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Marie: Sorry, my countdown clock was unreliable; then it became completely unreliable. I can't keep up with it. Maybe I'll try another one later.

 

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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Tuesday
Sep282010

The Commentariat -- September 28

President Obama's rally in Madison, Wisconsin:

     ... Post-event New York Times story here. AND Wisconsin State Journal report of the event here. Expanded New York Times story here. See video above.

Supreme Court Press Release: "Beginning with October Term 2010, the audio recordings of all oral arguments heard by the Supreme Court of the United States will be available free to the public on the Court’s Web site, www.supremecourt.gov, at the end of each argument week.  The audio recordings will be posted on Fridays after Conference."

The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition. It is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It's a point of view that I disagree with. It's a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it's been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it's that Fox is very successful.
-- Barack Obama

Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone interviews President Obama. Full interview. ...

... Tom Curry of MSNBC: "President Barack Obama’s lecture to his supporters to snap out of their lethargy is getting a frosty reception from some on the left side of the Democratic coalition."

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka invites us to join "One Nation Working Together" at the Lincoln Memorial on October 2. The sign-up Website he mentions is OneNationWorkingTogether.org:

     ... At a forum held in New York City's Cooper Union, "Trumka said it is vital to channel working-class anger away from Fox News and Tea Party extremists who are delivering"

a cynical, deeply dishonest and incoherent message—that big government is somehow to blame for the current crisis that the budget deficit will eat our children, and that illegal immigrants took all the good jobs.

Here's the second of three articles adapted from Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars. An audio clip of Woodward's interview of the President:

     ... Here's the transcript.

The Voodoo Factor, a/k/a the Hypnotic Oath. Joseph Gerth of the Louisville Courier-Journal: "Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul belongs to a conservative doctors’ group that, among other things, has expressed doubts about the connection between HIV and AIDS and suggested that President Barack Obama may have been elected because he was able to hypnotize voters." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. See more about Rand Paul on the Campaign 2010 Kentucky page.

Bob Herbert shares the content of some of the images & videos New York's Republican candidate for governor, Carl Paladino, thought were so hilarious he had to forward them to friends & acquaintances. Here are two:

A photo showing a group of black men trying to get out of the way of an airplane that is apparently moving across a field. The caption reads: 'Run niggers, run.'

A video clip of a nude couple engaged in intercourse with the title: “Miss France [expletive].” Mr. Paladino characterized it as 'a keeper.'

The Decided. Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "At least one-third of all ballots across the country this year will be cast before Election Day, party officials said, reflecting a steady rise in early voting that is profoundly influencing how political campaigns are conducted in many parts of the country."

The Editors of the Louisville Courier-Journal explain American politics to visitors from other countries:

Republicans, riding a tide of corporate cash and public anger, are counting on voters to have such short memories they'll bring back the disastrous policies of the Bush years. And Democrats, who hold the White House and large majorities in both chambers of Congress, are too fumbling and afraid to call the Republicans out.

Vice President Biden kicks of Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC show, "The Last Word." The Vice President & O'Donnell discuss a range of issues from the tea party to the Afghanistan war:

No Surprise Here. Hope Yen of the AP: "The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession. The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S....." The ratio of rich to poor income is nearly double what it was in 1968.

No Surprise There. Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: "Women made little progress in climbing into management positions in this country even in the boom years before the financial crisis, according to a report to be released on Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office."

Worse than I Thought. Katie Curnutte of Zillow Blog: almost one-third of Americans who apply for home mortgages have credit scores so low banks won't lend to them. Via Huffington Post.

Greg Sargent: if quitting her governor's gig & nattering on Fox "News" was part of Sarah Palin's strategy to become President, it isn't working.

Massimo Calabresi of Time: "CQ reports a deal, months in the making, between [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the White House on tougher Congressional oversight of covert intelligence programs." [The CQ story is subscriber-firewalled.]

Believing Isn't Knowing. Rachel Zoll of the AP: "A new survey of Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths." ...

     ... Sam Hodges of the Dallas Morning News puts some southern seasoning on the story: "People in the South – the Bible Belt – tended to score lower on the survey than those in other regions."

... "Junkets for Jesus." In Mother Jones, Jeff Sharlet details how Congressional "Family" members "travel the world to preach [Christianity] to dictators on the taxpayers' dime."

It's a little bit like Custer. He underestimated the number of Indians on the other side of the hill and he paid the ultimate price for it.  -- Sen. Bob Graham, on Adm. Thad Allen's assertion that underestimatetion of the Gulf oil flow was inconsequential

William Broad of the New York Times:"Federal prosecutors have charged [Los Alamos nuclear scientist] Dr. [Leonardo] Mascheroni with trying to sell nuclear secrets to Venezuela as part of a complicated scheme to have that country bring .... to life... his plan to build a giant laser for the achievement of nuclear fusion.... According to the indictment, he negotiated the deal in 2008 and 2009 with the undercover F.B.I. agent, who paid him $20,000 out of an overall promise of nearly $800,000."

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