The Ledes

Thursday, July 3, 2025

CNBC: “Job growth proved better than expected in June, as the labor market showed surprising resilience and likely taking a July interest rate cut off the table. Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 147,000 for the month, higher than the estimate for 110,000 and just above the upwardly revised 144,000 in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. April’s tally also saw a small upward revision, now at 158,000 following an 11,000 increase.... Though the jobless rates fell [to 4.1%], it was due largely to a decrease in those working or looking for jobs.”

Washington Post: “A warehouse storing fireworks in Northern California exploded on Tuesday, leaving seven people missing and two injured as explosions continued into Wednesday evening, officials said. Dramatic video footage captured by KCRA 3 News, a Sacramento broadcaster, showed smoke pouring from the building’s roof before a massive explosion created a fireball that seemed to engulf much of the warehouse, accompanied by an echoing boom. Hundreds of fireworks appeared to be going off and were sparkling within the smoke. Photos of the aftermath showed multiple destroyed buildings and a large area covered in gray ash.” ~~~

The Wires
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The Ledes

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

New York Times: “The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who emerged from the backwoods of Louisiana to become a television evangelist with global reach, preaching about an eternal struggle between good and evil and warning of the temptations of the flesh, a theme that played out in his own life in a sex scandal, died on July 1. He was 90.” ~~~

     ~~~ For another sort of obituary, see Akhilleus' commentary near the end of yesterday's thread.

Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

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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.

INAUGURATION 2029

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

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Wednesday
Nov142012

A Difference of Opinion

I'm posting this exchange -- which took place late yesterday -- between contributor James Singer & me largely because I think Singer speaks for thousands of Reality Chex readers. I don't think Singer is wrong & I am right. I not only respect his point-of-view, I find it a perfectly valid one. Still, it is one that I am constitutionally disinclined to share.

Singer: Okay, since it's not going to become a reality show, I'll borrow a line from an episode of "Prime Suspect": They're "both adults; that's what adults do." Now, can we move on? Please?

CW: @James Singer. While I'm sympathetic to your view -- no, we cannot move on. And here's why: I have a penchant for knowing the whole story, & we certainly don't know the whole story here. I think we'll find out more in the coming weeks; already the thrust of the story has moved from Petraeus (who looks more & more like a standard-issue adulterer here & not the central character) to John Allen.

I've always been more interested in what makes people tick than in politics; in fact, for me, politics is sort of human interaction writ large. Whenever I'm inclined to say, "I can't believe you did that," I realize that I can't believe it because there's something about that person -- who is likely a person close to me -- that I don't know. Either I've ignored it or s/he's hid it.

Decades ago, a man I was in love with rejected me. I didn't understand why because there was little doubt he was in love with me, too. In fact, he rejected me numerous times, and we both kept coming back till I quit. I figured out the answer in 2008 -- after I read his obituary. I was terribly sad, really heartbroken, that he had died fairly young. But later I realized there was a clue hidden in his obituary that explained his treatment of me, a clue that cleared up a decades-old mystery for me. Maybe that's what "closure" is. At any rate, it helped me understand a dynamic that I completely missed when I was in love with him. It turns out I wasn't in love with the whole person, but with the part of the person who presented himself to me. I feel a certain bittersweet gratitude to him for revealing to me in death what he could not tell me when he was alive.

We can pretty much guess the whole story on Petraeus & Broadwell at this point, although our conventional wisdom may want tweaking. But we have more to learn about the motivations of other characters in this widening farce. And I really do want to find out how it ends. I hope nobody has to die for the revelation.

Singer: @Marie. Many of us have had affairs that didn't exactly end the way we wanted them to. Shit happens. But some of us--many most of us--have had affairs that ended exactly like we wanted them to. So of our failures, we got over them; of our successes we have pleasant memories. I refer you to the Onion: http://www.theonion.com/articles/widening-petraeus-scandal-reveals-human-race-has-b,30368/

CW: @James Singer. Obviously, I didn't make myself clear. This isn't about the affair(s) & whether or not they worked out. Gen. Allen says he did not have sex with that woman Jill Kelley, & there is no reason to assume that his having written 15,000 (or however many) e-mails to a would-be socialite in a backwater Florida city is evidence of a sexual liaison. But it is evidence of a dangerous liaison, & I'd like to see if the media can figure out for us -- or help us figure out -- how these general officers operate & why they're getting into these entanglements with women of questionable characters & motives. I don't know the answer to that.

I find the Petraeus-Broadwell [affair] understandable & I'm rather sympathetic to it. But why Petraeus & Allen would get mixed up with the Khawam twins is another matter, and how the administration handles it will be interesting to see.

I understand that a lot of people -- probably more men than women, but I'm not sure -- are not interested in the nuances of relationships. I am. The fact that what I do here on Reality Chex happens to intersect with something that fascinates me is a bonus. Naturally, you need not check in here, & I won't be giving a take-home quiz on stories I link, so you need not pay them any attention. But I hope you won't feel in the future a need to ask me to STUF as you did in an earlier comment. For one thing, it won't do any good.


CW Update: BTW, I find this Onion "story" as compelling as the one Singer suggested: "Nation Horrified To Learn About War In Afghanistan While Reading Up On Petraeus Sex Scandal."

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