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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

Page Links
Friday
Sep102010

In Memoriam -- September 11

The President makes remarks at the Pentagon:

Vice President Biden at Ground Zero:

... C-SPAN has video of the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, memorial ceremony. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell begins speaking at about t 29:30 min. in; First Lady Laura Bush speaks at about 42:30 min. in; & First Lady Michelle Obama begins at about 55 min. in.

Los Angeles Times: "President Obama plans to mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by attending a memorial service at the Pentagon, the White House said Tuesday. In addition, Vice President Biden will attend services at ground zero in New York, while Michelle Obama will be joined by former First Lady Laura Bush at the Flight 93 memorial near Shanksville, Pa., Robert Gibbs announced at his daily press briefing." Update: see videos in right column.

Verena Dobnik of the AP: "Politics threatened to overshadow a day of mourning Saturday ... amid a polarizing national debate over a planned mosque blocks from the site where Islamic extremists attacked America. Chants of thousands of sign-waving protesters both for and against the planned Islamic center were expected after — and perhaps during — a ceremony normally known for somber church bells ringing and a sad litany of families reading their lost loved ones' names." ...

... Washington Post: "Hundreds of supporters of the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero gathered Friday evening near the site in Lower Manhattan, where they lit candles, sang and prayed on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

 

The New York Times has an excellent multimedia feature showing the plans & progress for Ground Zero. CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO GO TO THE TIMES INTERACTIVE SITE.

photo.     ... Here's the slideshow.

Ted Koppel, now of BBC News, in a Washington Post op-ed: "The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another.... Much of what [Osama bin Laden] has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves."

Secret Muslim Plot Exposed. Again. Jim Newell of Gawker: "A group led by the father of a Flight 93 victim will be running full-page ads this Friday and Saturday in a Shanksville-area newspaper ..." protesting that the Shanksville memorial, a work-in-progress, is really a Muslim crescent pointing at Mecca. Uh-huh. ...

    ... You know what else is going to be in the shape of the Islamic Crescent on 9/11? The Moon. -- Attaturk, Firedoglake

Meanwhile, at the Fuck Obama Xtravaganza (FOX) -- Media Matters: "Fox News is attacking President Obama's decision to attend a 9-11 memorial at the Pentagon rather than the World Trade Center site. However, former President George W. Bush routinely did not visit ground zero on past anniversaries of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Vice President Joe Biden is attending a memorial at the World Trade Center site...."

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