The Ledes

Thursday, July 3, 2025

CNBC: “Job growth proved better than expected in June, as the labor market showed surprising resilience and likely taking a July interest rate cut off the table. Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 147,000 for the month, higher than the estimate for 110,000 and just above the upwardly revised 144,000 in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. April’s tally also saw a small upward revision, now at 158,000 following an 11,000 increase.... Though the jobless rates fell [to 4.1%], it was due largely to a decrease in those working or looking for jobs.”

Washington Post: “A warehouse storing fireworks in Northern California exploded on Tuesday, leaving seven people missing and two injured as explosions continued into Wednesday evening, officials said. Dramatic video footage captured by KCRA 3 News, a Sacramento broadcaster, showed smoke pouring from the building’s roof before a massive explosion created a fireball that seemed to engulf much of the warehouse, accompanied by an echoing boom. Hundreds of fireworks appeared to be going off and were sparkling within the smoke. Photos of the aftermath showed multiple destroyed buildings and a large area covered in gray ash.” ~~~

The Wires
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The Ledes

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

New York Times: “The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who emerged from the backwoods of Louisiana to become a television evangelist with global reach, preaching about an eternal struggle between good and evil and warning of the temptations of the flesh, a theme that played out in his own life in a sex scandal, died on July 1. He was 90.” ~~~

     ~~~ For another sort of obituary, see Akhilleus' commentary near the end of yesterday's thread.

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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.

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

Page Links
Friday
Jun102011

The Commentariat -- June 11

I have an Open Thread up on Off Times Square.

The President's Weekly Address:

Joe Nocera writes his first useful column in months -- a full-throated defense of Elizabeth Warren.

Charles Blow covers the report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which concluded that: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." Blow adds, "As the A.C.L.U. pointed out last week, 'The racial disparities are staggering: despite the fact that whites engage in drug offenses at a higher rate than African-Americans, African-Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that of whites.'” The White House's response? -- Really, we're doing a great job. ...

... Here's a related Democracy Now story from March 2010 -- an interview of legal scholar Michelle Alexander, whose book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, documents the way the war on drugs has been used to create a black underclass. "... today there are more African Americans under correctional control, whether in prison or jail, on probation or on parole, than there were enslaved in 1850. And more African American men are disenfranchised now because of felon disenfranchisement laws than in 1870." The transcript is here.

Thom Shanker & Steve Erlanger of the New York Times: "In his final policy speech before he steps down, [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates issued a dire and unusually direct warning that the United States, the traditional leader and patron of [NATO], was exhausted by a decade of war and its own mounting budget deficits and simply might not see NATO as worth supporting any longer.... The White House made clear on Friday that in the tough tone of his remarks, Mr. Gates was speaking for the Pentagon, not necessarily for the administration.... But a White House official did say that Mr. Gates’s speech raised 'legitimate concerns' about whether NATO was providing enough resources for the war and that the Obama administration fully expected the alliance to meet its challenges."

David Sirota covers the ten top stories you missed while you were reading wall-to-wall coverage of Weinergate.

Paul Krugman posts a graph illustrating "Why I Don't Believe in the American People." The title is satirical. The graph illuminates one reason Tim Pawlenty "has turned out to be a much bigger fool than I or, I think, anyone imagined." ...

... AND Krugman does the math & finds that "there’s a very good case to be made that austerity now isn’t just a bad idea because of its impact on the economy and the unemployed; it may well fail even at the task of helping the budget balance." CW: That the jokers in the White House can't get this, or more accurately, refuse to get this, is a scandal.

Dana Milbank: "With [Council of Economic Adviser chief Austan] Goolsbee returning to Chicago, it will be that much more difficult for Obama to resist the political pressure to be rash."

Natalie Wolchover of Live Science: "La Niña and global warming are both partly responsible for some of the episodes of wild weather, experts say. However, natural atmospheric variability has also come into play this year; to some extent, the pile-on of wild weather is random chance."

A Feel-Good Story with Bipartisanship, too. James Cullum of the Huntington-Belle Haven (Virginia) Patch: "Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack kicked off the 'Virginia No Kid Hungry Campaign' to an audience of hundreds on Tuesday at Barcroft Elementary School in Arlington. Their goal: to end childhood hunger in Virginia by 2015."

The Epistolary Palin

Jim Rutenberg & William Yardley had the unenviable task of writing the New York Times story on the release of e-mails written to & from Sarah Palin for the brief time she was governor of Alaska. ...

... You can "explore" the Palin e-mails on this New York Times interactive page. Here's the lede: "A collection of e-mails between Sarah and Todd Palin and Alaska public officials during Ms. Palin's first 22 months as governor. The messages were originally requested under state public records laws in 2008. The documents were released on Friday, June 10, at 9 a.m. Alaska time. E-mails are organized by the date of each conversation. The New York Times has redacted some documents to remove offensive language." The page also provides the facility for you to alert the Times of any e-mails "of interest."

Here's the Washington Post lead story, by Dan Eggen & Robert O'Harrow, on the Palin e-mails. ...

... You can also read the e-mails beginning on this Washington Post page, which doesn't look quite as user-friendly as the Times format. There are also links on the page to related stories, some of which might be interesting & probably none of which I'll read.

Sean Cockerham & Erika Bolstad of the Anchorage Daily News: "A massive trove of emails released Friday from Sarah Palin's time as governor show a chief executive who was engrossed with countering her critics and increasingly upset at news coverage as she vaulted into international celebrity." Page includes links to related stories.

Becky Bohrer of the AP: "Much of the country was taken by surprise when Sarah Palin became the Republican vice presidential candidate in August 2008, but newly released emails make it clear that the little-known Alaska governor was angling for the slot months before Sen. John McCain asked her to join him on the GOP ticket. Earlier that summer, Palin and her staff began pushing to find a larger audience for the governor, wedging her into national conversations and nudging the McCain campaign to notice her."

Dave Weigel provides a short list of e-mail troves he wants to read more than Palin's.

Right Wing World *

Matt Browner of AmericaBlog:"Media Matters reports 'Thursday night on Fox Business, John Stossel used about seven minutes of his show to host a "debate" between former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and an actor who impersonates President Obama.' It's a fairly embarrassing video to watch, both in terms of how insignificant it makes Gary Johnson look and how absurd Stossel's program is." CW: this could not have been more ridiculous if Fred Armisen of SNL had appeaed as Obama:

The Man of (Absurd) Ideas. Washington Post political reporters provide a play-by-play of how the Gingrich campaign disintegrated. CW: My favorite sentence: "Gingrich became convinced that one of the keys to his winning in Iowa was in targeting the Chinese community living in the state."

* Is batshit crazy.

News Ledes

New York Times: "The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, on Saturday called on Representative Anthony D. Weiner to resign, underscoring the growing concern among Democrats that his online exchanges with women had become a distraction for the party." ...

     ... Story has been updated with new lede: "Defying forceful demands for his resignation, Representative Anthony D. Weiner of New York said on Saturday that he was entering a psychological treatment center and seeking a leave of absence from the House to deal with a pattern of reckless online behavior with women."

New York Times: "The International Monetary Fund, still struggling to find a new leader after the arrest of its managing director last month in New York, was hit recently by what computer experts describe as a large and sophisticated cyberattack whose dimensions are still unknown."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "A coalition of union groups active in state Senate recalls now advocates that Democrats field fake Republican candidates to run in primary elections against GOP state senators -- just as Republicans are fielding fake Democrats to run against those who challenging GOP incumbents. Friday evening, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin issued a statement that neither endorsed nor ruled out the idea, saying the party will 'review the options available.'"

New York Times: "The government issued warnings on Friday about two materials used daily by millions of Americans, saying that one causes cancer and the other might. Government scientists listed formaldehyde as a carcinogen, and said it is found in worrisome quantities in plywood, particle board, mortuaries and hair salons. They also said that styrene, which is used in boats, bathtubs and in disposable foam plastic cups and plates, may cause cancer but is generally found in such low levels in consumer products that risks are low."

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