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INAUGURATION 2029

Commencement ceremonies are joyous occasions, and Steve Carell made sure that was true this past weekend (mid-June) at Northwestern's commencement:

~~~ Carell's entire commencement speech was hilarious. The audio and video here isn't great, but I laughed till I cried.

CNN did a live telecast Saturday night (June 7) of the Broadway play "Good Night, and Good Luck," written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow's effort to hold to account Sen. Joe McCarthy, "the junior senator from Wisconsin." Clooney plays Murrow. Here's Murrow himself with his famous take on McCarthy & McCarthyism, brief remarks that especially resonate today: ~~~

     ~~~ This article lists ways you still can watch the play. 

New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.

Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts. 

New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. -- Magna Carta ~~~

~~~ New York Times: “Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946. That is about to change. Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties. It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.... A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.... First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore. He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.”

NPR lists all of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners. Poynter lists the prizes awarded in journalism as well as the finalists in these categories.

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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Sunday
Nov282010

Tales from the WikiLeaks Papers

Scott Shane & Andrew Lehren write the New York Times main story: "A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats. Some of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks.... WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site in batches, beginning Sunday. The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict." The Times' overview page. links to other stories. The Lede is following reactions to the WikiLeaks release. 

David Leigh of The Guardian has a good, brief synopsis. AND here's The Guardian's overview page.

Der Spiegel's overview page (English version) is here.

The WikiLeaks site is here, BUT Times of India, November 28: via Twitter, WikiLeaks claims it is under "denial of service" hack attack.

Zachary Roth of Yahoo News lists the "top ten revelations from the WikiLeaks cables."

Arshad Mohammed & Ross Colvin of Reuters: "The White House condemned the release of the [WikiLeaks] documents, saying their release could endanger the lives of people who live under 'oppressive regimes' and 'deeply impact' the foreign policy interests of the United States and its allies....

... Here's Robert Gibbs' full statement on the leaked documents.

Der Speigel: "In the documents..., US diplomats stationed across the globe report back to the State Department in Washington, communicating sensitive information about international arms deals, evaluating political developments or assessing the corruption level of local leaders. The compendium of reports, most of which cover the period from 2003 until the end of February 2010, sheds light on America's at times arrogant view of the world. Never before have so many political revelations embarrassed the US State Department in one fell swoop."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The treasure trove of secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks ... chronicle the Iranian nuclear standoff from its genesis. The diplomatic memos disclose the extent to which many of the United States's allies in the Arab world repeatedly implored Washington to stop Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons." ...

... Iran Sanctions: Bush 0, Obama 10. David Sanger & James Glanz of the New York Times: "In day-by-day detail..., cables ... tell the disparate diplomatic back stories of two administrations pressed from all sides to confront Tehran. They show how President George W. Bush ... struggled to put together even modest sanctions. They also offer new insights into how President Obama, determined to merge his promise of 'engagement' with his vow to raise the pressure on the Iranians, assembled a coalition that agreed to impose an array of sanctions considerably harsher than any before attempted."

Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the nited Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries. Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies."

Robert Booth & Julian Borger of The Guardian: "Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK."

Der Spiegel: "The ... documents ... reveal that the US has an extensive network of informants in Berlin and was kept informed of coalition negotiations as Chancellor Merkel was forming her current government. US officials, the cables show, are skeptical of several top German politicians. The ... secret documents from the US State Department show just how critical the American diplomats were of the new German government."

Barak Ravid of Haaretz: "Israel tried to coordinate the Gaza war with the Palestinian Authority.... Both the PA and Egypt refused to take control of the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave."

Der Spiegel: "The leaked diplomatic cables reveal that US diplomats are skeptical about Turkey's dependability as a partner. The leadership in Ankara is depicted as divided and permeated by Islamists.

David Bernstein, in the Volokh Conspiracy, on Saudi & other Arab states' effort to get the U.S. to attack Iran: "It’s quite a blow to conspiracy theorists, is it not, that the combined weight of two of their favor bogeymen, 'the Zionists' and 'the Arabs' haven’t been able to get the U.S. to take military action against Iran."

Spencer Ackerman in Wired: "Perhaps the most worrisome news to come out the diplo doc dump is that North Korea secretly gave Iran 19 powerful missiles with a range of 2,000 miles.... 'If fired from Iran,' the New York Times notes, a missile with that range could 'let its warheads reach targets as far away as Western Europe, including Berlin.' ... No wonder why European leaders are suddenly so keen on missile defense. And no wonder why so many of the leaders of the Arab Middle East are increasingly freaked out by Iran’s growing conventional arsenal — and nuclear program."

Amy Davidson of The New Yorker: "... the Guardian noted that the database the documents lived in had 'a very wide distribution among diplomatic, government and military circles,' and that about three million people are allowed to read 'secret' things. Maybe those were three million eminently respectable people, all carefully vetted.... Or maybe the government, if it expects the word 'secret' to constitute a clear warning about the potential for danger to one’s country, should think hard about what the word means."

Kevin Drum of The Nation: "... so far I just don't see these leaks causing an epic amount of damage. Obviously feelings will be bruised by the blunt language in some of the cables — though if Spiegel's excerpts are typical, the language is only slightly blunter than your run-of-the-mill anonymous carping — and foreign officials might be reluctant for a while to share confidences with American diplomats.... Hillary Clinton will indeed have her hands full for a while. But honestly, there's hardly anything here that I haven't already read on the front pages of multiple newspapers. Titillating, but not much more.

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