REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The State of Reality Chex

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To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

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OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

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.”

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Friday

Nov092012

The State of Reality Chex

First, thank you all for your encouragement and kind words.

I started Reality Chex in 2008 because I couldn't find a single site where I could get all or most all of what I wanted to know about the state of the presidential race and other contests. I figured that since I had to look all over the place to get a good handle on the big picture, I might as well share what I was finding. It was never my intention to carry the site past the 2008 election. However, the transition was pretty interesting so I carried on a bit longer. I figured I'd shut down after the inauguration. But the first months of the Obama administration were intense, so I kept up. Finally, I shut down Reality Chex in April 2009. Big protest. So I did a few things to make my job easier and started back up again.

I didn't allow comments until some time in 2011 (as I recall). That went fairly well, except I had problems with a few commenters attacking others and with some commenters who thought they could just make up “facts” to bolster their views. Others took me to be their personal research assistant or Answer Lady and would ask me to find stuff widely available through a simple Google search, or worse, to compile data in formats that were not widely available and report back. I got sick of all that & shut down for about a week, but I had enough letters asking me to resume that I did so, with some caveat that commenters had better shape up.

I understand that we were all on pins and needles going into the election, and we're all pumped now that it turned out more-or-less for the best. But this excitement has been followed by a return of the fact-free zone (along with few of requests of the Answer Lady). That gets me down, mostly because I don't think I should have to babysit adults. And I sure as hell don't enjoy it. I feel like Sister Mary Elephant.

So if you want to keep this site going, please show us all the courtesy of writing comments that contribute to, rather than detract from, the conversation. This is what most of you do almost all of the time. Alternately, if you want to write crap, I'll either have to shut down the comments facility – which I don't want to do – or find a crap moderator and let her or him manage the comments. Any volunteers for this thankless post should write to me personally at constantweader@gmail.com I don't expect a long line of applicants.

As Sister Mary Elephant would say, “Thank you.”

Marie

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