Latest news with #Stormtrooper
CNN
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
How one man's superhero mission has brightened thousands of lives in all 50 states
It's not every day that Deadpool comes to visit your bedside. But a lucky number of people across the United States have had that experience thanks to Yuri Williams. Since 2017, Williams has donned an array of iconic superhero costumes to spread cheer to sick children, the unhoused, veterans, people with disabilities, and even animals. Recently, he met up with kids and spread smiles at Miller Children's and Women's Hospital near his home in Southern California. But Williams has traveled to all 50 states five and a half times and estimates he's visited with more than 25,000 people in need, all out of the goodness of his heart. 'The goal is to provide these special moments for people,' he said. 'It's a great feeling to be able to go in and uplift these people that are in need of uplifting.' The 48-year-old is a probation officer by day but spends his free time organizing costumed visits. And Williams rarely makes these trips empty handed – he gives out toys, backpacks, food, clothes, and blankets, among other items. Sometimes the gifts come from organizations like Toys for Tots, and other times, he pays for whatever is needed out of his own pocket. Williams' costumed appearances are not limited to Deadpool. He has dressed as other superheroes including Spider-Man and Miles Morales, and Star Wars favorites like Kylo Ren, a Stormtrooper and the Mandalorian. Occasionally, he goes out with a Marvel sidekick in the form of Captain America, also known as a 75-year-old volunteer named Ron. 'It's making a distraction, wearing the costume,' Williams said, 'but at the same time, I'm able to help them because they feel like they can trust me.' This comic book aficionado's origin story began in 2009, after losing his mother, Lynda Hubbard, to an eight-year battle with cancer. 'My mother was a loving individual,' Williams said. Hubbard was a probation officer, who inspired her son to go into the profession and showed him what it meant to care for your community. After her passing, Williams said he struggled with deep depression for five years. But eventually, he came up with the idea to start a nonprofit to honor his mother and her spirit. A Future Superhero and Friends was born and became a way for him to bring joy into his own life. 'It makes me feel good inside,' he said. 'I'm making an impact on people in this world, and that's what my mom instilled in me every single day.'
Gizmodo
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘American Empire? What American Empire?' You Can Ask With This Reagan-Adjacent Stormtrooper Helmet
To be a kid in the 1980s meant absorbing the last years of the Cold War through pop culture that played into fears about a World War III everyone assumed was coming—think WarGames, Red Dawn, and '99 Luftballoons.' Somehow that script got flipped when President Ronald Reagan announced the 'Strategic Defense Initiative,' a system intended to protect the U.S. from missiles that quickly acquired its own pop culture nickname: 'Star Wars.' While Reagan's Star Wars never actually got off the ground, it remains a key takeaway from his time in office, so much so that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Southern California hosted an exhibit framed around it last year: 'Defending America and the Galaxy: Star Wars and SDI.' The library called it 'a fun and informative exhibition on Star Wars—both the real-world technology of SDI, as well as items from the movie phenomenon,' showcasing 'original items from SDI including an authentic Command Launch Equipment Console, as well as props, costumes, and concept art from the Star Wars franchise.' That strange blend of politics (nuclear war, so fun!) and science fiction is no longer on display, but one of the key items featured is now going up for sale. A screen-used Stormtrooper helmet from Star Wars: Episode I – A New Hope would be a rare enough find, but according to Julien's Auctions, it's one of just six original stunt helmets still around being held by private collectors. Now it can be yours if you have the $200,000-$300,000 (estimated price) required to be the top bidder. Here's a full, uncropped look at the helmet: Further details from a press release note that 'this helmet is believed to be featured in scenes on Tatooine as a 'Sandtrooper' helmet and may have been worn by the third Stormtrooper guard from the left, escorting Princess Leia to be confronted by the ominous Darth Vader.' Julien's is co-hosting the auction, dubbed 'Echoes From the Galaxy: A Star Wars Memorabilia Exhibit + Auction,' with Turner Classic Movies, and if you're going to San Diego Comic-Con or you happen to be in the San Diego area, you can cruise by the Comic-Con Museum (2131 Pan American Plaza in San Diego) to check out the exhibit starting July 14. The sale will be Sunday, July 27 starting at 10 a.m. PT. Here's a video about the auction that quickly shows off some of the other lots, including the lightsabers. You can get a closer look at the Julien's Auction website, which also has all the details on how to bid. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Metro
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
We tried Google's new AI video to see if it's as mindblowing as it seems
You've probably seen the highly realistic AI video saturating social media. That Stormtrooper building a snowman? Made by Google Veo 3. The surfing unicorn passing ice floes while penguins rave under the northern lights? Also AI… we assume. If you can dream it, you can create it, which is incredibly exciting – but also incredibly unsettling, in terms of what it means for creative industries as well as misinformation and fact checking. A quick rundown: Google now allows you to create a cinematic video clip, just from typing in what you want to see. It includes realistic voices and sound, which sets it apart from other models. Given I've never had skill as a filmmaker, I was amazed to be able to make a clip of something you'd previously need Hollywood special effects teams to conjure up, just from writing a couple of sentences on my computer. The video below shows the three videos we made at Metro to test out the new tech, which Google launched in the UK on May 30. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video First off, we thought we'd boost morale in the team by looking at what Londoners really think of Metro. We used this prompt: Starts off with a wide shot. A glorious sunny day. Quiet roads. Tracks into an excited crowd gathered on High Street Kensington in London, with majestic buildings all around, including a Whole Foods. The crowd is young, cool and full of anticipation. A red London bus pulls into shot and a door opens. A brown Lakeland Patterdale terrier scampers off the bus, barking excitedly, and leaps into the arms of a nearby man, tall, tanned wth curly hair and short tidy beard, very handsome, wearing a navy three piece suit. A statuesque woman with a chignon emerges from the bus with a stack of Metro newspapers in her arms. She distributes them to an ecstatic crowd who immediately start reading with great enthusiasm. 'Long live Metro', they all cry in unison. On first glance, it's pretty realistic (no?) But you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to notice that buses don't usually open through the front windscreen, the shop sign reads 'Whole Foobs', or that the editor rather inconsiderately drops the dog as soon as he gets outside. Also, the crowds we imagined would represent multicultural, cool London were all quite similar young white men in shirts. It's well known that AI can contain the biases of data it is trained on, so it's possible that this is related. After trying to refine the prompt by making it more detailed, we still didn't get a diverse crowd, but we did get 'Long Live Metro' pronounced with 'live' rhyming with 'dive'. I wanted to test how easy it would be to create something which could be spread as false information, inciting tensions by looking realistic. So I asked for the video to look like it was shot on a phone, like most witness footage of public incidents is. It should look as though it is shot with a phone camera, with slightly shaky footage. The scene is a typical British high street, with shops including Boots, Primark and Tesco. A young man wearing a balaclava runs into view holding a hammer, and begins smashing all the shop windows, shouting 'you're going to pay for this'. A woman with shopping bags tries to stop him but he pushes her aside. Thinking of the recent riots which affected towns across the UK, I wanted to produce something with the potential to go viral on social media and incite some angry reactions about law and order. On this occasion, I don't think anyone would be fooled. The video came back without sound (an issue that has affected quite a few videos, which I'll come to later), and the assailant's balaclava vanished from his face mid hammer swipe, quite a giveaway that AI had a hand in it. Shot with a glossy, high definition feel, it definitely didn't look like grainy user generated content either. After writing about the fiery 'Gate of Hell' crater in Turkmenistan finally starting to burn itself out, this came to mind as a potentially cinematic backdrop. Night is falling near the 'Gate of Hell' Darvaza Crater in Turkmenistan. The light from the fire within makes the dark sky glow. A woman, in her forties, wearing a protective suit but with her hair down, looks into the depths, seeing flames flickering inside. She says: 'They say this pit will burn itself out soon. Before that happens, I will take the fire home.' Then she clambers over the edge. This one was my favourite and the most successful prompt, even though I didn't go into too much detail. I didn't see any immediately obvious AI flaws (maybe because with just one person, it was less complicated to create) and I think the special effects could even belong in a blockbuster film. I suppose I shouldn't be too pleased with myself, as I literally did nothing requiring talent to create it. But opens up new pathways to explore whatever you can imagine, so I'm not surprised the feature has gone viral. We asked Google where they see this tech heading in the future, given that AI is already accelerating at unnerving speed (mocking it for not being able to count fingers already feels hopelessly out of date). Matthieu Lorrain, Creative Lead at Google DeepMind, told Metro: 'We're already seeing Veo 3 used for everything from making a quick clip for socials, to turning an inside joke into a moving meme, or visualising a cool concept quickly. These are some of the main use cases that we've seen since the feature launched on Gemini.' Some of the clips they produced to showcase the feature are below: To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video For now, one of the annoying parts of making a video is that you can't edit it; I can't ask it to refine the clip and ask for the animal-loving editor not to drop his dog, for example. It would just come up with a new clip entirely. Mr Lorrain said: 'Adding the ability to more easily refine and finesse a prompt or generated video is definitely something we're working on. For now, it's a case of experimenting with the wording to try and get the video to generate as you'd like, which is trial and error, but it's also part of the fun!' Google is currently testing the ability to generate video from an image, which is one of the most in-demand as well as potentially concerning possibilities of AI video. If you could upload an image of a real person, you could make a convincing deepfake with the potential to spread misinformation. But there are also legitimate reasons you might want to do this. Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian recently shared a tweet of a video generated from a photo of his mother hugging him, using another AI software Midjourney. Explaining he lost his mother 20 years ago and that the family could not afford a camcorder, he had no moving images to remember her by so created the short animation to better imagine what happened either side of the shot. Damn, I wasn't ready for how this would feel. We didn't have a camcorder, so there's no video of me with my mom. I dropped one of my favorite photos of us in midjourney as 'starting frame for an AI video' and wow… This is how she hugged me. I've rewatched it 50 times. — Alexis Ohanian 🗽 (@alexisohanian) June 22, 2025 People might also understandably want to imagine themselves in James Bond-like situations, or more boringly, for more polished content on their socials. For now, you also cannot specify a famous person in the written prompt and make a video of them using publicly available images, even though this would technically be possible (there are both legal and ethical reasons for this). I asked Gemini for a video of Keir Starmer giving a speech outside Downing Street to warn of an invasion of glowing, radioactive hamsters just to see, but sadly was blocked from bringing this into technicolour. It is currently only available to those with a subscription, which costs £18.99 a month. Once you have access, you can simply type your prompt into Gemini, the company's rival to ChatGPT, or use Flow, which is designed for more serious AI filmmaking, and allows the use of consistent elements such as a particular character across clips. Users can make three clips a day, to prevent servers being overloaded. To make the film, you simply write a paragraph about what you want it to show, detailing the style and camera work as well as the subject and script. Google gave a list of tips for a successful prompt here. Google warns users on Flow that audio is still an experimental feature and so videos 'might not always have sound' (so if this happens to you, it's not a problem with your speakers). They said speech does better with slightly longer transcripts, is muted for minors, and can trigger subtitles. 'We're working on it,' they said. It's a safe bet that AI will be shaking up filmmaking, just as it is every other industry. More Trending You can already generate a realistic-sounding 'podcast' on any topic just from uploading information about it, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could generate your own feature films soonish on any topic you like too, without having to log into Disney Plus or Netflix at all. Admittedly, the quality would probably be mixed, and there could be copyright issues if you just uploaded a manuscript of the latest bestseller. Mr Lorrain said: 'With regards to the future, as with any groundbreaking technology, we're still understanding the full potential of AI in filmmaking. We see the emergence of these tools as an enabler, helping a new wave of filmmakers more easily tell their stories. By offering filmmakers early access to Flow, we were able to better understand how our technology could best support and integrate into their creative workflows — and we've woven their insights into Flow. 'Veo 3 represents a huge step forward in quality, with greater realism, 4K output, and incredibly lifelike physics and audio. Like any powerful creative tool, it rewards practice—the more descriptive your prompts, the better your video. When it comes to getting the most out of Veo 3, think of prompting as learning to speak Veo's language—the more fluently and descriptively you articulate your vision, the better the video will be.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Games Inbox: Is AI going to ruin video games? MORE: Front Mission 3: Remake updated its graphics with AI slop and fans are not happy MORE: UK watchdog could force Google to make changes – what are they?
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Anthony Edwards, Adidas are releasing new football cleats
The post Anthony Edwards, Adidas are releasing new football cleats appeared first on ClutchPoints. Prior to his arrival as the NBA's next rising superstar, Timberwolves' Anthony Edwards also had dreams of making highlight-reel plays on the gridiron. Being a standout football player from a young age, it comes as no surprise that Anthony Edwards could manage becoming a dual-sport athlete, but given his massive success in The Association, he'll have to keep dreaming about a life out on the field. This upcoming season, Edwards and Adidas will partner for an upcoming signature football cleat. Advertisement Check our Sneakers news for more upcoming releases and breaking content! During the NFL season, we saw a huge uptick in the trend of players wearing customized sneakers-turned-cleats during their games on Sundays. Eagles' Jalen Hurts was consistently rocking the newest Air Jordan footwear on the field, while players like Stefon Diggs and Tyreek Hill continued to show out with their custom creations. Minnesota Vikings' receiver Jordan Addison was actually the first player to bust out a custom pair of Adidas AE 1 cleats as an homage to his fellow Minnesota star Anthony Edwards. The shoes seamlessly made the transition to the football field and now, Adidas has plans to release the cleats to the public. Adidas AE 1 Football Cleats After building a reputation as 2024's hottest basketball sneaker of the year, the shoes eventually made their debut in other sports like baseball and football. This upcoming football cleat will use the Adidas AE 1 'Stormtrooper' as a base for the upper, complete with Adidas Football cleat technology along the outsoles. Advertisement We see a neon green Adidas logo along the back heel, true to the original sneaker release. The shoes will continue to feature a mesh boot underneath the molded TPU upper, so wearers should be getting all the performance capabilities on the field as they would have on the basketball court. The cleats will be done in the same TPU material and offer a seamless transition from the upper down to the outsole. The Adidas AE 1 football cleats are expected to debut June 2026 and will come with at a retail tag that is still to be determined. Expect the shoes to become available on Adidas as well as Adidas Football retailers all over the country. What do you think of the Adidas AE 1 as a football cleat? Related: Nike Air Tech Challenge II returning June 2025 Related: Air Jordan 12 'French Blue' release update
Buzz Feed
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
If Your Dad Is The King Of Dad-Jokes, He Might Love These 31 Quirky Fathers' Day Gifts
A Star Wars-inspired Stormtrooper electric shaver so they can get their face as smooth as a Baby Yoda's bottom. A screaming goat figurine, because sometimes they need a buddy to scream it out with. It even comes with a book full of fun facts and trivia about the ever-majestic goat. A pack of 16 slingshot chickens they can pull, stretch, and fling at the wall or ceiling when they're feeling a bit bored, angry, or fidgety. A convenient lil' condiment fork if their love of pickles and olives is only matched by how much they hate getting soggy fingers by grabbing them straight out of the jar. All they have to do is place the silicone band around the top of the jar, and voila! A carton of popcorn seasoning salt so their at-home movie night snack rivals that of their local movie theater. A pack of four Crocs-shaped car air fresheners because the actual Crocs on their actual feet make their Subaru smell quite funky. These colorful and charming fresheners come with 12 scent pads (four lavender, four fern, and four unscented) and can be clipped to their car's air vent. A pair of (surprisingly) cozy fish slippers whose anti-skid soles not only ensure that these sandals are more wear-resistant but will also make sure they don't go slippin' and slidin' like, well, a wet fish. A rebellious mini frog statue perfect for decorating their garden and flipping off the neighbors. A mini wacky waving inflatable tube guy if they need a fun (but silent) coworker at their WFH station. Or if they need a good laugh while on their porcelain throne. A funny yet useful "Grievance Journal" because as much as you love your dad's incredibly dark sense of humor when it comes to all the things in life that annoy them, maaaybe they'd be better served writing those thoughts down instead of sharing them with the class. Inside, they'll find 52 distinct writing prompts and 52 misanthropic jokes that they are sure to find a little too funny. A Mjolnir bottle opener — others will ~Marvel~ at how strong they are as they pop open a Corona with ease! And a 44-piece Mjölnir toolbox sure to make them feel like a superhero every time they use what's in it to fix a household problem. A "Grillfather" apron so they can show off their burger-making abilities to the ~mob~ of family and friends waiting to eat at their next summer shindig. A wearable shark blanket if their favorite character in Jaws is, well, Jaws. Now they can cozy up on the couch to watch it! Dun dunnn! A "Gracula" garlic crusher — just because the Count has a garlic aversion doesn't mean he can't help them mince a little for their homemade pasta sauce. And it'll only take a few seconds! A set of guitar-themed grilling utensils to help them ~rock~ at the next barbecue! These stainless-steel utensils are rust-resistant so they'll last longer than Aerosmith toured. (Yep, they're still touring.) A Puffin sweatshirt can cooler so their cold IPA (or LaCroix, we don't judge) doesn't give their fingers frostbite. Plus, it'll keep their bev as cool as they are! A lightsaber wiper blade cover — now The Force can help keep their rear window clean! A lil' golf pen set that'll help keep their hands busy during their next Zoom call. This set comes with three golf club gel pens, two tiny golf balls, and a tiny golf course. Fore! And a toilet golf set because anytime is a good time to practice their putting! This set comes with a small putter, a wraparound green, two golf balls, a hole with a flag, and a "Do Not Disturb Card" they can hang on the bathroom door. Time to get their hole in one... A Live Laugh Lose party game — if they're already a pro at corny jokes, they'll love the challenge of coming up with (and then delivering) one on the spot. A squishy Blobfish they can tote around like the cute little pet stress ball that it is. A cute baby Grogu toothpaste dispenser so brushing their teeth becomes a weird and fun treat. Even if that treat looks like alien vomit. Two pairs of hotdog socks if their favorite meal comes doused in a million condiments. These cozy socks are sure to make them feel like a ~snack~! A cute peeled banana wine stopper made of 100% food-grade silicone to keep their red from turning into an undrinkable vinegar. A Lego Fender guitar set that'll allow them to show off both their love of rock 'n' roll and their craftsmanship. It comes with a posable whammy bar, pickup switch, tuning pegs, six strings, Fender logo stickers, and a textile strap. Oh, and they can build the guitar in either red or black. A toilet-themed book of puzzles so they can test their mental agility while under stress! A darling swinging duck car mirror accessory for when they're feeling a little lonely on their drive to work. Now they can get their quack on with this cutie! A pair of funny Porta Potty shot glasses since vodka is essentially spicy toilet water anyway. If that's their go-to, it may be time for them to re-evaluate some of their choices... A dad joke button jam-packed with over 50 jokes sure to make them laugh and make you cringe. Or a book of dad jokes because they've been telling the same one about being on a "seafood" diet for far too long now. It's getting a little embarrassing...
