truth is that pro-Palestinian propagandists are occupying Google and Wikipedia to keep debunked narratives alive.

This was recently confirmed when I attended a webinar featuring a physician who worked in Israels undercover Duvdevan unit, which is the basis for the popular series Fauda. She talked about her work in Gaza and on the West Bank during Operation Protective Edge.

I thought nothing would surprise me. But many things did, she said. The physician told the story of trying to save the life of a 2-year-old West Bank boy accidentally run over by his father. They rushed the boy to an Israeli hospital, providing treatment along the way.

Despite all our efforts, she remembered, the boy died. When I asked this father if he would donate any of his sons organs to another child, he said: Only to an Arab Palestinian child, not to an Israeli Jewish child.

This was a father who had just seen the enormous effort that Israeli Jews had undertaken to save his sons life; it was a very dramatic and emotional moment. Old prejudices might have died on the spot, at least momentarily. Instead, this mans Jew and Israel hatred kicked in immediately. The doctor was stunned by the sudden appearance of such political realities.

This is the kind of psychological enemy Israel is up against. And then there are the Palestinian terrorist leaders, who indoctrinate their own people and use them to carry out terrorist attacks against civilian Israelis. This fact is minimized by Western media and global leaders.

Given the worlds diabolical double standards, Israeli soldiers stand accused of atrocities they did not commit, while Palestinian terroristsHamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Liberation Organization, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinewho torture, kidnap, hijack, use human shields, including children, are still viewed as innocent victims.

Contrary to public opinion, the IDF is exceptionally ethical, and military leaders from other countries have attested to it. Israeli soldiers are haunted by any accidental civilian deaths and grief-stricken by the deaths of their own comrades. Unlike the Palestinian terrorist leaders, they do not glorify death and they mourn each life lost in necessary battle. This must be said, not once, but over and over again to counter the monstrous propaganda against Israel.

Yet, poisoned anti-Israel propaganda continues to overwhelm all platforms. For example, remember Israels alleged 2002 massacre of civilians in Jenin? It generated international headlines.

But it never happened.

For nearly two years, Arab Palestinian terrorists had been attacking Israeli civilians non-stop. The death toll and the numbers wounded were very high. In March 2002, terrorists murdered 100 Israeli civilians. On March 27, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside the Park Hotel in Netanya, just as Jews were seated for a Passover Seder. Thirty people were killed, mostly elderly. Another 140 people were injured.

This was a final straw. Reservists voluntarily flew home to Israel from all over the world. Many of the suicide bombers attacking Israeli civilians had come from Jenin.

The IDF sent soldiers into Jenin. They went from one booby-trapped house to another, all while under fire, just so that Israel would not be accused of bombing civilians from the air or committing a massacre.

Reports from the Palestinian side described a wanton Israeli killing fest, leaving hundreds of innocents dead. Some said thousands were killed. The entire town, they claimed, was destroyed.

In truth, 56 Palestinians died, most of whom were armed. Israel lost 23 soldiers. Despite that, if someone wanted to look into it now and Googled Jenin, here is what theyd find.

The first five pages about Jenin feature 27 anti-Israeli articles promoting a false history and only seven articles that tell the truth about what really happened.

Search Google for How many Palestinians died in Jenin, 2002, and heres the first thing you see today:

It was a lie then. Its a lie today.

News coverage, two excellent filmsPierre Rehovs The Road to Jenin and Gil Mezumens Jenin Diary: The Inside Storyand a very moving book, Brett Goldbergs A Psalm in Jenin, easily rebut Googles pernicious history-by-algorithm and remind us what really happened.

Heres whats important. The propaganda about the non-massacre in Jenin is not confined to 2002-2003. The falsehoods continued throughout the 21st century.

As of 2017-2018, Islamist propagandists Yvonne Ridley and Ilan Pappe continued to engage in this blood libel.

Just last week, Ridley referred to the Jenin massacre-that-wasnt as one of its biggest war crimes of this century.

There are more than half a million dead Syrians that might take issue with that.

But propaganda like Ridleys inevitably leads to real massacres and lynchingsof Jews and Israelis.

Part of the problem is Googles linkage to Wikipedia, which is fully dedicated to an anti-Israel and pro-Palestine position. For example, look at what pops up when you search the phrase Palestinian terrorist groups today:

The first thing you see is a Wikipedia summary of Palestinian political violence.

Palestinian political violence refers to acts of violence or terror motivated by Palestinian nationalism. These political objectives include self-determination in and sovereignty over Palestine, the liberation of Palestine and recognition of a Palestinian state, either in place of both Israel and the Palestinian territories, or solely in the Palestinian territories. Periodically directed toward more limited goals such as the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, another key aim is to advance the Palestinian right of return.

Like the so-called massacre at Jenin, the al-Dura Affair concerns the alleged cold-blooded murder in 2000 of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy by Israeli soldiers at the Netzarim junction. Yasser Arafat had again rejected peace and launched his long-planned intifada against Israel. The Muslim world embraced al-Dura as a martyr and ran his photo over and over again in the media, on t-shirts, mugs, posters, etc. They still do.

Journalist Nidra Poller describes the al-Dura matter as a long range ballistic myth. For many years, the entire world believed Israeli soldiers deliberately murdered a child. Even the IDF quickly ventured an apology, which it later retractedall due to the heroic and persistent work undertaken by Poller and by Richard Landes, Esther Schapira, Philippe Karsenty, and Nahum Shahaf, an Israeli physicist.

Over time, it became clear that if al-Dura was shot at all, it was not by Israelis.

Although Google continues to automatically link to Wikipedia, it eventually included the fact that a controversy about what happened actually exists. However, the controversy section appears at the very end of the Wikipedia entry, long after the false narrative has had its way with most readers.

The 2019 Gaza protests on the Israeli border provide the latest example of Palestinians instigating violence, only to grossly exaggerate the Israeli response.

The anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace joined a chorus of voices claiming that Israel was gunning down peaceful protesters. Israeli snipers, it claimed, were deliberately targeting children and persons with disabilities, among others.

It turns out the overwhelming majority of casualties were members or affiliates of terrorist organizations. About half of those killed were Hamas members and affiliates.

We learned this from Hamas officials.

But search Gaza border protests, and these facts are nowhere to be seen.

It is clear that this deadly disinformation campaign will never end, but those who direct traffic on the internet should not aid and abet this crime.

(Investigative Project on Terrorism)

Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the author of 18 books, including A Politically Incorrect Feminist, Islamic Gender Apartheid, and A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing and An American Bride in Kabul. She is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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Palestinian Lies Never Die; Wikipedia and Google Keep Them Alive - The Jewish Voice

Adam Schlesinger, who died of COVID-19 complications on April 1, is best known from Fountains of Wayne, but that was just one of his adventures in the music industry. Another was Scratchie Records, the label he cofounded with some other alt-rock stars, including two Smashing Pumpkins, James Iha and Darcy Wretzky.

Dan Bryk, an idiosyncratic Toronto singer-songwriter who would eventually settle in Durham, was signed to Scratchie. In 1999, he got a call from Schlesinger, who was working on the soundtrack for Loser, a teen comedy starring Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari.

According to Bryk, the obvious theme song, Becks Loser, had fallen through, and Schlesinger wanted to know if he had anything in his pocket. Naturally, because this is Dan Bryk, he sure did have a song with the words Im a loser in it. He demoed it quickly, FedExing the CD-R off to New York.

Here, narrative form calls for a decisive triumph or defeat. But that just wouldnt be a Dan Bryk story.

Bryk is a gifted indie piano man, a nerdy-Ben-Folds-meets-louche-Randy-Newman type whose off-kilter confessions come swathed in a sweet voice and a sweeter falsetto. His 2001 album Lovers Leap got an A-minus from Robert Christgau in The Village Voice when that still mattered. Its a lost indie-pop classic full of cockeyed odes to computer programmers and chunky girlsthe kind whos just my size, Bryk singswhere even tender ballads like Memo to Myself make room for a little heavy petting and Leonard Cohen. (Weight is a recurring theme in Bryks songs; he used to call his home studio Flabby Road.)

Lovers Leap was a commercial high-water mark, and it took him as far as Japan with Stephen Malkmus. Still, it sold poorly, a textbook victim of what Bryk aptly calls the the major-label faux-indie-rock gold rush. Its not on modern streaming services for the same reason. He made a great record in the wrong place at the right time. Classic Bryk.

Regarding Loser, Schlesinger reported back that the movie folks were looking for a finished master, not a demo, though they liked the song. Im sure they didnt, lol, Bryk wrote, in his usual self-deprecating fashion, when he posted the demo on his website several days after Schlesinger died. But Adam was master of the soft letdown.

After Lovers Leap foundered, Bryk kept at it, off and on. During his first stint living in the Triangle, in the mid-2000s, he earned local notoriety with a song about Cherie Berry and made a Christmas record to benefit Raleigh music education. He released Pop Psychology, his last record to date, on his own label in 2009, had a kid, and promptly abandoned album promotion to be a stay-at-home dadvocate in New York. After one year in Tanzania (Bryks wife, Erin McGinn, works for an NGO) and two in Washington, D.C., the family landed back in Durham, where theyve lived since 2016.

Bryk has been fairly quiet since then, but that changed on April 5, when he released the 1999 Loser demo and a 2019 demo called The Elements of Style. Since then, hes released one archival track per day, conjuring projects and albums that might have been if not for label-and-immigration woes, wrong turns and bad luck, and his lifelong insecurity, which hes been reconsidering in light of discovering that he has ADHD.

It seemed like the perfect time to introduce you to the best local singer-songwriter youve never heard. We decided to do so by drawing our questions from Bryks surprisingly detailed, surprisingly accurate Wikipedia page. When youre a real original adrift in the music industry, truth is stranger than fiction, but these tracks just might spur a second or third act in Bryks career. With any luck.

INDY: At age eight, did you briefly receive piano lessons from Earl Mlotek at the Toronto Royal Conservatory of Music but drop out due to hyperactivity and unwillingness to practice?

DAN BRYK: I think its pronounced mo-tek. Maybe this is where the ADHD story comes in. Ive started some mindfulness training to combat something which really seems to have been a self-limiting factor my whole life. The amount of negative messages a kid gets because of ADHDIve dealt with some crippling insecurity and lack of confidence in my musical work, sort of self-sabotage.

Where do you think Wikipedia got the idea that you stopped because of hyperactivityif youre only discovering that in recent years?

I feel like I wrote that in a blog entry a long time ago. Theres a super-long interview I did with PopMatters, I think some of this came from that. There are a bunch of Toronto people that are really possessive or proud of me [laughs]. I know some of them are really active on Wikipedia and Discogs and stuff.

Did you establish a recording club and record your music under the name The Cunning Linguists at St. Martins High School?

Yes! The Cunning Linguists was me and my friend Mike Feraco. We were really into New Romantic synth stuff: The Associates, Depeche Mode, Human League. Kids today are so spoiled because theyve got every synth in the world on their laptop. If I had the resources back then that I have today, I might have actually sounded decent [laughs].

Did you give an edgy solo debut performance at St. Martins 1988 Battle of the Bands that was censored by Mississauga Cable 10 community-access television?

This is true! I spent so much time in the music department without being in a music class. The music teacher kind of tolerated me because he could tell I was creative, even if I was a two-fingers-with-each-hand style of songwriter. I always had better ideas than discipline to practice.

I was supposed to play this battle of the bands with a three-piece band of older guys Id befriended in Toronto. But as we got closer to the date, I think they realized, oh, man, weve gotta actually go up to Mississauga and play at a high school? So they canceled, and I scrambled and sequenced a set. Stayed up all night, hooked up drum machines. I had one song which was kind of like a rap. It had a four-bar loop from It Takes Two, and I swore, which probably wasnt cool with the school.

When people realized cable was going to broadcast it, it became a thing, like, were gonna get to see Bryk swear! But they just cut off my set before the last song.

"Losing [Adam Schlesinger] and Daniel Johnston in a yearthats like my alpha and omega, my yin and yang. Thats my fucked-up side and my professional side, and Im always stuck in the middle."

Did you hungrily devour jazz and popular music under Prof. Howard Spring at the University of Guelph?

Yeah, once again, I was the person who was in the music department without being in it. The only 100 I ever received was from him. Later on, I said, why? And he said, in the years I offered this course, youre the only person who wrote the essay on country music in the final exam. Instead of doing my studies, I spent a lot of time in the library going through microfiches of Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy. Professor Springs course was like a slingshot into country music, which I liked in that snotty-undergrad Hank Snow not Garth Brooks way.

I didnt actually graduate from Guelph then. I got hired as a graphic designer when I was in school, and they were like, you could finish your degree and pay for that, or you can come learn stuff here.

That bit me on the ass much later, when I moved to America.

Did you move to downtown Toronto in 1994 and break into the scene with Dan Bryk, Asshole?

Totally, as any aspiring bohemian would. I did Dan Bryk, Asshole as a cassette and also an eight-track. That was a bit of a stunt, but it picked up a bit of press.

Did a CBC Radio 2 RealTime session in 1997 result in you signing to Scratchie?

Yeah, I had called in periodically to this live Saturday-night national radio show which focused on big Canadian indie music. They were marvelous people and took pity on me. They started playing Asshole a bit, and they were doing a series, sort of like Peel Sessions, and asked me to do one. My manager was like, I could put a band together for you, and Id already been playing with Kurt Swinghammer. Hes one of my heroes in Toronto, so the fact that he played on my stuff was kind of like Brian Eno and Gordon Lightfoot rolled into one being a fan.

Those were the songs I handed to [label cofounder] Adam Schlesinger after a Fountains of Wayne gig. A month later, Im at work, and my coworkers like, James Iha is on the phone for you. He was really cool and low-key. He really just wanted to talk about Randy Newman. Mojo used to do The Best Thing Ive Heard All Year every December, and Adam gave my CD-R as his favorite thing of the year, and it picked up steam. So his label, Scratchie, offered me a deal, and the best of intentions turned into a real textbook music-business story.

Adam, honest to god, was the hardest-working man in show business. He turned me on to so much stuff and always had an iron in the fire. If Id had his works habits, I wouldveI dont know what [laughs].

[Major label] Mercury wanted Scratchie because those guys were hot, and then they started to be less hot, and the deal cooled, but I was stuck in that deal. Scratchie was this artist-centered label, but the contracts were Mercury boilerplate. The whole experience was of the era, the major-label faux-indie-rock gold rush. Mercury and Universal and Polygram merged, and everyone responsible for the Scratchie deal was fired. It turned into a mess, and I ended up sitting on Lovers Leap for years while they were trying to extract themselves. They werent going to push any of the records, so Adam was like, theres no point in putting this record out and letting it die.

Its really hard to have a business relationship with your hero, which is why Adam passing without us having more than cordial hellos in a couple of years is really rough. To other people, he was a genius, but to me, he was like a mentor. Losing him and Daniel Johnston in a yearthats like my alpha and omega, my yin and yang. Thats my fucked-up side and my professional side, and Im always stuck in the middle. I havent been able to listen to any Prine, any of Adams stuff. I dont know if I can handle it yet.

"But its typical Dan Bryk luck. Every silver lining has a black cloud."

When Scratchie finally independently released Lovers Leap in 2000, did it receive a positive review from Robert Christgau in The Village Voice and meager sales?

Yeah, all the people at Scratchie who worked on the Fountains of Wayne stuff had to take better jobs. So I ended up with the really well-meaning but less-connected people. I remember the day that Adam called me and said, Christgaus coming to your gig at The Knitting Factory tomorrow, dont fuck up [laughs]. And I was on tour when someone called and said, hey, man, you got an A-minus from Christgau. After being this gadfly, like who does that guy think he is, in Toronto, to rate with Christgau was such a huge deal.

Did you tour Japan with Stephen Malkmus and have radio hits there?

Yeah, it was awesome and surreal. I felt like Thom Yorke, sitting in a room for five hours a day of interviews. I took Erin, my then-girlfriend, now-wife, and I think she got a really unreasonable expectation of what the trajectory of my career would be, based on being spotted in the street and playing for thousands of people. Once again, in Canada, it was like, oh, they like him somewhere else, maybe we need to pay attention to him.

Did you move to Durham but settle in Raleigh in 2003, and whats up with that weird equivocation?

We rented in Durham and then decided to buy a place in Brier Creek. I had been in Toronto, still on Scratchie, doing demos. Adam kept saying, were doing this deal with New Line Cinema, so hang in there, because if that happens well have a decent budget. Then Erin got offered a gig in RTP.

I was in this other band called The American Flag. It was these two high school kids that had made a record Bob Pollard put out on Rockathon. These kids put together a band of Toronto scenesters they were fans of, so thats how I ended up in that. We opened all these gigs for Guided by Voices on U.S. tours. Because of that, I had a musician visa that lasted a year, and then you renewed it. But 9/11 happened, and they started yanking visas from Canadians.

I came down to New York City for a wedding and the guy at the border stopped me with my suitcase of recording gear. He said, how do I know youre not going to New York to record bands and make money? So I was refused entry. Then you have a flag on you, and my musician visa expired, and it became a real headache.

I realized if I was going to stay with Erin, I needed a job. I had to finish my BFA to get an actual work visa. I could literally only be a graphic designer. I couldnt play any shows or act as if I was a musician, including online. So in the nascent Myspace days, I had to be really low-key. It took a few years until I got a green card in 2006.

Did you get dropped by Scratchie after it was acquired by New Line?

New Line asked for more demos, and the first set I gave them is on my Bandcamp as Mississauga Rattler. The word I got back from Adam was like, theres not really any ringers here, I want you to dig deeper and give me elemental Dan Bryk songs. New Line didnt hear the ca-ching of any cash registers. If Id stayed in Canada and been more active in that timewell I shouldnt say I was inactive. I put out a handful of good records by other people on my label, Urban Myth.

"Theres not a day in the music business without a small indignity. But I guess Im having the last laugh, because what music industry?"

Did you give a song about Cherie Berry to WKNC as Tha Commissioners and only admit it was you when the e-mails were found to originate from your computer?

I think that was the story [laughs]. The co-hosts goaded me into the pseudonymous pretense. They started playing Cherry Berry six times a day, and it picked up steam. It actually turned into a heartbreak for me, because Swinghammer had written a song, The Signature of Marilyn Churley, about being seduced by the signature of the minister responsible for elevators [in Toronto]. On some level, I forgot that that was the inspiration, and Kurt got really mad, like I stole his idea. And because it turned into this media cause clbre, people perceived that it was more of a success than it was. Its kind of weird getting the front page of The News & Observer over this goofy thing I did in an afternoon. But its typical Dan Bryk luck. Every silver lining has a black cloud.

Is The Old Ceremonys song Stubborn Man about you?

I think its a composite. I remember Django [Haskins] saying something like, oh, man, theres a song youll hear tonight, I think youll know what its about.

[Haskins says: Ha! Ive never heard that. No, it was aboutwait for itme. But in another sense, it was about every one of us who continues on this path despite the obvious difficulties. So I guess it is about him as well. I do love DB.]

Does Stubborn Man reflect you?

Um, yeah, probably. Ive probably erred on the side of thinking that recalcitrant and prickly was good promo, and it probably hasnt been. It comes back to this whole ball of ADHD stuff; over the years Ive made a persona which has more to do with being fundamentally insecure. Theres not a day in the music business without a small indignity. But I guess Im having the last laugh, because what music industry?

Tell me about these coronavirus archives tracks youve been releasing.

It sounds silly saying Im a perfectionist because part of my whole thing is that its a bit off-kilter. But I just havent been able to part with a lot of things. I dont play guitar after all these years, lord knows Ive tried. Im still just a keyboard player. So I have a lot of things that are done except guitar. Im releasing one a day until I run out or the songs start sucking too much. I figured Id do this for a couple weeks and see if anyone was interested.

Honestly, losing a bunch of people to coronavirus and other stuff has made me realize that if I died tomorrow, I do have a lot of stuff that people might find interesting while Im alive. This situation was enough to kick me out of a sense that Ive got to have all this stuff right. Id rather just have it out there, I guess.

Correction: Robert Christgau's review of Lovers Leap appeared in The Village Voice, not Rolling Stone.

Contact arts and culture editor Brian Howe at bhowe@indyweek.com.

DEAR READERS, WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW MORE THAN EVER.Support independent local journalism byjoining the INDY Press Clubtoday. Your contributions will keep our fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle, coronavirus be damned.

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Dan Bryk's Misadventures in the Music Industry as Told by Wikipedia - INDY Week

Welcome to Twitter, where everyone thinks they're an expert at literally everything and will give you second-hand embarrassment while trying to prove their pointless points. A beautiful Twitter exchange like that happened yesterday when a few desi people tried to argue about how Wikipedia works, with, wait for it, the founder of Wikipedia. It all started with some questioning why a Wikipedia page was deleted and I mean asking questions are fine but the entire bribing narrative? Oof.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, decided to resolve the matter but that would be in vain.

The argument continued with Jimmy again telling how it works on HIS site.

He's not even talking about religion, he's talking about how Wikipedia works and well, I would think that he's somewhat of an expert on it.

The man is just trying to tell them the quality of whatever is written on different pages matters and they're still not listening.

He's still trying to politely diffuse the situation and is even open to a discussion. Reliable sources are required by people; it's not that hard of a concept to grasp.

Just to fill the gaps since the tweet Jimmy is replying to below has been deleted but the person basically said that almost every article on Wikipedia doesn't have sources. Yep, people are that thick.

One would think it can't get worse than this, but just wait for it. Someone thought this was actually a valid argument to put forward.

Twitter

I can feel his frustration through the screen.

Same.

The quality content we need.

I would personally like to say thank you to everyone involved, this was way too hilarious.

Photo: Wikipedia (Main Image)

Original post:
Desi People Telling The Founder Of Wikipedia How Wikipedia Works & We Wish We Had That Confidence - MensXP.com