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Ken San Jose set for Broadway debut in ‘Evita’ revival

Ken San Jose will star in the upcoming Broadway revival of "Evita" via Instagram/@ kensanjose Filipino American performer Ken San Jose will make his Broadway debut in the 2027 revival of Evita, joining the ensemble of director Jamie Lloyd’s production starring Rachel Zegler as Eva Perón. Previews begin Feb. 27 at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York,…

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Sep 26 • 2:43 AM EDT • Entertainment • asianjournal.com
‘A Statement’ Review: Tom McCarthy’s Talky Climate Crisis Seriocomedy Is Light Entertainment That Hardly Rakes the Muck

New York Film Festival: The Oscar-winning writer/director turns his spotlight on a plushly appointed ensemble as the environmental stewards and scholars who tried to solve the climate crisis over one ...

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Oct 3 • 8:15 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
‘Untitled Vampire Play’

The world premiere of ensemble member Kevin Douglas' “Untitled Vampire Play” at Lookingglass Theatre Company can't decide if it wants to be a parody or make a serious point, so

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Jul 6 • 2:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • hpherald.com
Lookingglass Theatre has new leaders, including David Schwimmer as producing director

CHICAGO — Lookingglass Theatre has appointed David Catlin, a longtime ensemble member and a Northwestern University faculty member, and Ericka Ratcliff, most recently the literary manager at Chicago Shakespeare Theater,

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Sep 29 • 11:14 AM EDT • Entertainment • recorderonline.com
Arlington business puts the lid on your ensemble

FauxyFurr offers custom-made hats, upcycled fashion and western accessories fit for any occasion.

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Jun 6 • 4:30 AM EDT • Business • heraldnet.com
Nara Smith says 2-year-old-daughter Whimsy's cancer is in remission

The content creator, known for making elaborate meals while wearing glamorous ensembles, tells her TikTok and Instagram followers that she and her husband have spent the last eight months processing their daughter’s health battle.

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Jul 18 • 11:05 AM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
Scranton Times-Tribune

For a feel for the past and present of entertainment in Northeastern Pennsylvania, consider the Ritz Theater in Scranton. Will Rogers did rope tricks there in the heyday of vaudeville, in the same place metal bands and jazz ensembles play…

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Jun 7 • 12:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • thetimes-tribune.com
Healthcare AI’s next test is integration

While advanced AI excels at processing clinical data, healthcare's true test lies in overcoming deeply fragmented administrative workflows.

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Sep 10 • 4:58 AM EDT • Health • technologyreview.com
Tracking global water circulation using atomic fingerprints

Scientists have developed a powerful new way to trace the journey of water across the planet by reading tiny atomic clues hidden inside it. Slightly heavier versions of hydrogen and oxygen, called isotopes, shift in predictable ways as water evaporates and moves through the atmosphere. By combining eight advanced climate models into a single ensemble, researchers created the most accurate large-scale simulation yet of how water circulates worldwide.

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Feb 15 • 7:00 AM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com
'Sinners' wins best ensemble at Actor Awards, setting up Oscar showdown

Michael B. Jordan won best male actor at the 32nd Actors Awards, upsetting the category favorite, Timothée Chalamet, and handing the 39-year-old Jordan the most significant prize of his acclaimed

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Mar 1 • 10:33 PM EST • Entertainment • yakimaherald.com
"During the training sequence, we make a false promise": IO Interactive on the ensemble James Bond game that 007 First Light never was

But almost was!

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Jul 18 • 5:55 PM EDT • Technology • rockpapershotgun.com
April stays busy on local entertainment

The first two weeks of April feature four free performances by small ensembles and solo performers, ranging from introspective Chopin nocturnes to extroverted Broadway showtunes.

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Mar 27 • 1:30 PM EDT • Entertainment • davisenterprise.com
DCC hosts flute ensemble

The monthly free midday concerts at Davis Community Church on the second Friday of the month continue with a flute quartet at noon Friday, Sept. 11. Davis Community Church is

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Sep 4 • 1:53 PM EDT • Entertainment • davisenterprise.com
April’s Trading Post Positively Sprouts with Garden Delights

April’s Trading post arrives in full bloom, heralding in the rejuvenation of sun-dappled days and tending the garden. Take part in a variety of activities to earn this month’s reward— get the Ensemble: Forest Dweller's Butterfly Attire transmog set.

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Mar 30 • 1:00 PM EDT • Technology • news.blizzard.com
You are Invited to Health on the Line: Our Bodies, Plastics and Data Centers

The Iowa Conference Board of Church and Society is committed to connecting our faith with key social issues impacting our communities and God’s ...

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Aug 27 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • iaumc.org
Entertainment briefs | Trio performs with Fortuna Concert Series

The Department of Dance, Music, and Theatre at Cal Poly Humboldt will present “Contemporary Music for Percussion” performed by the Cal Poly Humboldt Percussion Ensemble and “Samba of Bahia” performed by the World Percussion Group.

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Apr 9 • 6:50 AM EDT • Entertainment • times-standard.com
Andy Serkis defends all-white ‘Lord of the Rings’ ensemble, says casting wasn’t ‘politically correct’

Andy Serkis says he didn’t take a ‘politically correct just-casting-for-the sake-of-casting-and-ticking-boxes’ approach to all-white ensemble of his upcoming ‘Lord of the Rings’ film, ‘The Hunt for Gollum.’

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Jul 15 • 8:11 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
Feature: Moore ’26 Keeps Busy with Double Science Major and Music

Luke Moore ’26 came to Kansas Wesleyan on a music scholarship. He’s graduating this weekend (May 16) with a double major in Chemistry and Physics. He’s as active on the music side as he is with his science activities — he’s played the cello for 10 years, including four years at Kansas Wesleyan. It’s common, he said, for scientists and musicians to share those interests. “I’ve spoken to plenty of musicians who would have done science if they weren’t musicians, and I’ve talked to plenty of scientists who would have done music if they weren’t scientists,” Mooresaid. He played the cello in the string orchestra, which he’s done since his first year, and as a junior and senior, sang in the Philharmonic Choir as a bass. He hadn’t sung in a choir since middle schoolin Garden City, but he found he really enjoys that aspect of his college career. Also as a junior, Moore helped re-activate the STEM Club as vice president. For two years, he helped build the club’s battlebot. Last year the bot came home from battles in Kansas City in pieces, lots of pieces. This year it came home with the first-place trophy. He’s helped make frozen nitrogen ice cream at Homecoming and other events and helped organize the STEM Club’s first gingerbread house competition for the holidays. Willing to get his hands – and face – dirty for science, he encouraged fellow musicians and scientists to smash him in the face with whipped cream pies on Pi Day (March 14) as a fundraiser for the STEM Club. His capstone project involved developing a metallic organic framework (MOF) that takes a methylene blue dye out of water. “I’m proud that I was able to design this project, and I was proud that I did end up making the MOF,” Moore said. The professors and attitudes at KWU have made all this possible. “I don’t actually have time for everything,” Moore said. “I have to prioritize things. Things inevitably fall through the cracks, but it’s hard for me to choose one over the other, because I like a lot of things. And I don’t want to not do music, and I don’t want to not do science.” Moore said that Kansas Wesleyan, as a smaller university, gives students the opportunity to try things. “If I were to want to be in a music ensemble, it would probably be a bit harder in a larger school. One nice thing about this school is that everyone’s involved in something,” he said. “Professors know that you have other things going on, and they are flexible and understanding.” Moore has applied to grad schools, with an goal of earning his Ph.D. and landing at a university big enough to allow for a small research team that also gives him an opportunity to teach. He’s off to a good start. Moore is receiving the award for Outstanding Research in the Math, Physics and Computer Studies Department at Commencement this year. Story by Jean Kozubowski

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May 15 • 4:27 PM EDT • Science • kwu.edu
A heartfelt and emotional ‘Tick, Tick... Boom!’ from Triune Entertainment

Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical musical is performed with a wonderful blend of harmonies in the ensemble numbers.

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Jun 23 • 1:47 PM EDT • Entertainment • dctheaterarts.org
Iconic pop star, 45, stuns in sheer leather ensemble
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Oct 12 • 10:36 AM EDT • Entertainment • nypost.com
Stars of tomorrow — and today

UNLV’s Jazz Ensemble I and Latin Ensemble bands return to Ham Hall on Saturday.

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Sep 11 • 8:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • neon.reviewjournal.com
Carson City celebrates 23rd Jazz and Beyond Music Festival with 10 days of music, entertainment and performances

An eclectic mix of swing, big band, ensembles and even country music is lined up now through next weekend as Carson City’s 23rd Annual Jazz & Beyond Music Festival is […]

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Aug 15 • 1:30 PM EDT • Entertainment • carsonnow.org
Frederick Theatre District Collaborative will host joint Comedy Festival

Three downtown venues — Maryland Ensemble Theatre, New Spire Arts and the Weinberg Center for the Arts — are partnering for a Comedy Festival running May 1 to 3. Tickets

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Apr 26 • 1:11 PM EDT • Entertainment • fredericknewspost.com
More live entertainment announcements for the Mothman Festival

Local favorites the PPHS Rock Ensemble will be performing on the Main Stage.

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Sep 13 • 12:21 PM EDT • Entertainment • wvnews.com
UW-Eau Claire’s marching band to perform in 2027 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

It’ll be the ninth ensemble from Wisconsin to participate in the parade in its over 101 years of operation.

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Oct 1 • 9:06 AM EDT • Entertainment • spectrumnews1.com
Looking at the Ugly Side of the Paramount-Skydance Merger...And How I’d Fix It

A Message from Our Sponsor Certified Fresh with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, FX’s Adults is an ensemble comedy series about a group of twenty-somethings in New York leaning on each other to navigate love, work, friendship and family. Don’t sleep on “The Sitcom of the Moment” - Awards Buzz All Episodes now streaming on Hulu on Disney+. Watch The Teaser Trailer... (Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industr(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) Before we dive in, I wanted to congratulate Broadcast Now for being the first to report that Netflix’s How to Get to Heaven from Belfast has been cancelled. (I saw this in a write-up by Kasey Moore of Whats-On-Netflix.) More importantly, I wanted to note that, as of yesterday, none of the other trades had reported the news yet. I have half a guess that eventually one of them will report this. Anyways, it’s time to take a break from my deluge of streaming ratings reports to continue my analysis of the Paramount Skydance Warner Bros. Discovery (PSWbD) saga. As I noted last week, a lot of times when folks use the (sometimes cliched) “the good, the bad and the ugly” framing for an article, “the ugly” section is just more bad. Or very, very bad. In this case, yeah, I do think it’s ugly. In more than one way. Unfortunately, we’re only going to have time to tackle one of those ways today: the ugly pile of debt to finance this deal. (In a future article, I may cover the entire process for how it went down, which was very, very ugly.) Last issue, I explained why I liked this deal in a vacuum. Unfortunately, “vacuums” don’t exist outside of space. Let’s dive in. Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - The Ugliness of the Paramount/Warner Bros. Merger More than one person sent me a note speculating that the big problem with Paramount Skydance buying Warner Bros. Discovery is the “Warner Bros.” portion of the deal. In fact, that’s a take I read a lot about Warner Bros., ever since they caught Netflix’s, and then Paramount-Skydance’s, eye. In short, multiple companies (Time, AOL, AT&T, Discovery) have bought and then regretted buying Warner Bros. Since it’s nearing Halloween, you could almost say it’s like the folks think WB is cursed! It’s a haunted studio—like the town of Derry in movie studio form—and whoever takes possession of it will fall into misery! Yet...I just don’t like that story, because it doesn’t explain the “why” behind why those deals fell through. Especially when Warner Bros. has continued to succeed as a TV and film studio in the intervening two decades. Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter? Game of Thrones? Everything HBO? Considering it never fully owned a broadcast TV channel, this media company has done pretty well. So what went wrong? Well, in recent years, companies bought Warner Bros. instead of the other, smarter option. Explaining POCD (And Applying It to Mergers & Acquisitions) As I explained last issue, one of my favorite frameworks is the POCD tool for evaluating venture capital investments: People Opportunity Context Deal The bar to invest as a VC is high. (Or I might say “was” since cheap interest rates made life easier last decade.) You review a thousand prospectuses, get pitched by a hundred, and invest in the ten best, with the hopes that one of those ten would pay for the rest. That means every element of a deal needed to pay off: you needed the right people running the companies, who could capitalize on the right opportunity, in the context of an industry that was ripe for disruption. If you could then not overpay, you could make some money in a smart deal. The analogy isn’t perfect here, but close enough. For a merger or acquisition to work, you need the combined company (which is the opportunity) to make more than the price you need to pay (which is the deal). Note: the people and context still matter, but with M&A, it’s a little more straightforward: does the opportunity exceed the cost? And usually with Warner Bros., it hasn’t. If you want to find out the single biggest mistake made by the Warner Bros. suitors over the last few years (and my simple fix) become a paid subscriber. I’ll also touch on who I think Paramount-Skydance could (shockingly) consider buying next, TBD, and more. Sign up here.

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Sep 30 • 6:41 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
Live coverage: Avio to launch spacecraft to monitor plant health and ocean conditions

The mission, with the shorthand VV30, is the second launch of a Vega-C rocket managed solely by Avio without Arianespace. Liftoff from Ensemble de Lancement Vega at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana is scheduled for 10:21 p.m. local time (9:21 p.m. EDT / 0121 UTC / 3:21 a.m. CEST).

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Sep 14 • 6:05 PM EDT • Health • spaceflightnow.com
‘White Rooster’ needs more work

The world premiere of ensemble member Matthew C. Yee's “White Rooster” at Lookingglass Theatre should be riveting. It has all the elements of compelling drama: a multi-layered plot that mixes

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Mar 30 • 2:49 PM EDT • Entertainment • hpherald.com
A Fiesta’s Serious Business

As if in pilgrimage, three resolute singers carried a melody down the nave toward the stage to open La Donna Musicale’s concert at the Church of the Covenant last Sunday. Their seamless blend with the ensemble’s five musicians set the tone for a program of love and longing that moved across some fiv

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Oct 8 • 10:43 PM EDT • Business • classical-scene.com
April stays busy with local entertainment

The first two weeks of April feature four free performances by small ensembles and solo performers, ranging from introspective Chopin nocturnes to extroverted Broadway showtunes.

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Mar 27 • 1:30 PM EDT • Entertainment • davisenterprise.com
Naomi Osaka exits U.S. Open, but not before displaying one more 'swaggy' fashion ensemble

Naomi Osaka may not have gone out of the U.S. Open with much of a bang. The two-time U.S. Open champion lost a lopsided fourth-round match on Monday to Elena Rybakina. Osaka, already known for her walk-on fashion reveals at tournaments, has been upping her game at the year's final major with a series of dramatic ensembles — all with a basketball theme, as her sponsor, Nike, honors the New York Knicks' championship win.

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Sep 7 • 10:35 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Nonprofit health system raked in $1.1 billion this year from stake in medical billing firm

Private equity firms have taken a strong interest in revenue cycle management firms, such as Ensemble.

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Aug 18 • 4:50 PM EDT • Health • statnews.com
Katseye singer Sophia Laforteza steps away from group over mental health

The announcement came comes after fellow bandmate Manon Bannerman went on a hiatus from the ensemble.

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Aug 7 • 5:05 PM EDT • Health • bbc.com
Five Families Ensemble to perform at MVCC

Mohawk Valley Community College will host the Five Families Ensemble for a concert at Schafer Theater on its Utica campus, with tickets available online.

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Sep 13 • 9:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • romesentinel.com
Musical reviews: 'Brigadoon' soars, 'Flower Drum Song' falters

'Brigadoon' soars at Pasadena Playhouse but 'Flower Drum Song' only intermittently comes to life at Little Tokyo's Aratani Theatre despite best intentions.

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May 20 • 6:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
How the brain finds order in visual chaos

Study of ensemble perception in mice finds that the early visual cortex does more than just relay information

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Aug 3 • 1:03 AM EDT • Science • advancedsciencenews.com
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Fisher-Lochhead group to play at Opera House

The Danny Fisher-Lochhead Large Ensemble will bring its unique sound to the Stonington Opera House on Friday, Sept. 11, at 7 p.m.

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Aug 31 • 8:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • ellsworthamerican.com
ENTERTAINMENT: Youth jazz ensemble to bring concert to WAC

The Northwest Arkansas Jazz Society’s All-Star Youth Ensemble makes its 10th-season debut with guest “star” jazz saxophonist Adam Larson, 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center.

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Apr 25 • 1:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • arkansasonline.com
“AI polls” are fake polls

A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.

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Apr 11 • 11:38 AM EDT • Technology • natesilver.net
Union for Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians authorizes first strike in ensemble's 145-year history

The union for Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians has authorized the first strike in the ensemble's 145-year history | KCBS All News 106.9FM and 740AM

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Aug 22 • 10:49 PM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
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Taylor Swift's Eras Tour Ensemble? Forme Science

Taylor Swift was seen in her latest Eras Tour documentary wearing Forme Science's Power Bra. We're debreifing on the bra and where you can buy it now.

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Dec 12, 2025 • 11:32 AM EST • Science • billboard.com
The best, boldest and most 'wait, what?' Stagecoach outfits, from Sydney Sweeney’s corset to Brittany and Patrick Mahomes' coordinated country-chic

From Sydney Sweeney's lingerie saloon moment to Post Malone's quadruple denim ensemble, the best Stagecoach looks went beyond the basics.

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Apr 27 • 2:11 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
PickleJar Entertainment Group Provides Fan Engagement Platform for Romantic Comedy Sunflower Child Starring Gavin Casalegno

Following Buyer Introduction at European Film Market in Berlin, MSR Media International to Continue International Distribution Push at Upcoming Cannes Film Festival Amazon's "The Summer I Turned Pretty" Star Leads Ensemble Cast; Project Now in Post-P...

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Apr 30 • 10:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • finance.yahoo.com
Fall Movie Preview: Russo brothers, maestros of ensembles, test their limits in 'Avengers: Doomsday'

Ups and downs have followed the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame,” but “Avengers: Doomsday” might just heal all its wounds.

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Sep 2 • 6:05 AM EDT • Entertainment • wsls.com
Regé-Jean Page to headline new erotic Netflix series 4 years after departing “Bridgerton”

Page has appeared in the ensembles of "The Gray Man," "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," and "Black Bag" since exiting the period drama series.

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Dec 2, 2025 • 2:15 PM EST • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Photos show Baghdad Ballet Academy students taking the stage at Baghdad’s Al-Sinbad Theater

BAGHDAD (AP) — Students from Baghdad’s Ballet Academy performed a production titled “Mermaid” before an audience at Al-Sinbad Theater on Friday. Wearing colorful costumes, dancers of different ages presented solo and ensemble routines, moving through choreographed formations, leaps and turns...

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Sep 27 • 2:48 PM EDT • Entertainment • seattletimes.com
Bryan Cranston misses “The Studio ”costar Catherine O'Hara 'so much': 'Just heartbreaking to lose her'

O'Hara appeared in the ensemble cast as Patty Leigh, the outgoing head of Continental Studios, while Cranston's Griffin Mill took over.

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Jun 9 • 3:36 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Union for Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians authorizes first strike in ensemble's 145-year history

The union for Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians has authorized the first strike in the ensemble's 145-year history | Newsradio 1140 WRVA

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Aug 22 • 10:49 PM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
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Arts and Entertainment Calendar

Vocal Showcase – April 30, 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Held in Coulter Recital Hall, this School of Music showcase features WCU vocal students performing solo and ensemble repertoire. Open to the public. More information at: https://wcu.campuslabs.com/engage/event/11939071 Late Night Writing – May 1, 9 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. A relaxed late‑night writing session in UC […]

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Apr 30 • 12:45 PM EDT • Entertainment • westerncarolinian.com
"AMERICANA:" Canticus Vocal Ensemble concert celebrates Declaration’s 250th anniversary

Canticus Vocal Ensemble will present “AMERICANA,” its final concert of the 2025-2026 season, at 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 3, 2026, at Englewood Christian Church. It will be a celebration

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Apr 26 • 11:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • yakimaherald.com
Orchestra Iowa concertmaster in spotlight for Masterworks II

Violinist and Orchestra Iowa concertmaster Julia Sakharova takes the spotlight this weekend as the ensemble performs works by Jessie Montgomery, Felix Mendelssohn, and Sergei Rachmaninoff at venues in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.

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Oct 13 • 6:50 AM EDT • Entertainment • thegazette.com
A Muny dream comes true for 13‑year‑old Myles Lacey

Thirteen‑year‑old Myles Lacey has sung in stadiums, on television and at events across the region. But stepping onto The Muny stage this week as part of the youth ensemble for Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations was different. For the first time, he wasn’t there to sing. He was there to […]

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Aug 2 • 11:49 AM EDT • Entertainment • stlamerican.com
ENTERTAINMENT: Youth jazz ensemble to bring concert to WAC

The Northwest Arkansas Jazz Society’s All-Star Youth Ensemble makes its 10th-season debut with guest “star” jazz saxophonist Adam Larson, 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center.

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Apr 25 • 1:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • nwaonline.com
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Entertainment briefs | Wind Ensemble to perform at Cal Poly Humboldt

The Cal Poly Humboldt Department of Dance, Music, and Theatre presents the Cal Poly Humboldt Wind Ensemble Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on campus in Arcata.

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Apr 30 • 6:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • times-standard.com