REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Conversation -- August 5, 2025

The Ledes

Sunday, August 3, 2025

New York Times: C.I.A. counterintelligence analyst Sandra Grimes, who unmasked Aldrich Ames, the deadliest traitor in C.I.A. history, “died at her home in Great Falls, Va., on July 25, at 79.... Long before the C.I.A. accepted that it had an internal leaker, Ms. Grimes, who had once car-pooled with Mr. Ames, was convinced that he was the mole.”

New York Times: Book editor Ann Schakne Harris, who shephered a string of best-sellers, “died on June 1 at her home in Manhattan.... She was 99.... A raft of best sellers attended her six-decade career. Among them were ... 'The Exorcist' (1969) by William Peter Blatty; 'The Thorn Birds' (1977) by the Australian writer Colleen McCullough; Stephen Hawking’s 'A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes' (1988); the autobiography of Betty Ford; an authorized biography of Warren Buffett; a smuggled manuscript by the Soviet-era composer Dmitri Shostakovich; and two Pulitzer Prize winners — 'Why Survive? Being Old in America' (1975) by Dr. Robert N. Butler, and 'Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation' (2013) by Dan Fagin.”

New York Times: “Loni Anderson, who played the platinum blonde receptionist on the screwball comedy “WKRP in Cincinnati” in the late 1970s and early ’80s and later became a tabloid mainstay during her contentious divorce from the actor Burt Reynolds, died on Sunday at a hospital in Los Angeles. She was 79.”

The Wires

The Ledes

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Washington Post: “A manhunt is underway for a person authorities believe shot and killed four people at a small-town bar in Montana on Friday morning. The shooting took place at approximately 10:30 a.m. at the Owl Bar in Anaconda, home to fewer than 10,000 residents in the southwestern part of the state, the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation said. Local law enforcement identified the suspect, whom they believe to be armed and dangerous, as Michael Paul Brown, 45.”

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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. ~~~

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.”

Page Links

Monday

Aug042025

The Conversation -- August 5, 2025

Dangerous Times. Paul Krugman: "... right now Trump has immense power, thanks in large part to the cowardice of many of the institutions that should be holding him in check. But he’s also rapidly bleeding [public] support, in large part because he’s completely failing to deliver on his economic promises. That combination makes this an extremely dangerous moment. And if authoritarianism does come to America, don’t count on it being soft 'like Hungary's]." (Also linked yesterday.)

Akhilleus' commentary in yesterday's thread on Donald Trump's architectural aesthetics is entertaining & accurate.

Alan Feuer of the New York Times: “... in the past several months, as members of ... [Donald] Trump’s Justice Department have repeatedly misled the courts, violated their orders and demonized judges who have ruled against them, some jurists have started to show an angry loss of faith in the people and the institution they once believed in most. The dissolution of these traditional bonds of trust — known in legal circles as the presumption of regularity — goes well beyond judges’ use of blunt words ... to describe the various parts of Mr. Trump’s power-grabbing policy agenda.... A number of judges in recent weeks have openly questioned the fundamental honesty and credibility of Justice Department lawyers in ways that would have been unthinkable only months ago.... Judges are not the only players in the legal system who have shown a measure of distrust in the Justice Department. In an almost unheard-of move, federal grand juries in Los Angeles have been refusing to indict many defendants whom prosecutors have sought to charge in connection with immigration protests, according to recent news reports.” Feuer gives numerous examples of judges skepticism of prosecutors' claims.

Everything Is Going Very Smoothly. Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s acting chief of staff tried and failed to oust a senior White House liaison assigned to the Pentagon, people familiar with the matter said Monday, detailing an unusual dispute that marks the latest instance of infighting among a staff plagued by disagreement and distrust. The clash last week between Ricky Buria, Hegseth’s acting chief of staff, and Matthew A. McNitt, who coordinates personnel policy as White House liaison at the Pentagon, appears rooted in Buria’s frustration with pushback from the White House as he has attempted to fill positions in the defense secretary’s office. It coincides, too, with the White House’s refusal to let Buria take over the powerful chief of staff job on a permanent basis.”

The Trump Misogyny Program, Veterans' Edition. Praveena Somasundaram of the Washington Post: “Pregnant veterans would no longer be allowed to receive abortions at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in cases of rape, incest or when the pregnancy threatens their health under a proposed rule from the Trump administration that would revoke a Biden-era policy expanding abortion access. Months after the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022, the Biden administration implemented a rule change allowing VA for the first time to provide abortion services for veterans and eligible family members in limited circumstances, including in states with abortion bans. VA said at the time that those bans, some near-total, were 'creating urgent risks' to the lives of pregnant veterans. Thus, VA said, the policy change was 'essential.' In its filing Friday, the Trump administration called the 2022 rule change 'inappropriate' and 'legally questionable.'” Thanks to RAS for the link.

Marie: One would think that the person chosen to "investigate" straight-arrow Jack Smith -- the former special prosecutor who brought charges against Donald Trump -- would be, like Caesar's wife, above reproach. Well, okay, this is Trump, so,

"The guy Trump picked to lead the office that’s now investigating Jack Smith: — said Niki Haley is ineligible to be president — has neo-Nazi ties — was Andrew Tate’s lawyer — 2x Claremont fellow — wrote for Gateway Pundit — called for Pence to be hanged — called for secession after 2020 election."

~~~ The guy making those claims is Radley Balko, and he's right. The person Trump picked to head up his Office of Special Counsel is Paul Ingrassia, and radical right-wing proclivities are well-established. The Senate has not held a hearing to consider his nomination. For some reason. The attack on Smith (I mean the "investigation"), if it goes forward, is guarantee to be a farce. Thank you to RAS for the link to Balko's skeet.

Meet the Lemmings. Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: Donald “Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics forced his allies into the awkward spot of criticizing an agency they had freely cited [and praised] in the past.” Among those who did about faces: JayDee Vance, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (Okla.), Sen. Roger Marshall (Kansas), Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, & the director of the White House Economic Council Kevin Hassett. “Mr. Trump has a pattern of accepting results that benefit him and denigrating those he dislikes as being rigged or part of a scam. He has objected to the results of the Emmys, falsely claimed that President Barack Obama did not win the popular vote and asserted that his erstwhile rival Senator Ted Cruz of Texas 'stole' a primary victory from him in Iowa in 2016.... Mr. Trump spread the lie that the [2020] election had been stolen from him. And since returning to office, he has lashed out at the sources of bad news for his administration, including judges who rule against him.... 'The key question for the Congress is: To what extent will they insist on a competent professional to be confirmed for this position going forward?' [Stephen] Farnsworth [of the University of Mary Washington] said.”

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⭐Israel/Palestine, et al. “All or Nothing.” Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: “Negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire appear to have reached an end — or at least a point of extreme brinkmanship — as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated he plans to expand military operations to occupy the entire Gaza Strip.... An Israel official said that discussions with the Trump administration over the decision were ongoing.... Trump, [his special envoy Steve] Witkoff said, 'now believes that everybody should come home at once. No piecemeal deals.' He said the administration was formulating a new 'all or nothing' plan. Both sides have rejected elements of the Witkoff proposal that has been on the table.”

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