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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

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Monday
Nov222010

The Commentariat -- November 23

The President Gets His "3 am Call." Michael Crowley of Time: "During a press gaggle on Air Force One today, White House press secretary Bill Burton said that national security advisor Tom Donilon woke the president at 3:55 am with the news of North Korea's artillery attack on a South Korean island." Crowley adds, "I see no sign that our children were unsafe because it was Obama and not Hillary who fielded it."

Appearing on Sean Hannity's nightly "Integrity in Journalism" show, journalism major Sarah Palin explains journalistic principles & ethics to Katie Couric (not named, but Couric is the object of this little lesson):

Megyn Kelly of Fox "News." Photo by Alexei Hay for GQ.... Greg Veis conducts an interview for GQ of Fox "News"' Megyn Kelly, who discusses the "nobility of journalism" and no, she did not have an affair with Brit Hume, but Hume was pleased about the rumor of one. Sample response:

My rule is, if anybody writes in asking for a head shot and compliments me or the show or just wants one, that's fine, they can have a head shot. But if they write anything perverted, they're not getting one. -- Megyn Kelly

CW: see photo which accompanies the interview. Not a head shot. Why would anyone be inspired to write "anything perverted" to Fox's own Miss School M'arm?

 

... Speaking of Right-Wing Integrity... Dan Vergano of USA Today: "An influential 2006 congressional report that raised questions about the validity of global warming research was partly based on material copied from textbooks, Wikipedia and the writings of one of the scientists criticized in the report, plagiarism experts say":

It kind of undermines the credibility of your work criticizing others' integrity when you don't conform to the basic rules of scholarship.
-- Skip Garner, plagiarism expert

The Fed Fights Back. Sewall Chan of the New York Times: "Faced with unusually sharp ideological attacks after its latest bid to stimulate the economy, the Federal Reserve now faces a challenge: ... how to defend itself in a hyperpartisan environment without becoming overtly political. Caught off guard by accusations from Congressional Republicans, Sarah Palin, Tea Party activists and conservative economists, the central bank and its chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, are pushing back, making their case on substantive grounds but also haltingly adopting the tactics of Washington battle, like strategically placed interviews, behind-the-scenes assuaging of opponents and reaching out to potential allies on Wall Street and Capitol Hill."

Broken Record: Paul Kiel of ProPublica: "The government’s mortgage modification program has ... failed to boost the number of modifications relative to the need... For homeowners, modifications are just as rare as they were before the program launched. The absolute number of modifications is higher now than it was then, but so are the number of defaulted loans." ...

... Abigail Field of AOL's Daily Finance: "Testimony in a New Jersey foreclosure case decided last week may spell big trouble for Bank of America.... If what one bank employee said on the stand proves to be accurate, paperwork problems it acquired when it purchased the failing mortgage provider Countrywide in 2008 could leave BofA on the hook for billions of dollars."

Alan Pyke of Media Matters: another day, another lie from the Newt: "... Gingrich claimed that the verdict in the civilian trial of embassy bomber Ahmed Ghailani — which will put Ghailani in jail for 20 years to life — is a miscarriage of justice and proves 'Attorney General Holder should resign....' Gingrich is not merely ignoring the record (his own, as well as judicial precedents and the history of stronger sentences from civilian courts than from tribunals). He's also ignoring the official Manual for Military Commissions, Rule 304 of which rules inadmissible any evidence gained through torture." ...

... Sorry, Newt. Greg Sargent & Adam Serwer: "The families of victims of the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa support the Obama administration's decision to try Ahmed Ghailani in civilian court, even if they were disappointed with the verdict, a spokesperson for the families tells us.... Edith Bartley..., a de facto media spokesperson for ... families of victims, [says] ... the families don't fault the Obama Justice Department's handling of the case. She also called on [right-wing] critics of Justice's conduct to stop turning the trial and verdict into a 'political issue,' which she denounced as 'unacceptable.'"

Fredreka Schouten of USA Today: "The companies with multimillion-dollar contracts to supply American airports with body-scanning machines more than doubled their spending on lobbying in the past five years and hired several high-profile former government officials to advance their causes in Washington, government records show." ...

... Marc Ambinder, now of the National Journal: "The White House is coordinating a response to what it views as dramatically overblown press coverage of a policy that most Americans say they support." ...

... Luckily, and to no one's surprise, the White House enjoys the cooperative effort of Mr. Inside-the-Beltway, Howie Kurtz, who stands up for the TSA's new pat-downs & super-scans & blames "media frenzy" for the public uproar. Frenzied Media, get a grip.

Jonathan Chait of The New Republic: "Probably the most serious long-term threat to American security is the possibility that terrorists will acquire an unsecured nuclear weapon. It's therefore terrifying that Republicans are holding up the START Treaty that secures that material.... Our security apparatus is filled with wildly expensive and/or intrusive measures that bring minimal benefit, but the one security intervention with an enormous cost-benefit ratio may get held up because you need the consent of an intransigent and largely insane party."

One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president. -- Al Gore, on why he had once supported corn-based ethanol subsidies

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