The Ledes

Monday, July 21, 2025

New York Times: “William L. Clay, who became the first African-American elected to the House of Representatives from Missouri, co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus and forcefully promoted the interests of poor people in St. Louis and beyond in his 32 years on Capitol Hill, died on Thursday in Adelphi, Md. He was 94.” 

New York Times: “Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the actor who rose to fame as a teenager playing Theo Huxtable on 'The Cosby Show' in the mid-1980s, died in Costa Rica on Sunday. He was 54. Warner drowned while swimming at a beach on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, The Associated Press reported, citing the country’s Judicial Investigation Department.” 

The Wires
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The Ledes

Sunday, July 20, 2025

New York Times: “The Cram fire in central Oregon, which is threatening 653 structures, most of them homes, has grown to more than 95,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire of the year so far in the United States.... Moister air and calmer winds are expected to blunt some of the fire’s growth over the weekend. It was 49 percent contained as of late Saturday night local time, according to InciWeb, a government site that tracks wildfires.” 

New York Times: “Torrential rain in parts of the Washington, D.C., area on Saturday led to flash flooding and prompted water rescues in Maryland and Virginia, the authorities said. More than five inches of rain fell in some densely populated Washington suburbs like Silver Spring on Saturday. Several major roads in Montgomery, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties in Maryland, as well as in Fairfax County in Virginia, were impassable on Saturday evening. In northwest Washington, D.C., parked cars were inundated with floodwaters.”

AP: “A vehicle rammed into a crowd of people waiting to enter a performance venue along a busy boulevard in Los Angeles early Saturday, injuring 30 people and leading bystanders to attack the driver, authorities said. The driver was later found to have been shot, according to police, who were searching for a suspected gunman who fled the scene along Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood.... Twenty-three victims were taken to hospitals and trauma centers, according to police. Seven were in critical condition, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement.... The driver, whose gunshot wound was found by paramedics, was also taken to a hospital.”

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Hubris. One would think that a married man smart enough to start up and operate his own tech company was also smart enough to know that you don't take your girlfriend to a public concert where the equipment includes a jumbotron -- unless you want to get caught on the big camera with your arms around said girlfriend. Ah, but for Andy Bryon, CEO of A company called Astronomer, and also maybe his wife, Wednesday was a night that will live in infamy. New York Times link. ~~~

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.”

 

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Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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The Commentariat -- September 21

The Fall of Summers. It is fitting that September 21 marks the end of Summers. -- Karen Garcia

Buh-Bye, Larry. AP: "President Barack Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, plans to leave the White House at the end of the year, a move that comes as the administration struggles to show an anxious public it's making progress on the economy." CW: I assume that Julie Pace, the AP reporter on this story, added the last line for ironical impact: "... but [Summers] looks forward to returning to Harvard to teach and write about the economic fundamentals of job creation." The New York Times has the full official announcement.

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Obama’s Wars,” by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work." Update: Washington Post story by Steve Luxenberg here. ...

... Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times reviews Woodward's book.

CW: when I need a Nobel Laureate to back up my observations, Paul Krugman is apt to come through, as he does here: "the [Obama] administration seems to go out of its way to alienate its supporters." ...

... Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post has the money quote on Jacob Lew's Senate committee testimony to which Krugman refers. Oh, and Nasiripour reminds us that Lew is "a former Citigroup executive." ...

... Not a Whole Lot of Shakin' up Going on. Alas, Andrew Leonard of Salon probably has it right on the End of Summers: "Obama replaced Romer with his longtime advisor, Austan Goolsbee, ensuring near perfect continuity with his original economic team. He replaced Orszag with former Clinton budget director Jacob Lew -- the very antithesis of a shakeup." ...

... Robert Reich: "After three decades of flat wages during which almost all the gains of growth have gone to the very top, the middle class no longer has the buying power to keep the economy going. It can’t send more spouses into paid work, can’t work more hours, can’t borrow any more. All the coping mechanisms are exhausted."

Republican strategist Mark McKinnon in the Daily Beast: President Obama has a "Velma Hart problem." Here's Hart on CNN:

Mark Thompson of Time: "... military paychecks were the key engine of income growth for many of the cities that saw their average pay grow the fastest last year. In fact, the 11 cities with the fastest income growth all boast major military installations that help drive their local economies.... What does it mean when the nation's cities with the fastest-growing payrolls are dedicated to fighting wars instead of cancer, building brigades instead of bridges, and training combat engineers instead of computer engineers?"

Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "Official and independent budget estimates show that letting tax rates spring back to pre-Bush levels for all taxpayers would bring the country within striking distance of meeting President Obama's goal of balancing the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015."

Jim Rutenberg & Kate Zernike of the New York Times: President Bill Clinton "... has emerged as one of the most important defenders of President Obama’s Congressional majorities. Some candidates are asking for his help on the campaign trail, rather than the president’s. Even though Mr. Clinton insisted on Monday that he was only 'peripherally and fleetingly' back in politics, he has been headlining rallies and fund-raisers across the country to buck up the depressed party faithful."

Ben Smith & Keach Hagey of Politico: the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert "dueling" marches October 30 are a "practical" joke that may energize young voters.

Christine O'Donnell is clearly a criminal, and like any crook she should be prosecuted. Ms. O'Donnell has spent years embezzling money from her campaign to cover her personal expenses.... Thieves belong in jail not the United States Senate. -- Melanie Sloan, CREW director

Andy Barr of Politico: "The campaign watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a pair of complaints with the Federal Election Commission Monday accusing [Christine] O'Donnell of using more than $20,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses."

Flash Cookies. Tanzina Vega of the New York Times: "Since July, at least five class-action lawsuits filed in California have accused media companies like the Fox Entertainment Group and NBC Universal, and technology companies like Specific Media and Quantcast of surreptitiously using Flash cookies. More filings are expected as early as this week. The suits contend that the companies collected information on the Web sites that users visited and from the videos they watched, even though the users had set their Web browser privacy settings to reject cookies that could track them."

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