All posts tagged: big

The Ugly Stepsister trailer has big The Substance vibes

The Ugly Stepsister trailer has big The Substance vibes

Published by skeptic

“What if Wicked and The Substance had a grubby baby?” This was the headline for my review of The Ugly Stepsister out of Sundance 2025, as I cheered this twisted fairytale full of violent beauty treatments and body horror. SEE ALSO: How ‘The Substance’ broke the Oscars mold Directed by Emilie Blichfeldt, The Ugly Stepsister re-imagines the tale of Cinderella from the perspective of one of her maligned siblings. Elvira (Lea Myren) wants only to be friends with her pretty and proper new stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss). Well, that and she pines endlessly for the love of the prince, who publishes poetry that has her swooning into romantic fantasies. So when Elvira’s mother promises her a path to wowing royalty at the upcoming ball, she’ll do whatever it takes — even if that means a medieval nose job without anesthesia. And things only get more gruesome from there. As promised in my review — which is pull-quoted in the above trailer — “The Ugly Stepsister is a deranged and dizzying achievement, folding in a classic story …

The Big 5 personality traits you can change with practice

The Big 5 personality traits you can change with practice

Published by skeptic

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. Excerpted from Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change by Olga Khazan. Copyright © 2025 by Olga Khazan. Reprinted by permission of Simon Element, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC. One day in the 1940s, an inmate came to see Raymond Corsini, a psychologist at Auburn Prison in Upstate New York. The prisoner, a man in his thirties, was getting out on parole, and before he left, he just wanted to thank Corsini. The inmate said that, before meeting Corsini, he had always hung out with “a bunch of thieves.” He had a dead-end job in the prison kitchen, and he had long ago lost touch with his family and faith. His prospects for successfully reentering society were probably poor. But, he said, after an encounter with Corsini two years prior, he had left feeling like he was “walking on air.” That day in the yard, …

IT Crowd’s Chris O’Dowd on aliens, returning to a ‘broke’ and ‘down’ London, and his new show Small Town, Big Story | Ents & Arts News

IT Crowd’s Chris O’Dowd on aliens, returning to a ‘broke’ and ‘down’ London, and his new show Small Town, Big Story | Ents & Arts News

Published by skeptic

Actor and comedian Chris O’Dowd has described moving back to London from the US, finding people in the city are “down” after a decade of cutbacks. The IT Crowd star returned to London from Los Angeles with his wife Dawn O’Porter and their two children a year ago. “It’s just gone through 10 years of austerity, and you can feel it off it,” he told Sky News. “People are down, is the impression I’m getting. I don’t know if it’s because of the divisive political culture or whether it’s because people are broke as s**t because they haven’t put any money into public services for so long, and now they’ve said they’re not going to do it either because they’re not going to raise taxes, so I don’t know what they’re going to do. But everybody is… it would be hard to say it’s improved.” Asked if he sensed any optimism that things would change for the better, he replied: “Not yet.” O’Dowd said the decision to return to the UK “wasn’t because Trump got …

How Do You Use AI in Your Daily Life? Share the Applications That Have Made a Big Difference

How Do You Use AI in Your Daily Life? Share the Applications That Have Made a Big Difference

Published by José

Image by Jernej Fur­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons It would be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine the last cou­ple of years with­out arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, even if you don’t use it. Can you recall the last day with­out some AI-relat­ed news item or social-media post — or indeed, a time when the hype did­n’t slide into utopi­an or apoc­a­lyp­tic terms? “If I look five or ten years down the road, it seems like we will be in a world in which the use of AI tools will not just be nor­mal,” writes Justin Wein­berg at Dai­ly Nous, offer­ing a more sober take. “Facil­i­ty with them will be expect­ed, and that expec­ta­tion will inform the social and pro­fes­sion­al norms we’ll all be sub­ject to, whether we like it or not.” To his audi­ence of phi­los­o­phy aca­d­e­mics, Wein­berg pos­es a ques­tion: are you using AI? And fur­ther­more, “Is there a par­tic­u­lar kind of task you think you’d like to learn how to use AI for, but don’t know how?” Here at Open Cul­ture, we’d like to ask some­thing sim­i­lar of our …

The Big Ideas That Can Banish Trolls

The Big Ideas That Can Banish Trolls

Published by José

Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. Some years ago, I had a friend who got into trouble on the internet. He was writing a book that took a strong stance on a controversial topic and had been talking about it on social media. He didn’t have a large following, but activists who opposed his view of the issue began to notice and decided that he needed punishing for wrongthink. Their angry invective about his work spread the conversation to people who anonymously and deliberately seek to offend and provoke others online—and these trolls began to abuse my friend relentlessly. “People are telling me to kill myself!” he told me, with desperation in his voice. He started worrying about being doxxed, or worse. “Do I need private security? Maybe I should move.” Out of curiosity, I asked my friend how much time he was then spending on social media, monitoring all the abuse. “Pretty much all day,” he said. This made sense …

New Lakers star Luka Doncic calls trade from Mavericks ‘a big shock’

New Lakers star Luka Doncic calls trade from Mavericks ‘a big shock’

Published by Sam

The Lakers introduced superstar Luka Dončić on Tuesday, and he expressed the same shock as the rest of the basketball world about the trade that brought him to Los Angeles from Dallas. “You can imagine how surprised I was,” Dončić said at his introductory news conference. “I was almost asleep. When I got a call, I had to check it was April 1st. I didn’t really believe it at first. It was a big shock. It was hard moments for me.” The Lakers acquired Dončić on Saturday in exchange for power forward Anthony Davis and a first-round draft pick. They also sent guard Jalen Hood-Schifino to the Utah Jazz in what was a three-team deal. The Los Angeles Lakers’ Luka Dončić at an introductory news conference in El Segundo, Calif., on Tuesday.Jae C. Hong / AP Dončić is coming off a season in which he led the Mavericks to the NBA finals. In his career, Dončić has averaged 28.7 points per game, third highest all time in NBA history. His playoff scoring average of 30.9 …

New Music Friday January 31: The Weeknd, Will Smith, Big Sean, JENNIE, Jeff Goldblum and More

New Music Friday January 31: The Weeknd, Will Smith, Big Sean, JENNIE, Jeff Goldblum and More

Published by skeptic

Happy New Music Friday! The weekend is here, which means more streaming, new playlists and the best that music has to offer — and ET has you covered for everything in between. Music’s Biggest Night is this weekend! Performers include Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Charli xcx, Teddy Swims, Benson Boone, RAYE, Doechii, Shakira and Shaboozey. A series of special performances will highlight the awards, including the In Memoriam segment, a star-studded salute to Quincy Jones and touching tributes celebrating the spirit of the city of Los Angeles. Brad Paisley, Brittany Howard, Chris Martin, Cynthia Erivo, Herbie Hancock, Jacob Collier, Janelle Monae, John Legend, Lainey Wilson, Sheryl Crow, St. Vincent and Stevie Wonder are set to appear. Presenters include Taylor Swift, SZA, Cardi B, Gloria Estefan, Olivia Rodrigo, Queen Latifah, Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith, Victoria Monét and Will Smith. The Recording Academy and MusiCares announced they are partnering with Direct Relief, the California Community Foundation and the Pasadena Community Foundation to bolster support for those impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires. On the GRAMMY telecast, attendees, …

The Big Empty by Robert Crais—Book Review by The Bookish Elf

The Big Empty by Robert Crais—Book Review by The Bookish Elf

Published by skeptic

Robert Crais’s latest Elvis Cole and Joe Pike thriller, The Big Empty, marks the 20th installment in this beloved series, following 2022’s Racing the Light. This time, the wise-cracking private investigator takes on what appears to be a straightforward missing persons case that spirals into a horrifying revelation of serial murders and betrayal. The novel demonstrates Crais’s masterful ability to weave complex narratives while maintaining his signature blend of wit, action, and emotional depth. However, some aspects of the story’s pacing and certain plot developments might leave readers with mixed feelings. Plot Analysis The Setup The story begins when social media sensation Traci Beller, known to her millions of followers as “The Baker Next Door,” hires Elvis Cole to investigate her father’s decade-old disappearance. What starts as a seemingly routine cold case investigation quickly evolves into something far more sinister. Story Development Crais expertly layers the narrative, gradually revealing darker and more disturbing elements. The investigation leads Cole to Sadie Given and her daughter Anya, who hold the key to Thomas Beller’s disappearance. The author …