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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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Monday
Dec242018

The Best Christmas Ever

Worst Christmas Ever:

Original:

Politically-Correct Update:

The Worst Rendition of the Worst Christmas Song Ever:

A Reprieve:

A Lump for Coleman. Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I had every intention to make this a Trumpless Christmas, but that turns out to be impossible. He probably ruined little Coleman's Christmas, so he might as well ruin ours, too:

... It's Worse Than You Think. Daniel Victor of the New York Times: "The president made the comments from the White House while he and the first lady, Melania Trump, fielded calls from a hotline for children wondering where Santa was.... [The occasion] is part of the annual Santa-tracking program run by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, known as Norad." Mrs. McC: What makes this even richer: it comes from a guy who himself has little touch with reality. ...

Earlier tonight walking next to some tourists on M Street, I heard the kid ask his parents if Santa was shut down too. The mom replied, 'No, even Trump can't screw that up.' He screwed it up! -- Jonathan Chait, in a tweet ...

... Luckily, Ken W. reminds us that there are fathers whose holiday manners top those of He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Mentioned:

Comments Off

Reader Comments (3)

“Santa is for suckers”: President Grinch

Fatty decides, in a telephone conversation with a seven year old, that the kid’s time for enjoying a magical Christmas is over, questioning his belief in Santa Claus and pointing out that by that advanced age, belief in Santa is “marginal” at best.

So the president* who spends more time in la-la fantasy land than a paranoid schizophrenic decides that a little kid needs to grow up and face reality.

Merry Christmas, you asshole.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/norad-santa-tracker-unaffected-by-government-shutdown-where-is-santa-christmas-2018-12-24/

December 25, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

CHRISTMAS MORNING: 2002
For Chris Hedges

In Trieste: Old men with sad stories gather every afternoon
In the seaside coffee shops

And here in Hamden, a Connecticut town
Covered this Christmas morning by a cold
Blanket of newly fallen snow,

Its people sleep late, so exhausted after weeks
Of frantic preparation;
Its children scramble down under
A tree’s bounty wrapped up with ribbons and bows.

One can see far across the field now
To the old barn whose roof glistens white against an ashen sky,
Its beams and timbers from an 18th century Vermont structure,
Standing barren and empty for decades
Like some glorious ancient memorial.

Oh, and look! Here comes the dog that belongs to the
Old man down the road who lost his wife to cancer
Not too long ago, see how his paws leave their signature
But not for long—

And somewhere someone is singing carols while someone
Else is stuffing a bird while others are saying their prayers;
Someone has just died.

Outside it is so still it’s as though
All of us are holding our breath waiting for
The New Year to envelop us with a blanket
Of warmth, of safety, of hope.

And in Trieste old men with sad stories gather every
Afternoon in the seaside coffee shops.

December 25, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

@Bea McCrab: You can trot out those two oldies, but goodie video clips for "White Christmas" and "Santa Baby" every year...I pull up your page every so often and hit the Play button with the volume turned up while I gather myself to prepare for a late holiday dinner.

Helps put me in the mood!
Merry, merry to one and all RC-ers!

December 25, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterMAG
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