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INAUGURATION 2029

Marie: I don't know why this video came up on my YouTube recommendations, but it did. I watched it on a large-ish teevee, and I found it fascinating. ~~~

 

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.”

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

Page Links
Wednesday
Jan132016

Ode to an Also-Ran

Not Ready for Big-Boy Pants.

Rebecca Savransky of the Hill: "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is blaming the GOP for his exclusion from the main debate stage in this week's Republican presidential debate, saying the decision may cost the party the support of libertarian voters. 'They have been saying for months they're going to narrow the field, but I don't think it's the job of the establishment in the Republican Party to decide who is and who isn't [in],' he said on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' on Wednesday morning.... Paul, who is boycotting the 'undercard' debate that will be held before the main event, said he's being pushed out because he has a 'unique voice.'"

So now we turn to the high arts (assuming doggerel qualifies) & our poet-in-residence Akhilleus for his versification of Paul the Younger:

The Children's Hour (apologies to Longfellow)

Between dark thoughts and unbecoming cupidity
Comes a trying time of immense stupidity
When scowling Confederates begin to glower
That is known cross the nation as the Children's Hour.

I see on the Tee-Vee machine and the papers
Curmudgeonly candidates and their ineffectual capers
I read in reports, and hear sour bleating
Black thoughts in their minds, hearts out they are eating

Especially the little one, a smelly rug on his head
His tiny fists pounding the floor by his bed
In such great distress, he's been kicked off the stage
So he'll pick up his ball and off home he will rage

"It just isn't fair" he whinnies and whines
His rug all askew as he pulls down the blinds
He sits in his room and refuses to breathe
"When I'm blue, they'll be sorry" and commences to grieve

His time as a bidder for high office is spent
Meantime he can still show them all his rear end
Watching the SOTU alone he espies
The man he hates so and yells out "He lies!"

This makes him feel manly, his feelings so hurt
But he takes time to go on the radio and blurt
That that black man's a phony and should just admit
That he'd rather play golf and pick up and quit.

He wonders just why no one wants him to win
The Orange head bozo's their favorite, Oh, sin!
So he grumps and he groans, between and betwixt
Life can be hard when you're just turning six.

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Reader Comments (2)

After I saw the picture, I had a feeling there was a poem to follow! And--surprise, surprise--the author is the renowned Akhellius, President of Paul the Younger's daycare center.

January 14, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterKate Madison

Great matchup! The photo + the poem! Outstanding!

January 14, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterMAG
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