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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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Sunday
Oct102010

The Commentariat -- October 11

A Heartwarmer. Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times. Mr. Biden visits his Scranton home.

Robert Kuttner, writing in the Huffington Post, makes a few minor factual errors in his post (e.g., it wasn't a pocket veto), but his overall point is worth considering (or hoping for!): "By pocket-vetoing the bill that sailed through Congress to expedite mortgage foreclosures, President Obama may have begun a chain reaction that will blow up Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's confidence game with the banks."

Paul Krugman: "... if job-creating government spending has failed to bring down unemployment in the Obama era, it’s not because it doesn’t work; it’s because it wasn’t tried." ...

... This New York Times page breaks down where the stimulus money went.

... Krugman has a brief post on the Economics Nobel recipients; his take is the same as mine: "And yes, this is the same Peter Diamond whose nomination to the Fed board has been held up because of Republican doubts about his qualifications." Krugman links to his August 6 post:

Senate Republicans holding up Peter Diamond’s nomination to the Federal Reserve Board on the grounds that he may not be qualified to make monetary policy. Aside from the fact that the same Senators cheerfully confirmed Bush nominees who didn’t know much about economics of any kind, this is especially stupid right now. ...

Sen. Richard Shelby.I do not believe he’s ready to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board. I do not believe that the current environment of uncertainty would benefit from monetary policy decisions made by board members who are learning on the job. -- Sen. Richard Shelby, on Nobel Prize-winning economist Peter Diamond, who was Ben Bernanke's econ professor. Shelby returned Diamond's "unacceptable" nomination to the White House ...

       ... CW: there are times when Republican hypocrisy is so ripe, they can smell it in Norway. ...

... Christopher Rugaber of the AP: "Companies still aren't finding it easy to fill job vacancies," partly because traditional jobs have morphed into ones that require broader experience. "The total number of job openings does remain historically low: 3.2 million, down from 4.4 million before the recession. But the number of openings has surged 37 percent in the past year. And yet the unemployment rate has actually risen during that time."

Washington Post Editorial Board: the U.S. tax code provides for spending $200 billion a year on social programs for the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans. "The code is salted with 'tax expenditures' -- programs, many worthy, designed to promote policies from homeownership to education to retirement savings" The code "lacks transparency and accountability" and "tends to award the most help to those who need it least."

CW: ever wonder why Goldman-Sachs CEO Henry Paulson took that low-paying government job as Dubya's Treasury Secretary? Think it was to nobly serve his country? Gary Gordon of McClatchy News: while Goldman CEO, "Paulson had presided over the firm's plunge into the business of buying up subprime mortgages ... and then repackaging them into securities.... During Paulson's first 15 months as the treasury secretary..., Goldman unloaded more than $30 billion in dicey residential mortgage securities ... and became the only major Wall Street firm to dramatically cut its losses and exit the housing market safely. Goldman also racked up billions of dollars in profits by secretly betting on a downturn in home mortgage securities." Experts say it's obvious Paulson's inaction at Treasury was designed to maximize Goldman profits despite the disastrous consequences for the markets & the American economy. CW: and Paulson will never suffer any consequences.

MoveOn.org gets hold of a prospectus for RepubliCorpTM. Interactive:

The Cabal of Multinational Corporations is pleased to formally announce RepubliCorpTM, a new combined entity following our complete merger with the Republican Party.

RepubliCorpTM combines the ethics-free campaigning savvy of the GOP with the limit-free spending power of Corporate AmericaTM. This merger is precisely timed: With the recent Citizens United ruling finally placing the United States Government on the open market, RepubliCorpTM is now perfectly positioned to lead our hostile takeover bid, currently scheduled for completion on November 2nd 2010.

Howard Kurtz & Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "The increasing polarization of cable news is transforming, and in some ways shrinking, the electoral landscape. What has emerged is a form of narrowcasting, allowing candidates a welcoming platform that helps them avoid hostile press questioning and, in some cases, minimize the slog and the slip-ups of retail campaigning."

I have 11-year-old twin boys, and this campaign has allowed us to accelerate awkward conversations. -- Delaware Democratic Senate nominee Chris Coons, when asked about his opponent's denunciation of masturbation ...

... Frank Bruni of the New York Times profiles Chris Coons, Delaware's Democratic nominee for Senate. CW: finally, someone in the MSM decides to mention the candidate who is actually qualified to serve.

Of "Speedos & Grinding." Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino defends remarks he made yesterday about gays, says he's not a bigot. CW: you decide. Update: here's a clip:

"Fraud Files" introduces you to Florida's Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott. Sadly, this is an accurate portrait & the scary music is apt:

West Virginia's Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin, who is running for the Senate, answers his opponent's "hicky" ad:

Jane Lorber of the New York Times: "Brave New Films, the documentary film company behind a series of damaging anti-McCain viral videos during the 2008 presidential campaign, has put its sights on Carly Fiorina, the Republican candidate for Senate in California. In the latest of three videos attacking Ms. Fiorina..., several former Hewlett-Packard employees who were laid off during Ms. Fiorina’s tenure as chief executive ... describe her as ruthless and extravagant." (See the earlier videos at the link.):

Stolen Valor. Dan Elliott of the AP: "The Justice Department is battling to save a federal law that makes it illegal to lie about being a war hero, appealing two court rulings that the statute is an unconstitutional muzzle on free speech.... The Stolen Valor Act makes it a crime punishable by up to a year in jail to falsely claim to have won a military medal, whether or not an impostor seeks financial gain."

Russell Gold of the Wall Street Journal: "Surprise inspections of deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico dwindled to about three a year over the past decade, even as exploratory drilling far from shore increased.... And since 2004 federal authorities haven't made a single surprise inspection on any of the 50 or so deepwater natural gas and oil production platforms in the Gulf, despite a law requiring periodic unannounced inspections."

If It's Broke, Don't Fix It. Change Its Name. "... the Minerals Management Service was recently renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. Nice work, Ken Salazar!

John Hamilton of Media Matters on how right-wing talkshow pundits like Glenn Beck & Michael Savage inspire acts of violence against progressives & authorities, including the President. ...

... If you missed it, also see Dana Milbank's column on Beck's violence-inspiring rhetoric, which I linked Saturday. Milbank briefly covers the same ground Hamilton does.

Reuters picture via the Daily Mail.I know it must be true because I read it in the Daily Mail: at the rally in Philadelphia yesterday, someone threw a book at President Obama. In an unrelated incident, police removed a naked man from the crowd. The article has photos of both. CW: I'm sparing you the photos of the naked man, who needs to start working out.

     Update: according to The Weekly Standard the man who streaked the rally was named Juan James Rodriguez, & billionaire Alki David promised him $1 million for the stunt. Forget the starving children of the world. This is a great way to spend your money, Mr. David.

You can see the flying book near the end of this video clip:

     ... Update: "Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told Politico that the book lobbing incident was not a threat, but friendly fire. 'The book was thrown by an over-exuberant person,' he said. 'It wasn’t a threatening thing, the person wanted to give the president the book.'"

At long last, C-SPAN has made video of the rally available. President Obama begins speaking about 10 minutes in:

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