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INAUGURATION 2029

Marie: I don't know why this video came up on my YouTube recommendations, but it did. I watched it on a large-ish teevee, and I found it fascinating. ~~~

 

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.”

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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Saturday
Dec112010

Frank Rich: The National Portrait Gallery has mounted an installation of same-sex themes in American portraiture. Included in the exhibit is a four-minute excerpt of a film by David Wojnarowicz titled "Fire in My Belly." Within the excerpt is an 11-second scene in which a "crucifix is besieged by ants that evoke frantic souls scurrying in panic as a seemingly impassive God looked on.... “Fire in My Belly” was removed from the exhibit ... some 10 days ago with the full approval, if not instigation, of ... the Smithsonian" because of a right-wing campaign against it, ginned up by, among others, "William Donohue, of the so-called Catholic League.... [Soon-to-be House Majority Leader] Eric Cantor called for the entire exhibit to be shut down and threatened to maim the Smithsonian’s taxpayer funding come January."

Here's video of the excerpt (I had to testify to Google that I was at least 18 years old to access it):

My comment:


The Smithsonian’s cowardice, I suspect, is its management's way of welcoming the new Congress & its official policy of medieval bigotry. Why is Defense Secretary Bob Gates so anxious to have DADT repealed within the week? Because the new Republican Congress will not repeal it. In the Senate, every Republican Senator but one voted against repeal last week, even though the public favors repeal, the majority of the military is cool with it (not that that matters), the top civilian and military leaders favor it, the courts will impose it, and basic human decency demands it. So the Smithsonian is falling into line with the political gang who are ready to take over Washington.

The Smithsonian management’s response to "the public" is not as dumb as you think. Its masters, after all, are the Congress, as Eric Cantor reminded them and us. Among the brilliant ideas of the Catfood Commission was this little-noticed one: charge entrance fees to the national museums. This of course would make the museums off-limits to many Americans who visit Washington, and other visitors would have to pick and choose carefully, skipping those museums they didn't consider must-sees. This is such a Republican idea: keep the riffraff out! Only the moneyed class will be allowed entree to the nation’s treasures.

Oh, and another thing – forget about women. Even though it is privately-funded, conservative legislators think a National Women's History Museum is superfluous. Right-wing Sens. Tom Coburn & Jim DeMint claim there are already enough museums about women -- like "the Quilters Hall of Fame in Indiana, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Texas and the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens in Washington." [Gail Collins, NYT, September 24] Really, girls, you've already got lilacs by the outhouse door!

So the Smithsonian poobahs bow first to anti-gay bias, and while they're at it, to fundamentalist Christian prejudices. Will we see an installation of anti-Semitic art next? Maybe a panoply of depictions of the devil looking ever-so-Jewish would fit the bill. How about a nice display of Confederate memorabilia to celebrate secession? Copies of some of the slave states' articles of secession would be great along with some tattered Stars & Bars and awesome portraits of Jeff Davis & Robert E. Lee. And by all means, let's have a paean to anti-feminist heroes. An audio-tour narrated by Sens. DeMint & Coburn would be a perfect accompaniment.

Our national museums are not repositories of cutting-edge art. Instead, they are reflections of who we are as a nation. And when our nation is operating under the thumb of right-wing prejudices, we are a nation of which real patriots must be ashamed.


     ... Washington Post Update: "The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, one of the principal sponsors of 'Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,' demanded Monday that the Smithsonian restore the David Wojnarowicz video or the foundation would not fund future projects.... The Warhol Foundation is the first major funder to publicly voice outrage" over the Smithsonian's removal of "the Wojnarowicz work, 'A Fire in My Belly,' [which] contains 11 seconds of an image of ants crawling on a crucifix."

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