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After leaving the White House, Michelle Obama might not be the first lady, but she might still be our gabber-in-chief shes added an appearance at a womens conference in Philadelphia to her chat-it-up tour.

Obama will headline the Pennsylvania Conference for Women in October, for an expected audience of 10,000, the nonpartisan organization announced. With her career-long devotion to improving the lives of children, increasing nutrition awareness, and advocating for equal access to education, Michelle Obamas impact clearly extends beyond her White House years, the groups board president, Leslie Stiles, said in the announcement.

The format of the former FLOTUSs cameo follows the pattern she has set since leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Its a conversation, not a speech, which allows Obama to be more relaxed and, well, conversational, than a formal address dictates.

In April, she sat for a wide-ranging, and largely politics-free, Q&A at the American Institute of Architectures annual conference and in May at thePartnership for a Healthier America summit. Shes been relatively more free-spoken than when she was the on-message wife of the prez at the latter event, she poked fun at her husbands famously deeply unbuttoned shirts and countered proposed GOP cuts to the school lunch program with a salty retort: Think about why someone is okay with your kids eating crap.

No word on how much the popular former first lady is being paid, but Mike Allen of Axios reports that she commands a whopping $200,000, which is half of what her husband can earn but just as much as former president George W. Bush.

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Michelle Obama continues her speaking tour with appearance at women's conference - Washington Post

Michelle Obama returned to the spotlight as a presenter at The ESPYS, drawing the loudest ovation at the awards show honoring the past year's best athletes and moments in sports.

The former first lady made a rare public appearance since leaving the White House in January. She presented the Arthur Ashe Courage Award posthumously to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of Special Olympics. Shriver's son, Tim, accepted on Wednesday night in Los Angeles.

"I am here tonight to honor a remarkable woman, a woman who believed that everyone has something to contribute and everyone deserves a chance. When we give others the chance to fulfill their greatest potential, we all win," Obama said before being joined onstage by eight Special Olympics athletes. "Through her passionate service, she made our world more welcoming, inclusive and fair."

Shriver accepted the silver trophy from Obama.

"Once a great first lady, still a great first lady," he said as the crowd roared.

Obama smiled with her arm on one of the athletes as Shriver urged that more work needs to be done to achieve equality toward people with intellectual disabilities.

"Our mother would have loved you," he said. "She would have loved your forthrightness, your honesty, your toughness, your commitment also to get everybody on the playing field. She would have been so honored that you are here for her tonight as we all are."

Obama walked off stage sharing a hug with one of the female athletes.

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Michelle Obama earns loud ovation from athletes at The ESPYS - ABC News

by: Rare.us Updated: Jul 12, 2017 - 10:40 PM

Former President Barack Obama will officially step back into the political realm for the first time since leaving office in January when heattends a fundraiser on Thursday to help raise funds for the Democrats efforts to draw new district lines.

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Obama will be the main attraction at a small fundraising event being hosted by former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is leading the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, at a private home in Washington, D.C.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is also involved with the Democratic redistricting effort, will also be in attendance.

Obama and Holder have spoken about redistricting, which is focused on winning state legislative seats and court battles, numerous times, even before the former president left office.

In 2016, Holder laid out the reason for the redistricting push, saying in an interview, American voters deserve fair maps that represent our diverse communities and we need a coordinated strategy to make that happen. This unprecedented new effort will ensure Democrats have a seat at the table to create fairer maps after 2020.

The former president also released astatement on redistricting through his spokesperson, Kevin Lewis:

Restoring fairness to our democracy by advocating for fairer, more inclusive district maps around the country is a priority for President Obama. [] The President supports NDRC, Holders efforts to address unfair gerrymandering practices that leave too many American voters feeling voiceless in the electoral process.

This is the only political event on Obamas schedule in the near future as he continues to shy away from weighing in on too many political topics. He does, however, want to help balance out the inequities that he sees on political maps. As one top aide toldThe Chicago Tribune, Obama will be supporting efforts that tackle the inequities of our current political system.

2017 Cox Media Group.

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Barack Obama set to attend first post-presidency political event - icFlorida

By Christy Bowe/Corbis/Getty Images.

Back in 2014, President Obama professed his undying love to Meryl Streep while presenting the Oscar-winning actress with the Medal of Freedom. I love Meryl Streep, Obama announced, officially declaring himself Team Meryl. Her husband knows I love her. Michelle knows I love her. There's nothing they can do about it. Since then, Streeps relationship with both Obama and especially his wife, Michelle, has escalatedwith the actress and former First Lady, both fierce equal-rights advocates, teaming up for a joint interview; a trip to Africa; a hug; and a star-studded farewell party at the White House. And now, Streep has officially pledged her allegiance to the Obamas by debuting a snazzy custom accessory emblazoned with their visages.

The accessory: a purse printed with a photo of the Obamas smiling and dancing, superimposed over a graphic of the White House. E!, which has a photo of Streep stepping out with said bag, reports that the opposite side of the bag features Michelle posing with her hand against her head and a smirk on her face.

Streep carried the bag while leaving her trailer on the New York set of her upcoming political drama The Papers, directed by Steven Spielberg, co-starring Tom Hanks, and centering on The Washington Posts handling of the Pentagon papers.

Back in 2009, a journalist told Streep that she is Barack Obamas favorite actress. (You can watch her giddy response below.) I love him. I think hes fantastic, Streep gushed in response. I havent met him. . . but I think hes fantastic. Part of it is, just where weve been, Streep continued. The comparison [between past presidents]. A thoughtful person. A person who actually weighs several arguments before coming to a decision, who admits descent, who welcomes it. Its all the things that weve dreamed of, for too many years.

Fast-forward eight years later to 2016, when Streep and the Obamas had not only met, but collaborated, so much so that Michelle Obama paid tribute to her friend and fellow equal-rights advocate at a screening of the CNN documentary We Will Rise.

The great Meryl Streep has just devoted her not-a-lot-of time to this project, Obama said, referring to Streeps commitment to Obamas Let Girls Learn initiative. And she is a delightfulshe is delightful and is intelligent and is focused and engagedas you would imagine Meryl Streep to be. Thats what I tell everybody. Meryl Streep is exactly as awesome as you would imagine Meryl Streep to be.

When presenting Streep with the presidential medal of freedom, Barack Obama similarly praised the actress, saying, Shes done it all for her craft. Shes sung Abba, which you know, thats something. She learned violin. She wore a nuns habit, faced down a charging lion, mastered every accent under the sun. She inhabits her characters so fully and compassionately.

While it is unclear where Streep got this pursedid she design it herself?!we hope that somewhere, deep in the Obamas closet, there is some sort of Streep apparelperhaps a graphic teewith her face and name literally on it.

This is not the first explicitly patriotic article of clothing Streep has worn, for those keeping track at home. Last July, Streep wore a a gauzy, Catherine Malandrino American flag-style dress at the Democratic National Convention. Certainly the Obama bag wont endear Streep in the heart of sitting president Donald Trump, who called the actress overrated in Januarynot that she cares.

Meryl Streep in New York Citys Theater District,1978.

John Cazale and Streep during the filming of The Deer Hunter, 1977.

Justin Henry and Dustin Hoffman in 1979.

Streep in the films climactic courtroom sequence.

Hoffman, Streep, director-screenwriter Robert Benton, and producer Stanley Jaffe with their Academy Awards, 1980

Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman while filming 1979s Kramer vs. Kramer.

Streep in New York City, 1979.

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Meryl Streep in New York Citys Theater District,1978.

Photograph by Duane Michals; From the DC Moore Gallery, New York.

John Cazale and Streep during the filming of The Deer Hunter, 1977.

From the Core Collection Production Files of The Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Justin Henry and Dustin Hoffman in 1979.

Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe.

Streep in the films climactic courtroom sequence.

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Hoffman and Henry in the film.

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Hoffman, Streep, director-screenwriter Robert Benton, and producer Stanley Jaffe with their Academy Awards, 1980

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman while filming 1979s Kramer vs. Kramer.

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Streep in New York City, 1979.

By Theo Westenberger/Theo Westenberger Archives, 1974-2008, Autry Museum, Los Angeles.

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Here's How Much Meryl Streep Loves the Obamas - Vanity Fair

The researchers used 14 hours of Obama's weekly address videos to train a neural network. Once trained, their system was then able to take an audio clip from the former president, create mouth shapes that synced with the audio and then synthesize a realistic looking mouth that matched Obama's. The mouth synced to the audio was then superimposed and blended onto a video of Obama that was different from the audio source. To make it look more natural, the system corrected for head placement and movement, timing and details like how the jaw looked. The whole process is automated save for one manual step that requires a person to select two frames in the video where the subject's upper and lower teeth are front-facing and highly visible. Those images are then used by the system to make the resulting video's teeth look more realistic.

The program isn't perfect yet, but in the video below you can see how much better it gets after three minutes, one hour, seven hours and 14 hours of training data. Some limitations the team has pointed out include occasional mistakes in mouth and facial alignment -- sometimes it gave Obama two chins -- an inability to match emotion and issues arising with sounds that require a particular placement of the tongue, like "th," which isn't currently covered by their program.

But, overall this artificial lip-syncing program creates a much more realistic image than others have. The work will be published in ACM Transactions on Graphics and you can see the researchers' process in the video below.

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Researchers make a surprisingly smooth artificial video of Obama - Engadget