The Ledes

Monday, June 30, 2025

It's summer in our hemisphere, and people across Guns America have nothing to do but shoot other people.

New York Times: “A gunman deliberately started a wildfire in a rugged mountain area of Idaho and then shot at the firefighters who responded, killing two and injuring another on Sunday afternoon in what the local sheriff described as a 'total ambush.' Law enforcement officers exchanged fire with the gunman while the wildfire burned, and officials later found the body of the male suspect on the mountain with a firearm nearby, Sheriff Robert Norris of Kootenai County said at a news conference on Sunday night. The authorities said they believed the suspect had acted alone but did not release any information about his identity or motives.” A KHQ-TV (Spokane) report is here.

New York Times: “The New York City police were investigating a shooting in Manhattan on Sunday night that left two people injured steps from the Stonewall Inn, an icon of the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. The shooting occurred outside a nearby building in Greenwich Village at 10:15 p.m., Sgt. Matthew Forsythe of the New York Police Department said. The New York City Pride March had been held in Manhattan earlier on Sunday, and Mayor Eric Adams said on social media that the shooting happened as Pride celebrations were ending. One victim who was shot in the head was in critical condition on Monday morning, a spokeswoman for the Police Department said. A second victim was in stable condition after being shot in the leg, she said. No suspect had been identified. The police said it was unclear if the shooting was connected to the Pride march.”

New York Times: “A dangerous heat wave is gripping large swaths of Europe, driving temperatures far above seasonal norms and prompting widespread health and fire alerts. The extreme heat is forecast to persist into next week, with minimal relief expected overnight. France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are among the nations experiencing the most severe conditions, as meteorologists warn that Europe can expect more and hotter heat waves in the future because of climate change.”

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Marie: Sorry, my countdown clock was unreliable; then it became completely unreliable. I can't keep up with it. Maybe I'll try another one later.

 

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.

 

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Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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Tuesday
Mar082011

International Women's Day

Let's see how the United States is celebrating International Women's Day:

Fox Los Angeles. Here at home, "First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton marked the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day Wednesday by honoring 10 women from around the world with awards that recognize efforts they have made to further women's rights. During the 2011 Women of Courage Awards ceremony held at the State Department, Clinton called recipient of this year's awards 'remarkable,' while Obama lauded it as the 'one of the most important' events she will attend."...

... Also speaking at the ceremony, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia and, get this, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Here's the reason for Blankfein's presence: he's going to spend a few bucks on the ladies. The State Department readout is here. Here's Clinton's speech:

... No mention in the official transcript of this exchange, supplied by Binoy Kampmark in Counterpunch:

The real interest came after the sugary, salutary speeches were concluded.  Questions asked of Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale, Assistant Secretary of Education Ann Stock and Clinton’s own chief of staff Cheryl Mills caught them off guard.  A Latin American woman (Voice of America News remains, as ever, generic) questioned whether the United States was even ready for a female president.  Mills answered that the country was ‘more than willing to support women in a leadership role and more than willing to actually see a woman as their leader’ though she had to admit that ‘that final hurdle’ had to be crossed.

Michelle Obama spoke late this afternoon at the White House:


Not enough? It's better than what's happening elsewhere:

Nicholas Kristof: "Bangladesh has a woman prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who has done nothing much for women – and who now is pursuing a campaign of vilification against Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been a champion of impoverished women all around the globe.... It’s astonishing – and so disappointing – to see a woman prime minister who does nothing for her country’s women go after a man who has devoted his life to helping the neediest women. And it’s a reminder that the struggle to achieve gender equality is not a battle between the sexes, but something far more subtle. It’s often about misogyny and paternalism, but those are values that are absorbed and transmitted almost as much by women as by men."

Julie Ioffe in Slate: "Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, the brainchild of socialist feminists at the turn of the 20th century. The idea was to give women a day to come together and push for equal rights. Though it isn’t really celebrated in the United States, many countries continue to mark the date with an official public holiday. Here in Russia, it is a major holiday with its own long weekend.... March 8 has become a travesty in modern Russia. In the 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has quickly shed all vestiges of egalitarianism and become ensconced in a deeply patriarchal social order."

Washington Post: Egypt. "According to Twitter reports from Cairo, a march planned for Tahrir Square in honor of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day was met by an even larger crowd of men deriding the women for being there and harassing them." ...

... Jenna Krajeski has a first-hand account of the strife in Tahrir Square. She concludes, "Mubarak is gone. Misogyny might be a tougher foe."

Tristan McConnell of Global Post: "In Sudan 60 women gathered on a busy street in Omdurman to protest against rape and rights abuses only to find themselves surrounded by 250 police. Ten minutes of chanting and banner waving was all the security men could bear before they quickly arrested half the women and threw them into a truck. The detained women continued to shout slogans so some of the men gave them a beating with sticks for good measure."

David Smith of the Guardian: "Marches by thousands of women in protest at Ivory Coast's president Laurent Gbagbo have ended in bloodshed after his army killed four people. The women made their stand on International Women's Day, less than a week after Gbagbo's soldiers killed seven women at a peaceful demonstration, earning worldwide condemnation. After a small women's march in the Treichville neighbourhood, one of several in Abidjan on Tuesday, security forces burst into the area and began shooting."

AOL News: the five worst countries to be born a woman. "Here are the five countries with the highest (that is, worst) scores on the 2008 Gender Inequality Index, the most recent ranking available": Yemen, Congo, Niger, Mali, Afghanistan.

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