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.

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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Friday
Mar182011

The Commentariat -- March 19

** Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker: the federal government's nuclear energy policy is to pretend our plants are safe & hope we get away with it:

More than two dozen reactors in the http://www.realitychex.com/process/admin/CreateOrModifyJournalEntry?moduleId=4549814&entryId=10842517#U.S. have aboveground storage pools similar to those that have failed at Fukushima — the only difference is that the American pools contain far more waste than their Japanese counterparts.... David Lochbaum ... of the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the risks currently posed by spent-fuel pools in the U.S. 'about as high as you could possibly make them.' ...

... Bob Herbert: "The public deserves a much fuller accounting of nuclear power’s pros and cons." ...

... "Duck and Cover." Karen Garcia lived within 50 miles of New York State's Indian Point nuclear plant which has a "long history of unplanned radioactive gaseous burps and leakage problems and a transformer explosion and proximity to a fault line." Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to shut it down, but he has no plan whatsoever for providing an alternative source of the energy the plant produces.

Glenn Greenwald: "... the intervention in Libya was presidentially decreed with virtually no public debate or discussion; it's just amazing how little public opinion or the consent of the citizenry matters when it comes to involving the country in a new war." ...

... Karen deYoung of the Washington Post: "The planned military action in Libya marks a rare international intervention in which U.S. forces will not take the lead operational role. With French, British and United Arab Emirates jets poised to begin flights over Libya, and other European and Arab forces assembling to aid enforcement of a no-fly zone, the Americans were far from the pending action, in ships offshore and surveillance aircraft high above." ...

... Helene Cooper & Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times have more background on the rapid evolution of U.S. policy on the Libyan crisis. The writers credit U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, National Security Council aide Samantha Power, & -- ultimately -- Secretary Hillary Clinton -- for moving the U.S. & other nations toward intervention." See also yesterday's Commentariat for a link to Josh Rogin's reporting on the same subject.

One example I particularly like is the encouraging number of female presidents in the region. And I must say that I’m far enough away from my own career in electoral politics that I will not take too much heat for suggesting that these women and societies can teach American voters a thing or two! -- Hillary Clinton, on Latin America

Local News

Richard Oppel, Jr., of the New York Times: "In an abrupt change of course, Arizona lawmakers rejected new anti-immigration measures on Thursday, in what was widely seen as capitulation to pressure from business executives and an admission that the state’s tough stance had resulted in a chilling of the normally robust tourism and convention industry. The State Senate voted down five bills that among other things sought to require hospitals to inform law enforcement officials when treating patients suspected of being in the country illegally and to prod the Supreme Court to rule against automatic citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants."

News Ledes

President Obama today on the strikes on Libya:

New York Times: "American and European forces began a broad campaign of strikes against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Saturday, unleashing warplanes and missiles in the first round of the largest international military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon said.... The Pentagon said that American forces dominated an effort to knock out Libya’s air-defense systems. In a briefing Saturday afternoon, Vice Adm. William Gortney told reporters that about 110 Tomahawk missiles, fired from American warships and submarines and one British submarine struck 20 air-defense targets around Tripoli, the capital, and the western city of Misurata." ...

... New York Times: "Libya had pledged a cease-fire hours before [President's Obama's address yesterday]. But reports on Saturday from rebel-held territory indicated that Colonel Qaddafi’s troops were attacking in the east. Government forces continued to advance on Benghazi, the rebel’s capital in the east, and the BBC reported that some tanks were in the city on Saturday morning. The government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, denied in Tripoli that pro-Qaddafi units were attacking in Benghazi and said that only the rebels had an incentive to break the cease-fire. After the BBC report on tanks moving within Benghazi, the BBC Web site was inaccessible in Tripoli, suggesting that it may have been blocked." The Times story has been updated: "American, European and Arab leaders began the largest international military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq on Saturday, in an effort to stop Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s war on the Libyan opposition. Leaders meeting in Paris on Saturday afternoon said direct strikes against Libyan government forces, as approved by the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, would begin within hours. And President Nicolas Sarkozy said French warplanes had already begun enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya, conducting reconnaissance missions and preparing to intercept any Libyan military aircraft."

A plane shot down over Libya. To the left of the plane, you can barely see the pilot, his parachute beginning to open. The plane is reported to be a Libyan plane shot down by rebel forces over Benghazi. AFP photo.... AP: "A warplane was shot down over Libyan rebels' eastern stronghold Saturday as the opposition accused Moammar Kadafi's government of defying a cease-fire.... Trying to outmaneuver Western military intervention, Kadafi's government declared a cease-fire on Friday as the rebel uprising faltered against his artillery, tanks and warplanes. But the opposition said shells rained down well after the announcement and accused the Libyan leader of lying."

AP: "Palestinian militants in Gaza fired more than 50 mortar shells into Israel on Saturday, the heaviest barrage in two years, Israeli officials said, raising the prospect of a new Mideast flareup. Also Saturday, Hamas police beat reporters and news photographers covering a rally in Gaza City, drawing a stiff condemnation from the reporters' association."

New York Times: "Egyptians flocked to the polls to vote in a referendum on a package of constitutional amendments that will shape the country’s political future."

New York Times: "For the first time since demonstrators began camping out in front of Sana University calling for an end to the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country’s opposition leaders attended the protest as a group on Saturday afternoon to voice their support."

Reuters: "One of six tsunami-crippled nuclear reactors appeared to stabilize on Saturday as Japan raced to restore power to the stricken power plant to cool it and prevent a greater catastrophe. Engineers reported some rare success after fire trucks sprayed water for about three hours on reactor No.3, widely considered the most dangerous at the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex because of its use of highly toxic plutonium." ...

AP: "Japan said radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near its tsunami-crippled nuclear complex exceeded government safety limits, as emergency teams scrambled Saturday to restore power to the plant so it could cool dangerously overheated fuel. The food was taken from farms as far as 65 miles (100 kilometers) from the stricken plants, suggesting a wide area of nuclear contamination."

New York Times: "After securing the Federal Reserve’s blessing, a series of financial giants rushed to raise their dividends and buy back stock on Friday, underscoring how Wall Street profits and an improving economy have helped the biggest banks stage a broad recovery since they were laid low by the financial crisis. Within hours of being told by regulators they had passed a second round of stress tests, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and several other major lenders laid out specific plans. Meanwhile, American Express and Goldman Sachs announced they were resuming large-scale stock repurchases, with Goldman buying back the $5 billion stake it sold to Warren E. Buffett in the fall of 2008."

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