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INAUGURATION 2029

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.

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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Saturday
Oct092010

The Commentariat -- 10-10-10

In a debate on Fox "News" this morning, when challenged by Democrat Debbie, Wasserman-Schultz, Republican House Whip Eric Cantor "repudiated" Republican House candidate Rich Iott for his participation in a Nazi SS re-enactment organization. Here's the video:

Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "In an interview this week, a senior administration official confirmed that the White House and Treasury Department had received warnings that the mortgage industry employed inexperienced staffers to oversee foreclosures, had problems handling documents and communicating with borrowers, and often failed to comply with regulations.... The only immediate response to warnings was a letter to servicers urging them to behave better. But in June, the administration enacted a policy requiring that servicers try to modify a loan before beginning the foreclosure process." CW: does HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan ever do anything?

Power to the Luddites! Frank Rich doesn't think the Internet has had much of a positive effect on politics: "Nowhere, perhaps, is the gap between the romance and the reality of the Internet more evident than in our politics." Rich concurs with Malcolm Gladwell that "social media increase the efficiency of the existing order rather than empowering dissidents." As a bit of anecdotal evidence, Rich cites the case of South Carolina's Alvin Greene, who got more than three times the number of primary votes as did Delaware's Christine O'Donnell. And Greene doesn't even own a computer! ...

... Maureen Dowd compares elements of David Fincher-Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Network" to Richard Wagner's "Das Rheingold." Dowd concludes, "the passions that drive humans stay remarkably constant, whether it’s a magic ring being forged or a magic code being written." ...

... CW: since both Rich & Dowd comment on "The Social Network," let's let Zuck speak for himself:

In a Washington Post op-ed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner defends the TARP by "tackling five myths" about it.

Making New York City a World Class City:

... BUT Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times writes that the rollout today of a couple of new, speedier bus routes was a bit of a bumpy ride; passengers couldn't figure out the new rules.

New York Times graphic.The Car that Drives Itself. John Markoff of the New York Times: Google "has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver.... Seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light." Look Ma, No Hands:

Faiz Shakir of Thing Progress: "After consulting with the Chamber of Commerce’s chief lobbyist Bruce Josten, the New York Times and the Washington Post publish articles today largely dismissing concerns about the Chamber’s foreign sources of funding as a means to raise money to air political attack ads." Both reports concentrated on "AmChams," but "'AmChams' are only a small piece of the puzzle. Most of the Chamber’s foreign sources of funds come from large multi-national corporations which are headquartered abroad, like BP and Siemens. Direct contributions from foreign firms also are accepted under the auspices of the Chamber’s 'Business Councils' located in various foreign countries." With graph.

In a humorous post, Alex Pareene of Salon discovers where Bob Woodward got the crazy idea the White House was contemplating a Biden-Clinton job exchange in 2012. "'It's on the table,' Woodward said. Wow! Except, as the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder succinctly tweeted: 'No, it's not.' CW: I won't give away the answer." Here's Ambinder's as-written-by-Woodward post.

... Some people are just born to be slaves.... It's just probably a matter of intelligent design. -- Rush Limbaugh

And God Created Slaves. Media Matters catches Rush explaining human nature:

We conservatives believe government is bad and we’ve got the candidates to prove it. -- P.J. O’Rourke

Stupid Candidate Tricks. Jeff Simon of CNN: "Nevada GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle told a crowd of Tea Party rally-goers last week that two cities — Dearborn, Michigan and Frankford, Texas — are under Sharia law, the sacred law of Islam.... Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly told the Associated Press that Angle’s comments were 'shameful' and 'totally irresponsible.'" Another problem? "Well, Frankford, Texas doesn’t really exist."

John Schwartz of the New York Times: "Sunday is the big day for saying 'I do.' More than 39,000 couples chose 10/10/10 as their wedding day — a nearly tenfold increase over the number of nuptials on Oct. 11, 2009, the comparable Sunday last year...."

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