The Weekend Edition

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We publish the Enterprise Morning Edition in English and Arabic from Sunday through Thursday before 7am, with a focus on the business, economic and political news that will move markets each day. What you’re reading now is our Weekend Edition, which is light on news and heavy on stories to read, videos to watch, and podcasts to which you may want to listen on Friday and Saturday (that being the weekend for the vast majority of our readers). The Weekend Edition comes out each Friday between 9:00am and 9:30am CLT. We’re in beta and in English only right now.

We’ll be back on Sunday at around 6:15am with our usual roundup. Until then: Enjoy the weekend.

 

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SPEED ROUND, THE WEEKEND EDITION

It’s the end of the world as we know it: Netflix is going to block subscribers from accessing it via VPNs and unblockers. In plain English: If you or someone you know flips a switch on a program such as Tunnel Bear or HMA to get content only available on the U.S. or Canadian versions of Netflix, the company will be blocking you “in [the] coming weeks,” according to a post on its blog yesterday. What’s the beef? Netflix has been live in Egypt and the GCC since last week, but with a cut-down selection of shows due to licensing agreements with regional content partners including OSN. In other words: If the content owner (say, NBC Universal) has given OSN the exclusive rights to a series in our corner of the world, it’s not going to give Netflix the rights, too. We’re going to look into alternatives such as the new Apple TV (and see what the VPN providers have to say) and we’ll be back next week with more.

No, you, [and by you, we mean our gentle readers in the United States] are not going to win the USD 1.3 bn Powerball lottery jackpot (or: why economists can kill all the fun in the world): Economist Noah Smith rains on everybody’s parade in his Bloomberg View column by explaining that playing the lottery is akin to throwing money away. “In terms of pure expected value, playing the lottery is a bad bet — in fact, it really has to be, since if the house weren’t guaranteed to win, the lottery wouldn’t be offered in the first place,” Smith writes. Why people still buy lottery tickets could then be explained by two things: “the pleasure of fantasy,” which Greg Ip explains as using the lottery ticket as an “accessory to fantasizing — much like a video game or a good book.” Or, more formally, a behavioral economics explanation that people tend to behave as if very small probabilities are bigger than they actually are. What is the problem with that then? A lot. The people who tend buy lottery tickets (and invest in lottery stocks) tend to have lower incomes, come from minority backgrounds, and have lower levels of education. So the lottery could be seen as “taking advantage of the cognitive illusions and biases of less-educated, less-well-informed individuals, making money for the government at these vulnerable people’s expense” and, as Smith explains, “Those are also the very people who can least afford to lose money on long-shot bets. So lotteries — and lottery stocks — tend to function as a kind of tax on the poor.” It’s something to consider amid the on-again, off-again reports since 2011 that Egypt would consider introducing some form of “quasi-halal” lottery system.

Facebook is making us dumber: Misinformation spreads so quickly in the media because people tend to seek out information that confirms their beliefs and to ignore contrary facts, Cass Sunstein writes, citing a study that looked at Facebook users’ behaviour from 2010 to 2014. “Facebook users tended to choose and share stories containing messages they accept, and to neglect those they reject,” and this results in the formation of a lot of “homogeneous, polarized clusters.” This drives group polarization, where like-minded people end up believing a more extreme version of what they originally believed, which, in the case of misinformation, intensifies the group’s commitment to that misinformation.

If you thought your brother-in-law’s day job was weird, you haven’t met “Maritime ‘Repo Men’: A last resort for stolen ships,” wherein the New York Times tells a tale of ship raiders and port pirates. “Thousands of boats are stolen each year,” the paper says, “and some are recovered using alcohol, [redacted], witch doctors and other forms of guile.” At the low end: solo contractors. At the higher end: a firm that “is currently working for a consortium of banks to repossess a fleet of more than a dozen freighters from nearly as many ports around the world. ‘They have to be taken all at once or else several will run.’”

Meet the 12 original members of the debut 1896 Dow Jones Industrial Average courtesy Business Insider, which also recaps where those companies are today.

Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is being published and sold in Germany for the first time since the Second World War and the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik asks if it is still dangerous. Beyond the book’s content, which Gopnik describes as “creepy” rather than diabolic or sinister, buying “Mein Kampf” is “a symbolic act before it’s any kind of intellectual one, and you can argue that it’s worth banning on those grounds alone.” On the other hand, making the book public is a “way of robbing it of the glamour of the forbidden.” Gopnik’s view veers toward the latter; resisting the rhetoric presented in such a book is still, as he puts it, “our struggle, and so they are, however unsettling, still worth reading, even in their creepiest form.”

Get past the Chinese internet addicts in the lede, and “Screen Addiction Is Taking a Toll on Children” covers interesting ground for anyone wondering how much screen time is too much, at what age, for the kiddies.

On the future of cash: Here at home, we pay cash for a bottle of water, a pack of smokes, for fitness classes, computers, cars and even homes. In Sweden? Not so much: “Parishioners text tithes to their churches. Homeless street vendors carry mobile credit-card readers. Even the Abba Museum, despite being a shrine to the 1970s pop group that wrote ‘Money, Money, Money,’ considers cash so last-century that it does not accept bills and coins.” But as the poster child for a cash-free future, Sweden is also a laboratory for new risks, including “a rising threat to privacy and increased vulnerability to sophisticated Internet crimes. Older adults and refugees in Sweden who use cash may be marginalized, critics say. And young people who use apps to pay for everything or take out loans via their mobile phones risk falling into debt.” Read in the New York Times.

We know, we know, Sweden isn’t utopia. But still, it’s hard not to like a “Fika” — the Nordic country’s take on the coffee break: “If there is one thing that distinguishes the Swedish coffee break … it’s this: Fika is about slowing down. Coffee represents a true break, a moment to sit and contemplate on your own, or to gather with friends. In our own culture, where coffee has come to be more about grabbing a 16-ounce-grande-whatever, in a paper cup to go, coffee is more about fueling up and going fast. In Sweden coffee is something to look forward to, a moment where everything else stops and you savor the moment.” Read on The Kitchn.

Doctors declared Juan Torres to be in a permanent vegetative state. Years later, he woke up. And what he’s told doctors since is helping change how scientists view human consciousness. (Read)

The World Economic Forum overplays its hand with the headline, but still sheds light on the size of creative industries globally with its post on “What is creativity worth to the world economy?” Eleven cultural and creative industries — from television, film and newspapers & magazines to advertising, gaming and radio — accounted for about 3% of world GDP and 1% of all employment globally. At USD 2.25 tn in revenues last year, the industries together were worth more than “telecommunications services (which comes in at USD 1,570 bn globally), and even surpassed the entire GDP of India (USD 1,900 bn).”

About to hop on a long-haul flight and forgot to bring your Kindle, books or other long-form reading device of choice? Go download the offline internet readers Pocket or Instapaper. Then head directly to the New Yorker’s list of “Our fifteen most-read magazine stories of 2015.” Problem solved.

How would you like to download 18 (yes, eighteen) 1.5 GB movies in about 1 second? That’s the promise held out by Li-Fi technology, which basically re-imagines the internet transmitted via lightbulb. We kid you not. 224 Gbps speeds are theoretically possible, and real-world tests (in an Estonian office, of all places) have already ramped up 1 Gbps download speeds. And get this: The technology doesn’t care how many devices are hooked up to a Li-Fi device, so there’s no degradation of quality because too many people are downloading. When will Li-Fi be turned loose in the wild? Commercial devices are at least a couple of years away from hitting store shelves. Oh, and the technology will only work indoors. PC Advisor has more and so, weirdly enough, does the WEF blog.

Without further elaboration, these are among the Christmas / New Year’s stories we would have noted had the Weekend Edition not been on holiday:

• The underbelly of e-commerce: How companies collect, process and resell returned gifts. (Wall Street Journal)
• 52 Places to Go in 2016 (the New York Times)
• 14 places to go if the world is going to end (Business Insider)
• 76 Viral Images From 2015 That Were Totally Fake (Gizmodo)

Origin Story, Part I: Scientists now believe that one simple genetic mutation was the key that allowed the emergence of multicellular life. In other words: If some lowly choanoflagellate’s DNA photocopier hadn’t made a mistake 600 mn years ago, human life as we know it may not exist — and neither would dogs, cats, birds, elephants or any other multicellular lifeform. Not even cockroaches or Cher. The Washington Post does a fantastic job bringing the story to life: “Researchers say they have pinpointed what may well be one of evolution’s greatest copy mess-ups yet: the mutation that allowed our ancient protozoa predecessors to evolve into complex, multi-cellular organisms. Thanks to this mutation — which was not solely responsible for the leap out of single-cellular life, but without which you, your dog and every creature large enough to be seen without a microscope might not be around — cells were able to communicate with one another and work together.”

Origin Story, Part II: Did Arabs help settle what is today Ireland? That seems to be one of the conclusions hinted at by this piece in the Irish Times, which notes that “Evidence of massive migration to Ireland thousands of years ago has emerged from the sequencing of the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, carried out by geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen’s University Belfast. Sequencing the genome of an early woman farmer, who lived near Belfast 5,200 years ago, showed her majority ancestry originated in the Middle East, where agriculture was invented.”

Everything old is new again: 1980s video games (both home console and arcade) were the first to make a comeback among the geeknoscenti. Then the hipsters turned on to vinyl (says Alice Cooper: “kids are tired of buying air”), and the renaissance of Polaroid-style film still hasn’t given up the ghost (here and here). Now, Super 8 film is the latest retro-cool technology making a comeback in the arts set, the Guardian writes, and people like JJ Abrams, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino are over the moon. The Verge reports that instant, Polaroid-style film and a turntable were among the Amazon’s best-selling items in the U.S. at Christmas time. Polaroid just debuted a new camera at CES, and Sony used the same forum to roll out a new turntable.

“Do you want to play a game?” No, the game inspired by the 1983 Matthew Broderick film War Games isn’t on the list, but if you want your dose of 1980s nostalgia right now, hit up two sites (here and here) on your laptop or desktop to play (without charge) everything from Pac Man to Frogger, Donkey Kong, 1942 (and 1943), Q*bert, Sonic, Street Fighter and Asteroids (the 1979 version), among dozens of others. Or would you prefer Atari 2600 games? Battlezone, perhaps? In all cases you’ll be using your keyboard instead of a joystick, but still…

THE WEEK’S MOST-CLICKED STORIES

The most-clicked stories in Enterprise in the past week were:

• What does the U.S. presidential election hold for Egypt? An op-ed by James Harmon, Chairman of the Egyptian-American Enterprise Fund and Chairman and CIO of Caravel Management (Enterprise)
• Table of current car prices in JPG format (Al-Borsa)
• RBS says “sell everything” as deflationary crisis nears (The Telegraph)
• Farming the Sahara: Its population soaring, Egypt is facing a food-supply crisis. Can the government make a desert bloom? (Takepart)
• The closest analogue in the animal world to watching Egyptians cross the street is watching barnacle geese chicks leap off rocky cliffs (Youtube)

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WATCH THIS

If you watch nothing else this weekend, make it this: “How to age gracefully,” wherein an eight year old gives advice to a seven year old, a nine year old to an eight year old, and so on, and so on. (Run time: 4:40)

Distractions can make us more creative: Tim Harford says working with a little mess actually has advantages and can inspire creativity. Cognitive psychology supports Harford’s proposition as “certain kinds of difficulty, certain kinds of obstacle, can actually improve our performance.” Harford’s talk can be viewed in full here. (Run time 15:32)

Drone wars: Now that we’ve established the scientificness of reveling in distraction, we present to you a video of a drone capturing another drone with a net, which we assume in the near future means people will be replacing their yard signs about their guard dogs with warnings of “Beware of drone.” (Watch, running time: 1:52)

For anyone still doubting the (terrifying) power of social media: Here’s what it looks like when someone, in this case Dutch soccer player Demy de Zeeuw, who has 8 mn followers, posts a picture on Instagram. (Run time 0:38)

Intelligence isn’t black and white: Howard Gardner, a professor of cognition and education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, argues that intelligence cannot be monopolised into a single form, because there are at least eight kinds of intelligence. The linguistics and mathematics measured in standard IQ tests only make up two kinds. (Runtime 9:02)

The smart money considers dope: Reuters visits a recent investment conference where traditionally conservative investors looked at how they may get in on the growing legalization movement in the United States. The video cites one report that estimates that for medical use alone, annual sales are estimated to increase from USD 3.5 bn in 2015 to USD 13.5 bn in 2020. (Watch,  running time: 1:58)

At the movies: Quentin Tarantino does it again with his eighth feature film, the aptly titled The Hateful Eight. While the movie is filled with known Tarantino elements, namely tasteful gore, colorful language, and of course, Samuel L. Jackson (who embodies all of the above), many will find this a little slow-paced. But don’t be deterred by this cerebral western, as the dialogue is more riveting than ever and manages to keep the suspense at a fever pitch, with the knowledge of all the epicness to come. We first linked to the trailer back in August, but here it is again to refresh our readers’ memories in light of the movie’s release in Egypt this past Wednesday. (Trailer; running time: 2:23)

DOCUMENTARY OF THE WEEK: E:60 Reports – Sepp Blatter and FIFA. Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind at this point that FIFA is rotten to the core? And while discussions on the World Cup consistently turn to the elephant in the room that is Qatar 2022, FIFA’s reputation was sullied long before that particular decision. And it all centers on the most powerful dictator to have never ruled a country: Sepp Blatter. E:60 follows the meteoric rise of one Swiss football fanatic to the pinnacle of the sporting world. It traces his accomplishments, which include shining a spotlight on third world nations and granting them a larger role in international football. It also explores the bodies left by the wayside as he fought to retain his position. Among the corpses: the reputation of FIFA. E:60 also looks into his most controversial moment, the Qatar World Cup, interviewing the whistleblower who claims to have been present when Qatari officials presented the bribes. You can catch the full documentary on YouTube here (running time: 48:37).

READ THIS

The most-read English-language article on the internet over the past 24 hours: The Verge’s endlessly fascinating profile of identity thief Daniel Rigmaiden, whose research while defending himself in a case where he faced 35 counts of wire fraud and 35 counts of identity theft led to the discovery of the US government’s previously-secret tracking device known as the Stingray. Ringmaiden’s painstaking research finally gained traction when he sent his file to the Wall Street Journal, which published his discovery in 2011 (a full two years before the Edward Snowden leaks), creating a firestorm of controversy as judges had been kept in the dark on the device despite signing off on court orders authorizing vague and wide-ranging surveillance permissions. (Read: The Dragnet)

The benefits of being cold: The Atlantic’s 32-year old health editor James Hamblin has made something of a name for himself by combining his medical degree with his experience in improvisational comedy from his time with the Upright Citizen’s Brigade troupe (read his profile in Politico here). While far too many celebrity doctors have peddled dubious medical claims (Dr. Oz comes to mind), Hamblin instead visibly enjoys skewering fringe health claims. His humor and measured skepticism are back on full display in his latest for the Atlantic, where he looks into the work of “Ray Cronise, a former materials scientist at NASA who now devotes himself to researching the benefits of cold exposure.” And by benefits, Cronise specifically alludes to weight loss without the need for physical exercise, although being uncomfortably cold all of the time may be just as bad. Hamblin doesn’t dismiss Cronise’s claims outright, but he does have a lot of fun with them: “Cronise said that when people tell him they need a blanket to sleep, he asks them, ‘Do you walk around in a blanket all day?’ (Given the choice, some of us would.)” (Read)

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt have blocked access to Qatari-owned news website The New Arab and its Arabic language version, The Guardian reported. With regional tensions in the Gulf and the fast-approaching anniversary of the 25 January revolution in Egypt, Qatar’s Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the network that runs the websites, has come under fire for being a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood. “When asked why the site had been blocked, Al-Araby chief executive Abdulrahman Elshayyal said he didn’t know: ‘We have been balanced and objective in our coverage despite the silly accusations.’”

Speaking of regional tensions: A diplomatic gulf is separating Saudi Arabia and Iran in recent days. But it’s the literal gulf that New York Times’ Karen Zraik tackles in “Persian (or Arabian) Gulf Is Caught in the Middle of Regional Rivalries.” She asks: “Is it the Persian Gulf? Or the Arabian Gulf?” It seems it isn’t just the grammar Nazis at Enterprise who geek out over lexicon. “It’s deeply emotional; it’s not simply semantic,” said Frederic Wehrey, an expert on gulf politics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Wehrey recalled meetings that degenerated into shouting matches over the name. At the heart of the matter, he said, was “a geostrategic dispute about ownership of the gulf.”

LISTEN TO THIS

Gimlet’s original podcast, StartUp, ended its mini-season with an episode delving into an issue that all startups, Enterprise included, have to go through when transitioning from a start-up to a “regular company.” You don’t really have to have listened to the whole season to appreciate the important issues and questions raised in the final episode of the season about the star-up. After reaching some level of success, who is whose direct boss? What’s your role? Do we have enough structure? Are some of the questions being raised. Gimlet’s employees, like most people who are working for young companies, are voicing their concerns power, accountability, and control especially as people move on to new roles most of which they have never done before. (Run time 33:02)

In memory of David Bowie, who passed away last week two days before his 69th birthday, NPR’s Fresh Air released an interview host Terry Gross conducted with him in 2002. Gross describes Bowie as someone who “had a genius for continual change himself, reinventing his sound and his image throughout the decades. Each album seemed to find Bowie in a different persona, with a new sound to match his new look.” You can listen to the interview in full here. (Run time 21:01)

It’s the time of the year when The Economist’s correspondents present their lists of the best books of 2015. “This year saw a boom in dark books about the future of America, new translated fiction and accounts of the battle of Waterloo.” If The Economist’s list is not enough, you can have a look at Mohamed El-Erian’s 2015 list of “books to get you through the age of uncertainty.” (Runtime 08:40)

Dan Carlin’s seminal podcast series Hardcore History is a must for all of you history buffs who really don’t have time to watch long documentaries. His series is more than just a lecture or an exercise in myth-busting. Carlin’s immersive narrative style really hammers in the true scale of historical events and their importance to us doomed to repeat them. As far as popular history is concerned, this is well worth the listen, particularly his Wrath of the Khans series.

SOMETHING THAT MADE US THINK

“We’re in a panic about terrorism — but the statistics say we shouldn’t be,” physicist Lawrence M. Krauss writes for the New Yorker. Governments have a tendency to respond to violence perpetrated by terrorists in extraordinary ways, but such panic is irrational. If you were in Paris on the day of the most recent attacks, there was a one-in-twenty-thousand chance of being a victim — the same odds that you would have being killed in a car accident on the same day there, Krauss notes. While the attacks in Paris increased the average murder rate in the city to more than double the national average, it only made Paris as dangerous as New York City from a statistical point of view. “We can be more vigilant without becoming irrational,” Krauss says. What to really worry about if you are living in the U.S.? Gun violence. And given that it is hard “to alter the mindset of a would-be terrorist,” it is comparatively easier to “introduce measures that could reduce gun-related fatalities in general.”

And while we’re on violence, let’s take a look at the very thin line between patriotism and terrorism in the U.S.: A group of armed Oregon men have been occupying a federal wildlife reserve since Saturday 2 January in an effort to get the federal government to turn over land to local ranchers, miners and loggers. The group, decked in camouflage, cowboy hats and some with automatic rifles, have rallied together in the name of Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, local ranchers found guilty of arson on federal land near their property, according to Reuters. Both the media and the authorities are treading cautiously with the group, with media almost exclusively calling them a militia. But what exactly would they have been called if they were a group of black or Muslim men? The irony wasn’t lost on social media, which was quick to brand the group Y’all-Qaeda, Yee-Hawdists and Vanilla ISIS. Political philosopher Musa al-Gharbi writes: “Clearly, there is a double standard. But here’s the takeaway: Muslims and other minority groups should be empowered to engage in the political sphere just as robustly, dynamically or even confrontationally as their white counterparts … In other words, the goal should be to have minorities treated more like white people — not to have Bundy and his militia treated more like Muslims or black people.” Encountered a group of armed men but unsure how to feel about them? Use this handy chart.

HEALTH

On brain games and snake oil: Medicines being backed up by pseudoscience is hardly new, dating back to before the 19th century. “Snake oil” has come to represent any and all fraudulent and questionable goods and, by extension, salesmen. The latest in these sorts of salesmen is Lumos Labs, the “brain-boosting app” manufacturer behind Lumosity. The idea is, play the games on the app a few times a week and it will boost your intelligence, improve memory, slow down aging and other wildly unrealistic and now largely disputed claims. In the U.S. alone, people spend up to USD 1 bn on brain fitness, reported the Washington Post. Julia Belluz from Vox has a nice roundup of the facts, but basically, it’s all garbage. In fact, researchers from Florida State University assigned undergraduates to play either Lumosity or popular video game Portal 2 for eight hours. They found the Portal 2 group outperformed the Lumosity group on cognitive tests and the Lumosity players “showed no gains on any measure.” The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has since slapped Lumos Labs with a USD 2 mn fine for false advertising, noting that “Lumosity preyed on consumers’ fears about age-related cognitive decline, suggesting their games could stave off memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s disease,” said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

The founder of the Obermeyer ski brand is 95 — and still skiing and swimming. Here’s how: The Wall Street Journal profiles Klaus Obermeyer, his diet and his workout routine. The man is hardcore: He’ll swim in an outdoor pool even in a snowstorm. Read: “At 95, a Lifelong Skier Says the Source of His Vitality Is His Workout.” (Paywall)

“Drinking tea is probably the easiest way to improve your heart health this year,” Quartz writes.

ENTREPRENEURS

ICYMI- Don’t judge a man by his cowboy shirts: If you haven’t already met the man who is arguably the most successful angel investor in history, it’s time — whether you could care about startups or not, there’s something to learn from how Chris Sacca approaches business and investing. Read the magazine-length profile: “How Super Angel Chris Sacca Made Bns, Burned Bridges And Crafted The Best Seed Portfolio Ever”

PERSONAL TECH

Industry standards finally agreed upon for next-generation video quality, look for the Ultra HD Premium logo on products in 2016: Industry group UHD (ultra-high definition) Alliance, which includes everyone from Amazon to the Dreamworks movie studio, published a press release earlier this month outlining the new standard in video quality for home entertainment, which includes a minimum resolution of 3840×2160, among a number of other technical specifications. Consumers should expect the logo, (pictured here via Wired UK), to start showing up on everything from television sets to Blu-Ray players this year. “Annual worldwide shipments of Ultra HD TVs are expected to grow nearly 719% over the next several years according to IHS’ forecasts, from nearly 12 mn in 2014 to nearly 96 mn in 2019, with over 300 mn in use by the end of 2019,” UHD Alliance quotes senior analyst at IHS Technology Paul Erickson.

Will VR become more popular than TV? Goldman Sachs certainly seem to think so. In fact, if Virtual Reality adoption follows their “Accelerated Uptake” projection, where VR becomes more commonplace through advances in battery and cellular technologies, the VR market will generate USD 110 bn compared to TVs USD 99 bn in 10 years. This only factors in VR hardware sales, the number almost doubles if you factor in software. The Goldman Sachs research coincides with Google announcing it has shifted Clay Bavor, Google’s VP of Product (Drive, Docs, Maps etc), to head the virtual reality department. Google is slightly behind Facebook, who are taking pre-orders on the Oculus Rift and expect to roll out in the first quarter of this year, but they aren’t that far behind. Google announced last fall that YouTube would begin supporting virtual reality video, enabling users to view VR video using a smartphone and Google’s Cardboard viewer.

What lurks beneath the Internet of Things? CNET’s Roger Cheng says security threats. First of all, the term Internet of Things refers to “a network of physical objects or ‘things’ embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data.” It’s basically the network connecting a ‘smart’ anything. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016, the largest of its kind in the world, about 4k companies were exhibiting, and around 1k of them involved IOT. In December, CNET’s Laura Hautala attended a conference at cyber security company Fortinet where a security researcher hacked into baby monitors in Saudi Arabia through a simple website (Shodan.io) using no coding skills, just a default username and password. The problem lies in the fact that manufacturers want to make their products as simple as possible, which means default passwords simplified procedures that essentially simplify hacking them, said Aamir Lakhani, the aforementioned researcher.

ON YOUR WAY OUT

It’s not just your ex, chickens also prefer better looking people: A group of researchers are positing that perceptions of human beauty are not entirely determined by societal norms, but could be based on something innate in brains. So they tested this by training “chickens to react to either an average human male or female face.” The chickens showed preferences for faces consistent with human preferences. “This suggests that human preferences arise from general properties of nervous systems, rather than from face-specific adaptations,” the researchers noted.

Ancient party animals: Ancient Egyptians are responsible for some of the world’s most important inventions and structures. Their contemporaries? Not so much (case in point: when an Egyptian tried and spectacularly failed to showcase a “flying car”). In fact, our ancestors are still showing us up. Researchers have unearthed what they believe is the Ancient Egyptian cure for hangovers. They deciphered parts of a medical papyrus found among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Collection showing that the ancients cured hangovers by stringing together leaves from an Alexandrian chamaedaphne shrub and presumably wearing it around their necks. Other Egyptian inventions include eye makeup and breath mints, so it may be safe to conclude that they also conceived of the concept of Friday nights in general. In more serious findings, last week an Old Kingdom tomb of a previously unknown queen named Khentkaus III was discovered in a small cemetery to the southeast of King Neferefre’s pyramid complex.

New Republic’s Tim Grierson and Will Leitch listed their most anticipated movies of 2016. The full list can be found here, but keep a close eye on Steven Spielberg’s The BFG, Martin Scorsese’s Silence and an untitled movie by Woody Allen. Also out this year is the all-female remake of Ghostbusters and Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange.

Actor Alan Rickman passed away on Thursday, dying of cancer at 69. While the media seems very keen on calling him a “Harry Potter star”, the legend whose career spanned over 5 decades held a number of diverse and iconic roles over the years. Many of our well-seasoned readers will remember him as the charismatic and devious sociopath Hans Gruber in Die Hard. While the role—for which he won popular and critical acclaim—helped establish him as a typecast villain, he held his own as a leading man in romance movies such as Sense and Sensibility opposite Emma Thompson. He won a Golden Globe Award, an Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of Rasputin in Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny a made-for-TV movie. Other notable films, he’s appeared in include Michael Collins, A Little Chaos, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and only because we have to, Love Actually. (Read)