
2025-06-24 01:17:44
Character.AI hires Karandeep Anand, former Meta VP of Business Products, as CEO, 10 months after Google hired away the startup's co-founder and CEO Noam Shazeer (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/20/charact…
marvel_partnerships: Marvel character partnerships (2018)
A network of partnerships among characters in the Marvel comic book universe. Nodes are either heroes or villains, and edges represent partnerships between such characters. The partnership network was extracted from Wikipedia pages of these characters, which indicate partnership relations with other such pages.
This network has 350 nodes and 346 edges.
Tags: Social, Fictional, Unweighted
#WritersCoffeeClub July 22. Do you write your characters’ thoughts, or let their actions speak for themselves? Why?
I usually write the thoughts and feelings of only one character, so the rest only speaks through their actions. I think it's just personal preference rather than anything profound 😂
Fictional depiction of mild self-harm, blood.
#WritersCoffeeClub July 23: Share a description you're proud of.
I've been writing a vampire novel lately. Here's a description from the scene when the vampire character proves to the human protagonist that he's been telling the truth:
—
"It's okay, Ada," he gave me a reassuring close-mouthed smile. "Just watch."
He slashed across his wrist in a motion that made the matching scars on my left arm hum. I covered them with my right hand, as if to calm my skin that I wasn't hurting it like that anymore. That we were merely watching someone else.
The cut on Theodore's arm turned red and angry, as expected. And then, just before the wound pooled up enough to bleed, it closed. I watched time run backwards as it disappeared, the skin stitching itself together to leave no trace of the violence imposed on it by the blade.
"What?" I walked up to him as he handed his wrist to me for inspection. I ran the tips of my fingers over the spot where the cut was mere moments before - but Theodore's skin, cold as always, was smooth and unharmed.
—
Forget password leaks, how about a website that has every combination of every 4-32 character passwords. (347,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 347 novemdecillion))
https://solst-ice.github.io/every-pass…
🎮 Feeling like #N64 or #PlayStation but don't have a console? #RetroArch on Apple TV or other TV-Box is a real game-changer! Runs super smooth and brings nostalgia st…
I can't type more...darn character limit, then again the more I typed the more complaint was there...so all good!
Character limit keeps out Mr Complain
#MrComplain
Denseness results for zeros and roots of unity in character tables
Alexander R. Miller
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15153 https://arxiv…
Series A, Episode 06 - Seek-Locate-Destroy
RAI: Yes, Supreme Commander.
SERVALAN: Let them know, too, that any lack of cooperation, any hesitation in responding to an order, will be treated as mutiny. Let them know I have said this. Dismissed. [Rai clicks his heels and exits. There is a bleep from the comm. Servalan ignores it, looking pensive. The comm bleeps again and Servalan reacts this time.]
Fountain Of Youth was amazingly vapid. I'd assumed it'd be awesome—treasure hunter movie with great actors directed by Guy Ritchie.
But it was amazing to see such an obviously opulent budget achieve so little in terms of interest. Wooden, uncommitted acting, zero character development/arcs —no one learned anything. Felt like the stakes didn't matter.
Honestly felt like I was watching rich people cosplay on camera to justify a languid, globe-hopping vacation.
BBC Studios aims to build a lifestyle brand for all ages around its hit cartoon character Bluey, which drove a record $3.6B in global BBC retail sales in 2024 (Michael Savage/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2
Replaced article(s) found for cs.LG. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.LG/new
[3/8]:
- Beyond Win Rates: A Clustering-Based Approach to Character Balance Analysis in Team-Based Games
Haokun Zhou
Chrono Odyssey (Playtest)
Requested access to CO's Playtest this weekend and got the notification on Friday I was in. Installed and launched the game. Game defaulted to Epic settings. Left it there and started the game. Right off the bat, the cinematics had strange artifacting on them. Almost looked like the Steam browser in the background was ghosting into the game somehow.
Created a character. Decent customization. Male doesn't look absurdly buff. Femme isn't overl…
CogDual: Enhancing Dual Cognition of LLMs via Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Rule-Based Rewards
Cheng Liu, Yifei Lu, Fanghua Ye, Jian Li, Xingyu Chen, Feiliang Ren, Zhaopeng Tu, Xiaolong Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17147
Democratizing Game Modding with GenAI: A Case Study of StarCharM, a Stardew Valley Character Maker
Hamid Zand Miralvand, Mohammad Ronagh Nikghalb, Mohammad Darandeh, Abidullah Khan, Ian Arawjo, Jinghui Cheng
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13951
Counting Matrices in SL3(Z) with Fixed Completely Split Character Polynomial: Preliminary Upper Bounds
Igor Rivin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15129 https://…
Introduced an #acting #coaching client to new material and so cool to see them finding the character. The specifics already started to emerge on the second reading.
#ActingCoach
I'm reading Witch Hat Atelier right now (checked out of my local library) and it's top-notch amazing, including the plot, world-building, ethics, character designs, and of course three staggering artistic quality, both in raw illustration quality and artful compositions. It's not shy with playing with the manga form either, with lots of stunning unique panels and active gutters. I also just realized the "shounen manga for girls" formula I've been looking for (which is a formulation that's nearly as important for boys to have access to as girls). But I also really love the humor, including ridiculous puns that are often well-translated. In this scene, the main character Coco has forgotten she's using a mist form spell and ends up blowing away her mist-form body even as age rushes into a chaotic situation, leading to this pun.
#AmReading
The Minnesota shootings illuminate the character of the Trump era (Sidney Blumenthal/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/21/minnesota-shootings-trump-mike-lee-vance-boelter
http://www.memeorandum.com/250621/p51#a250621p51
Fully Self-Consistent Semiclassical Gravity
R. Muci\~no, E. Okon, D. Sudarsky, M. Wiedemann
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17149 https://…
Category $\mathcal{O}$ and asymptotic characters
Alexis Leroux-Lapierre
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16215 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.1…
FramePrompt: In-context Controllable Animation with Zero Structural Changes
Guian Fang, Yuchao Gu, Mike Zheng Shou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17301 https:/…
Series B, Episode 12 - The Keeper
GOLA: Guards, bring the other fool back up. Be well my love. [To Tara] Will she be well?
TARA: [Keeping a straight face] Oh yes.
GOLA: Good.
JENNA: [Looking at the amulet again] Oh, I'm sorry, it is forbidden.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/212/417…
I'm not really a fan of #Spiderman. Spiderverse was a great movie experience. But before that? Not really into the character nor the movies.
This look at the evolution of the web-slinging effects, however, made me appreciate the franchise a lot more.
Yes, the only video game I play is #Warframe!
MR 26 – Wisp Is Love, Wisp Is Live
Ballas is dead, Margulis’s mercy, Lotus’s final kiss.
But Kaya Velasco? She is eternal.
Ballas gone, but she outlives sentient beings.
BALLAS DEAD, NOT KAYA! 😘 💋
I don’t care if she’s code and pixels, my heart’s got no patch notes!
They can’t stop me from loving a digital …
In the #ISE2025 lecture today we were introducing our students to the concept of distributional semantics as the foundation of modern large language models. Historically, Wittgenstein was one of the important figures in the Philosophy of Language stating thet "The meaning of a word is its use in the language."
Digital rights organizations urge the FTC to investigate Character.AI and Meta's "unlicensed practice of medicine facilitated" by therapy AI chatbots (Samantha Cole/404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/ai-therapy-bots-meta-character-ai-ftc-comp…
Towards small quantum Chern character
Hua-Zhong Ke, Changzheng Li, Jiayu Song
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12333 https://arxiv.org/pdf/…
Superconductivity in kagome metals due to soft loop-current fluctuations
Daniel J. Schultz, Grgur Palle, Yong Baek Kim, Rafael M. Fernandes, J\"org Schmalian
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16892
Truly saddened that McAuslan has replaced their only world-class #beer (St-Ambroise Oatmeal Stout) with an extremely dumbed down Irish stout with nearly no roast character, and a much thinner body.
I totally get that it wasn’t selling as well as Guinness, but attempting to compete there can’t possibly actually make business sense. Guinness drinkers are still going to order Guinness.
The Oatmea…
Romance, Relief, and Regret: Teen Narratives of Chatbot Overreliance
Mohammad 'Matt' Namvarpour, Brandon Brofsky, Jessica Medina, Mamtaj Akter, Afsaneh Razi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15783
Dirichlet $L$-functions on the Critical Line
Sami Vihko
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16115 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.16115
CharaConsist: Fine-Grained Consistent Character Generation
Mengyu Wang, Henghui Ding, Jianing Peng, Yao Zhao, Yunpeng Chen, Yunchao Wei
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11533
On the edge reconstruction of the second immanantal polynomials of undirected graph and digraph
Tingzeng Wu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14607 https://
What makes a show "adult"?
How do you make a character-driven story?
How does one tell a riveting story when the audience already knows the outcome?
▶️ Shut up and watch Andor - Bookborn
https://youtube.com/watch?v=alljOrUgHoY&si=iLPRabImYbUp6S…
Popular across social networks, these profile pictures are designed to represent you! Tell me your style! Would you like your character to be holding Coffee, a Book, or an iPhone? Wearing a Panda suit? Sure, you got it!
#Design #Illustration #Portfolio
Have y'all who are into anime seen Kinnikuman Perfect Origin Arc on Netflix? Kinda reminds me of Dragonball, but with more wrestling - and I'm not really into either of those things, but I love Kinnikuman. Go figure. It's based on the manga by Yudetamago (ゆでたまご) and some of the character designs were used by Bandai and then Mattel for the M.U.S.C.L.E. figures in the 80s. As they say, boosts appreciated for reach. I'm super curious.
There's a woman I know who, when she was pregnant, was very keen to hear the opinions of crystal diviners and homeopath medics on what sex her new baby would be but wouldn't let the ultrasound-scan technician that actually knows tells her because Spoilers.
On that note, I'm happy to watch #doctorWho #badWolf #tv
"…give a formerly flat character some _single defining trait_, obsession, or problem to deal with. Just this one weird-yet-relatable thing. And suddenly, this character and the scenes they were in would come alive."
- Tony Tost
https://practical.substack.com/p/the-m
Just picked this one up from the #library:
Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/209543060-character-limi…
Sometimes you work on a case where the suspect is so incredible unsympathetic to you - who represents everything you can imagine in terms of despicable character traits - you just keep digging and digging and digging in the suspects devices data to find the evidence you already know is not there.
It happens once or maybe twice a year but ...gosh... this guy...
#DigitalForensics
Oldies but Goldies: The Potential of Character N-grams for Romanian Texts
Dana Lupsa, Sanda-Maria Avram
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15650 https://
An accurate and revised version of optical character recognition-based speech synthesis using LabVIEW
Prateek Mehta, Anasuya Patil
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15029
Some mining today on Albion Asia when Albion EU was offline for maintenance.
As of this moment the guild "Mastodon Fediverse 100 Tax" got 8 members and 3 are online including me.
#AlbionOnline #MastodonFediAsia
Twisted periods of modular forms
Tianyu Ni, Hui Xue
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17041 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.17041
Watched "Convoy" by Sam Peckinpah (1978). What an interesting window into another era. Production-wise it was certainly a feat: dozens of trucks, locations, helicopters, stunts.
Story-wise it's "dudes sticking it to the man". The main character, however, doesn't want to start nor lead a rebellion. But the people following him project their own struggles onto him and are part of the convoy for a variety of reasons. Media tries to shine a light on this. Smart!…
#GameIdea: A narrative game where the gameplay is mostly in speech bubbles where you need to overcome distractions and understand what people are trying to say to you.
Each character talks at their own rate, and you have minigames to reveal their words. Distractions like nearby sounds and movement pull your cursor away or create new minigames to overcome to get your focus back on y…
AI Therapy Bots Are Conducting 'Illegal Behavior,' Digital Rights Organizations Say
https://www.404media.co/ai-therapy-bots-meta-character-ai-ftc-complaint/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter
FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Space
Black Forest Labs, Stephen Batifol, Andreas Blattmann, Frederic Boesel, Saksham Consul, Cyril Diagne, Tim Dockhorn, Jack English, Zion English, Patrick Esser, Sumith Kulal, Kyle Lacey, Yam Levi, Cheng Li, Dominik Lorenz, Jonas M\"uller, Dustin Podell, Robin Rombach, Harry Saini, Axel Sauer, Luke Smith
Dak Prescott nixes narrative about Pickens', restates endgame: 'I wanna win a championship' https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/dak-prescott-nixes-narrative-about-pickens-character-restates-en…
Series A, Episode 03 - Cygnus Alpha
BLAKE: [Whispers] Vila. [Pause, then louder] Vila. [Pause] Gan. [Pause] Gan.
GAN: [Moves to bars] Blake.
BLAKE: What is it? What's the matter with everybody?
GAN: How did you get here?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/103/377 …
I keep adding lore to this one character of mine that I really like the concept of but I... haven't even designed it yet. All I know is that she's a bird :neofox_laugh_sweat:
Analyzing Character Representation in Media Content using Multimodal Foundation Model: Effectiveness and Trust
Evdoxia Taka, Debadyuti Bhattacharya, Joanne Garde-Hansen, Sanjay Sharma, Tanaya Guha
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14799
Decay character theory for partially dissipative hyperbolic systems of balance laws
Ling-Yun Shou, Jiang Xu, Ping Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11450 ht…
AI Therapy Bots Are Conducting 'Illegal Behavior,' Digital Rights Organizations Say https://www.404media.co/ai-therapy-bots-meta-character-ai-ftc-complaint/
You know the character has made poor life choices when they’re shown driving a Maserati.
#AIinside [PODCAST] Emily Bender & Alex Hanna: “The AI Con”
https://pca.st/episode/e5a693d7-d0be-4f4b-a2de-34f2a5d9061d
via
Transgressing the algebraic coarse character map
Alexander Engel, Matthias Ludewig
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10816 https://arxiv.org…
My head hurts. At least they are trying.
=======
Password does not conform to policy. The current policy requirements are:
Must be at least 14 character(s) long
Must have at least 1 upper case letter(s)
Must have at least 1 lower case letter(s)
Must have at least 1 digit(s)
Must have at least 1 special character(s)
The only special characters allowed are ~@#$%^&*()-_= >?/\;:[]{}!,.
Must not match any of the last 24 password(s)
There’s a bit in the “Big Man” iPhone film when a character says “your aura is depleted”, which for me was one of those jarring “people vocally saying internet slang” moments.
https://youtu.be/AUrLMJQf2Bw
So, I think I'm done for the evening. Managed to get the dice roller working as intended with the `lark` parser which is a Christmas miracle. I'll clean it up tomorrow and make it look a bit better code-wise, but I'm pretty happy it does what it says it does. I'll probably roll this into the Pathfinder 2E TUI character sheet.
```
$ python main.py
Roll to parse: (3d8 2d6 15)[lightning] (4d10)[piercing] 3d8
===============================================…
Endoscopy for metaplectic affine Hecke categories
Gurbir Dhillon, Yau Wing Li, Zhiwei Yun, Xinwen Zhu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16667 https://
On the Sum of Additive Characters and its Applications over Finite Fields
Maithri K., Shivarama K. N., Indira K. P
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16081 https:/…
Some Battle of Tarot animation tests with Spine. This is our character based off of The Magician tarot archetype.
#BattleOfTarot #GameDev
I used https://posemy.art/ to make this rough mock-up cover for the next ESPionage adventure; Sunny Day and Rain. It's better than pasting a collage of elements together.
"Wire frame model of a kneeling man considering a broken 8-track cassette. A lifeless arm lays partially out of frame."
"I want to establish a wide range and play all kinds of parts. It's that sort of acting career I really respect. I like to turn a sharp left from whatever I've done before because that keeps me awake. That's why I want to be an actor - I don't want to play endless variations on one character."
-Tim Curry
#acting
Cohomology rings of character varieties
Anton Mellit
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12454 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.12454
Character.AI rolls out features like AvatarFX for video generation, plus Streams and Scenes for creating and sharing videos with characters on a new social feed (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/02/chat
I mean I knew that Musk was a giant loser but you won't believe how pathetic he can get. I am about to be finished reading "Character Limit" and the stories in there are something else. He is a small, damaged, complete loser of human being. wow. So much external power and money, yet he is a miserable twat. So many stories... will have to attach some here
Series D, Episode 11 - Orbit
AVON: That is because Orac has read your security file on Central Records.
EGRORIAN: [Looks disturbed. Takes the file from Vila.] Disconnect the funnel, Pinder. [Looks at the file]
[On Servalan's monitor]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/411/306
Any email address is a valid email address once it has at least one character before the @, one character after the @ and a character after the full stop (.)
You should _not_ be doing any checks beyond that. (Unless the domain name is a known spammy domain/TLD, of course, but that doesn't appear to be the case here)
My email address is a 1 character before the @, 2 characters after the @ and 2 letters after the full stop(.)
It is valid.
#noxp
#GameIdea: A narrative game where the gameplay is mostly in speech bubbles where you need to overcome distractions and understand what people are trying to say to you.
Each character talks at their own rate, and you have minigames to reveal their words. Distractions like nearby sounds and movement pull your cursor away or create new minigames to overcome to get your focus back on y…
Done some more work with the VR animation engine today.
Seems to now be working that I can lay in the path that the character will walk, and then puppet their limbs as they walk it.
Done more work to standardize how all the slapdash episode structure is so now there's also a #wip #starshipsd #gamedev
A good friend of mine has the Muppet character "Beaker" as his avatar. For reasons.
He offers me advice. I offer him advice. We chat. These are #ChatsWithBeaker
Series A, Episode 05 - The Web
CALLY: You're very practical.
[Decimas are exploring the area immediately outside the laboratory. Inside, Geela is making adjustments to the console.]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/105/394 B7B5
moviegalaxies: Moviegalaxies, movies 410-466 (2018)
Social graphs for over 700 movies from the moviegalaxies.com website. Each node represents a character in a movie and each edge is a same-scene appearance between two characters in that movie. The weight gives the number of same-scene appearances. Networks are extracted from movie scripts automatically.
This network has 25 nodes and 91 edges.
Tags: Social, Fictional, Weighted
"I want to establish a wide range and play all kinds of parts. It's that sort of acting career I really respect. I like to turn a sharp left from whatever I've done before because that keeps me awake. That's why I want to be an actor - I don't want to play endless variations on one character."
-Tim Curry
#acting
Before returning to Albion EU I wanted to get at least full T4 gear on Albion Asia plus Avalonian Pickaxe after using learning points to get to T4 mining. Upgrade costs are part of the data.
As of this moment I give a brief glance at all members in the guild "Mastodon Fediverse 100 Tax":
1/7 online. The 1 that's me of course.
Here are my notes on etherpad(attached image)
The British Gas furry blue flame character adverts are adorable.
Series A, Episode 10 - Breakdown
BLAKE: Jenna, you take my place. Brief Cally.
[Computer room, Gan tries to pull piping from wall]
AVON: Gan, no! You'll break the computer links, we'll never get them started. [Avon tries to stop Gan, who thows him off]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/110/295
Character sheaves on loop Lie algebras: polar partition
Ngo Bao Chau, Zhiwei Yun
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14584 https://arxiv.org/p…
A good friend of mine has the Muppet character "Beaker" as his avatar. For reasons.
He offers me advice. I offer him advice. We chat. These are #ChatsWithBeaker
moviegalaxies: Moviegalaxies, movies 410-466 (2018)
Social graphs for over 700 movies from the moviegalaxies.com website. Each node represents a character in a movie and each edge is a same-scene appearance between two characters in that movie. The weight gives the number of same-scene appearances. Networks are extracted from movie scripts automatically.
This network has 35 nodes and 89 edges.
Tags: Social, Fictional, Weighted
Character varieties, hexagonal 3-webs and Hess connection
Adjaratou Arame Diaw (UCAD), Karamoko Diarra (USTTB), Frank Loray (IRMAR), Tangue Ndawa Bertuel
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.07542
Series A, Episode 06 - Seek-Locate-Destroy
RONTANE: With respect, Supreme Commander, we are aware of the facts. They are simply that with all the resources that the Federation can call upon, this one vulnerable, lucky man is still free to cause havoc.
SERVALAN: You have some criticism of my handling of this matter, Secretary Rontane?
htt…
On the correlations between character sums of division polynomials under shifts
Subham Bhakta, Igor E. Shparlinski
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09271 https:/…
Grok's iOS app now features two AI "Companions", or 3D animated avatars that interact with users via voice, including Ani, an anime character with an NSFW mode (Alexey Shabanov/TestingCatalog)
https://www.testingcatalog.com/grok-debuts
MastodonFedivers is a character on the EU server of Albion Online that I made specifically for this I guess, playing and talking about my adventures here...
Edit:
I also realized there is no guild in the entirety of Albion Online EU that got "fediverse" in it.
Also any guild with 'mastodon' in it is ALSO missing!
I got an idea for "variable tax" ie. one week it is 100%, another week it's 0%...could work?
Series D, Episode 12 - Warlord
ZEEONA: I didn't intend to. I go home tomorrow aboard their freighter. Tarrant will take me.
[Corridor in Scorpio base. Zukan and Avon are walking along.]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/412/158 B7B3
With my MastodonFedivers character I gathered for 30 minutes after consuming a pork pie( 15% yield in everything gathered!) I got these:
* 143 ore 5.0 - 35k
* 192 ore 4.0 - 16k
* 16 logs 4.2 - 9k
* 38 ore 4.1 - 7k
* 14 logs 4.1 - 1k
profit after selling it all:
* 68k
costs:
* 10k in repair costs(or 13k)
* 4k tp to ML
* 1 pork pie 5.3k
full T5 ore gear including Avalonian Pickaxe was used.
Albion EU is down?
- Still down, in maintenance...could not log in moments ago...
I got another character called MastodonFediAsia which I play on AlbionAsia. Unfortunately I already created a guild with 100 tax in it...that was a mistake...but I can fix this mistake by changing tax to 0% and then adding that only during special events for brief moments tax may be higher than 0%
#AlbionOnline
Primes in Arithmetic Progressions to Large Moduli and Siegel Zeroes
Thomas Wright
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10780 https://arxiv.org/…
#Blakes7 Series A, Episode 04 - Time Squad
BLAKE: Take a look.
[Avon enters hold]
BLAKE: [To Avon] Thank you.
AVON: Glad to be of help.
JENNA: You don't sound too sure about that. Thanks anyway. Nice flying.
[Blake goes to intercom]