January 28, 2025
Marie is NOT on the way to Guantanamo, her computer(s) are down. She will be back to light a fire under Fat Hitler's flabby butt asap. Do not worry.
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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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.
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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.
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
Marie is NOT on the way to Guantanamo, her computer(s) are down. She will be back to light a fire under Fat Hitler's flabby butt asap. Do not worry.
Reader Comments (17)
Thanks, Marie
Oh, what a relief it is...
Yes, I was worried that maybe you had been shipped to Columbia,
but then I thought---Trump isn't a RealityChex follower since he
doesn't read.
Glad you're O.K.
Since it coincides with the shutting down of everything, I was worried also. Glad you are okay!!
Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, As Ken said.
Now I can stop worrying and go back to DeSantis and the Florida Legislature flinging poo at each other.
I hear that DEI is hiring really unqualified individuals:
D--onnie Jr.
E--ric
I--vanka
Can't get much worse.
TB is back!
Yay!
“Health officials are contending with an ongoing outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City metro area that reportedly has become the largest in U.S. history.”
Too bad scientists and medical researchers controlled by the MAGA king are not allowed to communicate with each other. Also…the CDC is headless. And to top it off, pretty soon we’ll have an idiot in charge of it all who wants to bring back polio!
Making America sick again.
The Trump Way. The GOP way.
But not to worry, I’m sure Fatty will find some drunken rapist he can put in charge of coming up with some way to blame Biden, Fauci, the Chinese, Taylor Swift (she’s in Kansas a lot these days).
But TB’s not that bad, right? I mean, just like Covid. Just a bad cold.
Bobby Lee, do you have a ringside seat? Sounds lovely...
I just wrote yet another missive to Fetterman. He's the only Dem to NOT condemn the pardons of everyone and their monkeys on J6. He called Fatso "kind and courteous." (who knows whom he really met--)and he has apparently voted for absolutely asanine candidates for the Cabinet. I think he has lost his bald mind. And to think I really liked the guy and wanted him in the Senate as opposed to the R yahoos always put forth in this state for elected office. He also has spoken out against Fats' felonies-- actually called them "politically motivated." They were not. The juries said so. (F***face is such a lucky monster, though-- he suffers never.)
I am wearing a t-shirt ostensibly from Fetterman's dog, and my daughter follows his wife...I bet they don't understand what the hell has happened to the guy who was elected from PA.
TB? Trump's already got that figured out. Just put a tariff on it.
Or blame it on the Chinese.
Or blame it on immigrants (if they aren't white, straight males).
Or blame it on Governor Newsom.
He's got all the answers,.Too bad they're always the wrong ones.
The birthright citizenship question was settled over 127 years ago because of the insistence by a young cook, Wong Kim Ark, who lived in San Francisco and who was born there, that he was in fact an American citizen.
Wong, born in San Francisco in 1870, made a trip to China to visit relatives still there. Upon his return, he was denied entrance to the country. Newly passed laws restricting Chinese residents to second class status kept Wong in limbo for several years until his case made it to the Supreme Court, which eventually ruled in his favor, but not because it was the right thing to do, but because denying birthright citizenship to everyone meant trouble for millions of white Americans whose parents were immigrants.
“It’s important to note, Frost said, that the supreme court was not ‘sympathetic to Chinese immigrants’. The justices had, just two years earlier, legalized racial segregation in public spaces in Plessy v Ferguson. They sided with Wong, Frost said, because denying birthright citizenship to children of immigrants meant that descendants of European immigrants would be affected too.”
So here we have guys who were racist enough to rule, with Plessy, that segregation was legal, but recognized the inherent stupidity of axing a major part of the 14th Amendment. Only now we have a president* whose racism is so embedded that he just doesn’t give a shit about any of that. As long as he can beat his chest (with his tiny hands) and brag to his racist MAGAts that he stuck it to brown people (again), he’s good with pissing on the Constitution (again).
Now the question will be is the current Supreme Court more racist than the Court responsible for Plessy?
I’m not betting no.
RFK Jr
"Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Once Pitched Deadly Human Vaccine Experiment
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, once pitched the idea to run an experiment on the children of Samoa to see whether vaccines actually work."
Tillis as reliable as Marie's computers.
"Tillis Assured Hegseth’s Former Sister-in-Law Her Testimony Could Convince GOP Senators to Vote No
North Carolina senator provides pivotal 50th ‘yes’ vote to confirm Hegseth as defense secretary"
RAS,
Jeeezus!
Shades of the Tuskegee syphillis “study”. Why not line ‘em up and shoot ‘em to test the efficacy of bullets to the head?
Appallingly inhuman or just astoundingly stupid? Just wondering if this brilliant idea was pre or post worm.
If was pre-worm, there’s no possible way this idiot should be confirmed to hand out band-aids at a skateboard park. If post-worm, it’s evidence ne plus ultra of his unfitness for any job requiring decisions about the health even of rodents.
Re: Tillis’ risible belief in the “possible” humanity and decency of Party of Traitors lemmings.
Never underestimate the existential cowardice of these craven douchebags when it comes to denying Fat Hitler every racist, fascist, misogynistic, unconstitutional, illegal, inhumane whim.
If he is a whiny titty baby, what are they? Whiny titty baby diaper changers? I’d like to see that on a Fox chyron some day:
“Ron Johnson, Whiny Titty Baby Diaper Changer.”
No front row seat to the Florida Poo Party, just reading the stories as they come up online. If anyone is interested Floridapolitics.com is the site I'd suggest even if it does have a red tinge.
attempt #2:
It's Stealing
so says Russell Berman, in The Atlantic, on the executive orders to pause spending.
Glad Marie was not visited by the thought police!
$Higher$ $Education$
"Republican Proposal Would Make College Scholarships Taxable Income
Republicans are gearing up to extend tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that mostly benefitted wealthier Americans, per an Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center analysis, along with other new spending on their policy priorities such as immigration. To pay for the tax cuts and new spending, Republican lawmakers are considering slashing dozens of federal programs and benefits—including making college scholarships that help students pay for tuition, taxable income."
Taxing college scholarships is yet another attack on higher education, which the MAGAts and their Dear Leader fear encourages students to think for themselves and to develop the ability to critically assess and debunk specious claims, stoopid demands, and Trump’s myriad lies.
Can’t have that.
They wouldn’t have gotten much from my college and graduate scholarships, but these days, when tuitions are far more than a down payment for luxury homes, taxing financial assistance to get a good education could be draconian.
But what can you expect from a silver spoon dimwit who has had everything handed to him, who has to whine repeatedly about how smart he is? Who does that? Truly smart people don’t have to gripe about how they have “all the best words”, especially when they have a fifth grade vocabulary, nor do they have to repeatedly protest that they are “stable” geniuses. Most true geniuses are not exactly what you’d call stable. They exist in a higher plane of intellectual, artistic, scientific, and literary achievement. Their goals are typically not “Isn’t my casino/plane/steak/tie/phony mortgage scam/gaudy building/university/bimbo wife/the bestest ever?”
Truly smart people scare the crap out carnival hucksters like Fat Hitler. So make it harder than ever for those people to excel.