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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.

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.

 

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The Washington Post publishes a series of U.S. maps here to tell you what weather to expect in your area this summer in terms of temperatures, humidity, precipitation, and cloud cover. The maps compare this year's forecasts with 1993-2016 averages.

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[.]"

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

Wednesday
Sep292010

The Commentariat -- September 30

Classy! As your governor, you're going to be seeing a lot of me on the front page, saying 'Governor LePage tells Obama to go to hell.'
-- Paul LePage, Maine's Republican gubernatorial nominee

E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: President Obama "returned to his community-organizer roots to try to salvage an election" at his campaign rally in Wisconsin after disdaining "a mobilizing strategy for his first year and a half in office.... If Obama succeeds, will he continue to keep his supporters engaged and 'fired up' ...? Or will he go back to an insider strategy that helped bring him to the brink of this precipice?" ...

... Meanwhile, ConservaDems help Republicans, pretend to be Republicans, & Arianna Huffington says President Obama isn't much better:

     ... Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal writes that if ConservaDems running against their own party win, even if Democrats maintain a House majority, they "almost certainly won't have a functioning liberal majority."

New York Times Editorial Board: "Despite President Obama’s promises of reform [the overuse of the state secrets doctrine], the public still cannot reliably distinguish between legitimate and self-serving uses of the national security claims. Worse, some of the administration’s claims clearly have fallen on the darker side of that line."

In the absence of a draft, for a growing number of Americans, service in the military, no matter how laudable, has become something for other people to do. -- Robert Gates

Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times: "The United States is at risk of developing a cadre of military leaders who are cut off politically, culturally and geographically from the population they are sworn to protect, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told an audience at Duke University on Wednesday night." CW: no kidding. ...

... Mark Thompson of Time: Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicts that the number of military suicides will keep rising.

Dana Milbank: NOW President Terry O'Neill confronts Alan Simpson in the Catfood Commission meeting room, urging him to resign. Simpson changes the subject to trashing former labor leader Andy Stern. Let's go to the videotape:

Unhinged. Maggie Haberman of Politic, September 29: "New York Republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino alleged Tuesday that Democrat Andrew Cuomo was unfaithful to his ex-wife years ago.... Paladino offered no proof of his claim, despite requests for substantiation, and he made it minutes after angrily declaring his 10-year-old daughter—a child from his own affair 10 years ago—off limits to the press." ...

     ... Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: "Hours after the phone interview [with Politico] was conducted, Mr. Paladino nearly came to blows with a New York Post reporter who confronted him about the comments." Here's the videotape:

      ... Update: Oh, goody! The Atlantic has made the corniest possible animated version of the confrontation between Paladino & reporter Dicker. Where is Taiwan when we need them? ...

      ... See more about Paladino on the Campaign 2010 New York page.

Constantly Creepy. CNN: Andrew Breitbart protege James O'Keefe, "a conservative activist known for making undercover videos, plotted to embarrass ... CNN correspondent [Abbie Boudreau] by recording a meeting on hidden cameras aboard a floating 'palace of pleasure' and making sexually suggestive comments, e-mails and a planning document show."

     ... Here is part of the outline O'Keefe prepared. Take a look at page 3, which details his props for the "seduction." They include, "a condom jar, dildos..., lube, ceiling mirror...." It goes on. Breitbart & O'Keefe -- the Woodward & Bernstein of the right.

Barton Gellman writes the cover story for Time on the "twisted patriotism" of right-wing militias.

Jonathan Martin & Keach Hagey of Politico: "With the exception of Mitt Romney, Fox now has deals with every major potential Republican presidential candidate not currently in elected office.... The matter is of no small consequence, since it’s uncertain how other news organizations can cover the early stages of the presidential race when some of the main GOP contenders are contractually forbidden to appear on any TV network besides Fox."

Ryan Reilly & Rachel Slajda of Talking Points Memo describe a right-wing conspiracy theory gone mainstream Republican that non-whites are lolling around welfare offices cooking up voter fraud schemes. These allegations are so offensive in content & tone I can't bring myself to type them. Oh, and they're untrue.

Tim Egan of the New York Times talks to his old friend Jeff Dowd, the model for the Dude in the film "The Big Lebowski," about California's Prop 19, a ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana.

CW: something I missed in the Pew religious knowledge survey: 41 percent of Americans can't name the Vice President of the United States.

Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post: the Federal Trade Commission has instituted new rules to rein in scams & shady practices of many debt settlement companies, companies that claim to help consumers manager & reduce their outstanding debts.