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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

Page Links
Friday
Oct012010

The Commentariat -- October 2

Dana Milbank on Glenn Beck's fantastic view of history, which revolves around his obsession with Adolf Hitler & President Woodrow Wilson, both of whom, Beck says, explain President Obama. "Beck has created an online 'Beck University' to spread his unique views of the past and has hosted 'Founders' Fridays' on his television show, devoted to rewriting the nation's early history as that of a fundamentalist state." Here's Milbank on Beck & Hitler:

In case you were wondering, Justin Elliott of Salon has a viable theory of how Bob Woodward gains access to the high & mighty. ...

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Bob Woodward's powerful new book, 'Obama's Wars,' underscores the delicacy of the relationship between [President] Obama and [General] Petraeus by highlighting the tensions that have long existed between the two ambitious and competitive men." ...

... Oh dear, the right's Woodward turns on its Bernstein. Andrew Breitbart says James "O'Keefe owes his supporters an explanation" for his plan to seduce or pretend to seduce CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau. For the backstory, see the September 30 Commentariat. ...

... Speaking of Brietbart & O'Keefe, Driftglass explains how "Chicago-style politics" works.

I believe in a country that rewards hard work and responsibility, a country where we look after one other, a country that says I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, I'm going to give a hand up, join hands with folks and try to lift all of us up so we all have a better future, not just some - but all of us. That's what I believe.
-- Barack Obama, at Gen44

President Obama gets his groove back at the Gen44 shindig. He begins speaking about 2 min. in:

     ... AP: "... President Barack Obama whipped up young supporters at a rally Thursday night." He spoke before "a sold-out crowd of 3,000 at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at DAR Constitution Hall" in Washington, D.C.

** CW: Peter Birkenhead speaks for me. "I'll quit whining when you start fighting.... When Democrats tacitly accept Republican delusions and lies, when they characterize them as mere 'differences of opinion,' or adopt them as their own, they help give body and shape -- the weight of reality -- to insidious fantasy." Read every word.

Tobin Harshaw of the New York Times has a good roundup of opinions about TARP, which has been in the news lately because of mounting evidence it may not be nearly as costly as expected. ...

... Here's a somewhat expanded version of the Simon Johnson post Harshaw links. CW: Johnson seems to me to have the best overall perspective. The "three serious mistakes" Johnson mentions seem to be at the heart of what is really wrong with TARP, as opposed to what teabaggers think is wrong with it.

Ernesto Londoño of the Washington Post: "The Taliban in recent months has developed increasingly sophisticated and nimble propaganda tactics.... U.S. officials and Afghan analysts say the Taliban has become adept at portraying the West as being on the brink of defeat, at exploiting rifts between Washington and Kabul and at disparaging the administration of President Hamid Karzai as a 'puppet' state with little reach outside the capital. The group is also attempting to assure Afghans that it has a strategy for governing the country again, presenting a platform of stamping out corruption and even protecting women's rights."

Jacob Weisberg in Slate tries to decipher what the right means by "elitism": it has "connotations of education, geography, ideology, taste, and lifestyle — such that a millionaire investment banker who works for Goldman Sachs, went to Harvard, and reads the New York Times is an elitist but a billionaire CEO who grew up in Houston, went to a state university, and contributes to Republicans, is not." Weisberg remarks that during the 2008 presidential race, John McCain,

... the son and grandson of admirals, a millionaire who couldn't remember how many houses he owned, accuse[d] his mixed-race opponent, raised by a single-mother and only a few years past paying off his student loans, of being the real elite candidate in the campaign.

Meatballs Matter. Bill Maher's "Christine O'Donnell Clip of the Week." Here O'Donnell speaks of her "faith journey":

... Daughter of Bozo. Mark Leibovich of the New York Times profiles Christine O'Donnell. ...

... Lying about the Lies. Keith Olbermann & David Corn discuss Christine O'Donnell's fantasy

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