The Ledes

Monday, June 30, 2025

It's summer in our hemisphere, and people across Guns America have nothing to do but shoot other people.

New York Times: “A gunman deliberately started a wildfire in a rugged mountain area of Idaho and then shot at the firefighters who responded, killing two and injuring another on Sunday afternoon in what the local sheriff described as a 'total ambush.' Law enforcement officers exchanged fire with the gunman while the wildfire burned, and officials later found the body of the male suspect on the mountain with a firearm nearby, Sheriff Robert Norris of Kootenai County said at a news conference on Sunday night. The authorities said they believed the suspect had acted alone but did not release any information about his identity or motives.” A KHQ-TV (Spokane) report is here.

New York Times: “The New York City police were investigating a shooting in Manhattan on Sunday night that left two people injured steps from the Stonewall Inn, an icon of the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. The shooting occurred outside a nearby building in Greenwich Village at 10:15 p.m., Sgt. Matthew Forsythe of the New York Police Department said. The New York City Pride March had been held in Manhattan earlier on Sunday, and Mayor Eric Adams said on social media that the shooting happened as Pride celebrations were ending. One victim who was shot in the head was in critical condition on Monday morning, a spokeswoman for the Police Department said. A second victim was in stable condition after being shot in the leg, she said. No suspect had been identified. The police said it was unclear if the shooting was connected to the Pride march.”

New York Times: “A dangerous heat wave is gripping large swaths of Europe, driving temperatures far above seasonal norms and prompting widespread health and fire alerts. The extreme heat is forecast to persist into next week, with minimal relief expected overnight. France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are among the nations experiencing the most severe conditions, as meteorologists warn that Europe can expect more and hotter heat waves in the future because of climate change.”

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
Help!

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

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

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.

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

Page Links
Wednesday
Dec142016

Trump's Laws of Politics

(A Riff on Newton's Laws of Physics, with apologies to Sir Isaac)

By Akhilleus

Physics, schmisics.

So. Rick Perry, eh? Energy Secretary. Does that mean he'll be taking dictation and getting coffee for the big oil and gas execs?

After all, he comes from a state where oil is king and he benefited enormously from oil industry contributions to his various political campaigns, including the one where he obsequiously meant to let all his oil pals know that he was going to kill the pesky Department of Energy, but, oops, he, um, er, he forgot what it was called. He's also, oddly enough, director of the board of the two major companies involved in the Dakota access pipeline project, a scheme in which, funnily enough, Donald Trump has invested a lot of money. But, hey, no conflict of interest there, right?

The previous two Energy secretaries were not making coffee for oil execs. They were, in fact, working physicists, both highly respected. One, Steven Chu, had a Nobel Prize in physics. Is Perry up to those guys, intellectually? Well, let's put it this way. Steve Chu figured out things that stumped BP's experts during the horrendous Deepwater Horizon oil spill (if you haven't read the piece Gloria linked yesterday, take a few minutes to do so. The name of the piece is "How Science Stopped BP's Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill"--the science didn't come from the oil industry, by the way, it came from Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu). Rick Perry, in contrast, couldn't even remember the name of the department he will soon be running.

Hey, Ricky. I take my coffee black, please, no sugar.

But, buried in that Scientific American article is a sentence that could explain why Trump is replacing world class physicists with a guy who would have trouble getting through "Physics for Dummies": "There is something of the owl in [Steven] Chu's heart-shaped face—giving the impression of proverbial wisdom but also of a veiled raptor, ready to strike the intellectually unprepared. He may look oddly casual...but he attacks with questions...the bespectacled Energy secretary posed a danger to the oil company scientists and executives, especially as he quickly acquired knowledge about the problem posed by [the ruptured oil well]. The only question was: Whose scientific expertise would prevail?"

And there it is, right there. Chu "...posed a danger to the oil company scientists and executives..." Trump wants to make sure that the only science that prevails is the made-to-order oil industry science. The only danger Perry might pose is substituting sugar for Sweet'N Low.

And anyway, physics, schmisics. Trumpy didn't need to understand physics to become a legend in his own mind, right? Just a lot of crazy numbers and weird symbols. Who needs it?

And so, genius that he is, he has replaced Newton's Laws with Trump's Laws. And what do those laws say? Funny you should ask:

Newton's first law: objects will remain at rest or in motion, and continue moving in a straight line, unless acted upon by an external force.

Trump's first law: Idiots will remain idiots no matter how many external facts confront their dimwitted world view (very important for getting a dangerous baboon elected president!)

Newton's second law: a force acting on a mass creates acceleration and can be determined by the expression F=ma, or force equals mass x acceleration.

Trump's second law: money acting on the ethically challenged creates an acceleration in corruption. (A most desired effect in the Trump universe.) This can be expressed as F=ma or fraud equals money x assholes.

Newton's third law: for every force, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Trump's third law: for every fact there is a ridiculously unequal and opposite reaction by wingnuts to what they see as an attack on their fact-free world view.

In light of the new rules of physics, I'd say Perry is the ideal choice. He won't vex oil companies with troublesome questions about Sciiiiiieeennnccccce, or maaaaath or lame stuff like that. Any time someone tries to do that fact thingy, he'll scream and yell and throw things, and when big oil and gas guys come around, he'll make them coffee and make sure they get whatever they want.

Intellectually unprepared? Eh, so what? Perry is the perfect Trumpian solution to a department that really should prob'ly just be mothballed completely. Because science, ya know? Who needs it?

The Standard Republican Way, as horrible as it is, is starting to look positively halcyon.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (1)

Well done, Akhilleus.

Already, one application hit me as I read this NYTimes header a moment ago.

"Trump Test Core G.O.P Doctrine: Russia is the Enemy"

Not for long, if I read the Second Law aright. God's Own Party is massively ethically challenged and Putin and Exxon have oodles of money. They'll cloak it, hide it, take baby steps maybe, but the Repugnants will cave, all the while feigning rectitude that (See First Law) some of dullest may still believe is warming their corrupted hearts.

December 14, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.