Washington Post: “A warehouse storing fireworks in Northern California exploded on Tuesday,leaving seven people missing and two injured as explosions continued intoWednesday evening, officials said. Dramatic video footage captured by KCRA 3 News, a Sacramento broadcaster, showed smoke pouring from the building’s roof before a massive explosion created a fireball that seemed to engulf much of the warehouse, accompanied by an echoing boom. Hundreds of fireworks appeared to be going off and were sparkling within the smoke. Photos of the aftermath showed multiple destroyed buildings and a large area covered in gray ash.” ~~~
New York Times: “The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who emerged from the backwoods of Louisiana to become a television evangelist with global reach, preaching about an eternal struggle between good and evil and warning of the temptations of the flesh, a theme that played out in his own life in a sex scandal, died on July 1. He was 90.” ~~~
~~~ For another sort of obituary, see Akhilleus' commentary near the end of yesterday's thread.
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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.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. — Anonymous
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. — Edward R. Murrow
Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns
I have a Bluesky account now. The URL ishttps://bsky.app/profile/marie-burns.bsky.social . When Reality Chex goes down, check my Bluesky page for whatever info I am able to report on the status of Reality Chex. If you can't access the URL, I found that I could Google Bluesky and ask for Marie Burns. Google will include links to accounts for people whose names are, at least in part, Maria Burns, so you'll have to tell Google you looking only for Marie.
This is the best time-lapse I could find of last night's lunar eclipse. It's by W. L. Castleman of Gainesville, Florida. So far the "professional" efforts have been duds:
Since Year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is 1638 December 21. Fortunately we won't have to wait 372 years for the next one ... that will be on 2094 December 21. -- Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory
... This got my friend Sharon E. thinking, & she checked to see what-all was going on in North America during the year of the last eclipse that occurred during the winter solstice. I've added a few:
New Haven, the first planned city in America, was founded as an "independent colony."
John Harvard died. He left his library & half of his estate to the local college. The school adopted the name Harvard College in his honor.
Jonas Bronck of Holland became the first European settler in the Bronx. (New Amsterdam was officially 8 years old & had 10,000 inhabitants.)
The Pequot War ends with the signing of the Treaty of Hartford. The treaty refers to three historic agreements negotiated at Hartford, Connecticut, which divided the spoils of the war.
The Swedish arrived on the ships Kalmare Nyckel and Fågel Grip to America, to establish the first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden.
Anne Hutchinson was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy and moved to Rhode Island.
New York Times: "The House of Representatives gave final approval on Tuesday to a long-awaited modernization of the nation’s food safety laws, voting 215 to 144 to grant the Food and Drug Administration greater authority over food production." The bill earlier passed the Senate, which added exemptions for small producers. The President has said he would sign the bill as amended.
Washington Post: "New Internet access rules approved by federal regulators on Tuesday prohibit network operators from meddling with Web traffic into American homes but do not extend to the fast-growing market for smartphones and tablet computers. The regulations passed the Federal Communications Commission along party lines, with two Democratic commissioners reluctantly siding with agency Chairman Julius Genachowski in a 3-2 vote."
Eating or defeating your own is a form of sophisticated cannibalism. -- Arlen Specter, in his Senate farewell speech, or as he characterized it, his "closing argument" ...
... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The Pennsylvania Republican-turned-Democrat [Sen. Arlen Specter] berated his colleagues for stripping the 'world's greatest deliberative body' of its collegiality. In a bitter, at times angry, speech, Specter accused leaders of both parties of abusing the Senate's 'cerebral procedures' in the service of partisan rancor and gridlock."
CW: the other day Fox "News"" Shep Smith called out senators for opposing the 9/11 responders' bill but he didn't mention their names, nor did he identify them all as Republicans. Here, Smith gets specific:
... And here's Smith today, identifying Sen. Tom Coburn, who vows to block the first responders' bill, because the sponsoring senators say they have the votes to pass it:
... Alex Seitz-Waldhas the story at Think Progress. ...
... Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal: "Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburnwill not allow a proposal that would cover health-care costs for Ground Zero workers to go through the Senate before Christmas, a Coburn aide told Washington Wire [WSJ] this morning." CW: remember "Dr. No" is a medical doctor.
Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy lets Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) have it in a pretty funny series of questions about DeMint's assertion that it's "sacriligious" for Congress to work on legislation during the Christmas season. Enjoy.
Statistics come to life when Swedish academic Hans Rosling graphically illustrates global economic development & life expectancy over the last 200 years. Thanks to Peter S. for finding this video:
In a New York Times op-ed, Larry David, who is rich, says "Thanks for the tax cut! ... Life was good, and now it’s even better. Thank you, Republicans. And a special thank you to President Obama and the Democrats. I didn’t know you cared."
Dana Hedgpeth of the Washington Post: "Since it was founded in 2001, the TSA has spent roughly $14 billion in more than 20,900 transactions with dozens of contractors.... But lawmakers, auditors and national security experts question whether the government is too quick to embrace technology as a solution for basic security problems and whether the TSA has been too eager to write checks for unproven products."
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Justice Department has shut down a wave of high-profile investigations of members of Congress over the past few months, drawing criticism that the government’s premier anticorruption agency has lost its nerve after the disastrous collapse last year of its case against former Senator Ted Stevens." ...
... Hah! Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "When the Federal Election Commission voted last month to close an investigation into a $96,000 payment to Senator John Ensign’s former lover, it overrode the findings of its own staff lawyers, documents made public Monday showed. Lawyers at the F.E.C. counsel’s office said in a confidential report in March that Mr. Ensign’s parents and his campaign treasurer appeared to have violated campaign finance law when the parents made the payment to the family of the mistress, Cynthia Hampton, who worked for his campaign."
Dan Roem of the National Journal: "One of Pres. Obama's biggest supporters in the Senate in the past week is not even a member of his own party: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Murkowski supported the president's position on the Senate's four biggest votes since last Wednesday. She and fellow Alaska Sen. Mark Begich (D) voted in favor of the tax cut compromise and to invoke cloture on New START treaty, the Dream Act and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Both senators also voted in favor of the final repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell on Saturday. No Senate Republican voted for all four bills other than Murkowski."
Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "... while public opinion has changed in favor of gay rights over the past two decades, those attitudes are often not reflected in public policy, because the views of lawmakers, polls suggest, lag behind the public, and not just among social conservatives who have long opposed elements of the gay rights agenda on moral grounds.... Yet the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, first proposed in the Clinton years, remains stuck on Capitol Hill, in part because lawmakers are squeamish about language in it that would protect transgender employees. The 'don’t ask, don’t tell' repeal bill nearly died the week before it was passed." ...
... Jonathan Chait of The New Republic: "The progress of gay rights in the United States ... has been intoxicatingly rapid.... In part this reflects changes in the Republican Party, which is now dominated almost entirely by defenders of the economic prerogatives of the rich and barely pretends to care about the Christian right's agenda any more. In part it's a wildly successful effort by Hollywood to normalize homosexuality."
Hope Yen of the AP: "If government estimates hold true, the closely watched 2010 census will show America's once-torrid population growth dropping to its lowest level in seven decades. In Congress, the steady migration to the South and West should be a boon for Republicans, with GOP-leaning states led by Texas picking up House seats."
Aaron Lucchetti & Sarah Muñoz of the Wall Street Journal: "U.S. regulators are considering whether to require large financial firms to hold onto a chunk of executive pay to discourage the excessive risk-taking that contributed to the financial crisis, according to people familiar with the situation. Giant companies such as Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley that are considered critical to the U.S. economy, could be forced to award half or more of their executives' pay in the form stock or other deferred compensation, instead of up-front cash."
David Streitfeld of the New York Times: a new California law designed to protect victims of impending foreclosure from swindlers disallows attorneys from receiving payment prior to obtaining loan modifications; that sounds good, but it has meant that attorneys say they can't afford to take on clients who wish to contest foreclosure proceedings.
I just don’t remember it as being that bad. I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white.... I was there with some of my friends.... We wanted to hear him speak.... I don’t really remember [what he said]. The truth is, we couldn’t hear very well. We were sort of out there on the periphery. We just sat on our cars, watching the girls, talking, doing what boys do. We paid more attention to the girls than to King. -- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, believed to be considering a run for President, reminisces on halcyon days of the civil rights movement ...
... The Weekly Standard interview, by Andrew Ferguson, is here. Holly Bailey of Yahoo! News writes a follow-up story. ...
... Matthew Yglesias puts some actual historical perspective on Barbour's remembrances of the Yazoo City Citizens Counsel, "town leaders" whom Barbour credits with kicking out the Ku Klux Klan. Yglesia writes, "The Citizens’ Councils were ... the respectable face of white supremacist political activism." ...
... Jonathan Chait has more on Ferguson & Barbour's profoundly inaccurate depiction of history. CW: they of course get it ass-backwards. I don't agree with Chait's conclusion that Barbour can turn his murky history of race relations into a plus, & if he can, this country is worse than I thought. ...
... This Is Amazing. Conservative Jim Geraghty of the National Reviewagrees with me. He bases his opinion of Barbour's reported 1982 watermelon "joke."
... To read how really "upstanding" the Yazoo City Citzens Council was, see Charles Bolton's The Hardest Deal of All. The Yazoo City story is highlighted, but scroll down at bit to see all of it. Indirectly, viaBen Smith. ...
... Update, via Greg Sargent: After 24 hours of attacks from right & left, Haley Barbourtries to walk back his remarks about those swell fellows on the Citizens Councils. CW: too little, too late.
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