"Donald Trump Is Done With Checks and Balances"
It is not an exaggeration to say that, to me, Jamelle Bouie is one of the most important voices regarding current US politics and racial division. I follow him across social media (BlueSky, TikTok, and his articles.) This is an excellent article which reminds us that Trump is a serious threat to our country because what he proposes isn't new, in fact, it's explicitly how the country was founded:
It is important to remember that the Constitution was neither written nor ratified with democracy in mind. Just the opposite: It was written to restrain — and contain — the democratic impulses of Americans shaped in the hothouse of revolutionary fervor.
"Most of the men who assembled at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 were also convinced that the national government under the Articles of Confederation was too weak to counter the rising tide of democracy in the states," the historian Terry Bouton writes in "Taming Democracy: 'The People,' the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution."
We were not given a democratic Constitution; we made one. We unraveled the elitist and hierarchical Constitution of the founders to build something that works for us — that conforms to our expectations.
But nothing is permanent. What's made can be unmade. And at the foundation of Donald Trump's campaign is a promise to unmake our democratic Constitution.
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Dan Conover discussing WaPo an NYT on this election
Dan Conover, a "recovering newsman" wrote the following about "the failure of the NY Times and Washington Post to adequately defend democracy" (according to Dave Winer.) Dan posted it to his Facebook page.
After the whole "1. Bezos hell-boxed the WaPo Harris endorsement; 2. No he didn't, it was a decision by the publisher; 3. I'm Jeff Bezos, and I'm writing to tell you why I killed it" fiasco, people I admire and respect posted arguments for why people should cancel their Amazon accounts, rather than "punishing" the journalists at the Post by abandoning one of the last quality news staffs in the United States.
It's really not a bad argument. I just disagree with it. Here's one example of why.
Yesterday, Joe Biden responded to the comedian at Trump's MSG rally calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. It went pretty much as you'd expect until the President said the only garbage was Trump's supporter's.
Or was it "Trump's supporters?"
Little Marco Rubio was so excited that Biden (who, you'll recall, isn't running for President) might have been referring to ALL Trump supporters, rather than the very SPECIFIC supporter who made the "joke" (which, btw, had been vetted by the campaign), that he ran onto the stage during Trump's speech at another rally to read the alleged insult aloud.
Set aside the fact that Trump insults Harris' supporters every fucking day. He's actually upped the ante this time: We've been promoted from "very bad people" to "The Enemy Within," which sounds so much better in the original German.
Forget that the White House issued a statement clarifying that Biden was, in fact, referring to Trump's comedian, not Trump voters in general. And try, if you can, to ignore the fact that Trump put on a high-visibility safety vest and took a ride in an actual garbage truck on which his campaign painted "TRUMP" so as to milk every ounce of insult and phony media umbrage out of the latest Biden gaffe nothingburger.
Instead, pretend you're the Executive Editor of the Washington Post, and ask yourself: Considering all those factors, and the proximity of Election Day, where would you run that "Did Biden Call Trump supporters 'Garbage'?" story on your print newspaper and website?
Here's what I learned from Talking Points Memo's David Kurz this morning: Not only did The Post give the "garbage" story top-billing, so did the fucking New York Times.
There was a time in my life, long ago, when I got paid decent money to stand around a desk in the middle of a newsroom on a deadline and shout at other editors (and sometimes reporters) about headlines and placement. And lemme tell you: When the people who would put that phony garbage story above the fold win those ethical headline-and-placement arguments, you've got a big, big problem.
We're not talking about HuffPo or Salon here. We're talking about the last two "unique nationals" standing in American print journalism. Instiututions with long and storied histories. Both took the same test at the same time, and both failed it.
Do I have beefs with Amazon? Of course. But when it comes to monopolistic practices, the problem isn't Amazon -- it's a legal systems that either can't or won't prosecute those practices. And, while I'm at it, if it weren't for Amazon, my ficition [sic] career would have ended with the last literary agent who deleted one of my query emails without a second thought because "that's too different from what sold last quarter, and he's not related to anyone famous."
Amazon Publishing isn't a perfect publishing platform. But it's a chance for indies like me to find an audience, and that's all I ever asked for. So thank you for that, Jeff Bezos, you Lex-Luther-looking motherfucker.
I didn't quit The Post because I hate Bezos personally or because I demand that the paper endorse Harris. I quit The Post because journalism may be a business, but it's supposed to be MORE than a business. It's protected by the First Amendment because an informed electorate is essential to the health of a democratic society. And if you look back at the history of American journalism, you will probably not be surprised to learn that it's ALWAYS been a mixed bag, at best.
But I can't, and won't, forgive The Post for backsliding at this crucial moment.
The Post has a talented roster, and does some great reporting on matters of significance. But its editorial policies -- not to mention its retrograde executive hiring practices -- are sending a message to news organizations across the country: If The Washington Post and The New York Times -- the two papers most responsible for holding Richard Nixon accountable for his crimes -- are going to blatantly suck-up to the rich, powerful and unethical, why aren't we?
Trust me: No matter what they might say in public, there's nobody at The Post who misunderstands this message. Two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand subscribers didn't quit this week because they hate Dana Milbank or Aaron Blake. They quit because Post management rolled over for Donald Trump, and then fucking lied about it.
I don't want The Post to go away. I want The Post to change. And if that means they should fear their readers more than they fear Donald Trump, so be it.
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NYT still links to Google Podcasts on their site. I'm fairly surprised, their tech team are usually on top of things.
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Podcast Middleman
The NYT are putting their podcasts behind a paywall. You can still get them free for the first few days and then they move behind the paywall. I get it. It's business. But my consumption of podcasts is heavily dependent on the day. And I like being able to go back a little while to recent topics but maybe not immediate.
So I decided to look into using Plex as my podcast server, thinking I could automatically download new podcast files to my server and then listen whenever I wanted. Unfortunately it seems Plex had a podcast function, but it was buggy and they made the call to cut the function rather than integrate it.
Disappointing, but I get it.
Now, I'm going even simpler. A folder on my server, a cron job which fetches and downloads the podcasts daily and keeps them for a month (to avoid devouring server space.) And then I just make my own personal podcast feed for them.
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NYT suing OpenAI and Microsoft for use of Copyrighted Work
Excerpts from the NYT's own article about the lawsuit:
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.
The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.
The lawsuit could test the emerging legal contours of generative A.I. technologies — so called for the text, images and other content they can create after learning from large data sets — and could carry major implications for the news industry. The Times is among a small number of outlets that have built successful business models from online journalism, but dozens of newspapers and magazines have been hobbled by readers’ migration to the internet.
At the same time, OpenAI and other A.I. tech firms — which use a wide variety of online texts, from newspaper articles to poems to screenplays, to train chatbots — are attracting billions of dollars in funding.
OpenAI is now valued by investors at more than $80 billion. Microsoft has committed $13 billion to OpenAI and has incorporated the company’s technology into its Bing search engine.
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WordleBot got smarter
I still do Wordle everyday and usually I like to check what they think of how I did thanks to Wordlebot. This morning I noticed it had a new feature to look at my recent results and not just that day's. Not a huge improvement, but nice to have a history feature for looking back at my past Wordles finally.
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Wordle to be linked with NYT account
I'm excited they're finally making this change. I already pay it for crossword access, and this means I can do my daily Wordle on my laptop or my phone.
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