REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Commentariat -- Sept. 13, 2015

The Ledes

Thursday, July 3, 2025

CNBC: “Job growth proved better than expected in June, as the labor market showed surprising resilience and likely taking a July interest rate cut off the table. Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 147,000 for the month, higher than the estimate for 110,000 and just above the upwardly revised 144,000 in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. April’s tally also saw a small upward revision, now at 158,000 following an 11,000 increase.... Though the jobless rates fell [to 4.1%], it was due largely to a decrease in those working or looking for jobs.”

Washington Post: “A warehouse storing fireworks in Northern California exploded on Tuesday, leaving seven people missing and two injured as explosions continued into Wednesday evening, officials said. Dramatic video footage captured by KCRA 3 News, a Sacramento broadcaster, showed smoke pouring from the building’s roof before a massive explosion created a fireball that seemed to engulf much of the warehouse, accompanied by an echoing boom. Hundreds of fireworks appeared to be going off and were sparkling within the smoke. Photos of the aftermath showed multiple destroyed buildings and a large area covered in gray ash.” ~~~

The Wires

The Ledes

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

New York Times: “The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who emerged from the backwoods of Louisiana to become a television evangelist with global reach, preaching about an eternal struggle between good and evil and warning of the temptations of the flesh, a theme that played out in his own life in a sex scandal, died on July 1. He was 90.” ~~~

~~~ For another sort of obituary, see Akhilleus' commentary near the end of yesterday's thread.

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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.”

Page Links

Saturday

Sep122015

The Commentariat -- Sept. 13, 2015

Internal links removed.

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama on Saturday abandoned his two-year effort to have the government create a system that explicitly rates the quality of the nation's colleges and universities, a plan that was bitterly opposed by presidents at many of those institutions. Under the original idea, announced by Mr. Obama with fanfare in 2013, all of the nation's 7,000 institutions of higher education would have been assigned a ranking by the government, with the aim of publicly shaming low-rated schools that saddle students with high debt and poor earning potential. Instead, the White House on Saturday unveiled a website that does not attempt to rate schools with any kind of grade, but provides information to prospective students and their parents about annual costs, graduation rates and salaries after graduation." See also this week's presidential address in the right column.

Jamelle Bouie: "... as much as the White House can justly gloat over its strategy for securing Senate support [of the Iran nuclear deal], we shouldn't ignore the extent to which it had a huge ally in persuading Democrats to stand with the deal. Namely, the Republican Party.... Again and again, the GOP's great obstacle -- and Democrats' great ally -- is itself. Its intransigence might win elections -- Obamacare helped the GOP win the 2010 midterms, and Republicans hope that Iran will do the same for 2016 -- but it comes at a cost: policy that's more liberal than the alternative."

New York Times Editors: "This past June, in the heat of their outrage over gay rights, congressional Republicans revived a nasty bit of business they call the First Amendment Defense Act.... It would not ... defend the First Amendment. To the contrary, it would deliberately warp the bedrock principle of religious freedom under the Constitution.... The act would bar the federal government from taking 'any discriminatory action' -- including the denial of tax benefits, grants, contracts or licenses -- against those who oppose same-sex marriage for religious or moral reasons.... The bill makes matters worse by covering for-profit companies, which greatly multiplies the potential scope of discrimination against gays and lesbians. These are radical proposals, but they are accepted without question by many in today's Republican Party."

Bob Cesca in Salon: There's a direct link between Republican politicians' attacks on Planned Parenthood & acts of terrorism. ...

Jeb! & Prescott Bush.... Once Upon a Time -- Granddad & His Doofus Progeny. Prescott Bush was a founder of Planned Parenthood & its first treasurer. And then there was Jeb! He boasts of defunding Planned Parenthood when he was governor of Florida, says the federal government should defund Planned Parenthood because "they're not actually doing women's health issues" (not sure how you "do" "issues," but that's Jeb!speak), & says Congress should investigate Planned Parenthood. (Which it is, & doing a damned fine job of it, too.) Sorry, Granddaddy.

** Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), in the Washington Post, reviews Ari Berman's Give Us the Ballot; The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America."

Presidential Race

Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "The company that managed Hillary Rodham Clinton's private e-mail server said it has 'no knowledge of the server being wiped,' the strongest indication to date that tens of thousands of e-mails that Clinton has said were deleted could be recovered."

Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: Donald Trump got rock-star treatment when he showed up at the "Iowa Republican Party's tent in the parking lot before the big Iowa vs. Iowa State football game on Saturday.... Three other Republican candidates not named Trump also glad-handed and posed for selfies among the tailgating football fans before the game. But their receptions were of a different order.... Cheers went up several times over false sightings. A sign read: 'The Trump Will Set You Free.' (It was countered by a protester's sign: 'Mr. Hate, Leave My State.')... There was no applause for [Scott] Walker.... Earlier, Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky worked the tailgaters, not all of whom were thrilled to have a presidential candidate and his entourage interfering with their meat grilling, beer drinking and game playing."

Andrew O'Herir of Salon: Donald Trump's appeal is to primitive tribalism. "Even Donald Trump would not come right out in 2015 and say that he's in favor of cruelty and hypocrisy and the denial of reason, but he doesn't have to. He demonstrates his devotion to those virtues with every second of every public appearance, every hateful comment directed at women who presume to challenge him, every poisonous calumny about the immigrants..., and every preening pronouncement that he plans to exert power and authority well beyond that allotted to the president by the Constitution, or that he possesses a magical solution for some nonexistent problem but won't tell us what it is.... [Bernie] Sanders and Trump are almost negative images of each other, so much so as to represent alternative and perhaps impossible pathways for the human future."

Katie Glueck & Daniel Strauss of Politico: "Scott Walker's standing in Iowa has disintegrated, and he can't blame Donald Trump. The Wisconsin governor once-heralded by political insiders as the front-runner for the GOP nomination is struggling with perceptions that he is inconsistent at best and a full-out flip-flopper at worst.... In Iowa, where Walker was supposed to perform best among the early-voting states, he is now polling at only 3 percent, according to a Friday poll from Quinnipiac University. And short of a miracle on the debate stage next week, other Republicans say, it's hard to see how he comes back. 'There was a ton of excitement about Scott Walker, and that's subsided some,' said Karen Fesler, a prominent Iowa activist who is aligned with Rick Santorum." CW: How any sane human being could feel "a ton of excitement" about this nincompoop is way beyond me. ...

... Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "Scott Walker has canceled two speeches he was scheduled to give next weekend in Michigan and California so that he can instead spend time meeting voters in South Carolina and Iowa." CW: Don't worry, Scottie. You seem like the perfect candidate to pick off all those Rick Perry caucus-goers.

Beyond the Beltway

The Gay Harasser. Mark Stern of Slate: "After promising [a judge he would] comply with federal law, [Texas Attorney General Ken] Paxton [RTP] pulled an about-face, actively fighting to prevent a lesbian from inheriting her dead partner's estate.... What's especially bizarre about Paxton's legal theory is that it's disproved by Obergefell itself. Paxton argues that, because [a wife in the case] is already dead, the state cannot recognize her relationship as a valid marriage. Yet that was exactly what James Obergefell asked the Supreme Court to do." CW: You do have to wonder why people like Paxton are so consumed with hatred of people they don't even know.

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: "In fewer than 12 hours, the [Valley fire in Lake County, California,] had scorched 40,000 acres. As firefighters evacuated homes in its path, the fire would jump ahead of them, threatening more homes before firefighters could advance.... Experts said the Valley fire moved faster than any other in California's recent history."

Reuters: "Egypt's police and military killed 12 Egyptians and Mexicans and injured 10 when they accidentally shot at a Mexican tourist convoy whilst engaging militants in the country's western desert, the ministry of interior said on Monday."

New York Times: "Moses Malone, the N.B.A center known as the Chairman of the Boards for prodigious rebounding that propelled him to the Basketball Hall of Fame and acclaim as one of the top 50 players in the league's first half-century, died during the weekend in Norfolk, Va. He was 60."

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