Sad. Beloved Maggie left behind her legacy, saying farewell as Lady Violet Crawley in “Downton Abbey”: “…and now it’s time to go”
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Maggie Smith: ‘A National Treasure’
Viola Davis commended Smith for “defying the expectations of age” in a touching tribute. “The end of an era of the sheer definition of what it means to be an actor. You created characters that clung to us, moved us, entertained us……made us look within,” she wrote in part. “You were
300 million tennis balls made each year taking 400 years to decompose – Belgian designer turns them into comfy chairs instead
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In the last two years, tennis has taken over our closets (court-appropriate garb can be found everywhere from Skims to Miu Miu), our screens (who could forget Zendaya’s turn as the tennis protogé-turned-elite-coach Tashi Duncan in “Challengers”) and now — our living rooms.
At least that is the hope of Belgian eco-designer Mathilde Wittock, who fashions bespoke furniture
“Creativity is made, not generated” – Procreate CEO defies industry trend, vows “no generative AI” will be included in its products
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Procreate announced that it will not incorporate generative AI into its popular iPad illustration app. The decision comes in response to an ongoing backlash from some parts of the art community, which has raised concerns about the ethical implications and potential consequences of AI use in creative industries.
“Generative
Being herself: natural elegance and charm. Belfast retiree starts fashion model career at 70
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‘I was a shy pensioner – now I’m a 70-year-old model proving it’s never too late’
Anne Flanagan, 70, from Belfast, was approached by a photographer in the street who asked to take her picture – and now she’s a model with a local agency
A 70 year old woman has shown that age is no barrier to new
World largest music record labels sue GenAI startups for copyright infringement on a “massive scale”
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Music industry giants allege mass copyright violation by AI firms
Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Records have sued AI music-synthesis companies Udio and Suno for allegedly committing mass copyright infringement by using recordings owned by the labels to train music-generating AI models, reports Reuters. Udio and Suno can generate
World Nature Photography Awards 2024 winners: gannets fishing in Scotland, magical winter landscape in Iceland, owl-look-alike plant in Thailand
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A dramatic photo of two gannets fighting for a fish in the waters off Scotland’s Shetland Islands has won first prize at the World Nature Photography Awards.
The image by Tracey Lund, from the United Kingdom, was selected from thousands of submissions to receive the $1,000 prize. “Thousands of gannets were in the sky above us and then started to dive into the sea after locally
Lunar New Year’s Parade in San Francisco largest outside Asia, nearly 3 hours long over 1.3 miles featuring 289-foot-long golden dragon
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San Francisco’s Lunar New Year parade celebrates the Year of the Dragon (Video)
Amid the loud pops of firecrackers, thousands of people gathered as dozens of floats rolled from Market and Second streets on a balmy Saturday to celebrate the Year of the Dragon.
San Francisco’s Lunar New Year parade, the largest one outside
1 January 2024: Mickey Mouse of “Steamboat Willie” enters public domain
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‘Steamboat Willie’ is now in the public domain. What does that mean for Mickey Mouse?
An early Walt Disney movie featuring the first appearance of Mickey Mouse is among the copyrighted works from 1928 moving into the public domain on Jan. 1, 2024.
“You know, he’s evolved so much and become more 3D and colorful,” observes Ryan Harmon, a former Disney
Michael Gambon (1940 – 2023), internationally known for playing Professor Dumbledore in Harry Potter, was “one of the last links to the great generation of actors” with six-decade-long career
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Sir Michael John Gambon CBE (19 October 1940 – 27 September 2023) was an Irish-English actor. Gambon started his acting career with Laurence Olivier as one of the original members of the Royal National Theatre. Over his six-decade-long career, he received three Olivier Awards and four BAFTA TV Awards. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama.
Gambon
The Authors Guild and 17 prominent writers including Grisham, Connelly, Baldacci, GRRM file class action lawsuit against OpenAI for “flagrant and harmful” copyright infringement, 10,000+ authors sign open letter, “people keep telling me they bought my newest book… I didn’t write”
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George R. R. Martin, Jodi Picoult and other famous writers join Authors Guild in class action lawsuit against OpenAI
New York (CNN) — A group of famous fiction writers joined the Authors Guild in filing a class action suit against OpenAI on Wednesday, alleging the company’s technology is illegally using their copyrighted work.
The complaint claims that OpenAI, the company behind
Blue Bird, lovely, lively, missing Jack? Had his ambitions not grown bigger (Shakespeare: “the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream”), Blue Bird would still tweet on Twitter
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Al Young, joint chief creative officer, St Luke’s “…getting rid of the perfect little bird icon, which is instantly recognizable and charismatic, in favor of X is not going to be a successful solution for Twitter, in my opinion. X is ubiquitous and it is shorthand for danger. No one wants to put Xs in their search bars unless they are actively looking
Blue Bird, lucky birds, continue to cheerfully chirp, twitter, sing among trees and flowers though lost duel with “X”: one from nature, the other from where?
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For over a decade, the Twitter bird logo has been inseparable from the social media platform. But with the service’s X rebrand, Musk is saying goodbye to ‘all the birds.’
Early Monday morning, Twitter began replacing its blue bird logo with a fan-made “𝕏” logo. The same X also appears on Twitter’s homepage, as a profile picture for its official @twitter
“A tear may be so near…life is still worthwhile, if you just smile”: Tony Bennett (1926-2023), World War II veteran and music legend spanning 7 decades
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Tony Bennett, legendary singer and master of the American songbook, dies at 96 “I’ve never worked a day in my life,” Tony Bennett told USA TODAY in 2011, “because I love what I do.” The great singer cited that bit of Confucian wisdom often. In a career spanning more than six decades, Bennett conveyed that joy and