Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Barbenheimer’ Ruled the Box Office. Can ‘Glicked’ Recapture the Magic?

    “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” both open Friday, and some fans hope to rekindle the excitement that greeted last year’s simultaneous openings of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”The summer of 2023 was all about “Barbenheimer” — when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” opened the same day, capturing the public imagination and bringing crowds back to movie theaters that had struggled since the pandemic.This fall, some fans are hoping to recapture a little of that excitement with a buzzy new movie face-off with its own catchy portmanteau: “Glicked.” (Sorry, “Wickiator.”)“Wicked,” the first installment of the onscreen adaptation of the beloved Broadway musical, and “Gladiator II,” a swords-and-sandals epic directed by Ridley Scott that picks up more than two decades after the first installment, will both be widely released in theaters on Friday. Seeing the potential for another odd pairing at multiplexes, select corners of the internet have dubbed it “Glicked Day” (pronounced glick-id).Can they make “Glicked” happen? Will Elphaba green replace Barbie pink? Here are four questions to get you up to speed.Are the stars of ‘Wicked’ and ‘Gladiator II’ rooting for ‘Glicked’?Yes. Two movies that open on the same day are typically viewed as competitors, but some hope that, like “Barbenheimer,” this unlikely pairing will pique the interest of moviegoers, which could help both succeed at the box office.“If it has a similar effect to what it did for ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer,’ it would be amazing,” Paul Mescal, who stars as Lucius in “Gladiator II,” told Entertainment Tonight. He added that “the films couldn’t be more polar opposite, and it worked in that context previously, so fingers crossed people come out.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    At the Serpentine, Holly Herndon Taught A.I. to Sing

    Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst are presenting their first large-scale solo museum show. It sounds gorgeous, even if its visual elements are lacking.Although it’s easy to feel alienated by the opaque processes behind artificial intelligence and fearful that the technology isn’t regulated, the artists Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst want you to know that A.I. can be beautiful.Their exhibition “The Call,” at the Serpentine Galleries in London through Feb. 2, is the first large-scale solo museum show for the artist duo, who have long been at the forefront of A.I.’s creative possibilities.Herndon — who was born in Tennessee, grew up singing in church choirs and later received a Ph.D. in music composition from Stanford — has made cutting-edge, A.I.-inflected pop music for over a decade. With Dryhurst, a British artist who is also her husband, she has branched out to make tools that help creatives monitor the use of their data online, and recently, into the visual arts.The couple’s work “xhairymutantx,” commissioned for this year’s Whitney Biennial, uses A.I. text prompts to produce an infinite series of Herndon portraits that highlight the playful nature of digital identities.The Serpentine show combines musical and visual elements. With the varied a cappella choral traditions of Britain in mind, Herndon and Dryhurst worked with diverse choirs across the country, from classical to contemporary groups of assorted sizes, to produce training data for an A.I. model. In a wall text, the artists explain that “The Call” consists of more than just the A.I.’s output. They also consider the collection of the data and the training of the machine as works of art.“We’re offering a beautiful way to make A.I.,” the artists’ statement adds. Their utopian take is that A.I. is collectively made: It learns from whatever it is exposed to and can therefore be shaped for good.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Is the Biden Administration Coming for Chrome?

    The Justice Department is reportedly targeting Google’s web browser as its antitrust enforcers seek to cement a major win before Donald Trump takes office.Can the Biden administration’s antitrust enforcers succeed in breaking up Google before they leave office?Josh Edelson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA parting antitrust shot by Biden’s enforcersBefore the Biden administration’s antitrust leaders step down, they’re taking their final shots at Big Tech. That will reportedly include an effort to break up Google as a consequence of the Justice Department’s successful competition lawsuit against the company.A forthcoming request to force the sale of the Chrome browser, according to Bloomberg, would be one of the most sweeping competition demands in years. But it will also be a test of the second Trump administration’s own antitrust agenda.Chrome is a crucial part of Google’s business. The industry’s dominant web browser — it controls about 61 percent of the U.S. market, according to Bloomberg — is a potent data-collection portal, steering people to the company’s search engine. That gives Google the ability to track users when they are signed in, and can be used to for targeted ads.Chrome has also become a gateway for Google’s A.I. services, including its Gemini chatbot, which some say could eventually follow user activity across the web.The Justice Department decided against requesting the divestiture of Google’s Android smartphone operating system, Bloomberg reports. But it wants the company to stop bundling it with services including search and the Google Play app store.If successful, the split would cement a crucial legacy for Biden’s antitrust team. It’s unclear how much of the aggressive approach promoted by Lina Khan of the F.T.C. and Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department will survive. A Chrome divestiture would achieve the kind of corporate breakup that regulators failed to force upon Microsoft two decades ago.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Severing of Baltic Sea Cables Was ‘Sabotage,’ Germany Says

    Germany’s defense minister said damage to two fiber-optic cables on the sea floor appeared deliberate, but a culprit was not known.Germany’s defense minister on Tuesday called the severing of two fiber-optic cables in the Baltic Sea an act of sabotage aimed at European countries that are supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.One undersea cable connecting Finland and Germany was cut on Monday and the other, which runs between Lithuania and Sweden, was severed late Sunday. The damage disrupted some data transfers but did not endanger the internet connection or security of any of the countries, authorities said.“Nobody believes that these cables were severed by accident,” Germany’s minister of defense, Boris Pistorius, told reporters ahead of a meeting of European security officials in Brussels.He did not believe that either of the cables could have been damaged by ships accidentally dropping their anchors. “Therefore we must state — without concrete knowledge of who was responsible — that this was a hybrid action,” he said. “And we must assume, without being certain, that this was sabotage.”Concerns have been rising in Europe that Russia may wage a hybrid war against it in retaliation for helping Ukraine defend itself since a full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Russian ships have been reported in the Baltic and North Seas near areas where critical infrastructure lies beneath the waters.The foreign ministries of Finland and Germany issued a joint statement late Monday expressing concern about the severed cable between their countries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What’s Killing Kids?

    We explore America’s childhood death rate.If I drew you a graph that showed the death rate among American kids, you would see a backward check mark: Fewer kids died over the last several decades, thanks to everything from leukemia drugs to bicycle helmets. Then, suddenly, came a reversal.Child mortality rate More

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    Wyoming’s Abortion Bans Are Unconstitutional, Judge Rules

    The ruling found that two state laws — one barring use of abortion pills, and one banning all forms of abortion — violated the state Constitution’s “fundamental right to make health care decisions.” A Wyoming judge ruled on Monday that two state abortion bans — including the first state law specifically banning the use of pills for abortion — violated the Wyoming Constitution and could not be enforced.Judge Melissa Owens of Teton County District Court wrote in her ruling that both the ban on medication abortion and a broader ban against all methods of abortion “impede the fundamental right to make health care decisions for an entire class of people, pregnant women.” She added, “The abortion statutes suspend a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions during the entire term of a pregnancy and are not reasonable or necessary to protect the health and general welfare of the people.”Enforcement of the two abortion bans, passed last year, had been temporarily halted by Judge Owens while the court case proceeded. Her decision on Monday blocks the laws permanently, although the state is expected to appeal. Efforts to reach the state attorney general’s office and the governor’s office were unsuccessful on Monday night.The suit to block the bans was filed by a group of plaintiffs that included two abortion providers in Wyoming; an obstetrician-gynecologist who often treats high-risk pregnancies; an emergency-room nurse; a fund that gives financing to abortion patients; and a woman who said her Jewish faith required access to abortion if a pregnant woman’s physical or mental health or life was in danger.An amendment to the Wyoming Constitution, approved by an overwhelming majority of the state’s voters in 2012, guarantees adults the right to make their own health care decisions.In court last year, the state, represented by Jay Jerde, a special assistant attorney general for Wyoming, argued that even though doctors and other health providers must be involved in abortions, there were many instances in which abortion was not “health care” because “it’s not restoring the woman’s body from pain, physical disease or sickness.”Mr. Jerde also argued that the constitutional amendment allowing people to make decisions about their own health care did not apply to abortion because terminating a pregnancy affected not just the woman making the decision, but the fetus as well.Judge Owens rejected both of those arguments. She wrote: “The uncontested facts establish that the abortion statutes fail to accomplish any of the asserted interests by the state. The state did not present any evidence refuting or challenging the extensive medical testimony presented by the plaintiffs.”Dr. Giovannina Anthony, an obstetrician-gynecologist and abortion provider who was one of the plaintiffs in the case, said on Monday night that she was “grateful and relieved that the judge agreed that abortion is health care and that abortion bans violate the rights of pregnant women.”Dr. Anthony said she expected the state to appeal. “This is not the end of the fight in Wyoming, but for now we can continue to provide evidence-based care without fear of a prison sentence.” More

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    NYT Crossword Answers for Nov. 19, 2024

    Erik Agard runs down the clock.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — People tell me that I’m elusive. I hear from one friend or another that I’m hard to get a hold of, that I seem eternally busy. Despite my protestations, these assessments may have some truth to them: My social calendar is active to the point of exhaustion, and I can’t resist sopping up any free hours with hobbies (sign language classes, a gym routine, sourdough).Erik Agard has a solution for those in a similar position, but he has hidden it in the theme of today’s crossword. How many minutes can you spare to solve it?Today’s ThemeMr. Agard’s novel approach to scheduling consists of a yin and a yang: We should SAVE THE DAY (17A) and SPEND THE NIGHT (38A). This cycle of saving and spending is described at 62-Across, [What 17- and 38-Across combine to form?] — a TIME BUDGET.I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a minimalist theme, nor one so cleanly and cleverly executed. Mr. Agard used just two themed entries to achieve the wordplay in his revealer, but the effect was exponential.Tricky Clues19A. I confess to being a fair-weather fan of spoken clues. It’s satisfying if I can solve one at first glance, but when I can’t, I feel justified in criticizing them as a group. The phrase [“Who ___?”] might be completed by “says” or “said,” for instance, but in this case it solves to ISN’T.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Two Bee Gees Drummers Die Within Days

    Colin “Smiley” Petersen, the original drummer, and Dennis Bryon, who played during the band’s disco heyday, died within four days of each other.Two drummers for the Bee Gees — one during the long-running Anglo-Australian pop group’s early days of hit-making ballads, the other during its white-hot disco superstardom — died four days apart, according to posts from a tribute band and former bandmates.Dennis Bryon, 76, the Bee Gees’ drummer starting in 1973, died on Nov. 14, according to Blue Weaver, who played in the band Amen Corner with Mr. Bryon. He announced his death on Facebook on Thursday, but gave no cause of death for Mr. Bryon.Colin “Smiley” Petersen, the band’s first professional drummer, died on Nov. 18 at the age of 78, according to Evan Webster and Sue Camilleri, who work on The Best of The Bee Gees Show, a tribute band. Mr. Petersen died from a fall, they said.Mr. Petersen, who joined the Bee Gees in 1967, played on the band’s first four albums. He started playing in the The Best of The Bee Gees Show five years ago, Mr. Webster said.Mr. Petersen played on a string of hit ballads from 1967 to 1970, including “Massachusetts,” “To Love Somebody,” “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” “I Started a Joke” and “Words.” He was also a child actor, known for his role in the 1956 film “Smiley,” which was the origin of his nickname, among a few other movies in the late ’50s.In a 2022 interview with The Strange Brew Podcast, Mr. Peterson said that the band would always create songs together in the studio.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More