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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. ~~~

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.”

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Friday

Nov082019

The Great White Hope

I know why the Trumpbots love him. Just look at the world for a moment from their point of view. Or from Trump's point of view.

You are Donald Trump. In just one news cycle ...

A judge fines you $2 million & makes you admit on paper you're a fraud who steals money from little old ladies and war heroes.

This guy you fired is thinking about dissing you & spilling your secrets on national teevee. It comes out that instead of doing your job, you were concentrating on a fool's errand, trying to buy a not-for-sale island in the North Atlantic. Some government do-gooder is investigating whether or not you broke another law. You find out your own lawyer lied to you repeatedly about a woman in Kiev; yeah, your own lawyer & some third-rate grifters he tied you to could bring you down. Another one of your employees is a big fat liar. There's still fall-out from the news that another of your employees refused to stand up for you when you needed him. Another guy who reports to you sent around a memo saying you really screwed up on the job. Then some employee, who hasn't got the guts to ID himself, writes a whole book outlining what a total fuck-up you are; the book is one cheap shot after another. These are people you hired, gave them top jobs and invited them to the Christmas party, and this is the way they treat you.

At the same time, one of the only friends you have in on trial for lying for you, and your friend is likely to go down. In fact, you're on trial, too. The prosecutors are comparing you to a notorious movie Mafioso.

More than half the country hates you, and yet another billionaire is after your job.

And yet, and yet. You get up, watch a little teevee (okay, a lot of teevee). And you keep on keepin' on.

Most people would have stayed in bed if any one of the things that happened to you in just one day had happened to them. Most people would have given up. And they know it. So if more than half the country hates you, millions of people love you. Like you, they're failures, or at least they think they are. And many of them, like you, are failures because of the mistakes they've made, because of their own ignorance and incompetence, not because of some unfair disadvantage imposed upon them. You give these ne'er-do-wells hope. You're a role model. If you can get up and blast the people who would bring you down – if you can misspell their names (Melanie) & their jobs (special council) and still vindicate yourself (at least in your own mind), well, hell, maybe they too can roust themselves from the bed and go forth anew.

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It's as though this Great White Hope having once won a round in the ring of Punch and Judy bouts actually believed he could take it to the top and survive. He's on his last legs now although you'd never know it–-perhaps HE doesn't know it. "Sir–-your nose is broken, you are bleeding profusely, and your right eye is completely shut–-time to concede, don't ya think?"

And all his people wave and shout––once more into the brink!

November 8, 2019 |

P.D. Pepe

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