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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Saturday
Aug202011

The Commentariat -- August 21

Maureen Dowd: "President Obama ... shouldn’t be driven by the Washington schedule. He should be setting it. At long last, he promised a clear economic plan. Unfortunately, he had the fierce urgency of next month, when Congress gets back to town. Americans are rattled and want action. They don’t know or care what Congress’s schedule is. They just see the president not doing anything." ...

... I've posted a Dowd page on Off Times Square.

Kraft Foods Will Be Watching You. Shan Li & David Sarno of the Los Angeles Times: "The commercial applications of facial recognition are in contrast to those being used by law enforcement to identify specific individuals. Companies, at least at this point, mostly just want to pinpoint a demographic based on age and gender to tailor their ads. But even this facial recognition-lite alarms privacy advocates, given that it could greatly popularize and expand use of the technology."

Right Wing World

Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman makes his case & attacks his opponents. The full interview, which is a Web extra:

Who Do That Voodoo? The GOP Do. Greg Ip of the Economist in a Washington Post op-ed: "The economic ideology of the Republican Party has changed in recent years.... Liberals and conservatives in the United States ... have largely agreed that the government should have at least some role in smoothing out the ups and downs of the business cycle — what economists call 'macroeconomic stabilization,' that is, containing inflation in good times and boosting employment in bad. But this is the consensus that many Republicans in effect now reject.... They almost surely have it wrong."

The fact is, government doesn’t create jobs, otherwise the last two-and-a-half years of stimulus would have worked. -- Rick Perry, lying through his teeth ...

... Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post: With a young and fast-growing population, a large and expanding military presence and an influx of federal stimulus money, the number of government jobs in Texas has grown at more than double the rate of private-sector employment during Perry’s tenure.... Last June, private-sector employment in Texas declined by 0.6 percent while public-sector jobs increased by 6.4 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, government employees account for about one-sixth of the workforce in Texas. The significant role of government in Texas’s relative prosperity stands in stark contrast to the 'go-it-alone' image cultivated by Perry, who credits a lack of government interference for fostering a business-friendly environment in Texas."

... The stimulus did not work, obviously all it did was create more debt in this country. It didn’t create any jobs, as far as I can tell, except for maybe those federal regulators that were increased. -- Rick Perry, lying though his teeth ...

... Marie Diamond & Travis Waldron of Think Progress: Rick Perry has "accepted more stimulus money than any other state besides California, and used the funds to close 97 percent of Texas’ massive budget deficit. The Houston Chronicle reported that as of July 2010, federal stimulus funds created or saved 47,700 jobs in the Lone Star State.... So far, Texas has used $17.4 billion in federal stimulus money to keep schools open, ensure Medicaid coverage for children, and put more people to work on infrastructure projects.... Ironically, Perry once aggressively pursued the federal aid he now denounces...." Thanks to Bob M. for the link.

... Pay to Play. Nicholas Confessore & Michael Luo of the New York Times: "Over three terms in office, [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry’s administration has doled out grants, tax breaks, contracts and appointments to hundreds of his most generous supporters and their businesses. And they have helped Mr. Perry raise more money than any politician in Texas history, donations that have periodically raised eyebrows but, thanks to loose campaign finance laws and a business-friendly political culture dominated in recent years by Republicans, have only fueled Mr. Perry’s ascent."

Paul West of the Los Angeles Times: Rick Perry's "campaign released a video in which the Texas governor strides toward the camera in chaps, ready to saddle up. Asked to distinguish himself from his predecessor, George W. Bush, he replied, 'I went to Texas A&M. He went to Yale.' That class-conscious contrast — brash populist versus starchy elite — plays most acutely against fellow Republican Mitt Romney, the literal son of the Republican establishment who embodies the party's upper-crust past." You can see Perry's campaign ad here.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner: "Former Bush advisor Karl Rove says he believes former Alaska governor Sarah Palin will enter the Republican presidential race sometime around Labor Day.  Appearing on Fox News Saturday morning, Rove said Palin 'has a schedule next week that looks like that of a candidate, not a celebrity.' Rove also cited a new campaign-style video Palin has released on her recent visit to the Iowa State Fair as evidence Palin is gearing up for a run."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The lawyer for the woman who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault said on Sunday that he would formally ask the judge overseeing the criminal case to disqualify the Manhattan district attorney’s office from the prosecution and appoint a special prosecutor."

New York Times: "For the first time in months, witnesses in Tripoli reported heavy fighting across the capital late Saturday night, even as rebel forces claimed to have encircled the city by taking major towns to its east, west and south." Al Jazeera story here. Al Jazeera's liveblog on Libya is here. ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Rebels surged into the Libyan capital Sunday night, meeting only sporadic resistance from troops loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and setting off raucous street celebrations by residents hailing the end of his 42 years in power. The rebel leadership announced that insurgents had captured two of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons, including Seif al-Islam, his heir apparent. The leadership also announced that the elite presidential guard protecting the Libyan leader had surrendered." ...

     ... Al Jazeera Update: "International leaders have urged Muammar Gaddafi to concede defeat in his struggling to hold onto power in Libya as scenes of celebration broke out in central Tripoli as rebels advanced into the heart of the capital. 'Tonight, the momentum against the Gaddafi regime has reached a tipping point. Tripoli is slipping from the grasp of a tyrant,' said US President Barack Obama. Obama also called on the opposition Transitional National Council, which Washington recognises as Libya's legitimate governing authority, to demonstrate leadership, respect human rights, preserve the institutions of the Libyan state and move towards democracy." ...

     ... CBS News Update: "A rebel leader told Al Jazeera that Qaddafi has refused to surrender, and that his guards shot at rebels as they were closing in, killing one of them. There are many rumors, but the truth of Qaddafi's whereabouts are currently unknown."

Huh. More than 6,000 Years Old? New York Times: "A team of Australian and British geologists have discovered fossilized, single-cell organisms that are 3.4 billion years old and that the scientists say are the oldest known fossils on earth."

AP: "Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security's disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency. Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can't find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs."

AP: "Militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip fired a barrage of rockets and mortars on southern Israel early Sunday, striking an empty school and a dozen other targets, as U.S. and Egyptian diplomats were scrambling to keep the new convulsion of Israeli-Palestinian violence from escalating." ...

... Haaretz: "Members of Knesset from Israel's leading opposition party, Kadima, urged the cabinet on Sunday to launch a military campaign in the Gaza Strip, following the barrage of rockets that struck Israel over the weekend and the deadly terrorist attack that predeced on Thursday."

Cape Cod Times: President Obama ... attended a party at the Oak Bluffs home of Charles Ogletree yesterday evening. "Ogletree, a frequent summer visitor on the island [of Martha's Vineyard], is a well-known law professor who taught both the president and first lady Michelle Obama when they were students at Harvard Law School, according to pool reports, which indicated that about 100 people attended the party."

     ... CBS News Update: "President Obama embarked Sunday on what looked like vacation by normal standards: a morning at the beach with his wife and daughters and a (partial) round of golf on a local course. But first, the administration announced it believed the Muammar Qaddafi's regime, amidst rebel advances on the Libyan capital, was not long for this world."

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