Habanerocouscous

Midge is a semi-disavowed character in the Barbieverse, created in 1963 to counter claims that Barbie was oversexualized; weirdly, in 1982, Mattel made the decision to release a version of the doll, who appeared to be a young teen, as a pregnant lady, with a detachable bump containing an articulated foetus. (more…)

Look at this jerk who hurt Messi.

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Hey Boston geeks! We moved over some tickets to the $8 student level, in case some people felt priced out by the fancier options.

The EVATAR is a working model of a reproductive system made from a mouse ovary and bits of a human uterus, cervix, vagina, fallopian tubes, and liver. Developed by Northwestern University researcher Teresa Woodruff and her colleagues, the EVATAR is intended to help better test the effects of medicines and toxins on women. And now it's completed its first full menstrual cycle. From National Geographic:

The tissues produced hormones that coursed through the miniature reproductive system, their levels rising and falling over 28 days.

Eventually, multiple synthetic systems could be linked up to essentially create a “human in a dish,” some researchers hope, reducing the need to experiment directly on people or animals.

And scientists hope such devices could one day use a patient’s own tissues to tailor treatments to an individual. Woodruff imagines a future in which a person’s medical care might be tailored using a series of personalized avatar devices as their own metabolism changes through the years.

“I think the future of women’s health is bright,” (Woodruff) says.

An Uber passenger in Seattle had either the best or worst trip of her life, depending on how she feels about live re-enactments of action movies. That’s because the Nissan Xterra Uber the 40-year-old woman was riding in hit a car, lost control, and drove right through a gas pump, causing a massive fireball.

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A group of tigers is called an “ambush” for a reason. When these massive cats get together and decide to catch some prey, they’re simply vicious. A quadcopter learned this the hard way at a Siberian tiger enclosure in China’s Heilongjiang Province. Not only did the beasts swipe the drone out of the sky—they took a few…

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Robbie Barrat is president and founder of their high school computer science club; they created Rapper-Neural-Network, a free software project that uses machine learning trained on a corpus of 6,000 Kanye West lines to autogenerate new rap songs. (more…)

This week's edition of the always, always-excellent On the Media podcast featured an interview (MP3) with notorious (and self-confessed) media manipulator Ryan Holiday, whose book, Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator describes his career in PR, in which he perfected the art of making terrible people rich by getting decent people to hate them. (more…)

Johns Hopkins teammates Joel Tinney and John Crawley, who have underwhelming names for lacrosse players, fooled most of Navy with a hidden-ball trick during Tuesday’s season opener. By the time Tinney delivered his shot, it was too late for the Midshipmen to defend.

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Within this WPRI feature on various New England Patriots’ high school glory days is a magnificent parable about how Rob Gronkowski, a butt with a tattoo of a butt with a tattoo of a butt on it, sacrificed his individual success for a greater cause.

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New Zealand Breakers big man Akil Mitchell suffered a horrific and gruesome injury in a game earlier this morning, when his eyeball “puffed out of its socket” after being caught by an opponent going for a rebound.

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Running gear for the new year, a TP-Link wireless router, the 5-in-1 RAVPower Filehub, and more lead Sunday’s best deals.

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What we’re reading, Paperback Paradise

Not sure about that one.

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Marquette King is a one-man anti-No Fun League machine, and the Raiders punter made it count late in Oakland’s game against Buffalo today by taking the flag thrown against Corey White for roughing—one that extended the drive and sealed a Raiders win—and celebrating with it.

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A patient at Tokyo Medical University Hospital was undergoing laser surgery on her uterus when she farted, apparently starting a fire that badly burnt her.

"When the patient's intestinal gas leaked into the space of the operation (room), it ignited with the irradiation of the laser, and the burning spread, eventually reaching the surgical drape and causing the fire," according to a report from the hospital.

(The Straits Times)

The winner-take-all economy has turned virtually every industry into a cartel (four record labels, two cable companies, two phone operating systems, etc) who operate without fear of competition regulation, allowing representatives of a few companies to gather in closed-door meetings to cook up operating agreements that end up having the force of law. (more…)