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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

Page Links
Friday
Jun172011

The Commentariat -- June 18

President Obama's weekly address celebrates fathers:

     ... AP story by Erica Werner here.

I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square. With the Anthony Weiner story behind us, here's hoping this site will no longer be a magnet for predators. I'll be on the road, so I may not be available to immediately control the comments. If a serious problem develops, I'll just have to shut down comments altogether till I get where I'm going & can more closely monitor the comments pages.

"It Isn't 'Hostilities' if the People You're Bombing Don't Shoot Back." Amy Davidson of the New Yorker joins the crowd of opinionators who can read English sentences and are appalled at the Obama Administration's twisted claims that the Libyan conflict is not subject to the War Powers Resolution. ...

... Ha! Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization.... Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to 'hostilities.' Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20. But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of 'hostilities.'”

Say What? John Aravosis of AmericaBlog: White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tells Netroots Nation that a well-known 1996 questionnaire in which Barack Obama said he favored gay marriage "was actually filled out by someone else, not the President." With video of Pfeiffer making his unbelievable assertion and this reproduction of the "fake" questionnaire:

     ... CW: See Answer to Question 6. That sure does look like Obama's signature to me. ...

... Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "Liberal activists gave White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer a chilly reception on Friday at an online political conference as he tried to defend the Obama administration’s policies on gay marriage, Afghanistan and tax cuts. To heckling and some loud boos, Pfeiffer drove home two themes to activists attending the Netroots Nation conference: change is hard and installing a Republican in the White House would be much worse than reelecting President Obama." ...

... Here's a related report from Michael O'Brien of The Hill.

Associated Press: it's suddenly pretty difficult to tell where the AARP stands on Social Security, which comes as a shock to other advocates for the elderly.

Just Plain Mean. Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: The "last extension of unemployment benefits — typically received in weeks 80 through 99 of unemployment — is paid for entirely with federal money and does not affect state budgets. But because of ideological opposition and other legislative priorities, Arizona and a handful of other states, like Wisconsin and Alaska, have not" made a minor change to their existing statutes which would "keep the program going."

David Carr & John Schwartz of the New York Times: "For the last two years, David Protess, a renowned journalist and professor who spent three decades fighting to prove the innocence of others, has been locked in a battle to do the same for himself. It hasn't gone as well." Here's an outline of the cases of those freed because of the work of Protess & his students.

CW: I have not been covering the controversy over a study, released by the ostensibly nonpartisan McKinsey and Co., mostly because the details of what's wrong with the study are (a) a deep, dark secret and (b) get pretty much into the weeds. (I did write a comment to Tom Friedman, who relied on the McKinsey report, to the effect that his commentary was intrinsically flawed, inasmuch as the study on which he based his analysis was subject to serious question. Not surprisingly, my comment was buried on a back page.) Anyway, Steve Benen demonstrates why the McKinsey controversy matters: conservatives who know the study results may be bogus are using it anyway to "prove" the Affordable Care Act is a bad deal.

News Ledes

Speaker John Boehner & President Obama on the course at Andrews AFB today. AP photo via ABC News.

President Obama, Speaker Boehner, Vice President Biden & Ohio Gov. John Kasich will play golf today. Washington Post story here. Update: here's the play-by-play from Politico.

New York Times: "President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan launched a broadside against his coalition allies on Saturday, saying the motives behind their presence were suspect and even complaining that their weaponry is polluting his country." Guardian: "The US and other foreign powers are engaged in preliminary talks with the Taliban about a possible settlement to the war in Afghanistan, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said. It is the first official confirmation of US involvement in such negotiations." Story has been updated. ...

... Guardian: "The Afghan government will struggle to pay its bills 'within a month' after the International Monetary Fund rejected proposals for resolving the Kabul Bank scandal, western officials have warned."

Reuters: "Oracle is seeking between $1.4 billion and $6.1 billion in a patent lawsuit against Google over the lucrative smartphone market, according to a court filing.Oracle sued Google last year, claiming the Web search company's Android mobile operating technology infringes upon Oracle's Java patents."

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