All posts tagged: Characters

Who’s in the cast of Grace season 6? Full list of actors & characters

Who’s in the cast of Grace season 6? Full list of actors & characters

Published by Daniella Wilson

The latest season of ITV’s gritty crime drama Grace wraps up with it’s fourth and final episode tonight – with John Simm’s Roy Grace and Richie Campbell’s Glenn Branson set to take on another new case in the Brighton area. This one promises to be “one of his most complex cases yet” according to the official synopsis, and will see them called to the scene of a car accident in which a local hotelier was killed by a driver who fled the scene. Of course, Simm and Branson aren’t the only stars back for this latest episode – Zoë Tapper is back as Roy’s fiancée Cleo, who is helping him to raise the son he never knew he had, while Laura Elphinstone is back as DC Bella May. Also returning are Brad Morrison as DC Nick Nicholl, Juliette Motamed as DC Vee Wilde, Rebecca Scroggs as Ari Branson and more. We don’t yet know if we will see Sam Hoare back as Cassian Pewe, after he betrayed the team and was unveiled as a corrupt …

AI Characters in Marvel Comics

AI Characters in Marvel Comics

Published by Jenni Sidey

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Iron Man #2, published late in 2024, features the start of a recurring gag where our hero has installed a new AI program, Iron.GPT, into his armor. Said program is outrageously incompetent. It’s a funny bit, but I’m not sure how well it works. Even granting that Tony Stark slapped this armor together with a box of scraps (no cave this time), the notion of him resorting to such an amateurish AI seems unlikely, given that far more sophisticated programs — including some invented or modified by Tony himself — have been commonplace in the Marvel universe for decades. It’s important to note that AI in the real world and AI in the Marvel universe are two completely different animals. Here in reality, the term “artificial intelligence” may refer to generative AI, which is mostly known for cranking out hallucinatory slop and turning lazy attorneys into internet laughingstocks, or to agentic AI, which has much greater problem-solving capabilities. …

Border Patrol Agents Sold Challenge Coins With ‘Charlotte’s Web’ Characters in Riot Gear

Border Patrol Agents Sold Challenge Coins With ‘Charlotte’s Web’ Characters in Riot Gear

Published by skeptic

US Border Patrol agents are raising money by selling coins that commemorate last year’s wave of immigration enforcement “operations” across the country, along with other merchandise. The funds are for nonprofit organizations that list Border Patrol buildings as their address in IRS paperwork. At least two of the organizations have dedicated US Customs and Border Protection email addresses. The front side of one coin for sale reads, “NORTH AMERICAN TOUR 2025,” along with the acronyms for US Border Patrol and the acronym for “fuck around and find out”—a phrase that was initially popularized by the far-right group the Proud Boys and has been used by various Trump officials. In the center, the coin depicts a gas mask, a riot control smoke grenade, and a pepper ball launcher. On the other side, the coin appears to have a portrait of Border Patrol’s now retired commander-at-large, Gregory Bovino, with his arm raised in a salute, along with the text “COMING TO A CITY NEAR YOU!” It lists seven cities, many of which actually saw federal enforcement surges …

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie cast: Full list of actors and characters

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie cast: Full list of actors and characters

Published by Daniella Wilson

Following his blockbuster showing in 2023, Mario is back on the big screen with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Adapting the iconic Nintendo Wii game of the same name, the film features a host of returning characters as well as a few new faces. So, for the full list of who is joining Chris Pratt on his second adventure through the Mushroom Kingdom, here’s a look at the full cast of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie cast. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie cast: Full list of actors and characters Here is the cast of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie: Chris Pratt as Mario Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach Charlie Day as Luigi Jack Black as Bowser Keegan-Michael Key as Toad Benny Safdie as Bowser Jr Donald Glover as Yoshi Brie Larson as Rosalina Glen Powell as Fox McCloud Luis Guzmán as Wart Issa Rae as Honey Queen Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek Chris Pratt as Mario Chris Pratt and Mario from The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images, Illumination Who is Mario? Mario is a …

Mysteries with Autistic Characters

Mysteries with Autistic Characters

Published by Jenni Sidey

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. First, let me get this out of the way: I don’t think Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime is a bad novel. I recognize that it (and the play inspired by it) has done positive work in fostering empathy and understanding for neurodivergent people. But I do think it’s a complicated novel because it’s often the first book neurotypical readers encounter with an autistic main character. Why is this complicated? Two reasons. One, Haddon is not autistic himself, and two, he also didn’t conduct thorough research about autism or consult real autistic people while writing it. In one NPR interview, he even went so far as to say that he “did more research about the London Underground and the inside of Swindon Railway Station… than [he] did about Asperger’s syndrome.” It’s also true, according to a 2009 blog post, that he doesn’t view the novel as a book about autism, nor does he …

Queer Characters to Lead Bridgerton Season 5

Queer Characters to Lead Bridgerton Season 5

Published by José Betancourt

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. What It’s Like to Be a Romance Cover Model File this under: we all contain multitudes. In 2019, Andrew Flanagan was a welder living in Franklin County, Alabama. Now, he’s the cover model on dozens of romance novels. It’s a transformation that began, as so many things do these days, on TikTok. Flanagan built an audience–now more than 1.7 million–by sharing short videos about his daily life. When he first received a message asking if he’d like to model for a romance novel, he thought it was scam. Flanagan has since quit welding, sold more than 100 photos directly to authors seeking cover art, and traveled to photo shoots and book events, where he’s sometimes asked to appear, around the country. Delightful. Queer Characters Take Center Stage in Bridgerton Season 5 They’re coming to the manor. Netflix announced Bridgerton’s fifth season yesterday with a teaser that revealed the series’s first major queer story as Francesca …

Inside the neural implant letting paralyzed patients type at 110 characters per minute

Inside the neural implant letting paralyzed patients type at 110 characters per minute

Published by Jenni Sidey

Before his disease took his voice, he could type a message as fast as anyone. Now, with electrodes no larger than a grain of rice embedded near the surface of his brain, he can do it again, at 110 characters per minute, with an error rate that would make most smartphone users envious. That’s the core of what researchers from Mass General Brigham Neuroscience Institute and Brown University are reporting in Nature Neuroscience: a brain-computer interface that lets people with paralysis type using a standard QWERTY keyboard, not by moving their hands, but by simply attempting to. The system interprets the brain’s intention to move specific fingers and translates those signals into letters, in real time, with no physical movement required. Two participants tested the device as part of the BrainGate2 clinical trial. One has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive disease that attacks the nerve cells controlling movement and speech. The other has a cervical spinal cord injury. Both used the system from their homes, not a research lab, a detail the team considers significant. …

Ellis star teases episode 3 that “throws spanners” for character’s future

Ellis star teases episode 3 that “throws spanners” for character’s future

Published by Daniella Wilson

The second season of Ellis continues this week, with the next pair of episodes set to lift a bit more of a lid on Harper’s (Andrew Gower) life, it seems. When asked what’s to come in the rest of the season, Gower told Radio Times: “I’m sure Sharon [D Clarke] would say this too but the next episode is really great – it alludes to Harper and my history, maybe bits of my family more than it’s ever done before. “We arrive at a community which I’m familiar with and which I have history with. Which again, when I read that, getting however many episodes into a TV show and still finding out new information about the characters – I’m all for that. I love it.” Gower continued: “Also, for me as an actor, it’s great because then it fuels what’s happened before and where we’re going in the future. That is a slate quarry where they’re manufactured, it’s based around a family that I have previous history with. Sharon D Clarke as DCI Ellis …

The Other Bennet Sister review – Utterly charming Austen spin-off gives new life to classic characters

The Other Bennet Sister review – Utterly charming Austen spin-off gives new life to classic characters

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Period literary adaptations have all got a little, well, sexy of late, haven’t they? Bridgerton is, of course, the pinnacle of this trend, an erotic female fantasy brought to life and clad in wigs and elaborate corsetry. Emerald Fennell’s controversial “Wuthering Heights” was essentially an aesthetically exquisite vehicle for Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie to rut against each other across a variety of al fresco locations. And then there’s the raunchy reboot of A Woman of Substance, described by reviewers as a Riders-style bonk-fest meets Succession. Hurrah, then, for The Other Bennet Sister, the BBC’s latest Jane Austen spin-off, based on the novel by Janice Hadlow. It proves the perfect antidote to all that climbing-the-walls steaminess and uninhibited shagging. The 10-part series stars Call the Midwife’s Ella Bruccoleri as Mary Bennet, the dowdy, bespectacled younger sister of Pride and Prejudice protagonist …

Watching violent Black video game characters increases unconscious bias in White viewers

Watching violent Black video game characters increases unconscious bias in White viewers

Published by José Betancourt

When people watch violent video game characters, the race of those digital avatars can shape the viewers’ racial biases in real life. A recent experiment published in the International Journal of Psychology found that seeing a Black character perform violent acts increased unconscious prejudice among White participants. Black participants actually reported lower levels of overt racism after watching the same footage. These results highlight how racial representations in digital media can silently mold the attitudes of different audiences in entirely different ways. Tailson Evangelista Mariano, a researcher at the Catholic University of Pernambuco in Brazil, led the investigation alongside colleagues from Brazil and Portugal. The research team wanted to understand how interactive media impacts the way people view different racial groups. Most past research on media and prejudice has focused on passive formats like television and movies. Mariano and his team wanted to see if the highly engaging nature of video games produced similar effects. They also wanted to see if the race of the person watching the game changed the outcome. To do this, …