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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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Saturday
Oct302010

The Commentariat -- Scary Stories, Plus

 

CBS reporters are on tape saying, 'Let’s find a child molester in the crowd that supports Miller.... Those are corrupt bastards. -- Sarah Palin, keeping it classy on Fox "News" this morning

      ... Here's the video:

... Famous tape editor & ABC News "election analyst" Andrew Breitbart posts the purported tape & transcript. ...

     ... Update. Breitbart Punks Palin, et al. David Edwards & Daniel Tencer of the Raw Story: Fox "News" reporting undercuts Palin's, Breitbart's claims. With video. ...

     ... Greg Sargent: "Breitbart's Big Journalism site is making an incendiary accusation: That reporters at the Anchorage CBS affiliate KTVA were caught conspiring to damage Tea Party Senate candidate Joe Miller.... But it's unclear from the recording precisely what, if anything, was being plotted. And now the station is adamantly denying the charges." Here's the full statement from KTVA General Manager Jerry Bever. ...

     ... Update: David Brock of Media Matters: release the tapes, Gov. Palin.

... Even Palin's Tweets Are Getting Loonier. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo reports on one she probably wishes she (or her ghostwriter) hadn't sent.

Scary but True. Neela Banerjee of the Los Angeles Times: "If the GOP wins control of the House next week, senior congressional Republicans plan to launch a blistering attack on the Obama administration's environmental policies, as well as on scientists who link air pollution to climate change."

Scary if True. David Broder, the Washington Post 's warmonger in chief & amateur economist extraordinaire, says President Obama will win re-election because he will ratchet up for war with Iran, which will boost the economy. Besides, Americans will rally around a war President, as we always do. ...

        ... Dean Baker, an actual economist, responds:

If spending on war can provide jobs and lift the economy then so can spending on roads, weatherizing homes, or educating our kids. Yes, that's right, all the forms of stimulus spending that Broder derided so much because they add to the deficit will increase GDP and generate jobs just like the war that Broder is advocating (which will also add to the deficit). So, we have two routes to prosperity. We can either build up our phsyical infrastructure and improve the skills and education of our workers or we can go kill Iranians. Broder has made it clear where he stands. Via Matt Duss of Think Progress

        ... Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy, who wonders if Broder has lost his mind, adds more:

... this is crazy for a number of reasons. One is that markets don't like tensions, and certainly not the kind that jack up oil prices. Second, World War II brought the United States out of the Great Depression because it was a massive economic stimulus program that mobilized entire sectors of society. Today's American military has all the tools it needs to fight Iran, and there isn't going to be any sort of buildup.

Frank Rich makes the case that the rank-and-file tea party members have neither the numbers nor the financial clout to have any real effect on legislation. Even if some of their candidates win, they'll be more useful to Democrats who will characterize them as typical Republican extremists than to Republicans, who will sideline them.

Maureen Dowd on President Obama: "In 2008, the message was him. The promise was him. And that’s why 2010 is a referendum on him. With his coalition and governing majority shattering around him, President Obama will have to summon political skills — starting Wednesday — that he has not yet shown he has." ...

... Nicholas Kristof, by contrast, thinks we should give President Obama a break, that he's a victim of the bad economy & that he's done some great things nobody noticed.

CW: this essay is a month old, but it isn't stale. Michael Tomasky in the New York Review of Books: the Democrats continue to have a messaging problem that many thought Obama had the talent to solve. "Republican themes, like 'liberty,' are popular, while Republican policies often are not; and Democratic themes ('community,' 'compassion,' 'justice') are less popular, while many specific Democratic programs—Social Security, Medicare, even (in many polls) putting a price on carbon emissions—have majority support."

Prof. Tyler Cowen in the New York Times: "... continuing arrival of immigrants to American shores is encouraging business activity here, thereby producing more jobs, according to a new study. Its authors argue that the easier it is to find cheap immigrant labor at home, the less likely that production will relocate offshore." CW translation: oppressed workers in the U.S. take jobs away from oppressed workers in other countries, & that has side benefits.

This is a terrific ten-minute discussion of gerrymandering produced by the libertarian Reason Foundation. Chances are you'll learn something you didn't know. I did:

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