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Black Panther's Missed Opportunity, Bad Dog Breeding, and Nerdy Cooking Secrets: The Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

Photo: AP | Image: Marvel | Image: Google | Photo: Getty
Photo: AP | Image: Marvel | Image: Google | Photo: Getty

As we continue to reel from yet another week of revolting news, it’s worth taking a moment to remember that some glimmers of good remain. Being a shill can still get you in some deep shit, and arguing to your entire company that women are biologically inferior to men is still a totally good reason to fire someone. And while glass ceilings stand intact, we’ve at least begun to realize that glass walls are a hilariously dumb idea.

Here are some of the other great Gizmodo stories from the past week that will hopefully help take your mind off all the other festering crap mid-February has to offer.

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I Learned the Nerdy Cooking Secrets of Modernist Chefs—And You Can Too

Illustration: Sam Woolley/GMG
Illustration: Sam Woolley/GMG
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You can cook food worthy of five-star restaurants, even if you’re the most inexperienced cook. You just need to throw a bit of money at your kitchen. It will be wasteful. It will be expensive as hell. But it will taste incredible. I know this because I tried it. I lived the Modernist Cuisine lifestyle.

Why Purebred Dogs Are Sick, Miserable, and Ugly

Photo: AP
Photo: AP
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The Westminster Kennel Club just hosted its popular annual dog show, where canines of all shapes and sizes get to strut their stuff in front of discerning judges. Seems like harmless fun, but many purebred dogs are, or soon will be, in poor physical health—the result of an emphasis on cosmetic, and not functional, physical characteristics.

The Mess at Meetup

Illustration: Sam Woolley/Gizmodo
Illustration: Sam Woolley/Gizmodo
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Meetup was supposed to be different.

While much of the tech industry struggled to create inclusive work environments and free itself from the kinds of workplace harassment allegations that have spewed out of major companies like Google and Uber, Meetup was mission-driven, diverse, profitable, and user-focused. But last year, facing increasing competition, Meetup started negotiating an acquisition with WeWork—and everything changed.

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Why Choosing Between Android and iOS Still Matters

Photos: Gizmodo
Photos: Gizmodo
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Fire up an iPhone X alongside a Galaxy Note 8 and you might not think there’s all that much to choose between Android and iOS any more. They offer the same apps, in the same sorts of grids, with similar approaches to notifications and quick settings, and at this stage in the game you’re probably happy with your choice of mobile OS and sticking with it. Is there really any reason to switch? Well, yeah—there’s still a few!

AMD’s Newest Processors Are So Good You Can Skip the Graphics Card

Alex Cranz/Gizmodo
Alex Cranz/Gizmodo
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In the past year, graphics cards have gone from the reasonably priced computer part you pick up on Amazon or Newegg to something bordering on as precious as gold. If you happen to find one being sold at its MSRP, you can easily snatch it up and sell it on Amazon for twice the price. The market has gotten so cutthroat in the face of a GPU shortage that vendors like Microcenter have limited the number of GPUs you can buy and will only sell at the original MSRP if you can prove you’re buying it for personal use. And into this fierce market enters AMD with a new CPU with an integrated graphics card so good you can leave the other GPUs to the cryptominers.

Google’s Big Ad-Blocking Update Comes to Chrome: Here’s What We Know

Image Source: Google/Adblock Plus
Image Source: Google/Adblock Plus
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It’s been in the works for nearly a year and Google’s great ad-pocalypse is now upon us. On Thursday, the Chrome browser began to automatically filter out ads that don’t meet certain quality standards. Your browsing experience is about to change a little bit. Here’s what you need to know.

How Google Maps Leads Women Seeking Abortions Astray

Screenshot: Damn Joan/YouTube
Screenshot: Damn Joan/YouTube
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If you are pregnant and looking for an abortion clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, you might initially think you are in luck. A quick trip to Google on your phone and typing in, “Where can I get an abortion near me?” brings up a Google map with eight different pins, all located within 10 miles of your location.

Marvel Misses Another Easy Opportunity for LGBTQ Representation With Black Panther

Image: Marvel
Image: Marvel
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In Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, and Yona Harvey’s most recent runs on Black Panther and World of Wakanda, Ayo and Aneka—two of the Dora Milaje—are lovers who play a pivotal role in the civil uprising that occurs at a time when Wakanda’s society is on the brink of collapse. Given the amount of screen time given to the squad of warrior women in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, one of the biggest questions about the film has been whether it would at all incorporate any elements of Ayo’s (Florence Kasumba) sexuality, or even the idea that queer women were a part of the Dora Milaje.

How Do Winter Olympians Stay Warm?

Photo Illustration by Elena Scotti/Gizmodo/GMG, photos via Getty Images
Photo Illustration by Elena Scotti/Gizmodo/GMG, photos via Getty Images
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Nearly three thousand athletes have made their way to the Winter Olympic this month, and probably at least a couple are cursing the day they ever decided to become world-class bobsledders: Reports out of Pyeongchang list the temperature at or around a murderous subzero, putting this year’s games on track to be the coldest since 1994—with matters not much helped by the fact that, in their haste to get a stadium in shape, South Korea’s builders neglected to include a roof.

The athletes have devised a couple of novel coping methods—many have been seen plastering their cheeks with athletic tape—but you can’t properly luge in a scarf and huge puffy coat. Which brings us to the subject of this week’s Giz Asks—namely, how are these people not freezing, dressed like that?

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Why the Winter Olympics Has Less Doping Than the Summer Olympics

Photo: Getty
Photo: Getty
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Russia was banned from competing in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, a sweeping punishment for its brazen state-sponsored doping program, exposed in 2016. But even with the added scrutiny of athletes in 2018, the percentage of athletes using banned substances in Pyeongchang is probably lower than it was in Rio in 2016, and than it will be in Tokyo in 2020. Doping—throughout the history of the Olympics—tends to happens more in the Summer Games than in the Winter Games.

Wesley Snipes Has a Good Idea Why More People Don’t Remember How Important Blade Was

Image for article titled Black Panther's Missed Opportunity, Bad Dog Breeding, and Nerdy Cooking Secrets: The Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week
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The hype around Black Panther is reaching a fever pitch as everyone prepares to see (or has already seen) Marvel’s first film with a predominantly black cast and a black director. But with all the excitement in the air, there are some folks who don’t know that Black Panther won’t be the first film based on a Marvel character with a black lead.

That distinction belongs to Stephen Norrington’s Blade, the 1998 film starring Wesley Snipes as the titular, daywalking vampire who hunted his own kind in an effort to protect humanity from annihilation.

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Do Not, I Repeat, Do Not Download Onavo, Facebook’s Vampiric VPN Service

Screenshot: Nosferatu (1922)
Screenshot: Nosferatu (1922)
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There’s a new menu item in the Facebook app labeled “Protect.” Clicking it will send you to the App Store and prompt you to download a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service called Onavo. Millions of people use VPNs to enhance their privacy online. But that is not Onavo’s function.