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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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Wednesday
Oct272010

The Commentariat -- October 28

The middle class doesn't like to get welfare checks, so instead it gets tax credits and deductions for doing things middle-class people generally do anyway. -- Will Wilkinson, The Economist, via Andrew Sullivan

Patricia Cohen of the New York Times: "Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg sees President Obama "as a kind of philosopher president.... To Mr. Kloppenberg the philosophy that has guided President Obama most consistently is pragmatism, a uniquely American system of thought developed at the end of the 19th century by William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce.... Mr. Obama was ultimately drawn to a cluster of ideas known as civic republicanism or deliberative democracy .... In this view the founding fathers cared as much about continuing a discussion over how to advance the common good as they did about ensuring freedom." Princeton University Press will publish Kloppenberg's book Sunday. Harvard Magazine publishes "A Nation Argues with Its Conscience," an adaptation of part of Reading Obama here. A second section from the book, "From Hull House to the White House" is here.

Sewell Chan of the New York Times: "The uncertainty over the legal status of foreclosed homes in the nation could further depress home prices and delay the recovery of the housing market, the Obama administration said on Wednesday.... Most at risk, it appears, are communities in the states with the greatest concentrations of foreclosures — led by Nevada, Florida, Arizona and California — where the turnover of vacant properties could screech to a halt if a joint investigation being conducted by all 50 states, and reviews by the Obama administration and regulators like the Federal Reserve, uncover additional wrongdoing." ...

... It Could Be Worse. You Could Live in Spain. Suzanne Daley of the New York Times: in Spain, mortgage debt is specifically excluded from bankruptcy. "Not only are Spanish mortgage holders personally liable for the full amount of the loan, but throw in penalty interest charges and tens of thousands of dollars in court fees, and people can end up ... facing a mountain of debt.... Spain now has the highest unemployment rate in the euro zone — 20 percent — and real estate prices are dropping.... Many Spaniards [are] no longer able to pay their mortgages...."

Joe Klein of Time: "... this election cycle has exposed [Karl] Rove for what he is: man-servant to the oiligarchs. Rove's most significant activity this year has been raising big, secret donations from the Republican rich and turning them into the ugly, inaccurate negative ads that have been his stock-in-trade forever. ...

Speaking of Rove, here's Rove speaking of Palin: With all due candour, appearing on your own reality show on the Discovery Channel, I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of 'that helps me see you in the Oval Office....

... Rove also criticized this promo for her show, in which Palin says, I would rather be doing this than in some stuffy old political office.


Sam Stein: "On Wednesday, the president conducted what appears to be the first ever in-person sit-down with political bloggers, hosting a group of five in the White House.... An administration official confirmed that Joe Sudbay of AMERICABlog; Duncan Black ("Atrios"), who runs the site Eschaton; Barbara Morrill, who writes for the DailyKos; Jon Amato, who is the founder of Crooks and Liars; and Oliver Willis, who runs an eponymous site, spoke with the president on Wednesday. ... The Huffington Post has a transcript of the conversation.

The President Is "Evolving." I am a strong supporter of civil unions.... I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage. But I also think you’re right that attitudes evolve, including mine. And I think that it is an issue that I wrestle with and think about because I have a whole host of friends who are in gay partnerships. I have staff members who are in committed, monogamous relationships, who are raising children, who are wonderful parents. And I care about them deeply. And so while I’m not prepared to reverse myself here, sitting in the Roosevelt Room at 3:30 in the afternoon, I think it’s fair to say that it’s something that I think a lot about. That’s probably the best you’ll do out of me today.
-- Barack Obama, in response to a question from Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog

Dina Cappiello of the Canadian Press: "Some of America's largest emitters of heat-trapping gases, including businesses that publicly support efforts to curb global warming, don't want the public knowing exactly how much they pollute. Oil producers and refiners, along with manufacturers of steel, aluminum and even home appliances, are fighting a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency that would make the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that companies release — and the underlying data businesses use to calculate the amounts — available online."

A Kentucky Democratic Party Ad that's Hard to Watch:*

     * ... Update: Democratic "Party spokesman Matt Erwin said the ad will appear only after 10 p.m., when children are less likely to see it."

Tim Profitt, the man who stomped on MoveOn volunteer Lauren Valle prior to a Jack Conway-Rand Paul debate, has asked Valle to apologize. He calls the incident "no big deal" and says he stomped her because he has issues with his back. Here's the Louisville Courier-Journal story:

Stephen Colbert sympathizes with Profitt:

... ** Sex Abuse, Cover-ups, & Karl Rove's Secret Cash. Matthew Mosk of ABC News: "In the bitter U.S. Senate race in Kentucky, a local millionaire [Terry Forcht] has helped launch a barrage of ads attacking [Jack Conway] the Democratic candidate – a candidate who, as the state's attorney general, is prosecuting the businessman's nursing home for allegedly covering up sexual abuse, records show."

Adam Serwer in the Washington Post: "Voter fraud is a virtually nonexistent problem.... Even if you wanted to steal an election this way, it's logistically unfeasible. Swaying the numbers in any significant way would require such a large number of well-trained co-conspirators that getting caught is a virtual certainty.... [But] voter suppression is a very real phenomenon." ...

... Here's an Example. Molly Ball of Politico: Robert de Posada, "the man behind the controversial ad telling Hispanics 'Don't Vote' ... voted absentee in Virginia on Wednesday." Univision pulled the ad "after Democratic cries of voter suppression."

Joe Miller is a Nightmare on Nome Street, but his Halloween ad is pretty funny:

... CW: Even funnier: Democrat Scott McAdams is now ahead of him in the polls. Shira Toeplitz of Politico: "After several rough weeks on the campaign trail, a new poll out of Alaska shows Republican Joe Miller has fallen to last place in the three-way Senate race. A Hays Research Group poll released Thursday showed write-in candidates, presumably meaning Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in the lead with 34 percent, Democrat Scott McAdams with 29 percent and Miller with 23 percent." ABC News' Jonathan Karl tweets that McAdams could win with 29% of the vote because many write-in votes will likely be tossed. Via Ben Smith. ...

... AND while we're not doing polls, here's a good one from NBC-10 in Providence, Rhode Island: "Democratic gubernatorial candidate Frank Caprio seems to have lost support since telling the president to take his endorsement and 'shove it,' according to an NBC 10-Quest Research poll released Wednesday night.... Caprio lost 12 points since an NBC 10-Quest Research poll released Oct. 12 showed him in the lead with 37 percent, followed by [Independent Lincoln] Chafee and [Republican John] Robitaille."

"End the War on Pot." Nicholas Kristof cites some good rationales for legalizing marijuana.

Bill Adair of the St. Petersburg Times: "After rating hundreds of claims in the 2010 election -- from TV ads, debates, interviews and mailings -- we're giving an overall Truth-O-Meter rating to the campaign. We rate it Barely True. In a majority of claims checked this fall by PolitiFact and our eight state partners, we found a grain of truth, but it was exaggerated, twisted or distorted."

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