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.

The Wires
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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.

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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.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

Marie: Sorry, my countdown clock was unreliable; then it became completely unreliable. I can't keep up with it. Maybe I'll try another one later.

 

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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Tuesday
Jun092015

To the Lighthouse

Defunct video removed.

 

I suppose it was appropriate that on a day Paul Krugman warned against succumbing to the “derp,” it appears that some Reality Chex contributors did just that.

 

 

So, a few notes:

 

When you link to a story (or video) that presents itself as true, if it is a joke or a hoax or satire, please be sure to let readers know.

 

If you think the story is true, consider your own biases. If the story is both outlandish and fits into your personal belief system, as Krugman suggests, be cautious.

 

If you still aren't sure, try to check out the story's veracity. If it's a widespread hoax, as was the one linked yesterday, it's easy to Google rebuttals. Both Snopes and Wikipedia have extensively debunked the lighthouse joke.

 

Facebook is not a news source.

 

Anybody can be fooled.

 

(a) I once linked to a fake news story, precisely because the story fit into my own preconceptions. Luckily, a reader caught my error pretty quickly.

 

(b) “In March 2008, Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence in the U.S., opened his remarks to The Johns Hopkins University's Foreign Affairs Symposium with the lighthouse story, claiming, 'Now this is ... true. I was in the signals intelligence business where you listen to the people talk and so on. This is true. It's an actual recording.'” Besides being DNI, McConnell is a former vice-admiral of the Navy. If anyone in the world should have known better, it was McConnell. And you wonder how we got the Iraq intelligence so wrong (McConnell was not DNI at the time, but you know, same administration).

 

If you know a story linked on Reality Chex isn't true, let us know, as contributor D. C. Clark did yesterday. I catch quite a few of them, & I certainly suspected the lighthouse story was a hoax, but I didn't have time during the day yesterday to Google it -- still tearing up that countertop, which is built like the roof of a bomb shelter.

 

BTW, Clark thought (or sought) this Berlitz ad was funnier:

 

 

... because what is funny about the lighthouse story is that it is true. Only it isn't. And that makes all the difference.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (4)

Great advice from Der Professor about not yielding common sense if a story fits too neatly into one's preconceptions. Not all that long ago, I linked a "news" item that originated as a bit of satire from Andy Borowitz. Hoo-boy! Vas I feeling schtupid, ven dis I find out.

But here's the problem. The raging dementia that has squished right-wing brains to the size of walnuts (and growing smaller by the day), is the source of so many outrageous and jaw dropping situations and statements that industrial strength satire would be hard pressed to keep up. It's not always easy to tell what's real from what's made up. Satirists like Borowitz must read the daily goings on from Right Wing World and think "Man, I wish I could write shit like that. That is some serious crazy right there."

But since the Right has such a derpendency problem, there's no end of actual stupidity. They manufacture it hand over fist.

(Does anyone else think "growing smaller" is an odd construction? I checked with my friend Ockzi Morons to see what he had to say. He liked it. He considered it a genuine imitation of something he had come up with years ago, so he wrote up his thoughts on the subject and sent me an original copy.)

June 9, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Well, ADM McC's specific story ("people who know told him"), and the general the sea-story about the lighthouse, are special categories of "war story."

Just don't forget - "All war stories are lies."

Really, I was there, man.

June 9, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterPatrick

@Patrick: I was too. The more outrageous the better. "Now this is no shit, but there was!"

I'm sure the troops in the Continental Army told versions of the same tales.

June 9, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa

There I was.

June 9, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa
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