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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INAUGURATION 2029

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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The Conversation -- July 20, 2025

Alan Feuer & Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times: “In the swirl of money and sun-tanned women that was their Palm Beach-and-Manhattan set, Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein spent nearly 15 years mingling side-by-side as public friends. There were lavish dinners with boldface names at Mr. Epstein’s mansion on the Upper East Side and raucous parties with cheerleaders and models at Mr. Trump’s private club and residence at Mar-a-Lago. In between, there were trips back and forth from Florida to New York on one of Mr. Epstein’s private jets. But behind the tabloid glamour, questions have lingered about what Mr. Trump’s long association with Mr. Epstein says about his judgment and character, especially as his allies have stoked sinister claims about Mr. Epstein’s connections to Democrats.... One of the young women [-- Virginia Giuffre --] who later said Mr. Epstein groomed and abused her was recruited into his world while working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago.... Another woman has said that Mr. Trump groped her when Mr. Epstein brought her to Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet him.... Stacey Williams, a former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, has said she was groped by Mr. Trump when she was introduced to him by Mr. Epstein, whom she was dating at the time.” The link is a gift link. (Also linked yesterday.) 

Marie: I don't usually dwell on salacious stories, but an excerpt from a book by former SDNY U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman, which Marcy Wheeler published last week (and I linked here contemporaneously), so disgusted me that I chose to watch a few podcasts about the Trump/Epstein case. Tim Miller's interview of Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, who has been reporting on the case for years, covers a lot of ground. The video runs almost 50 minutes, so I'm not necessarily recommending you devote that much of your time to this matter. But it held my attention. BTW, Brown -- who comes across as extremely level-headed -- does not think Epstein killed himself. So there's that. I also almost never watch Meidas Touch podcasts as they always overpromise and they're extremely partisan and sensationalist. But here again this reprise of Donald Trump's history of exploiting girls and young women was sickening enough to hold my attention. The video lasts 19 minutes. 

Justin Baragona of the Independent: “JD Vance took a quick day trip to Montana Tuesday afternoon to speak to right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, who is the chief of both Fox News and its sister corporation News Corp., which publishes the New York Post and Wall Street Journal. According to the Associated Press, the vice president’s secret meeting also included several executives from Fox News, the conservative cable giant that has largely carried Donald Trump’s water and helped staff up the president’s current administration.... It’s still not clear what the meeting between Vance and the Fox executives was about....” MB: Curiously, Baragona never mentions Epstein even though Tuesday reportedly was the day WSJ reporters contacted Trump for comment on their Epstein birthday-card report. I'd speculate that JayDee, who is often assigned the job of peacekeeper, was sent on an emergency mission to try to persuade Murdoch to kill the Epstein story. 

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: “Trump’s supporters thought he would shed light on shady elites protecting their own money and power. Now MAGA is reckoning with the fact that Trump is the shady elite, shielding information about Jeffrey Epstein.... On Thursday, Trump posted that he had asked Bondi to produce “any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval.” But judges usually keep such testimony secret. It was hilarious to see Trump hiding behind the judiciary he’s tried to sideline.... Twisting conspiracy theories into a Gordian knot of hate, Trump is claiming some Epstein files were 'made up' by Barack Obama, James Comey, “Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration” and “Crooked Hillary.' It’s tough to blame the deep state when you are the deep state.” (Also linked yesterday.)

Patrick Marley, et al., of the Washington Post: “The Justice Department under the Trump administration has fired dozens of career prosecutors during the past six months, making the dismissal of federal attorneys — generally a move reserved for cases of misconduct — almost commonplace. The dismissals often came without warning and have affected more than 40 prosecutors, based on reporting by The Washington Post and a tally of public information. The total number of lawyers, agents and support staff DOJ has fired since the administration began in January includes dozens more people, according to Justice Connection, an advocacy group for former Justice Department employees. The group estimates that more than 200 career employees have been fired across the department and its component agencies, which include the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.... The terminations have alarmed staff members and observers who worry that agency officials are engaged in a broad campaign to erode civil service protections, bolster the political interests of the president and weaken the rule of law.”

Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: “Another senior aide to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is leaving the Pentagon, officials said Saturday, marking at least the sixth departure of a top adviser in Hegseth’s first six months in office. Justin Fulcher, who was named a senior adviser to the defense secretary in late April, said in a text message to The Washington Post that his departure is 'perfectly amicable' and that he planned all along to complete just six months of government service.... The latest shake-up follows a report by The Post published Tuesday that detailed an unusual situation ahead of his appointment in April in which Fulcher — then a member of billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service — stormed out of a meeting with the Pentagon’s DOGE team lead, Yinon Weiss, and sought help from Hegseth’s front office.... Hegseth brought Fulcher onto his team days later, after he fired three other senior advisers and accused them of leaking information to the news media.”

The Plot Thickens. Sara Fischer of Axios: "Skydance CEO David Ellison and his lawyer met with Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr and an FCC lawyer on Tuesday, a new regulatory filing shows.... The meeting came two days before CBS abruptly announced that it is canceling 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' after the next season in May 2026, citing 'financial' reasons.'... '... we discussed Skydance's commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS's editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers,'" Ellison's lawyer Matthew Brill wrote.  (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Joe My God's headline: "FCC Chair likely demanded Colbert's cancellation." MB: My God, I think Joe is right. Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

Comment1 Comment

Reader Comments (1)

So, FCC wants CBS` editorial decision-making to reflect diverse ideologies?

Used to be news outfits were supposed to reflect facts, but I can see CBS editors mixing in a little "conservatism" here, some "liberalism" there, plus your soupcons of communism, nazism, emperor worship, dominionism - there are hundreds of "varied" ideologies to share, instead of those boring limited "facts," which are tedious and repeatable.

July 20, 2025 | Unregistered CommenterPatrick

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