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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

Page Links
Saturday
May052012

The Commentariat -- May 6, 2012

Super moon over the Temple of Poseidon SE of Athens, Greece, yesterday. AP photo.There's a pretty good slideshow of photos here.

President Obama kicked off his 2012 campaign yesterday in Columbus, Ohio:

It Depends on Where You Get Your News:

     ... Glenn Thrush of Politico: "The [Obama] campaign was only able to muster 14,000 supporters at the first event in an arena designed to hold more than 18,000. Several thousand empty seats ringed its upper deck, mostly out of view from the cameras. About 8,000 supporters turned out for the VCU rally, a full house, and most seemed to like their candidate's blend of hope, change and Romney-bashing." ...

     ... Alexander Marlow of Breitbart "News": "Obama launches campaign in empty arena. Barack Obama launched his campaign in unspectacular fashion today at Ohio State University, the largest college in the crucial swing state. A photo posted to twitter by Mitt Romney's campaign spokesman Ryan Williams reveals sparse attendance."

Christopher Bodeen of the Associated Press: Gary Locke, the U.S. Ambassador to China, played a pivotal role in the drama over legal activist Chen Guangcheng. Locke is popular among the Chinese people. "Locke has drawn overflowing audiences to his speeches at Chinese universities and been the subject of magazine cover stories. Huge crowds showed up when he visited his ancestral home in the southeastern province of Guangdong. At one point, Chinese Foreign Ministry officials complained to the U.S. Embassy about Locke's popular image of being thrifty as an attempt to defame the Chinese government."

Alice Randall in a New York Times op-ed: "Four out of five black women are seriously overweight. One out of four middle-aged black women has diabetes. With $174 billion a year spent on diabetes-related illness in America and obesity quickly overtaking smoking as a cause of cancer deaths, it is past time to try something new."

Pastor Bob Still Not Impressed with Willard. Peter Nicholas of the Wall Street Journal: "Mitt Romney might have been hoping to make inroads with Christian conservatives when he questioned the Obama administration's handling of the case involving the blind Chinese dissident, Chen Guangcheng.... Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas..., said it wasn't the time to criticize administration officials working toward a solution.... Asked about Mr. Romney's statements, he added: 'I don't think now is the time to engage in political partisanship.' Mr. Jeffress stirred a controversy last year when he called the candidate, who is Mormon, a 'non-Christian.' He has since endorsed Mr. Romney in the general election race."

Presidential Race

In his "This Week in God" post, Steve Benen notes that the religious right have "forced one of Romney's spokespersons to resign, and right about now, they're wondering what else they can make the campaign do."

Right Wing World

More GOP Super Sperms. George Talbot of the Mobile, Alabama, Press-Register: "Bill Johnson, a former Alabama [Republican] gubernatorial candidate, has left his wife and family in Prattville to be with babies he secretly conceived as a sperm donor in New Zealand. Johnson’s wife, Kathy Hale Johnson, told the New Zealand Herald that Johnson recently returned to live in New Zealand where he donated sperm to at least 10 women without her knowledge." Here's the New Zealand Herald story.

News Ledes

Reuters: "Voting started in mainland France on Sunday in an election that could make Nicolas Sarkozy the 11th European leader to be swept from office by the economic crisis and crown Francois Hollande as France's first Socialist president in 17 years." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "François Hollande swept into office on Sunday, becoming the first Socialist to be elected president of France since François Mitterrand left office in 1995."

Reuters: "Greeks enraged by economic hardship voted on Sunday in a deeply uncertain election that could reignite Europe's debt crisis and throw into doubt the country's future in the euro zone." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Greek voters appeared to radically redraw the political map on Sunday, bolstering the far left and neo-Nazi right in a wave of protest against the dominant political parties they blame for the country's economic collapse."

New York Times: "Lawyers for five men charged before a military commission with conspiring in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, complained on Sunday that the process was rigged to lead to the execution of their clients, and they offered new details and explanations for a sometimes chaotic daylong arraignment on Saturday."

New York Times: "A senior Qaeda militant in Yemen linked to the deadly bombing of an American warship there in 2000 was killed in an airstrike on Sunday, the Yemeni government said, in the latest sign of an escalating American campaign to counter the terrorist threat there. Yemeni authorities said the militant, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, 37, who has been on the F.B.I.'s Most Wanted list in connection with the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole that killed 17 sailors in October 2000, died in the strike in Shabwa Province in one of the rugged tribal areas controlled by insurgents."

New York Times: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Sunday that he was 'comfortable' with same-sex marriages, a position that appeared to go beyond the 'evolving' views that President Obama has said he holds on the issue."

Washington Post: "After signing a 10-year lease and spending more than $80 million on a site envisioned as the United States' diplomatic hub in northern Afghanistan, American officials say they have abandoned their plans, deeming the location for the proposed compound too dangerous."

AP: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce Sunday night that he'll dissolve parliament to hold early elections, a move designed to fend off domestic critics and perhaps put him in a stronger position to act against Iran." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Sunday called for early elections, vowing to win a 'renewed mandate' and 'form the broadest government that is possible' to 'guarantee the future of the people of Israel in the land of Israel, for eternity.'"

... Haaretz: "Israel's High Court justices sharply criticized the government on Sunday for not fulfilling its legal commitment to demolish a West Bank settlement."

AP: "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will use a two-day visit to India this week to urge further reductions in Indian imports of Iranian oil."

AP: "Connecticut lawmakers' approval of the use of medical marijuana includes strict regulations for the cultivation and distribution in an attempt to avoid problems other states have run into when legalizing the plant for medical use."

Here's the Al Jazeera report on the Guantanamo hearing.

AP: Against 15-1 odds, "I'll Have Another ran down Bodemeister in the final furlong Saturday to win the Kentucky Derby, winding up in the winner's circle despite a rookie jockey, a more famous stable pony, and a price tag of just $11,000 as a yearling."

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Reader Comments (1)

NPR reported that there were some empty seats but still respectable attendance at the speech. 14,000 I think they said. One has to wonder at what point that picture was taken since we can't see who's on the stage. Still looks a lot better than Romney's empty stadium speech.

May 6, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterDaveS
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