REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - Word of the Year (for the Turd of the Year)

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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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Monday

Nov272017

Word of the Year (for the Turd of the Year)

By Akhilleus

Dictionary.com has come out with its word of the year. And no, it isn't "asshole", although that, along with "pernicious" and "dick" would have been perfectly fine choices. I'd have thought it would be "collusion", but no, it's "complicit", which describes the entire Trump clan and everyone on his execrable cabinet of clowns and confidence schemers.

Complicit: "'Choosing to be involved in an illegal or questionable act' and 'having partnership or involvement in wrongdoing.'"

That pretty much describes Trump World, don't it?

But if that word doesn't suit you, you can go here and try your hand at selecting a word to describe the little king hisself, apart from his milieu. But don't select "arrogant", "idiot", "orange", "asshole", or "president" (yeah, I know, no asterisk). They're the top vote getters, over 10,000 a piece.

Scroll down and you do run across some unusual, but accurate choices:

wazzock: (English, dialect) a foolish or annoying person
bunghole: self explanatory
flaccid: one of my favorites.

And hey, santorum got 16 votes!

Some are just odd: Tomato, prune, wax, lobster, mong? Baka? Dillhole? Enoch?

Two people suggested "word" which I suppose is a bit waggish since the exercise is called "trump in one word". Ha-ha, very clever, kids.

Only two picks for "jejune" which I found surprising.

"Cockgobbler" is in there (which I found not surprising--along with scads of similarly sexual turns of phrase).

"Mugabe" gets a knowing head nod.

Then there's "Pajero", which, I discovered, means 'He who fiddles with himself for sexual gratification'. Check.

"Turdburglar"? Why not?

Twelve selected "savy" which could mean they're not very savvy themselves. But at least they're all Confederate illiterates.

Several people suggested "antidisestablishmentarianism", which tells me they either wanted to show off their spelling chops or haven't read much in the way of 19th C English history.

Things get really interesting when you scroll down to the entries with a single submission.

Arrogantaur, asswipemotherfuckinpieceofrac (that's all that fit), tchump, FartBlossom, and Antechrist (he came before Christ?), onionhead, and Dick-Cheese. Ladyweoutof was good, as was colonscope and Dunderpate; but I liked the comprehensiveness of Omnibuffoon. One anatomically confused entry was VaginaBallsack. Covers the waterfront, I guess.

PIck out your own faves. Open the Thesaurus. It's hard to go wrong.