Latest news with #RedQueen
Hindustan Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
First look at The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping teases an exciting return to Panem
For anyone who grew up in the mid-2000s, The Hunger Games wasn't just a book or a movie, it was a cultural moment. A generation of teenagers found themselves deeply connected to Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire who defied a dystopian world with nothing but a bow and her stoic refusal to comply. Long before Divergent, Red Queen, or any of the other YA dystopias that followed, The Hunger Games defined teen rebellion in fiction. Haymitch and Katniss Everdeen Now, more than a decade after the original films lit up the box office, fans are being invited back into the world of Panem but this time, through a surprising new lens of their surly mentor, Haymitch Abernathy. The first look at The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is finally here, and it's nothing short of surreal for longtime fans. With a fresh storyline, a new generation of tributes, and a star-studded ensemble cast, the prequel film promises to deepen our understanding of Panem's darkest traditions. The excitement is real, and so is the nostalgia. Watch below. Slated for a worldwide release on November 20, 2026, the movie is based on Suzanne Collins' upcoming novel of the same name. It will be directed by Francis Lawrence, with the screenplay penned by Billy Ray. Longtime collaborators Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson return as producers under Color Force, alongside Lawrence. Cameron MacConomy will executive produce. About the film While Haymitch's character — famously played by Woody Harrelson — was always pivotal, this film will explore the pivotal 50th Hunger Games, also known as the Second Quarter Quell, from his point of view. The supporting cast includes Laura Marcus as Silka, Percy Daggs IV as Ampert, Rada Rae as Wellie, Jhaleil Swaby as Panache, John Doeble as Buck, and Alina Reid as Kerna, among others. Additional roles include Salimou Thiam as Clayton, Kaine Buffonge as Hull, Sky Frances as Maritte, Tatyana Muzondo as Ringina, Kara Tointon as Willamae, Smylie Bradwell as Sid, Melody Chikakane Brown as Hattie Meeny, Grace Ackary as Asterid, Scot Greenan as Burdock, Jeffrey Hallman as Clerk Carmine, Sandra Förster as Hersilia, Serafin Mishiev as Woodbine Chance, Jax Guerrero as Tibby, and Jefferson White as Mr. McCoy. Whether you were Team Peeta, Team Gale, or just Team 'Down with the Capitol', this revival is shaping up to be a powerful reminder of why the franchise became a phenomenon in the first place.
Time of India
10-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Are young workers paying the price for corporate panic? Staffing expert breaks down the 'AI hype' in candid post
In a rare blend of clarity and calm, Andrew Hilger — former president of the $15 billion staffing powerhouse Allegis Group — has offered a grounded perspective on the current wave of AI obsession that has taken over boardrooms, job markets, and social media feeds. In a recent post on LinkedIn, Hilger urged businesses and professionals alike to breathe through the chaos, calling the frenzy 'Phase One' of any macro change, and reminding everyone: 'This too shall pass.' Hilger's commentary arrives at a time when fears of job loss, automation, and the death of entry-level employment are dominating headlines and hallway conversations. Drawing from decades of experience across continents and industries, the staffing expert unpacked why he believes AI isn't the villain—it's the fear of being left behind that's distorting how companies are behaving. The Real Problem Isn't AI, It's the Panic According to Hilger, the surge in AI investments and the freeze in early-career hiring aren't necessarily rooted in technological readiness. 'Companies have real problems to solve,' he wrote, 'but they're also being sold solutions looking for problems.' The result, he notes, is a Red Queen effect—everyone sprinting just to stay in place. In the race to appear ahead of the curve, many companies are showcasing unproven demos and buzzword-heavy case studies, while quietly grappling with the daunting task of real change management. The labor market, particularly for fresh graduates, is feeling the brunt of this cautious overreach. A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found the unemployment rate among new grads rose to 5.8% in March, up from 4.6% a year earlier. While many are quick to link this shift to automation, Hilger suggests it's not that simple: 'We see a spike in the unemployment rate… and race to assign causation. What if it's more about the hype?' Netizens Join the Chorus: 'A Weird Time to Be Alive' Hilger's post struck a nerve with thousands online. One commenter reflected on how AI is quickly mastering the dullest tasks humans avoid—making it both useful and threatening. 'One way to allow for a smooth transition is to instate a basic income… Not a small one either,' they wrote. Another echoed the surreal nature of the moment, comparing it to Y2K: 'Maybe it will be just like the year 2000. It hits and nothing changes. I tell myself a few times a day, 'I don't really know what's going on right now.'' The shared sense of disorientation, coupled with the pressure to 'keep up,' is driving not only businesses but also workers into reactive loops. Hilger highlights this as the core issue: 'We're not shaping the future as much as reacting to the fear of being left behind.' Entry-Level Workers, Not Replaced—Just in a Holding Pattern Despite the anxiety, Hilger holds space for hope. He predicts that today's struggling entry-level workers may soon become tomorrow's disruptors—especially those fluent in emerging tech. 'A possible Phase Two,' he says, 'will see them displace anyone resistant to change.' The implication is clear: this is not a dead end, but a reset. One where readiness to learn, adapt, and rethink outdated structures will matter more than alarmist headlines.
WIRED
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
Authors Are Posting TikToks to Protest AI Use in Writing—and to Prove They Aren't Doing It
Jun 18, 2025 7:00 AM Traditional and indie authors are flooding #WritersTok with videos of them editing their manuscripts to refute accusations of generative AI use—and bring readers into their very human process. Video:All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Victoria Aveyard's eyes avoid the camera when she slams her large white binder on the table, weighed down with a 1,000-page draft of her latest work in progress. The stack is heavy, made clear by her audible sigh as she splits the thick manuscript in half. Fueled with Cherry Lime Poppi and a bowl of grapes, she purposefully jots notes on the pages with every quick camera cut. Aveyard, the New York Times bestselling young adult fantasy author of the Red Queen series, doesn't say a single word in the video, but her captions on the screen speak volumes. 'Using GenAI to write a book doesn't make you a writer, it makes you a thief,' reads one. 'Don't use generative-AI to make tropey, regurgitated romantasy sludge that you can then launder through the self-publishing industry in order to backdoor your way into a traditional publishing deal,' Aveyard tells her over 460,000 followers on TikTok in another video posted on May 27. 'Authors talk.' Both TikToks garnered over 350,000 views. Criticism and warnings of Gen-AI authors snagging coveted deals are flooding both Threads and TikTok, with writers and readers sometimes flinging around accusations when they suspect someone is using AI as part of their creative process. Now, Aveyard and other prolific authors are not only calling out people who use AI to write, they're also posting livestreams and time-lapses of their writing processes to defend themselves against such complaints. 'The r/WritingWithAI subreddit has over 40,000 subscribers and growing. It's a very depressing thought, to know we may very soon be the minority,' Aveyard tells WIRED. 'I don't think my voice will move the needle much or convince anyone already using generative AI to stop, but I needed to voice my anger with the circumstances.' The publishing market is expected to grow by $18.9 million between now and 2029, according to market research firm Technavio, partially due to an influx of self-published authors. But with scammy rewrites and digitally fabricated authors entering the market, artificial intelligence has made searching for human-made content more difficult, causing independent authors to combat what some are calling an AI-generated 'witch hunt.' 'Sometimes it's hard to conceptualize the scope and scale of work that goes into writing a book, and showing a physical manuscript really helps that hit home,' Aveyard says when asked about the inspiration behind her 1,000-page editing video. She is a strong critic of AI in publishing, calling it theft of creative intellectual property. 'I post regularly on my platforms, and I'm always looking for content that catches the eye as well as emphasizes my work. And getting to emphasize my position on generative AI? An added benefit.' (Aveyard never names any specific indie authors using generative-AI to secure a traditional publishing deal.) 'Do I think authors should post 'proof'? Not necessarily,' says indie author Ashley Godschild. 'Would I like to see more authors post their process and make it clear it's without AI? Yes. Because I think we need to be loud and clear that it's not welcome in this industry.' Godschild, who penned the fantasy novel The Hunter and The Hunted, says she's been writing since childhood and goes through a lengthy process—plotting her manuscript years before putting pen to paper. A few days after seeing Aveyard's 1,000-page edit post, Godschild posted a time-lapse of herself writing at her computer, captioning the video, 'Watch this time-lapse of me writing a scene in a murder mystery TV show without the use of gen-AI.' The caption also notes that she's 'not a thief' and that 'the murderer is so unpredictable not even a machine could figure out who it is.' Some writers are using the AI controversy to remind people of the very human skills it takes to craft a complex story. YA indie author Rachel Menard posted a TikTok of herself opening drafts of one of her manuscripts, writing that if she was using AI, 'It wouldn't take me 78 drafts to get it done.' 'Everyone has forgotten what makes a book good, and it's the work that goes into it,' says Menard, who has penned three books independently. She adds that while AI may be able to 'pop out a decent spice scene,' it can't create a compelling story. 'If my characters don't feel like real people, living real lives, with real problems, then I need to keep working on it.' Quan Millz, an indie author with over 830,000 TikTok followers and well-known for his jaw-dropping 'street lit' titles like Old Thot Next Door and This Hoe Got Roaches in Her Crib , says accusations that he has used AI to write go beyond labeling him as a thief—they underestimate the cultural fluency behind his novels. Prior to revealing his identity on TikTok in 2023, Millz, who is Black, dealt with accusations that he was white and even a rumor that he was a 'CIA operative.' 'It's clear now that you use AI to write all your books. Ain't no way you're dropping the books this fast,' one commenter wrote on one of Millz's posts. Millz uses AI to make book covers, including for books that are still in the conceptual phase, but says allegations that he also writes with the tool are false. 'There's no way in hell you're going to get any of these AI models to really capture the essence of just how Black people talk,' Millz tells WIRED. The author says he has tested using AI for writing and found that the large language models censored his adult scenes and could not reproduce his nuanced tone. 'It doesn't understand that AAVE [African American Vernacular English] is not monolithic … Black people in Chicago don't sound like Black people in New York.' While Millz has hosted a couple of TikTok Lives documenting his writing process in real time, he tells WIRED that he won't be hosting more—even if it helps prove to skeptics that his written work is original. Constantly checking in with commenters hindered his writing process, he says, and he feels that while having a social presence is crucial in indie publishing, filming your process won't provide more proof of AI-free work than your work itself—at least not yet. 'I really do think that there's something else transcendent about the human experience, something mystical that we just don't know about yet, and you can feel that through the arts,' Millz says. 'When you read AI text, even if you do a good job of trying to edit it or make it your own, there's still something amiss.'
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Alice's Day to transform Oxford into Wonderland this summer
There will be street theatre, talks, storytelling, and guided walks as Oxford celebrates Alice's Adventures in Wonderland this summer. The Story Museum has announced the return of Alice's Day, an annual event that transforms Oxford into a wonderland. Taking place on Saturday, July 5, this year's festival will follow the theme of 'Quests and Adventures'. Alice's Day will return to Oxford this July (Image: The Story Museum) Alice's Day will return to Oxford this July (Image: The Story Museum) In July 1862, Charles Dodgson took Alice Liddell and her sisters on a boating picnic up the River Thames from Folly Bridge in Oxford. To amuse the children, he told them a story about a little girl, sitting bored by a riverbank, who finds herself tumbling down a rabbit hole into a topsy-turvy world called Wonderland. Ten-year-old Alice asked Mr Dodgson to write the story down, and the result was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1865 under the pen name Lewis Carroll. Visitors to Oxford will have the chance to see the Red Queen procession, a life-size pack of cards, and Alice herself chasing the White Rabbit, all performed by Curious Company. Other venues taking part include the Bodleian Libraries, Museum of Oxford, History of Science Museum, The Lewis Carroll Society, Oxford Water Walks, The Oxford Children's Book Group, and Alice's Shop. Alice's Day will return to Oxford this July (Image: The Story Museum) Alice's Day will return to Oxford this July (Image: The Story Museum) Christ Church, once home to Alice Liddell, will host croquet in the masters' garden in partnership with the Eynsham Croquet Club. It will also have a talk by Phillip Roberts about the Magic Lantern, a 19th-century storytelling device used by travelling entertainers. This event will include a performance of Lewis Carroll slides, recently acquired by Christ Church Library. The Story Museum will offer half-price entry to its interactive galleries, and visitors will have the chance to play Snarks and Riddles, a board game designed by the museum's young Story Curators. This life-size game is inspired by the story worlds of Lewis Carroll. Alice's Day will return to Oxford this July (Image: The Story Museum) Alice's Day will return to Oxford this July (Image: The Story Museum) The museum's magic common room will host the giant Wonderland afternoon tea, featuring cakes, sandwiches, and savouries made by the café team. Ameneh Enayat, The Story Museum's head of creative programme, said: "We are incredibly excited to reveal another unforgettable Alice's Day. "We are especially pleased to reveal the new interactive board game, made by our young Story Curators; a team of budding designers aged 11 to 16 working with The Story Museum to develop skills in immersive exhibitions in weekly after-school sessions during term time. "We are incredibly grateful to our partners who work so hard to make this day so special. "I can't think of many children's stories that have influenced art, fashion, food, and film the way that Alice has, and it's wonderful to think that it all originated here in Oxford."
The Guardian
02-04-2025
- Climate
- The Guardian
I don't want to die with a freezer full of seeds. It's time to rethink biodiversity and preservation
About a month after Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina last fall, Roger Wynn and I met in an Asheville, North Carolina, supermarket parking lot. He'd driven two hours from Little Mountain, South Carolina, where the passing storm had also left its destructive mark. 'When the power finally came back on,' Wynn said, 'two of my freezers didn't work.' Wynn was worried not about spoiled food inside, but his seed collection. On that autumn day, in an act of forced downsizing and seed philanthropy, Wynn handed over two boxes filled with seeds. He wanted me, as founder of the non-profit Utopian Seed Project, to share the seeds with farmers across the region. The boxes contained a trove of Appalachian varieties: speckled field peas, white mountain half-runner beans, purple-podded bush beans and lots of butterbeans. Over many years of being active in the seed-saving community, Wynn has more than 100 varieties of carefully stewarded seeds. He recalled collecting sugar maple seeds in third grade when he 'planted them in Dixie cups and sold them door-to-door'. As a child, Wynn helped his grandmother shell dry butterbeans on their porch. He remembers how she admired the spectrum of lavender and pink seeds. But 'when she died, [family members] basically cleaned the freezers out and threw everything away, including all her seeds,' he said. Unlike some of his butterbeans, it's not a rare story. Seeds have a finite lifespan, but when cooled to below-freezing temperatures, seeds' metabolism slows and they can remain viable for decades or more. This makes freezers an important, albeit mundane, tool for long-term storage. Essentially, the freezer is an insurance policy against the loss of seed varieties. That's also the principle behind facilities such as the Millennium Seed Bank in Sussex, England, which stores billions of seeds underground at -4F (-20C). This kind of institutional seed preservation is called ex-situ, which removes varieties from their natural environment. Wynn is growing and saving seeds within his community, practicing in situ conservation. Freezing seeds is a double-edged sword. The ability to store large seed collections with a few hundred dollars worth of plug-in technology has created a preservation problem. Or perhaps the problem is preservation itself. In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, the Red Queen said: 'Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.' The 'Red Queen's hypothesis' in evolutionary biology argues that species must be constantly evolving and adapting just to maintain their place in the ecosystem. A world without freezers would force seeds to be grown and saved regularly. But preservation can be a trap, both for the seeds frozen in time and the seed keepers who preserve them. Hurricane Helene reinforced another hard truth: a freezer full of seeds is the literal version of putting all your eggs in one basket. Dr Jim Veteto, living in Celo, North Carolina, manages the Southern Seed Legacy Project and recorded oral histories of people like Roger Wynn. His barn collapsed during Helene, burying his entire seed collection of hundreds of rare seed varieties collected from Appalachian and Cherokee seed keepers. In the days after the storm, he tried to dig the freezer out of the debris and muck. Later, local seed-savers showed up to help, and they pulled the freezer from the wreckage. Amazingly, the seeds appear to have survived. Large-scale, government-funded seed banks also have their problems. They collect and store seeds from peasant, Indigenous and rural communities across the world. Bonnetta Adeeb, founder of Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance, refers to them as 'seed jail'. I visited the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) S-9 Seed Storage at the University of Georgia's Griffin campus. A large room cooled to a constant 18F was filled with hundreds of shelves, thousands of containers and millions upon millions of seeds. In theory, everyday people can request seeds from the USDA's extensive collections. But, in practice, the USDA seed banks are primarily accessed by academic and corporate plant breeders, who rely on crop diversity to develop elite breeding lines. The preservation can become predatory, leading to claims of biopiracy and the 'gene rush', equivalent to gold rushes where outsiders rushed in to extract precious metals and profit from them. Seeds over people, even when those people and their relationships to the land are the reason the seeds exist and endure. Often, 'improved' seeds are sold back to the original communities, further undermining their stewardship of biodiversity. Roger Wynn told me that the hurricane prompted an ongoing shift in his own thinking. 'This disaster made me start thinking about my seeds. For the most part, it's been fun. It's given me purpose.' Wynn highlighted the friends and community he had made along the way, all the times he had swapped and shared seeds. The Southern Seed Legacy Project's Veteto, who feared for his own life at the peak of the storm, said almost everyone he received seeds from had already died. 'It's just me out here with a freezer full of seeds,' he said. 'I've become the type of person that I started out documenting. But that's OK because these seeds give my life meaning.' Veteto was a student of Dr Virginia Nazarea, co-founder of the Southern Seed Legacy and author of Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers. Nazarea once wrote: 'Seedsaver contribution to the conservation of biodiversity needs to be understood as conservation in vivo, or conservation as a way of life.' This speaks to something greater than preservation, which often treats seeds like artifacts, not living things. Seed-saving should not be the goal, but merely a skill that is used in an ongoing relationship with the plant. People, seeds and relationships change over time. Life is messy, and that's OK. In 2019, I accompanied culinary historian David Shields on a visit to the 'Dark Corner' of South Carolina, near Greenville. As part of his work with the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, he researched and sometimes rediscovered old seed varieties that dropped out of commercial circulation or had never achieved it. We traveled there to follow a lead from Craigslist, which mentioned someone growing what was believed to be an extinct corn. In the late 1800s, Cocke's Prolific was a nationally renowned corn, but became less available by the turn of the 20th century and was considered a lost variety until six years ago. That day, we visited 96-year-old Manning Farmer, who proudly showed us 18in corn cobs. They were perhaps the only ones in the entire world. He'd grown and saved Cocke's Prolific for nearly seven decades. Like any good seed-saver, he kept backup seeds in his freezer. His motivations were utilitarian, not preservation. It was his way of life. Farmer died shortly after his 99th birthday, in November 2021. Our desire to preserve is strongly linked to a narrative of loss, both for biodiversity writ large and for rare heirloom seeds. But we recognize the need for biodiversity and destroy it in the same breath. What if we protected the Amazon instead of just the genetics within it? What if we supported small-scale diversified agriculture instead of industrialized monoculture? Seed preservation has a place, but it's not the thing that will save us. Heirloom seed keepers attempt to preserve the past, while plant breeders control genetic resources to commodify the seed. Neither camp is particularly focused on how to expand biodiversity into the future, as if biodiversity and seed varieties are fixed and finite things. Compounding this problem is the climate crisis, which is dramatically affecting our ability to grow food. Diversity is a core component of resilience, so we need rapid, ongoing and diverse adaptation of our regional food systems – everywhere, all the time. If we've been preserving all these seeds for some imagined future need, then the need is now. Arguably, it's already too late. For me, events like Hurricane Helene represent the limits of adaptation. You can't adapt to a 30,000-year flood, which wiped entire farms and towns from the landscape. You can only roll the dice and cross your fingers. Enormous climate mitigation is our only hope. In the meantime, we need to heed the Red Queen's advice to 'keep running', to adapt while we still can. For me, this means emptying the freezers into the fields, a radical reverse flow from preservation back to the people. Because what's the point in dying with a freezer full of seeds?
