Barbara Speed

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Barbara Speed

A few years ago, a Hollywood studio approached the tech giant IBM with an idea. Perhaps it would be fun if Watson – the company’s artificial intelligence system – analysed its new film about an artificial humanoid gone rogue, and created a trailer for it. The technology was duly “trained” on 100 horror trailers, fed the 90-minute film, and a human editor helped stitch its chosen clips together. The result, billed as “the first movie trailer made by AI”, is awful.

Feb 20, 2025 | theguardian.com | Barbara Speed |Catherine Shoard |Hollie Richardson |Anne Billson |Kira Cochrane |Gwilym Mumford | +2 more

The dropped toy bunnyI managed to cry before the opening titles, at a scene so innocuous that I must have disconcerted those around me. Bridget picks up her daughter’s stuffed rabbit, sniffs it, says “It stinks!”, then kisses it anyway. It hints at the radical self-acceptance our widowed protagonist seems determined to instil in her children – but it’s also testament to the amount of Bridget lore heaped into this film.

Jan 15, 2025 | msn.com | Barbara Speed

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.

Jan 15, 2025 | theguardian.com | Barbara Speed

For many women I know, contraception is a kind of decades-long quest. The goal: to not get pregnant unless we want to. The tools: limited, imperfect and, sometimes, rejected by our uncooperative bodies. I have gone on the pill, come off the pill, tried to get the coil (and failed, thanks to my heart rate dropping during the procedure), and had an implant that looked like a short piece of spaghetti poked into my arm, only to have it taken out again after spending months in a fug of sadness.

Dec 26, 2023 | msn.com | Barbara Speed

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.