REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments

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

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.

Link Code: <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

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.”

Page Links

Thursday

Jan262012

Comment "Approval"

My site host Squarespace has a new forced feature which automatically throws some comments into an "awaiting approval" bin. I have no facility to disable this feature (actually, it IS disabled, but Squarespace has installed an override). I have asked Squarespace to change this. I don't think they will.

This is an equal-opportunity site, and I don't bar anyone from commenting. I apologize for this annoying, discriminatory "feature." I will "approve" comments as soon as I'm aware of them and before reading them. With the exception of some ad spam, I can count on one hand the number of comments I've had to remove in the past six months for offensive content. This approval system is a real pain for commenters, readers and me.

I do, BTW, read all the comments, though not necessarily timely. If I ever remove a comment for what I deem cause, the writer will know it & know why.

Update: a commenter has suggested that "the best solution is just not to comment." That's was not my goal in making readers & contributors aware of the approval process imposed by my host. Since I'm not going to read the comments as I "approve" them, it takes me only seconds to release the comments for publication. The delay is what is unfair to commenters: I don't sit at my computer waiting for comments to come in, so any comments that trigger the approval algorithm will be delayed, sometimes by hours if I'm not around. This delay severely limits commenters' ability to engage in an exchange of ideas, which is one of the purposes of the comments facility. Not only that, I think the approval process itself is insulting to contributors, who 999 times out of 1,000, write comments which falls within my so-called standards.

So keep on commenting, please. What annoys me is the approval requirement, not the comments.

Comments Off

Permalink

Email Article

Reader Comments (5)

As I was reading off all the stuff on Reality Chex this morning, my husband said, "Wow. What would we do without Marie?"

So I hope you get to read this before it's dumped. Every day starts with Reality Chex here at Casa de Duxbury. :)

January 26, 2012 |

Julemry

Interesting. So one does NOT have a control of his 'won' website. It is practically impossible to handle (read) all comments at a timely fashion. It costs the real New York Times a lot of money, I guess.

Well, the best solution is just NOT to comment.

January 26, 2012 |

Ladislav Nemec

The Duhigg and Bradsher piece was disturbing in its specificity. Most of us, I imagine, were well aware of the working conditions in China, but this piece fleshed it out and one feels sick knowing all the details. I teared reading about the poor mother who had to view her burned son, was afraid to touch him, and failed to understand how this could have happened. Some of the comments following the article blamed consumers; while that has merit, it does not address the greed and ineptitude that prevails in these companies. The fact that Mitch Daniels cited Steve Jobs in his speech as someone to emulate is ironic and moronic. And so it goes~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

January 26, 2012 |

PD Pepe

So it goes. It did not have to be like this. A timid government yielded to the big international companies when negotiating trade agreements, We took no advantage of the importance of the American market and just rolled over and said do me. And they did.
An example of what we could have done is Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart dictates what their cost will be, where the product
will be made, how it will be marked and what the pallet pattern and height will be. They are the huge market.
Being in the huge American market was so important to other countries that we could have demanded compete acceptance of American products in return. Korea and Japan still keep out many American products. We could have charged a import fee to protect Americn jobs and defray costs of educating or relocating American workers.
Since the foreign suppliers shipped a lot and imported little, they could not retaliate. And to get a foot hold in the world's largest market they would have acccepted anything, had we asked.
All of the foreign countries were tough negotitors, we were weak and have had our lunch eaten while big American companies cheered and even directed our defeat to make things cheaper and easier for themselves.
We could have had our own elecronics cluster, with clean air and no child labor and no poisoning of employees. The damage to America caused by out sourcing far exceeds the benefits. Benefits going to a small percentage of Americans.

January 27, 2012 |

Carlyle

I really miss you on the NYT website. You and Karen Garcia.Their present commentariat is pitiful

It's taking me a while to get accustomed to this website

January 27, 2012 |

Tim Giles

Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.