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BTS’ Suga Believes Psy ‘Paved The Way For K-Pop’ In America

A decade ago, Korean singer Psy released his sixth project Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1. That project was home to the worldwide smash hit “Gangnam Style” which took the globe by storm as an infectious dance record that came with its own routine. The 2012 song was certainly an unexpected hit as it peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 while also breaking the Guinness World Record for the most “liked” video on YouTube at the time. The success of “Gangnam Style” was one of the first examples of K-pop making its impact in the United States and it’s something that BTS’ Suga is very appreciative of.

During an interview they conducted together, Suga shared his praises for Psy and the impact of “Gangnam Style.” “He was always someone I was grateful for,” Suga said in Korean. “With ‘Gangnam Style,’ he paved the way for K-pop in the U.S. so that we were able to follow his footsteps with ease.” Their conversation comes after the two collaborated on “That That,” which was released earlier this month off of Psy’s ninth album Psy 9th.

Since the success of “Gangnam Style,” BTS has been the only k-pop artist or group to reach No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart. The group has done it six times since 2020 thanks to “Dynamite,” “Life Goes On,” “Butter,” “Permission To Dance,” “My Universe,” and “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat) (BTS Remix)” with Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo.

You can watch Psy and Suga’s interview in the video above.

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Meghan McCain’s Memoir ‘Bad Republican’ Flopped So Hard That It’s Sold Fewer Than 300 Copies

Meghan McCain had it good. For years, she was on a daily chat show where she got to spew whatever was on her mind to millions of people — then whine about how she was a victim because no one agreed with her. When she left The View last summer, she lost her soapbox, and subsequently tried to find a new one: She wrote a book. Alas, not many people are reading it.

As per MSN, the hardcover edition of McCain’s book, Bad Republican: A Memoir — which was released as an audio-only book last autumn is a massive flop. How massive? As of Friday, it’s sold a measly 244 copies since its release on April 26. To that into perspective, in its 11 days of release, it managed to sell an average of about 22 copies per day.

Here’s what most readers are missing, as per the Amazon listing:

[McCain] tells of growing up the daughter of an American icon who shaped her life and details the heartbreaking final moments spent by his side. She recalls her (mis)adventures on the New York dating scene and brings us up to speed on meeting her now-husband. We hear her views on cancel culture and internet trolls as well as life backstage as the sole Republican at America’s most-watched daytime talk show—and why she decided to leave.

What do the few people who purchased (and then actually read) it think about it? Here’s a one-star review on its Amazon page:

I was so looking forward to reading this as I am an independent and appreciate someone who can see all sides,” the review reads. What I got was a whiny little girl who complained about LIFE everything in life that EVERYONE has to deal with and most do it without feeling sorry for themselves… she is beyond blessed with family support and financial resources and she still whines about EVERYTHING that is simply life. so sorry I wasted my time.

It’s the worst review McCain has received since the cast of And Just Like That… blasted her column on And Just Like That…

(Via MSN)

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Mattea Roach’s Historic 23-Game Streak Came To An End After She Lost By A Measly Dollar

After an awkward time last summer, Jeopardy! has been on a roll. In the last year, the brainiac game show has seen three rock star contestants: Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider, and, most recently, Mattea Roach. But all good things must come to an end, and on the episode that aired Friday, so it did for the latter.

For weeks, Roach, a 23-year-old tutor from Canada, has ruled the roost, amassing not only a large number of wins but a bounty of cash — more than enough to pay off her student debt. But her streak ended on her 24th show. Heading into Final Jeopardy!, she was up by $19,200. But she got the last question, about a facility named for Coca-Cola “magnate” Asa Candler, wrong. Challenged Danielle Maurer, a digital marketing manager from Georgia, did not.

Still, it was close. Roach wagered $3,601, bringing her final total to $15,599. Maurer, who had $11,400, bet $4,200, meaning she had $15,600. In other words, Roach lost by one dollar.

Still, 23 games is one of the show’s best, fifth behind James Holzhauer (32), Amodio (38), Schneider (40), and the episode’s host, Ken Jennings (74). She’ll be seen later this year when she competes in the Tournament of Champions against Amodio and Schneider.

Roach was gracious in her defeat. “Feeling proud and reflective tonight,” she tweeted, adding, “thank you again so much to all who have supported me during my run. It’s almost exactly four months to the day I got the call to go on Jeopardy, and I had no idea back then how much my life would change as a result.” She also thanked Maurer, who unseated her.

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Nicki Minaj’s Father’s Killer Faces A Year In Prison After Pleading Guilty To A Pair Of Felonies

Last year, Nicki Minaj suffered a huge loss in her life through the unexpected death of her father Robert Maraj. The 64-year-old was walking between Roslyn Road and Raff Avenue in Long Island, New York on February 12, 2021 when he was hit by a car heading northbound. The driver did not stop at the scene and Maraj would eventually die from his injuries. The vehicle in question was driven by 71-year-old Charles Polevich who turned himself in for the incident less than a week later. As a result, Polevich was charged with one felony count of leaving the scene of an incident without reporting and another count of evidence tampering.

A little over a year after the tragic incident, we now know how long Polevich might stay in prison. According to TMZ, the 71-year-old pled guilty to the aforementioned felonies during a recent hearing. With that, he escaped a seven-year sentence after Judge Howard Sturium agreed that Polevich could serve a maximum of one year in prison in addition to fulfilling community service requirements and getting his license suspended.

Shortly after her father’s death last winter, Nicki took to Instagram to remember him with a heartful message and pictures of them together. “I can say it has been the most devastating loss of my life,” she wrote in one post.

Polevich will head back to court on August 3 to receive his official prison sentence.

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Dallas Defended Its Home Court And Picked Up A Win Over Phoenix In Game 3

The Dallas Mavericks will not find themselves in position to get swept in the Western Conference Semifinals. Dallas played host to the Phoenix Suns in Game 3 of their series on Friday night, and thanks to a monster game by the team’s starting backcourt, the Mavericks were able to pick up a 103-94 win to make the series 2-1 in favor of the Suns.

After losing the first quarter in each of the first two games of the series, Dallas came out in front of their home fans at the American Airlines Center and led 29-20 after one. While Phoenix shot better from three and from the field, the Mavericks got an extra 10 shots in the frame by reeling in four offensive rebounds and forcing four turnovers.

That, mixed with 10 early points from Jalen Brunson and Luka Doncic getting well on his way to a triple-double (seven points, seven rebounds, five assists), helped Dallas get an early edge.

The Mavs looked like they were going to cruise into the locker room, leading by double-digits for much of the second quarter and extending their lead to 14 with just under three minutes remaining in the frame thanks to a triple by Dorian Finney-Smith.

If there is one thing the Suns have shown over and over again these last two years, it’s that you cannot let them see a hint of daylight or else they’re going to take advantage. After Finney-Smith’s three, Phoenix ripped off seven consecutive points, and after trading buckets dow the stretch, Dallas took a 51-44 lead into the locker room. Doncic had 16 with nine boards and six assists, while Brunson had 14. Jae Crowder led the way for the Suns with 11 points, Devin Booker had nine, Deandre Ayton had eight, and Chris Paul had seven with an uncharacteristic seven turnovers.

Doncic and Brunson continued to give the Suns defense headaches throughout the third. Dallas’ general plan to attack the paint put those two in situations where they repeatedly went at the rim, which helped them combine to score 47 of the team’s 82 points through three.

The Mavericks got their lead up to as many as 17 in the fourth when disaster potentially struck, as a dubious foul call against Doncic with 8:07 left gave him five on the game and led to him going to the bench. Phoenix immediately responded, with Booker and Paul hitting shots to get the lead down to 12 and forcing Jason Kidd to call a timeout.

The Suns kept chipping away, getting it down to a single-digit game on a pair of Mikal Bridges free throws with just more than four minutes left. But Dallas had an answer, and it kept having answers, and when Phoenix got it down to eight and nearly forced a turnover with just under a minute remaining, it appeared like one final push was in the cards.

That ended up not being the case. The Mavericks were able to get the ball to Reggie Bullock in the corner, and the veteran sharpshooter did what he’s done so well over the course of his playing career.

Brunson led all scorers with 28 points to go along with five assists and four rebounds, while Doncic had 26 with 13 boards and nine dimes. Bullock scored 15, and both Finney-Smith and Maxi Kleber pitched in 14. Crowder’s night — 19 points, seven rebounds, five assists, and two steals — was the most productive for the Suns. Booker had 18 and Ayton had a double-double with 16 points and 11 rebounds.

Game 4 between the Mavericks and Suns will take place on Sunday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

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Luka Doncic Mocked Chris Paul Flopping After A Foul Call In Game 3

There are two traits that define Luka Doncic. One, and by far the more important of the two, is that he is extremely good at basketball, to the point that he is among the best players in the world and is the centerpiece team of a Dallas Mavericks franchise that has aspirations of winning a championship sooner rather than later.

The other trait is that the dude gets really, really mad sometimes. Doncic is among the most expressive players in the league, and when he is unhappy with something, he lets people — and by people, I mean the referees — know about it. An example of this came in Game 3 of Mavs-Suns, as Doncic tried to barrel his way through Chris Paul and got called for a charge.

Now, Paul is very much a master of the dark arts, and is not afraid to embellish contact as a way to get a call. While this did seem like a legitimate offensive foul call, Doncic didn’t buy it, and as a result, he did an impression of Paul by pretending to flop.

A lot of things went right for Doncic in the first half — 16 points, nine rebounds, seven assists, Dallas leading by seven — but this one seemed to really get under his skin.

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Ronald Acuña Hit A Baseball To Mars Despite Falling Down As He Swung

Ronald Acuña Jr. is high on the list of baseball’s coolest players. The 24-year-old Venezuelan has turned into one of the league’s brightest young stars, a legitimate 5-tool talent and one of the centerpieces of the Atlanta Braves’ franchise as it looks to defend the World Series it won while he was on the sideline last season.

Acuña’s 2021 season was cut short after he suffered a torn ACL in July, and this season, the former Rookie of the Year didn’t get to make his debut until the end of April. As a result, he’s been a bit rusty, and he entered Friday night’s game against the Milwaukee Brewers hitting .200 and with zero home runs.

He did manage, however, to fix the whole zero home runs thing pretty emphatically during the game. Acuña stepped up to the plate against Eric Lauer in the bottom of the fourth and got a 1-1 breaking ball. It was down and outside in the strike zone and Acuña read it perfectly, and as a result, he hit the thing 450 feet to dead center. He managed to pull this off while falling down, too.

There are lots of ways for baseball players to get their uniforms dirty, none of them are as cool as hitting a dinger.

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The Sixers Celebrated Joel Embiid’s Return By Beating The Heat In Game 3

The Philadelphia 76ers got a big boost in the lead-up to Game 3 of their Eastern Conference Semifinal series against the Miami Heat, as it was announced that Joel Embiid would return from a concussion and an orbital fracture as the series shifted back to the City of Brotherly Love. Between his debut in the series and one of the worst offensive performances the Heat had this year, Philly was able to pick up a 99-79 win to cut Miami’s series lead in half.

The first half was perhaps the ugliest half of basketball that we have seen this postseason. After Miami jumped out to an early 6-4 lead, Philadelphia was able to get the home crowd engaged with a 14-2 run that saw the Heat go nearly five minutes without scoring a point.

While a 12-point first quarter lead is hardly insurmountable, the Sixers were able to use that to create a cushion that existed for essentially the remainder of the half. Miami never got within four points from that point on prior to going into the locker room, as Philadelphia pestered them on defense and threw them completely out of the rhythm they had through the first two games of the series. While Jimmy Butler had 10 points and six rebounds at the break, no one else on the Heat scored more than six, and as a team, Miami shot 14-for-43 (32.6 percent) from the field and 2-for-16 (12.5 percent) from three.

As a result, the Sixers entered the locker room with a 41-34 cushion, powered in large part by a big first half from James Harden — he scored eight of his 15 points from the charity stripe with four rebounds and two assists — nine points from Danny Green, and seven points and seven boards from Embiid in his return.

Out of the break, both offenses started to find their footing. Butler, in particular, gave the Heat a huge lift, scoring 14 of the team’s 31 points in the third quarter. The team doubled-up their first half total by knocking down four threes, and found themselves only down 68-65 heading into the fourth.

Perhaps the most surprising development for the Sixers was the play of Green, who has long been a bellwether for his team’s chances of winning a game throughout his career. By the end of the third, the veteran had 18 points and made six of his seven attempts from three.

But at the start of the fourth, Miami’s offense cratered once again. Philadelphia opened up a double-digit lead by scoring the first seven points of the frame until Bam Adebayo got to the charity stripe more than three minutes in and hit a pair of free throws.

Even when it looked like Miami was going to have easy baskets, the Sixers managed to come out on top. No better example of that came when PJ Tucker stripped Harden and tried to throw a pass to Victor Oladipo, but led him just a little too much. As a result, Tyrese Maxey raced out ahead of him and made one of the best defensive plays we have seen this season, which led to an Embiid jumper that went in as he got fouled by Adebayo.

Green went 7-for-9 from three for 21 points, which was tied with Maxey for the most on the Sixers. Embiid scored 18 points and pulled in 11 rebounds in his return, while Harden had 17 with eight boards and six assists. Butler’s 33 led all scorers while Tyler Herro had 14 off the bench.

Game 4 between the Sixers and the Heat will take place on Sunday evening. The game is scheduled to tip off at 8 p.m. ET on TNT.

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17-year-old kid genius built a mind-controlled prosthetic arm in his spare time

When thinking about what we did during lock down, it’s a wide variety of experiences. Some people created businesses, learned a new skill, or moved from one couch to the other without spilling their overflowing plate of nachos. Then there’s Benjamin Choi, a 17-year-old junior in high school who decided to build a prosthetic arm that could be controlled by brain waves. Choi actually started the extensive project in 2020 at the age of 15 using his sister’s 3D printer. The idea for the prosthetic arm came from a feature on “60 Minutes” about a mind-controlled prosthetic arm, but in order for the arm to work it required surgery to implant sensors on the motor cortex of the user’s brain.

He told Smithsonian Magazine, “I was really, really amazed at the time because this technology was so impressive,” he says. “But I was also alarmed that they require this really risky open brain surgery. And they’re so inaccessible, costing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”


The teen’s goal was to make the robotic limb affordable, allowing it to be more accessible. He also wanted to eliminate the need for a surgery that requires digging around in someone’s brain to get the prosthesis to work. Using his sister’s 3D printer for his first prototype was time consuming and required tedious work to connect the pieces since the printer could only print pieces 4.7 inches long. It took Choi 30 hours just to print the parts of the arm before using rubber bands and bolts to put it together. The prosthetic worked using head gestures and brain wave data.

Amazingly, the prosthetic arm isn’t Choi’s first go at coding. Choi has been participating in robotics competitions since elementary school, requiring him to not only build robots, but code them so they move the way he wants. He’s gone to the world championships several times and in 9th grade he taught himself computer programming languages C++ and Python by watching videos on Stack Overflow.

For now, the arm is mounted on a stand. Over the past two years Choi has been working to perfect the arm before adding a socket, which he says would require a recipient to be custom fitted. Currently on its 75th iteration, Choi is still able to maintain the affordability of the prosthetic manufacturing costs being around $300. The current basic body powered upper body prosthesis will run you $7,000.

Choi works with volunteers to collect data and improve the functionality of the AI arm. The high schooler still has a way to go before the arm is complete and ready to be put on the market but that hasn’t stopped him from being recognized. Choi has won awards in Microsoft Imagine Challenge, the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, and the National At-Home STEM Competition. The teen is also a recipient of a manufacturing grant from PolySpectra Inc., awarded in 2020 to help with the production of the arm. PolySpectra produces durable 3D material.

Choi plans to attend college for engineering with a plan to continue working on his prosthetic arm, eventually bringing it to clinical trials. If Choi pulls this off, it could be life changing for the 2 Million people in America that live with the loss of a limb.

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A new study found this flirting strategy to be the most effective, regardless of your looks

In the 1988 Disney classic “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” the titular character is in an unlikely relationship with his voluptuous wife Jessica. Roger is a frantic, anxious rabbit with a penchant for mischief, while Jessica is a quintessential ’40s bombshell who stands about a foot and a half taller and isn’t “bad,” just “drawn that way.”

When private investigator Eddie Valiant asked Jessica what she sees in “that guy?” she replies, “He makes me laugh.”

This type of couple may seem like something we only see in the movies, but don’t underestimate the power of humor when it comes to attractiveness. A new study published in Evolutionary Psychology found that being humorous is the most effective way to flirt for both men and women.


“People think that humour, or being able to make another person laugh, is most effective for men who are looking for a long-term relationship. It’s least effective for women who are looking for a one-night stand. But laughing or giggling at the other person’s jokes is an effective flirtation tactic for both sexes,” says Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Department of Psychology.

“It is not only effective to be funny, but for women, it is very important that you show your potential partner that you think they are funny,” Rebecca Burch, a co-author from SUNY Oswego in New York, added.

Unfortunately, this study was only conducted on heterosexual couples.

For men, showing off their sense of humor was found to be the most effective way to flirt whether they were looking for a short-term or a long-term relationship. For women, being funny was the most effective tactic when looking for a long-term relationship. For people looking for a short-term fling, appearing available was the most effective tactic.

According to the study, humor is effective regardless of one’s attractiveness. “Individual differences in age, religiosity, extroversion, personal attractiveness and preferences for short-term sexual relationships had little or no effect on how effective respondents considered the various flirting tactics to be,” says study co-author Prof. Mons Bendixen.

If you see someone you like but don’t think you’re good-looking enough for them, give it a shot. You may still have a chance if you can make ’em laugh.

The most effective tactics for those looking for a long-term relationship:

For women:

1. Makes him laugh

2. Shows interest in conversations

3. Spends time with him

4. Engages in deep conversations

5. Kisses on mouth

For men:

1. Makes her laugh

2. Spends time with her

3. Shows interest in conversations

4. Engages in deep conversations

5. Smiles

The study is proof that looks aren’t everything and shows that having a good sense of humor isn’t just about making someone laugh. A great sense of humor is evidence that someone is intelligent, wise, perceptive, confident, can see things from new perspectives and has good intuition. It also helps people quickly build bonds and share experiences, which is a great way to get close to someone in a fast and fun way.

So why wouldn’t Jessica be with Roger? The guy is hilarious.