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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[.]"

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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Sunday

Oct232016

When You Don't Get the "Joke"

Jokes depend upon subtext. When you "get" the joke, it's because you know the subtext. Jokes are funny because the subtext both gives the joke its meaning & creates a momentary bond between teller & hearer. For instance, when Hillary Clinton said at the Al Smith dinner last week, "Usually, I charge a lot for speeches like this," most hearers knew this was a joke at her own expense, and referred to speeches she made to Goldman Sachs & other big corporations and for which she was paid seemingly huge sums for what appeared to be, in each case, about an hour's work. The speeches became campaign issues in both the primary and general elections, particularly because Clinton would not release transcripts or tapes of her remarks. Clinton used fewer than ten words to spoof herself and her critics. We knew that backstory, so we got the joke. Ha ha.

Donald Trump told one "joke" at the dinner I just didn't get: "... here she is tonight — in public — trying to pretend she doesn’t hate Catholics.” Why would anybody even think that, much less say it? I wondered. Other than a few rabid StormTrumpers, who "hates Catholics"?

As Amy Davidson of the New Yorker writes, the excuse for that shocking remark was this: "Trump’s joke was about an e-mail in which Jennifer Palmieri, a Clinton aide who herself is Catholic, referred to Catholicism as 'the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion.' The Trumpian translation turned this into evidence that Clinton was a religious bigot — an anti-Catholic in a room full of Catholics." Mighty obscure, and scarcely a trope worthy of an insult directed at Clinton instead of Palmieri, but maybe that was it. It wasn't.

Near the end of the evening, Hillary Clinton, in what I assumed were more-or-less traditional remarks at Al Smith dinners, said,

And when I think about what Al Smith went through it’s important to just reflect how groundbreaking it was for him, a Catholic, to be my party’s nominee for president. Don’t forget – school boards sent home letters with children saying that if Al Smith is elected president you will not be allowed to have or read a Bible. Voters were told that he would annul Protestant marriages.

And I saw a story recently that said people even claimed the Holland Tunnel was a secret passageway to connect Rome and America, to help the Pope rule our country. Those appeals, appeals to fear and division, can cause us to treat each other as the Other. Rhetoric like that makes it harder for us to see each other, to respect each other, to listen to each other. And certainly a lot harder to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Okay, I thought, she was working Al Smith's misfortune into a criticism of Donald Trump and his whole campaign. Even so, it was quite appropriate, in context. But once again, I think I missed the subtext.

Michael Daly of the Daily Beast reminded me: Donald Trump's father Fred "was arrested on Memorial Day in 1927 for participating in a Klu Klux Klan riot in his home borough of Queens. The riot was fueled in part by the prospect that Al Smith might become not just the Catholic governor of New York but the first Catholic president of the United States. 'Americans Assaulted by Roman Catholic Police of New York City' read KKK leaflets that went up in Queens the day after the arrest of Fred Trump and others."

In that tiny newspaper story, published nearly 90 years ago, lies Donald's "Rosebud." Religious, racial, ethnic, cultural and gender animus form the core of his twisted belief system. The views Fred Trump held in the 1920s explain why he and Donald didn't mind discriminating against blacks in their housing developments, even when they were operating under a consent decree; why Donald calls Mexicans rapists & criminals; why Donald thinks Americans of Hispanic descent are unfit to serve in high public office; why Donald would discriminate against Muslim men, women and children; why Donald would stereotype Jewish "folks"; why Donald would profile all people of color as part of his "law & order" platform; why Donald -- and his own sons -- would cultivate white supremacists; why Donald would see nothing wrong with getting into a fight with Pope Francis; why Donald would blithely suggest that his opponent "hates Catholics."

Donald Trump has run a hate campaign because hating others -- all others, no matter who -- is a family tradition. Hillary Clinton remarked on that at the Al Smith dinner. Maybe we didn't get it then, but we know it now.

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But why the Holland Tunnel, which links Manhattan with New Jersey? The tunnel to Queens is the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

October 23, 2016 |

Jerry Wechsler

@Jerry: The Holland Tunnel opened for traffic in 1927. Al Smith ran for president in 1928. The Queens-Midtown tunnel didn't open till 1940. When Smith ran for president, there was no there there.

The Pope would have to sneak thru (in one direction or the other -- maybe Jersey City could have been Vatican America) via the Holland Tunnel.

Marie

October 23, 2016 |

Marie Burns

@Jerry Wechsler: Why let a few obvious facts get in the way of some dirty, Trumpian-type politicking?

Robert Slayton (see books/Google books) "Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith"

"...Smith’s opponents distributed photos nationwide showing the construction of New York’s Holland Tunnel, claiming this was the secret passageway being built to bring the pope all the way from Rome (the candidate tried to argue that tunnels cost $25 million a mile, that Vatican city was thirty-five hundred miles away, but what was the use?)."

October 23, 2016 |

MAG

Yeah, come to think of it, I remember when Kennedy was running for president, he also was going to build a tunnel to Rome. Some ridiculous memes never die.

I sort thought when Kennedy didn't build the tunnel -- figuratively or literally -- that was the end of anti-Catholicism in this country.

I guess not.

Marie

October 23, 2016 |

Marie Burns

Marie: Thank you for this––and yes, we do know it now.

October 23, 2016 |

PD Pepe

Thanks Marie and everyone.
MAG - I hope you did not intend to imply that I am Trumpian :)
Gee, I'm kind of to the left of Bernie Sanders on many things, though I'm also able to vote for HRC with a certain enthusiasm.
I do not require perfection in my candidates, since I look in the mirror every day - literally and metaphorically - and never find perfection there, either.
I'm grateful for this blog and this community; a small coterie of subversives :)

October 23, 2016 |

Jerry Wechsler

Margaret Sullivan has a piece in the WAPO that speaks to thoughts that've been on my mind recently. "let's go cold turkey" Yeah! Let's stop giving Trump the headlines. Enough of our braking to view this damn train wreck. Enough of him. The day after the election let's change the subject.

Near the end of Sullivan's piece this particular line was broken below by a blue button insertion that invited one to 'Sign up" "...But the ratings-driven attention to Donald Trump’s every outrageous word and deed should come to a screeching halt.."

I almost clicked it. Count me in!
But, it was simply to receive a WAPO alert.
A joke! Got it!

October 23, 2016 |

MAG

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