The Ledes

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

New York Times: “Most of the Mid-Atlantic remained under severe weather warnings early Tuesday morning, as a series of slow-moving storms unleashed heavy rains and flash flooding from New York to Virginia. The National Weather Service said the eastern seaboard would continue to experience heavy rainfall on Tuesday, likely causing disruptions to millions of commuters, especially in the New York area, which saw flash flooding overnight.Videos on social media showed commuters on New York’s subway clambering up stairs as water gushed down onto platforms. In New Jersey, one train station was completely flooded and impassable on Monday night. And news media filmed rescue crews coming to the aid of people stuck on flooded roads in Scotch Plains, N.J.” This is part of the pinned item in a liveblog.

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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

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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The Commentariat -- May 1

President Obama speaks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner:

Here's a handy graph to whip out when your Republican friends (& certain stupid members of Congress) say the national debt is all Obama's fault. Washington Post graphic.Those Irresponsible Republicans. Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post explains in simple terms with straightforward numbers how the federal government got in the fiscal mess it's in. "The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts.... Federal tax collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years.... All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt, according to a separate Washington Post analysis of CBO data over the past decade. Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate." Oh yeah, and do blame Alan Greenspan. Thanks to Doug R. for the link.

New York Times Editors: "In an announcement on Friday afternoon — the time slot favored by officials eager to avoid scrutiny — the Treasury Department said it intends to exempt certain foreign exchange derivatives from key new regulations under the Dodd-Frank law. These derivatives represent a $4 trillion-a-day market, one that is very lucrative for the big banks that trade them." CW: also entirely coincidental that Geithner made that announcement right after Obama went to Wall Street hat-in-hand. You see how campaign money comes out of your pocket: bankers contribute to Obama, Obama gives bankers a deal, bankers trade with abandon & get in trouble, taxpayers bail out bankers. If you pay federal taxes, you just made a campaign contribution to BaracK Obama.

New York Times Editors: "President Obama should take the court up on its transparency blessing forthwith and sign a proposed executive order that would require government contractors to disclose their donations to groups that support or oppose federal candidates.

Dave Eggers & Ninive Calagari in a New York Times op-ed: "... the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years." The authors compare the way the U.S. & countries with more successful educational results recruit & hire teachers."

Maureen Dowd ruminates on the British royal wedding, the Grimms' version of "Cinderella," and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Pretty cheerless stuff....

... I've put up a comments page for Dowd on Off Times Square. You can comment on other political matters there, too. I've posted my own comment, too. Update: PLUS I've added a little challenge for readers on Off Times Square -- an opportunity to tell Democrats what to do in 2012. Be creative!

Dream On. Karen Garcia: "Presente.Org, one of the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy groups, is asking its members for input on a formal plan to withdraw active support for the president's re-election, in light of his continued failure to executive power to defer the deportation of a million DREAM Act candidates."

George Zornick of The Nation: Republican Congressmembers & right-wing front groups play defense at townhall meetings, screening questions & bussing in supporters.

ProPublica has a whole page of stories about the dangers of fracking, a method used to extract natural gas. I've sent the link to the page along to the New York Times' Fracking' Joe Nocera, friend of Boone Pickens.

Right Wing World *

Right Wing World Hypes a New Round of Birther Conspiracy Theores. Media Matters: the long-form certificate is "an obvious forgery"; the pdf of the birth certificate has been altered; delivery doctor is dead & his wife didn't know he had delivered Obama -- how curious. Oh, there will be more.

The Hatch Identity. Justin Elliott of Salon: "Around noon [Thursday], I posted a piece looking back at Sen. Orrin Hatch's sponsorship of a 2003 measure to allow foreign-born citizens to run for president. Less than 24 hours after the piece went up, a tech blogger discovered that the section of Hatch's website that mentioned the 'Presidential Eligibility Amendment' had mysteriously disappeared." A spokesperson for Hatch told Elliott that the section had disappeared because the Senator has a "brand new website," but Elliott writes that "the design of Hatch's website looks the exact same as it did yesterday. The only thing that has changed is that the archive of Hatch's bills now ends at 2008. Everything before that, including the 2003 Presidential Eligibility Amendment, is gone." CW: Hatch has been in the Senate since 1976. But in Right Wing World, if some of your past votes & bill sponsorships don't comport with your new fake persona, you just erase them & establish a brand new Website identity.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

** New York Times: "Osama bin Laden has been killed, two United States officials said. President Obama was expected to make an announcement on Sunday night, almost ten years after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One of the officials said that American forces, acting on intelligence, launched a 'targeted assault' that killed Mr. Bin Laden, whose ability to elude capture for so long deeply frustrated the Bush administration." Story has been updated. Here's the AP story....

     ... Update: Here's the Al Jazeera story, with video report. Al Jazeera also has a liveblog of developments related to Osama's killing.

AP: "Pope Benedict XVI beatified Pope John Paul II before more than a million faithful in St. Peter's Square and surrounding streets Sunday, moving the beloved former pontiff one step closer to possible sainthood."

AP: "Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting Saturday was dominated by somber topics as CEO Warren Buffett explained to about 40,000 shareholders how the company had been battered by a trusted former employee’s misdeeds and a string of natural disasters. Buffett assured the crowd at an Omaha convention center that Berkshire is strong enough to withstand both the David Sokol scandal and the estimated $1.7 billion in insurance losses that drove profits down 58 percent in the first quarter." Here's the New York Times story. AND here's the Times' liveblog of the meeting.

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