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Marvel Cosmic Invasion DLC adds Cyclops and The Thing, more DLC to follow

Dotemu and Tribute Games revealed DLC plans for Marvel Cosmic Invasion, starting with the arrival of Cyclops and The Thing today. This first DLC is out today on Nintendo Switch 2 and Switch. Here’s some information about the new DLC characters: The Thing: The Fantastic Four’s heaviest hitter brings his cosmic radiation-induced might to the fray, excelling in Marvel Cosmic...

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May 18 • 11:22 AM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com
MARVEL Cosmic Invasion DLC characters Cyclops and The Thing now available

Publisher Dotemu and developer Tribute Games have released the arcade-style beat ’em up game MARVEL Cosmic Invasion downloadable content characters Cyclops and The Thing, the companies announ…

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May 18 • 11:06 AM EDT • Technology • gematsu.com
The Subnautica 2 fish self-defence debate rages on, as the game’s non-violent themes clash with player desire to fend off underwater threats

Unknown Worlds has stayed true to its oceanic pacifism themes, while the realities of living with dangerous animals has some players frustrated.

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May 18 • 7:17 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles 2 DLC character Doma launches May 28

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles 2 downloadable content character Doma will launch on May 28, publisher Aniplex and developer CyberConnect2 announced.

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May 17 • 9:17 PM EDT • Technology • gematsu.com
Report: Cancelled Star Wars KOTOR Remake Version Surfaces With Opening Cinematic

MP1st has come across a newly surfaced cinematic from Aspyr's canceled Star Wars KOTOR Remake, showing familiar characters for fans.

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May 17 • 5:11 PM EDT • Technology • mp1st.com
Kentucky’s curious cast of political characters

Rep. Thomas Massie is just one of a tradition of powerful and iconoclastic politicians from Kentucky.

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May 17 • 3:59 PM EDT • Politics • inquirer.com
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'Outlander' cast recalls important Black Jack Randall scene — and why it didn't air.

'Outlander' cast explains that Jack Black Randall survived in a scene that was filmed but never aired. Here's why Tobias Mezies' character had to die.

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May 17 • 8:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
Kentucky’s Curious Cast of Political Characters

The state, where a rebellious Republican faces a tough primary challenge on Tuesday, has an unpredictable political landscape that has produced a long list of surprising figures.

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May 17 • 5:01 AM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
Pep Guardiola ends TNT Sports interview abruptly after Manchester City future question

Guardiola deflects question on his future with a characteristically witty “Have a lovely evening!”Man City boss insists “the future is bright” after his side beat Chelsea in the FA Cup finalCa...

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May 17 • 5:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Employees at some Hershey Entertainment and Resorts properties reach deal

HERSHEY, Pa. (WHTM) — Union workers at two Hershey Entertainment and Resorts properties agree on contracts, but negotiations continue as of Friday at three others, the company said. The two p…

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May 15 • 4:08 PM EDT • Entertainment • abc27.com
A ‘Devil Wears Prada 2’ Actor’s Performance Is Drawing Backlash — And His Wife Isn’t Staying Quiet

Reviews of "The Devil Wears Prada 2" have been mostly positive, but this one character has divided the film's fans.

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May 15 • 11:24 AM EDT • Entertainment • huffpost.com
The State of Rural Hospitals in the U.S, 2012-2023

ASPE’s Office of Health Policy has developed an Issue Brief modeling the key determinants of rural hospital closure or conversion as well as an interactive Rural Hospital Dashboard to highlight key characteristics and trends among rural hospitals. The Issue Brief uses a Cox proportional hazards model to identify low occupancy rates, for-profit ownership and proximity to an urban county as key determinants of closure or conversion to outpatient only facilities.

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May 15 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • aspe.hhs.gov
Belgian entertainment group Studio 100 posts record turnover and profit in 2025

The Belgian entertainment group Studio 100, known for the Plopsa theme parks and iconic Belgian children's TV characters such as Samson and Plop...

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May 15 • 2:58 AM EDT • Entertainment • belganewsagency.eu
Can flailing Trump hold on to the Senate in the midterms?

Democrats think they can flip the Senate blue in November, and they’re hoping a group of interesting characters will help them do it. This week, Jonathan Freedland is joined by Jonathan Martin of Politico to discuss the chances of such an upset and what it would mean for the president to lose the upper chamber

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May 15 • 2:00 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
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Vice President Vance slams MaineCare program

Gov. Janet Mills has previously characterized the Trump administration’s allegations of fraud as targeting Democratic states and as an attempt to “distract from his failing agenda.”

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May 14 • 3:05 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
Why ‘Rivals’ Recast Helen With Hayley Atwell

'We wanted to look at that character and make more of her and use her to dig more into Rupert's past,' exec producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins says.

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May 14 • 11:46 AM EDT • Entertainment • cbs19news.com
Ezio Auditore Returning in Assassin's Creed Hexe, It's Claimed

It has been claimed that Ezio Auditore, famed Assassin's Creed character, is returning for Hexe, the next major new release in the series.

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May 13 • 3:11 AM EDT • Technology • insider-gaming.com
RFK Jr. Says Men in the '70s Had Twice as Much Sperm as Teenage Boys Today: 'Existential Crisis'

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. characterized the United States' declining birth rate as an "existential crisis," claiming that men in the 1970s had "twice the sperm count" as teenagers today during a White House event on maternal health on Monday, May 11.

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May 11 • 7:00 PM EDT • Health • people.com
NCAA debuts ‘Tomorrow’s Leaders, Today’ campaign to celebrate the lessons learned beyond competition

The NCAA's newest brand campaign, "Tomorrow's Leaders, Today," showcases how college sports develop life skills and character traits that extend far beyond the game, leading to student-athletes' success later in life. The ad debuted over the weekend and will run throughout the NCAA spring championship season.

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May 11 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • ncaa.org
A reflective Sen. Lamar Alexander puts value on character over politics

“The Education of a Senator” goes on sale May 19. Knox News joined the former senator at his home in the Great Smoky Mountains.

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May 11 • 5:01 AM EDT • Politics • knoxnews.com
‘The Sheep Detectives’: Wooly, charming fantasy whodunit

Droll characters on two legs and four

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May 10 • 12:24 PM EDT • Entertainment • davisenterprise.com
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Tom Henderson: Rayman Legends remake retains “everything people love”

Journalist Tom Henderson has recently commented on the rumoured Rayman Legends remake which is apparently in development at Ubisoft. Many were aghast that Ubisoft were remaking such a relatively…

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May 9 • 10:27 AM EDT • Technology • mynintendonews.com
'Comedy Bang! Bang!' brings ‘Ground Beefing’ to Madison

The popular comedy podcast features performers improvising fake characters. Host Scott Aukerman is bringing the show to the Barrymore Theatre May 27.

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May 9 • 6:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • captimes.com
2026 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship Award

First year Materials and Nanoscience graduate student Stéphane Miaule (Tolbert group) has been awarded the 2026 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, one of the country’s most prestigious honors for graduate students in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). The program, jointly sponsored by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, supports doctoral students across a broad range of scientific and technological fields of strategic importance. This highly competitive fellowship provides full tuition, fees, and a monthly stipend for three years. In 2026, only 102 fellowships were awarded nationwide, and Stéphane is the sole recipient from UCLA. Before transferring from Santa Monica College to UCLA, Stéphane interned at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center, where he researched the mechanical and thermodynamic properties of lunar regolith, as well as radiation shielding materials for lunar habitation development. At UCLA, he joined the Soft Materials Research Laboratory under Professor Qibing Pei, focusing on the synthesis and characterization of hafnium oxide nanocomposite scintillators. After earning his bachelor’s degree in chemistry, he remained in the Soft Materials Research Laboratory as a post-baccalaureate researcher for one year before joining Professor Sarah Tolbert’s group as a Ph.D. student. Stéphane’s Ph.D. research is focused on improving the properties of conjugated polymers, which are a family of plastic materials that can conduct electricity. Stéphane is specifically looking at self-assembling polymers that can be processed in water to create light-weight, flexible, high-conductivity polymer devices without the need for toxic or volatile organic solvents. After completing his Ph.D., Stéphane hopes to work in a national laboratory, researching semiconducting polymers for applications in new electronic devices. “The Graduate (1967) featured a memorable scene in which the protagonist was told that ‘there’s a great future in plastics.’ We know this still holds true today, as polymer research has expanded rapidly due to the wide variety of applications these materials enable. Through my work on semiconducting polymers, I hope to contribute to the continued development of plastic electronics,” Stéphane said. Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penjen@g.ucla.edu.

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May 8 • 1:21 PM EDT • Science • chemistry.ucla.edu
Helldivers 2 devs respond to criticism with Q&A after recent Steam reviews tank to ‘Mostly Negative’

Helldivers 2 players have criticized Arrowhead Game Studios for some time. An official response from the devs promises many improvements.

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May 8 • 9:03 AM EDT • Technology • pcguide.com
Exclusive: Inmates describe being punished for speaking out about Ghislaine Maxwell

Julie Howell did not know what she was getting into last year when she was asked about a new inmate who had arrived at her prison – or that she was about to become an unwitting supporting character in the ongoing drama around convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

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May 7 • 7:01 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Path of Exile 2 aims for a full 1.0 release this year, but not all of the promised character classes will make it

It's nearly the end of the early access road for Path of Exile 2. We ask the director about launching this year and which features will, and won't, make it.

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May 7 • 5:30 PM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Yakuza Dev's Stranger Than Heaven Drops English Dub Option Due to Bilingual Characters

Language barrier

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May 7 • 3:00 PM EDT • Technology • pushsquare.com
Chief Justice John Roberts says justices are not ‘political actors’

During remarks at a judicial conference, Roberts bemoaned what he characterized as misconceptions about the Supreme Court held by the American public.

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May 6 • 8:00 PM EDT • Politics • nbcnews.com
High-Signal Publisher
Taking a look at four of the most overrated episodes of television in entertainment history

"Pine Barrens" celebrates its 25th anniversary, inspiring a ranking of four overrated TV episodes from The Sopranos, Seinfeld, and Game of Thrones.

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May 6 • 6:20 PM EDT • Entertainment • foxnews.com
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'Dutton Ranch' — the new 'Yellowstone' spinoff — follows Beth and Rip to South Texas: Here's what we know about the series

The series, which builds on characters originally created by Taylor Sheridan and John Linson, picks up a year after "Yellowstone" ends with Beth and Rip buying a ranch in Dillon, Mont.

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May 6 • 2:35 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
See first look at 'Masters of the Universe' characters Fisto, Ram Man, and Trap Jaw (exclusive)

'Masters of the Universe' is filled with unique characters, and EW has the exclusive first look at He-Man's cohorts Fisto and Ram Man, and Skeletor's henchman Trap Jaw. Plus, costume designer Richard Sale breaks down each look's creation.

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May 6 • 9:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
Star Fox Remakes Star Fox 64 On Switch 2 This June

Updated graphics, characters, and more bring Star Fox 64 to the modern age.

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May 6 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • gameinformer.com
'Daredevil: Born Again' season 2 finale's surprise reveal confirms Marvel casting

The 'Daredevil: Born Again' season 2 finale comes with a surprise character reveal with big implications for season 3.

ew.com logo
May 5 • 10:05 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
KidStrong offers science-based training program for children in Louisiana

KidStrong is a science-based kids training program designed to help children develop strength, confidence and character.

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May 5 • 6:33 AM EDT • Science • wafb.com
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Capcom Responds to Resident Evil Requiem DLSS 5 Backlash: "We Got the Design Right"

When NVIDIA first revealed DLSS 5 and its neural rendering, a lot of the online backlash that was leveled at the feature centered around Capcom's Resident Evil character, Grace, and how DLSS 5 changed her facial features. Now, in a recent interview with Eurogamer, Koshi Nakanishi and Masato Kumzawa,...

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May 4 • 8:46 PM EDT • Technology • techpowerup.com
Celebrating Seattle’s small businesses every day

National Small Business Week is a time to celebrate the important contributions of our small businesses to Seattle’s economy. They bring character to our neighborhoods, drive our economy, and embody what makes Seattle special. “Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. For every dollar we invest in a small business, 75 percent comes back […]

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May 4 • 4:23 PM EDT • Business • bottomline.seattle.gov
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Leon Could Be '70' and Still Be a Great Character, Resident Evil Director Says

Capcom wants players to know that old age won't keep Leon Kennedy out of games set after Resident Evil Requiem because he'll probably "still be a great character" even "when he's 70."

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May 4 • 1:03 PM EDT • Technology • ign.com
'Devil Wears Prada 2' director explains returning star's surprise death scene

'The Devil Wears Prada 2' director David Frankel explains why one returning actor 'had to die' in a shocking death scene twist — and later showed up to watch his peers film his character's funeral.

ew.com logo
May 3 • 9:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
Tekken 8 DLC character Kunimitsu launches May 27 for Season 3 Character Pass owners, June 1 for all

Tekken 8 Season 3 downloadable content character Kunimitsu will launch on May 27 for Season 3 Character Pass owners and Jun 1 for everyone else, Bandai Namco announced.

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May 3 • 1:35 AM EDT • Technology • gematsu.com
Kunimitsu trailer for Tekken 8, character releases for early access on May 28th

At the Tekken World Tour 2025 Finals back in January, Bandai Namco unveiled their Season 3 trailer which showed us that the game's third season will consist of Kunimitsu, Bob, Roger Jr. and a brand new character.As promised ...

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May 3 • 1:30 AM EDT • Technology • eventhubs.com
A Look At WEBTOON Entertainment (WBTN) Valuation As Genies Partnership Expands 3D Avatar Opportunities

WEBTOON Entertainment (WBTN) recently announced a partnership with AI avatar company Genies to bring its English platform characters into interactive 3D chat experiences, digital collectibles, and creator tailored avatar tools. See our latest analysis for WEBTOON Entertainment. The Genies partnership arrives after a sharp pickup in momentum, with WEBTOON Entertainment’s 30-day share price return of 35.79% and 7-day return of 18.96% lifting the latest price to $13.24. The 1-year total...

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May 2 • 9:17 PM EDT • Entertainment • finance.yahoo.com
New in-game animation for Ingrid shown off by Street Fighter 6 Director

Ingrid is the final character coming to Season 3 of Street Fighter 6. She'll become available for players to use starting on May 28, 2026.The Street Fighter 6 developers recently treated fans to Ingrid's pre-fight animations. Evidently ...

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May 2 • 3:14 PM EDT • Technology • eventhubs.com
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves DLC character Mr. Karate announced

SNK has announced Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Season 2 downloadable content character Mr. Karate from Art of Fighting. He will launch in May.

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May 2 • 12:43 AM EDT • Technology • gematsu.com
Mr. Karate revealed for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves though he looks a bit different now

Although it just began months ago, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is quickly approaching the end of its second season already, but there's still a few characters left joining the roster soon.During Evo Japan 2026, SNK revealed ...

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May 1 • 8:00 PM EDT • Technology • eventhubs.com
NASA Aircraft Studies Tiny Particles with Atmospheric Impacts

Scientists from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have turned to one of NASA’s high-altitude research planes to characterize

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May 1 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov
DEAD OR ALIVE 6 Last Round ‘The King of Fighters XIV Collaboration’ trailer

Publisher Koei Tecmo and developer Team NINJA have released a new trailer for DEAD OR ALIVE 6 Last Round introducing the game’s collaboration downloadable content characters Mai Shiranui and …

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Apr 30 • 11:05 PM EDT • Technology • gematsu.com
Is ‘9-1-1’ About to Kill Off Another Major Character?

Plus, Buck gets a blast from his past, then faces a devastating call.

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Apr 30 • 9:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • cbs19news.com
Northwood University Celebrates 2026 Class of Outstanding Business Leaders

Gala honors achievement, raises scholarship funds, and inspires students to pursue lives of meaning, leadership, and earned success Northwood University celebrated five honorees whose vision and leadership have transformed industries and communities on Saturday, April 18, during the 46th Outstanding Business Leader Awards Gala at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The gala brought together honorees, alumni, students, donors, and university leaders for a signature event rooted in Northwood’s mission to develop free-enterprise leaders who drive global economic and social progress. This year’s honorees represented an array of industries, including entertainment, entrepreneurship, construction, manufacturing, motorsports, and automotive retail. “Outstanding Business Leader Awards is one of the most meaningful traditions at Northwood University,” said Dr. Kent MacDonald. “It gives our students the opportunity to learn directly from leaders who have built exceptional careers through vision, perseverance, personal responsibility, and service to others. What makes these honorees special is that their impact reaches far beyond business success. They create jobs, strengthen communities, open doors for others, and lead with purpose. They remind our students that free enterprise, when guided by character and integrity, can be a powerful force for good.” Since 1981, the Outstanding Business Leader Awards have recognized exceptional business leadership while supporting student opportunity through the Outstanding Business Leader Endowed Scholarship Fund. Prior to the gala, honorees met with Northwood students during a roundtable conversation designed to give students direct access to first-hand mentorship and career insight. The student-centered experience continued that evening, as each honoree was formally introduced by a Northwood student selected through a competitive process that drew more than 50 applicants this year. The experience reflects Northwood’s emphasis on learning through experience and providing students with meaningful opportunities to build confidence, connections, and professional momentum before graduation. The following honorees and presenters were featured at this year’s Outstanding Business Leader Awards Gala: Paul A. Glantz, chairman and CEO, EH Real Estate LLC; chairman emeritus, Emagine Entertainment Inc., was introduced by Kennedy Williams, a marketing communications and automotive aftermarket management student from Farmington Hills, Michigan. They are pictured with Gala Emcee Steve Madincea (far left) and Northwood University President Kent MacDonald. Jennifer Tenaglia Panning ’92, president, Artisan Tile Inc., was introduced by Karley Baker, a finance and marketing student from Washington Township who is enrolled in Northwood’s four-year bachelor/MBA track. Danny Sullivan, 1985 Indianapolis 500 champion, 1988 IndyCar World champion, and 1994 Rolex 24 at Daytona champion, was introduced by Max Hart, an automotive marketing and management student from Cheboygan, Michigan. Reagan Cordes, a sales management student from Davison, Michigan, is pictured introducing Linzie Venegas, chief operating officer of Ideal Group, who was unable to attend the gala. Larry Zinn, executive general manager of Warren Henry Auto Group and a 2008 Northwood alumnus, was honored to accept the Outstanding Business Leader Award on behalf of his father, Warren Henry Zinn ‘77, who was unable to attend Saturday’s gala. Larry Zinn was introduced by Bella Smylie, a data analytics student from Clare, Michigan. “This gala is about more than recognizing business excellence; it’s also about investing in students and reinforcing the relationships that make Northwood special,” said Advancement Vice President Murray Kyte. “We celebrate leaders whose lives reflect The Northwood Idea while raising scholarship funds to invest in students whose ambition, character, and entrepreneurial spirit reflect the values Northwood seeks to advance.” “During my time at Northwood, I’ve been fortunate to experience things I never could have imagined,” said Baker, who added she was honored to form a meaningful connection with her Outstanding Business Leader honoree. “…Northwood builds a network that stretches far beyond these walls, one shaped by shared values, a belief in free enterprise, and a conviction that business, done right, can change lives.” To learn more about this year’s honorees and gala sponsors, visit the Outstanding Business Leaders Awards webpage at www.northwood.edu/advancement/signature-events/outstanding-business-leader-awards/. Share this page

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Apr 29 • 10:16 AM EDT • Business • northwood.edu
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2025's Worst-Reviewed Game Is Getting A Big Price Drop

A new story mission starring a new character has also been added to Mindseye

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Apr 28 • 11:23 AM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
Webtoon Entertainment Partners With Genies to Expand Digital Experiences

Webtoon Entertainment and Genies are partnering to bring new character-driven chat and digital experiences to the company’s platforms.

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Apr 27 • 9:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • variety.com
WEBTOON Entertainment Partners With Genies to Expand Character-Driven Fan Experiences With Digital Avatars

LOS ANGELES, April 27, 2026--WEBTOON Entertainment Inc. (Nasdaq: WBTN), a global entertainment company and home to some of the world’s largest storytelling platforms, today announced a strategic partnership with Genies, the AI avatar technology company powering the next era of interactive digital identity, to develop character-driven chat and digital experiences.

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Apr 27 • 9:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • finance.yahoo.com
WEBTOON Entertainment Partners With Genies to Expand Character-Driven Fan Experiences With Digital Avatars

WEBTOON Entertainment Inc. (Nasdaq: WBTN), a global entertainment company and home to some of the world’s largest storytelling platforms, today announced a s...

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Apr 27 • 9:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • businesswire.com
Madrid Locals Are Fighting to Preserve the City’s Soul

As the city morphs into a luxury tourist destination, struggling small businesses are pushing to retain the character that drew many tourists in the first place.

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Apr 27 • 1:01 AM EDT • Business • bloomberg.com
Sydney Sweeney's business strategy: A blank canvas for roles and brand deals

Sydney Sweeney is back in the news thanks to HBO's hit show "Euphoria." Like her character, Cassie, Sweeney is a magnet for controversy and discourse.

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Apr 26 • 10:00 PM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
'Euphoria' new episode hits major character with shockingly gory surprise

'Euphoria' season 3, episode 3 just hit Jacob Elordi's Nate with a shockingly gory surprise after the character's wedding to Sydney Sweeney's Cassie.

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Apr 26 • 10:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
Small Antarctic Telescope Makes An Outsized Impact On Exoplanetary Science

ASTEP, the Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets, a small visible telescope operating at Concordia station, continues making a real impact in characterizing odd new exoplanetary systems.

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Apr 26 • 11:03 AM EDT • Science • universetoday.com
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10x Science: $4.8 Million Raised To Build AI Platform For Molecular Protein Characterization

10x Science, an artificial intelligence company focused on molecular-level protein characterization, announced that it has raised $4.8 million in seed funding led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Civilization Ventures, Founder Factor, and a group of strategic angel investors. The round was oversubscribed and will support the company’s efforts to scale its platform and expand partnerships across the life sciences ecosystem.

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Apr 26 • 10:42 AM EDT • Science • pulse2.com
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Square Enix has thought about making a single-player Final Fantasy 14

According to Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki ‘Yoshi-P’ Yoshida, Square Enix has thought about making a single-player game set in the same world. Yoshida made the remarks during a press event. He was asked about the possibility of creating a different type of game that would be single-player that potentially follows side characters or a different period of time....

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Apr 25 • 5:00 PM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com
Ventriloquist gives voice to comic characters in 2 musical shows for2026 at Bird-in-Hand Stage

Ventriloquist Ryan Bomgardner of Lititz recently opened another season of his family-friendly musical-comedy shows at Bird-in-Hand stage.

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Apr 24 • 3:50 PM EDT • Entertainment • lancasteronline.com
How NCAA Career in Sports Forum helped Harding’s Hudson Vaughn clarify his mission

Harding student-athlete Hudson Vaughn's journey has been defined by turning adversity into achievement, using challenges as a catalyst and character as the foundation for leadership and innovation.

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Apr 24 • 7:00 AM EDT • Sports • ncaa.org
Street Fighter 6 DLC character Ingrid launches May 28

Street Fighter 6 downloadable content character Ingrid will launch on May 28, Capcom announced.

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Apr 22 • 7:02 PM EDT • Technology • gematsu.com
Capcom provides a first look at Ingrid's in-game render before the debut of her gameplay trailer tonight for Street Fighter 6

Ingrid is the next character coming to Street Fighter 6 as DLC. She's set to be the final challenger of Season 3.Needless to say, fans are already discussing the rumors surrounding the Season 4 lineup. While that rumor ...

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Apr 22 • 9:33 AM EDT • Technology • eventhubs.com
Miyamoto wants to adhere to Peach's backstory in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie in future games

Without diving into spoilers, The Super Mario Galaxy delves more into Princess Peach as a character and her backstory. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, this is something Nintendo will look to adhere to moving forward. Nintendo Dream recently mentioned to Miyamoto that Peach has been expanded upon in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. He was asked if what’s shown can be...

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Apr 22 • 8:52 AM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com
Rumor: Street Fighter 6 Year 4 DLC characters leak, includes big crossover

A leaker with a reliable track record has allegedly leaked DLC characters for Street Fighter 6 Year 4, which includes a big crossover.

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Apr 21 • 8:36 PM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com
Rumor: Street Fighter 6 Season 4 DLC character roster potentially leaks online including big Final Fantasy crossover

Street Fighter 6 is getting ready to close out its third season of DLC content with Ingrid on the way in the near future, but we may now already know who is coming after her.A potential leak of Street ...

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Apr 21 • 4:41 PM EDT • Technology • eventhubs.com
Revitalizing Primary Care: Health Plan of San Mateo’s Investment Strategy

Abstract Health systems that invest in primary care have better and more equitable health outcomes. Yet primary care faces a crisis (characterized by

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Apr 21 • 2:58 PM EDT • Health • milbank.org
Shaky political science: using "simulated" elections over real-world elections

[Dear DSOS readers – this article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in early December, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting. We found that many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data, and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first three articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report, the second one analyzing a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report, and a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research]. In this fourth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we shine a spotlight on seven studies that were web-hosted and funded by New America’s Political Reform Program and its Electoral Reform Research Group (the ERRG is an ad hoc committee headed by New America’s Political Reform Program and joined by the American Enterprise Institute, the Unite America Institute and Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law). This research consortium has been led by Lee Drutman, senior fellow with New America’s Political Reform Program. These seven studies are simply not credible from any objective standard about how political “science” is supposed to illuminate our understanding of either ranked choice voting or politics in general. The feature that six of these seven studies have in common is that they all used surveys – artificial, simulated elections -- to attempt to say something cogent or interesting about ranked choice voting (RCV) elections. None of them used real world data from actual RCV elections – either the 1000+ elections in the US or the many thousands of elections from places like Australia, Ireland and elsewhere where RCV has been used for 100 years. While a few of these studies conclude with some mixed positives about RCV, our analysis here is content neutral. The idea that, with a political reform like RCV, you can ask respondents in a mock, artificial election to vote with that method, with only the barest of explanation about how RCV works or its likely impacts (i.e. no spoiler candidates, majority winners, voters liberated to pick their favorite candidates, coalition-building), and then ask them their thoughts/reactions about voting in that system, with fake candidates and no real campaigning, no real exposure to an actual election or actual candidates, rests on some very puzzling assumptions. The findings of these seven studies actually are contradicted by the findings from many other studies based on real-world RCV elections. These New America studies also failed to list the real-world RCV studies in their own citations, instead including those studies that reinforced their conclusions. The seven studies featured in this article were chosen because they form a cohesive cohort which precisely illustrates one of the main points of our research paper, namely that using surveys, i.e. artificial elections, or mathematical/theoretical models, instead of real-world data, is in fact “shaky political science.” Below are summaries of our analysis of five of the seven New America studies. You can read our complete analysis of all seven studies at our paper, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting.” Choosing to “Vote As Usual” by Andre Blais, Carolina Plescia, and Semra Sevi. New America. (Blais et al., 2021). This study, web-hosted and funded by New America’s Political Reform Program and its Electoral Reform Research Group, used two surveys in which respondents completed ballots for simulated elections using plurality, approval, RCV and point (Score) voting. In both cases the authors provided the respondents with only minimal explanation of each method. For example, the entire explanation for RCV was “For this vote, rank the candidates from your first to your last choice (you do not need to rank them all). This is called the ranked vote.” That’s it. The study did not provide any context or explanation to survey respondents about why she/he might want to rank multiple candidates. Participants were not even told that ballots would be tabulated using an “instant” runoff, not to mention any description of RCVs ability to eliminate the spoiler effect or liberate voters to rank their favorite candidates without fear of helping the “greater evil” candidate to win. That’s like taking an iPhone back in time to 1970 and asking someone if they like it better than their rotary phone without explaining how it works. Their first survey targeted states that held 2020 Super Tuesday Democratic primaries and used the real candidates’ names in the survey; the second survey used fictitious candidates. In other words, they surveyed respondents who had only ever participated in plurality elections, had no history or background with using RCV or any of the other methods, had no clue about its likely impacts, and did not communicate how the alternative methods would be counted, and then asked them: “How satisfied are you with using each system?” Predictably, the winner was plurality elections, the system used for president, Congress, gubernatorial and state legislative elections – in other words, the method they have been using, year after year, all their voting lives. With so little explanation of RCV and its impacts, this study is simply not credible in discovering anything useful about real-world RCV elections. It merely shows that a basic voter education campaign is needed when adopting a new election system. Additionally, the result contradicts many other post-election surveys following real RCV elections, asking opinions from voters who had just participated in a RCV election, that showed a great deal of satisfaction with RCV (see details on that in Studies 22-25 in our paper, as well as the four studies cited in the review for Study 28). Share Other studies on “satisfaction” and “understanding” make similar mistakes, in terms of basing their surveys on inadequate explanation to respondents and lack of education about context. How could any survey ever hope to measure accurately, in essence simulate a real-world election, without actual campaigning candidates, the media writing about those candidates, organizations endorsing candidates and voters being inundated with crucial information? More than anything, what these “studies” based on surveys show is that if you ask voters about something they don’t know very much about, and fail to adequately educate them, their responses will unsurprisingly reflect their confusion. Equally puzzling is that New America’s Electoral Reform Research Group, headed by political scientist Lee Drutman, found this to be a credible enough study that they not only published it but highlighted it in Drutman’s own discussion of research related to ranked choice voting. This pattern was repeated in study after study featured by New America’s Electoral Reform Research Group. For example in Ranked-Choice Voting and Political Expression: Voter Guides Narrow the Gap between Informed and Uninformed Citizens by Cheryl Boudreau, Jonathan Colner, and Scott MacKenzie, the researchers based their analysis on a survey which found that respondents who were asked to vote in a simulated RCV election, with minimal explanation of RCV or how it works, displayed less evidence of being informed about how to use RCV effectively, with the least informed voters ranking fewer candidates. As pointed out under the study above, in a real election voters are informed by a wide variety of methods, including public education by the election administration, by interested political groups, the media, and the candidates themselves who benefit from voters being aware of how to vote in the new system. In Support for Ranked-Choice Voting across Race and Partisanship by Joseph Anthony, David C. Kimball, Jack Santucci and Jamil Scott, the researchers used respondents from different parties and races voting in simulated plurality and RCV elections, who indicated their satisfaction with each voting method. Instead of using real world election results, the authors fell back on the easy, armchair and less reliable academic research methodology of making up mock elections. As with the other studies, little explanation was given of how RCV works or what its implications might be (electing majority winners or eliminating spoilers, for example). Unsurprisingly, this study found that respondents were not very satisfied with RCV. However, when the authors added an explanation that RCV has a tendency to elect more women and people of color, they found that this greater explanation increased the preference for RCV. The more voters were familiar with it, and the more they understood potential positive impacts – surprise! -- the more they were open to switching away from the status quo. Of note, the results from this study are thoroughly contradicted by a number of other studies whose data was obtained from real RCV elections with real voters. Those studies show a great deal of satisfaction with RCV. More “fake election” research An interesting wrinkle on this “research by fake elections” approach, which only served to illustrate how unreliable such “research” can become, was taken in Ranked-Choice Voting, Runoff, and Democracy: Insights from Maine and Other U.S. States by Joseph Cerrone and Cynthia McClintock_,_ also web-hosted and funded by New America’s ERRG. It gets high marks for creativity, but an eye-roll for thinking this could possibly add anything meaningful to our understanding of real world RCV elections. This study tried to determine whether RCV, plurality or two-round runoff elections provided greater voter satisfaction and acceptance of election results. To determine that, the authors conducted a survey asking if voters were satisfied with a fictional newspaper report of an election, with three different versions given to respondents – plurality, runoff and RCV, with variations of Republican/Democrat winners and variations of “come-from-behind” winners,” i.e. candidates not initially in first place but who win the “runoff.” Again, a minimal explanation of RCV or how it works was given, and the survey showed that respondents had the greatest unfamiliarity with RCV than the other methods. The unsurprising result? Respondents were much more satisfied with “come-from-behind” victories in a traditional two-round runoff election than in RCV, even though RCV is also a runoff system but with a single round of counting. Interestingly, the dissatisfaction with RCV disappeared for those who were more familiar with RCV. In fact, among those respondents who were “very familiar” with RCV, they were equally satisfied with RCV, runoff and plurality. Surprise, surprise. Again, what this study revealed, more than anything, is not only the inadequacy of the explanation for RCV given by the authors of this study, but the failure of the research format itself, thinking that such an artificial mock election could somehow simulate what actually happens in the real world in a real RCV election. Those four studies reviewed above are fitting examples of inadequate and shaky political “science.” Other studies reviewed in our paper from the New America/Electoral Reform Research Group cohort which also used mock elections included: Ranked-Choice Voting is an Acquired Taste by Joseph Anthony and David C. Kimball. New America. (Anthony et al., 2021). Ranked-Choice Voting is No Refuge for Extreme Candidates by Melissa Baker. New America. (Baker, 2021). Also included in this New America cohort is Does Ranked-Choice Voting Reduce Racial Polarization? by Yuki Atsusaka and Theodore Landsman, which actually did use real-world election results data but applied an odd and unconventional methodology to the data which relied on shaky assumptions and non-real-world scenarios that were too divorced from reality. To determine levels of “racially polarized voting,” the researchers imagined “ethnic parties,” by which they mean political parties for each ethnic group, which was especially odd since the election data they were using came from nonpartisan RCV races. But then they made an even odder assumption, namely that since race and ethnic characteristics of studied voters were not available, the authors tried to infer that information based on who voters selected and the racial make-up of voters in each district. This amounted to little more than vague and ambiguous guesswork dressed up with a bunch of mathematical equations used to give it a veneer of scientific appearance. Indeed, it seemed to assume racial polarization in order to prove racial polarization. Based on this questionable methodology, the authors concluded that RCV doesn’t reduce racial polarization. But the premise of this study missed an obvious reality: since RCV incentivizes more candidates to run and can result in more diverse fields of candidates, one would expect more racially-polarized voting in voters’ top rankings, not less, because more voters would have someone on that ballot who represents their racial or ethnic identity and more freedom to vote for their real first choice. By encouraging more diverse candidates and eliminating the spoiler effect, RCV facilitates voting for a favorite candidate of your own race and then selecting a second choice with the best likelihood of winning. The real measure is what voters do with their additional rankings – do they consider other candidates and vote “for the best of the rest”? This study didn’t tell us anything useful about that. But readily available data shows this is common in real RCV elections, and candidates act on this knowledge by engaging with voters outside their racial group. So the authors of this study failed to consider or account for what actually happens in real-world elections, and their conclusions are tainted by this failure. New America has contributed a great deal over the past 2.5 decades to our understanding of many policy areas, including politics and political reform (full disclosure: Steven Hill, one of the authors of this article and of the “Shaky Political Science” research paper and series, is a former senior fellow and former director of New America’s political reform program, 2005-2010). So it was especially disappointing that New America funded and published such a large batch of dubious studies about ranked choice voting. The stated praiseworthy goal of its Electoral Reform Research Group was to inspire new academic research about ranked choice voting that would shed light and help the public better understand the impacts of RCV. Instead, the ERRG research did just the opposite. It produced dubious research that created more confusion and misinformation. In so doing, New America’s political reform program contributed to “shaky political science.” Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS, a reader-supported digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe

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Apr 21 • 9:31 AM EDT • Science • democracysos.substack.com
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Apr 20 • 1:09 PM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
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Apr 20 • 2:45 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com
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Apr 18 • 3:35 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
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Apr 18 • 9:09 AM EDT • Technology • eventhubs.com
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Apr 18 • 7:57 AM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
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Apr 15 • 11:05 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Dundee can take nothing for granted in bottom-six battle

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Apr 15 • 7:48 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Epic Games Reportedly Developing Extraction Shooter Starring Disney Characters

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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles 2 DLC character Shinobu Kocho (Infinity Castle) launches April 17

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Apr 12 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • startribune.com
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Apr 11 • 12:17 PM EDT • Entertainment • kpcnews.com
“AI polls” are fake polls

A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.

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Apr 11 • 11:38 AM EDT • Technology • natesilver.net
Epic is reportedly building an extraction shooter for Disney

Epic Games is reportedly working on an extraction shooter with Disney characters it plans to release in November.

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Apr 10 • 6:04 PM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Five Science Fiction Movies to Stream Now

This month’s picks will have you seeing double, including a film in which Vince Vaughn plays current and future versions of a character.

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Apr 10 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • nytimes.com
Money for Nothing? Universal Basic Income as Health Policy

To make a point, the Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright (1997) once borrowed a character from the 1960s comic strip Lil' Abner: a big blobby creature

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Apr 10 • 10:01 AM EDT • Health • milbank.org
2XKO announces additional character, Fuse and content for 2026, but we're not sure if it's a good or not so good sign for the game

Getting more content in a fighting game is always a good thing though this reveal feels a little different than most.Riot Games announced today they are ramping up their planned content releases for 2XKO in 2026, which is leaving ...

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Apr 8 • 10:02 PM EDT • Technology • eventhubs.com
Samson Dev: DLSS 5 Needs Full Pipeline Integration & Broad Hardware Support to Be Viable

Samson dev Liquid Swords explains what DLSS 5 needs: pipeline integration, broad hardware support, and artistic control over character visuals

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Apr 8 • 2:30 PM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com
Overwatch’s Next Hero Isn’t Who Fans Thought She Was

The game’s 51st hero looked a lot like a character from the novels

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Apr 8 • 12:33 PM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
'I'm Still Beyond Confused Why They Didn't Go the Cyberpunk Route' — Crimson Desert Female Character Creator Mod Lets Players Unshackle Themselves From Premade Kliff

One of the major criticisms of Crimson Desert I’ve seen since launch is that it does not let you create your own character. Instead, you’re locked into playing as Kliff, who himself has been criticized for a lack of personality, and two other even less fleshed out playable characters. Well, now, like so many other things with Pearl Abyss’ open world action adventure, there’s a mod for that.

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Apr 8 • 6:47 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com
Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis Next announced for Nintendo Switch

Today, Gameloft unveiled Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis Next for Nintendo Switch. The game is launching on May 28, 2026. Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis is a fast-paced arcade tennis game featuring popular characters from SpongeBob, Avatar, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and more. Expect character customization, a story mode, split-screen multiplayer, and more. Here’s an official overview: Become your favorite Nickelodeon character, like SpongeBob...

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Apr 7 • 12:22 PM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com
When I get abused just for dancing, it shows how far hatred of politicians has gone

Concern over MPs’ competence is one thing, but this is silencing opponents’ voices by character assassination, says Labour MP Stella Creasy

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Apr 7 • 3:00 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
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Overwatch Reveals The Anran Redesign Fans Begged For

The character looked more like Kiriko and Juno than her brother Wuyang

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Apr 6 • 7:35 PM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
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New Yorker profile of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman raises character questions

Sam Altman is one of the most powerful people in the world. Are we OK with that?

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Apr 6 • 12:58 PM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
'Nathan Drake Horror Game' Changes Main Character After Online Chatter

Earlier this week, users spotted a Nathan Drake rip-off character on the PlayStation Store. The developer has since changed that character.

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Apr 6 • 7:10 AM EDT • Technology • insider-gaming.com
Video: Pokémon Champions 'World Overview' Trailer Released

Introducing two characters of Frontier City

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Apr 4 • 8:30 PM EDT • Technology • nintendolife.com