REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Commentariat -- October 4

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Zoë Schlanger in the Atlantic: "Throw out your black plastic spatula. In a world of plastic consumer goods, avoiding the material entirely requires the fervor of a religious conversion. But getting rid of black plastic kitchen utensils is a low-stakes move, and worth it. Cooking with any plastic is a dubious enterprise, because heat encourages potentially harmful plastic compounds to migrate out of the polymers and potentially into the food. But, as Andrew Turner, a biochemist at the University of Plymouth recently told me, black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid." This is a gift link from laura h.

Mashable: "Following the 2024 presidential election results and [Elon] Musk's support for ... Donald Trump, users have been deactivating en masse. And this time, it appears most everyone has settled on one particular X alternative: Bluesky.... Bluesky has gained more than 100,000 new sign ups per day since the U.S. election on Nov. 5. It now has over 15 million users. It's enjoyed a prolonged stay on the very top of Apple's App Store charts as well. Ready to join? Here's how to get started on Bluesky[.]"

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.”

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The Commentariat -- October 4

AP: "Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware said in a 2006 debate that China was plotting to take over America and claimed to have classified information about the country that she couldn't divulge." CW: later O'Donnell revealed that the CIA sends her classified information via coded radio transmissions which her teeth pick up. (Perhaps I made that last bit up.) ...

... the ever-so-level-headed Jim Fallows of The Atlantic: "... the 'privy to classified information' riff ..., to anyone who knows anything about the world of politics, instantly signals, 'I am completely insane.'" ...

... Steve Benen: "even for a Senate candidate who's lied repeatedly about her educational background, is suspected of campaign embezzlement, is suspected of tax fraud, rejects modern science, hates gays, has crusaded against masturbation, has talked about stopping Americans from having sex, and embraces a hysterically extreme political worldview, this is pretty extraordinary." More on O'Donnell on the Delaware page.

** Robbing from the Bereaved & the Taxpayer to Give to -- Prudential. David Evans of the Washington Post: "... Prudential [Financial] is investing - and profiting from - death benefits owed to service members' families, using money provided by the government.... The government has paid Prudential $1.7 billion for these benefits since 2003, when the war in Iraq began." Prudential holds & invests money due to survivors, setting them up with "quasi-checking accounts" while Prudential retains profits on the remaining balance for itself rather than for the survivors.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) writes a great op-ed in USA Today: "... rage on the right should not be confused with populism. The far right attacks government regulation as it feeds Wall Street and the insurance companies. It rails against government spending for the least privileged as it lavishes tax cuts favoring the most privileged." Read it all. ...

... ** Paul Krugman writes a terrific column about how Rupert Murdoch's Fox "News" & the billionaires club have co-opted the Republican party for their own gain. ...

... "A Spending Frenzy Conducted Largely in the Shadows." T. W. Farnam & Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "Interest groups are spending five times as much on the 2010 congressional elections as they did on the last midterms, and they are more secretive than ever about where that money is coming from. The bulk of the money is being spent by conservatives, who have swamped their Democratic-aligned competition by 7 to 1 in recent weeks. The wave of spending is made possible in part by a series of Supreme Court rulings...." ...

... AND Ben Smith found out why Rupert Murdoch sent $1 million each to the Republican Governors' Association & the anti-Obama Chamber of Commerce, thus putting the last nail in the coffin of the "fair & balanced" pretense:

A person close to News Corp. told me this week the company didn't realize its $1 million to the RGA would become public. And the $1 million to Chamber of Commerce was supposed to be secret as well.

Philosopher J. M. Bernstein applies a Hegelian model to the Wall Street fiasco. Hegel explained why Dodd-Frank should have been a lot stronger. Fairly easy-to-follow.

In his New Yorker Commentary, Steve Coll reads Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars & paints a portrait of a President who brings "realism & intelligence" to the Afghan-Pakistan conundrum. ...

... Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post: "Obama has chosen a sensible middle course in Afghanistan, trying to devote significant time and resources to that country, degrading the Taliban but also letting the U.S. military know that this is not an unlimited engagement and that America has other interests in the world.... Americans are chronically disappointed by the way their wars end. This is because while waging wars, Americans refuse to think through the political and military tradeoffs needed to get to a reasonable outcome."

Richard E. Cohen of Politico: "In an unprecedented letter to all congressional candidates in both parties, more than 130 former members of Congress" urged the current crop ... "to find common ground to solve problems” & show some "decency and respect toward opponents."

Kathleen Hennessey in the Los Angeles Times: Democrats are throwing some Republican candidates off-message, "Rarely has a set of candidates given opponents so much to work with."

The Republicans have lost their standards, they’ve lost their principles.... Really that’s why the machine in the Republican Party is fighting against me.... They have never really gone along with lower taxes and less government. -- Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle, in a closed-door meeting with a tea party opponent

Scoop! Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun obtained a tape of a meeting among Sharron Angle, her Tea Party of Nevada opponent Scott Ashjian, & their minions. Pretty raw stuff. Includes audio of the meeting. ...

... Update from Shira Toeplitz of Politico: "Nevada Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian admitted Sunday that he secretly recorded a conversation with Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle, at a meeting in which she asks him to get out of the race, and that he leaked the tape to a journalist." The recording, according to a Harvard Law professor, was illegal. ...

... Update: or maybe Ashjian isn't a teabagger at all. Here's an the Tea Party Express produced:

... AND Christiana Bellantoni of Talking Points Memo adds, "Cleta Mitchell, a top Republican lawyer representing Sharron Angle's Senate bid in Nevada, told TPM ... that the meeting [with Ashjian] ... was 'a setup.'" See more on the Nevada senatorial race on the Nevada page.

Barry Friedman & Dahlia Lithwick in Slate: how the Roberts Court has used deft magicians' tricks to shove the law to the right without the public's noticing it. ...

... Half-Time Justice. Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: Elena "Kagan's old job as solicitor general - the '10th justice' - is initially making it hard to do her new job as the ninth justice. Kagan, 50, has recused herself from 25 of the 51 cases the court has accepted so far this term, all as a result of her 14-month tenure as solicitor general, the government's chief legal representative in the Supreme Court and the nation's lower appellate courts."

** Here's the Huff Post's sign-up sheet for bus rides from New York City to Washington, D.C. for Jon Stewart's "Sanity Rally." The deadline for sign-up is this Friday, October 8.

News You Can Use (Maybe):

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "As some of the nation’s largest lenders have conceded that their foreclosure procedures might have been improperly handled, lawsuits have revealed myriad missteps in crucial documents." ...

... Ylan Mui of the Washington Post: 675 colleges & a pricey credit card company collaborate to fleece students in a deal that falls outside reform legislation. ...

... Candice Choi of the AP: "... a federal study last year found that about one in four U.S. households skirts banks and relies on services such as check-cashing and payday loans. Many of these households bring in less than $30,000 a year." Choi, who tried living in the non-bank world herself, found it to be both costly & fustrating.

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