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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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Thursday
Jan132011

The Commentariat -- January 14

New York Times: "The Republican National Committee selected a new chairman on Friday, with Reince Priebus of Wisconsin surviving seven contentious rounds of balloting to succeed Michael Steele as party officials expressed a desire for new leadership to prepare for the 2012 presidential election. Mr. Priebus, who broke away from Mr. Steele’s inner circle to run against him, pledged to pay off the committee’s $21 million debt and strengthen state parties across the country...." CW: he also pledged not be nearly as fun.

Anthony Shadid of the New York Times: "The reported departure of Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, after popular protests in his North African country, electrified an Arab world whose residents have increasingly complained of governments that seem incapable of meeting their citizens’ demands and bereft of ideology save a motivation to perpetuate themselves in power.... Since their beginning, the protests have been closely followed by Arabic-language networks, as well as social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter."

Poppycock. -- Col. T. V. Johnson, a Quantico spokesperson, in response to the assertion that Bradley Manning, the accused WikeLeaker, is being mistreated (other expletives Col. Johnson commonly uses: "Egad!" "Horsefeathers!" and "Upon my word!") ...

... Scott Shane of the New York Times contrasts Manning's living conditions with those of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in a Washington Post op-ed,  has advice for Presidents Obama & Hu on how to avoid a U.S.-China cold war. "The aim should be to create a tradition of respect and cooperation so that the successors of leaders meeting now continue to see it in their interest to build an emerging world order as a joint enterprise."

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post: the Obama administration has made significant concessions to the business community over the past few months. "By the unwritten rules of political reconciliation, they demand and deserve a similar response. The most obvious and effective would be a clear statement from the business lobby that it will not support Republicans in their effort to repeal last year's health reform legislation." ...

... Greg Sargent: "'The Patient's Rights Repeal Act.' At a House Dem leadership meeting last week, Dem leaders decided that this is the phrase they will officially use to brand the House GOP's push to repeal health reform."

Richard Dunham of the Houston Chronicle on Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas' senior statewide officeholder, announcement that she will not seek re-election in 2012.

Bryan Walsh of Time has a good article, with lots o' links, on the EPA's decision to veto "the largest single mountaintop mining removal permit in West Virginia history." West Virginia Democrats Sens. Joe Manchin & Jay Rockefeller & Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin were among those who harshly criticized the EPA for canceling the permit. Here's Andrew Restuccia of The Hill on Rockefeller's letter of protest to President Obama. Ken Ward, Jr. of the Charleston Gazette reports on Tomblin's reaction.

Alex Pareene of Salon: "For a bunch of people who worship the Founders and like to play dress-up American Revolutionary War, Tea Partyers sure hate knowing anything remotely reality-based about the Founding Fathers. Tennessee Tea Party groups have introduced a proposal to take what few minorities there are in American history textbooks out of American history textbooks, along with any negative portrayals of the wealthy white men who led this young nation in its infancy."

Andrew Downie of Time on the Brazilian floods: "The devastation of the flooding will be made more bitter for its victims by the fact the deluge was so desperately predictable. Brazil is a tropical nation with a heavy rainy season that often bursts the banks of rivers, and yet each year's flooding brings death and destruction that could have been avoided with adequate planning and management."

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