Aissante Diallo, 3, died in her Harlem apartment on Sunday after suffocating while trapped in a sofa bed. According to the New York Post, Aissante was at home when “the bed retracted, trapping her and her 10-year old sister.” The sister managed to escape, but Aissante was “squeezed inside.” NBC 4 reports that the girls were sleeping at the time of the accident.

Two other children were also in the apartment but not in the bed.

The children were being watched by their mother’s boyfriend but it’s unclear whether he was inside the home when the accident occurred. According to police, “his story has been inconsistent.” However, police were alerted to Aissante's injuries when the boyfriend flagged down an officer on the sidewalk at some time after 6 p.m. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators are still questioning the boyfriend while waiting for the medical examiner determine the cause of the death.

[Image via Shutterstock]

Thanks to the Internet, no one will pay for porn anymore unless it’s a celebrity sex tape. According to insiders, it’s sex tapes from the likes of Farrah Abraham and Sydney Leathers that are currently keeping the porn industry financially “afloat.”

Burger King, the fantastic land where you can find weed and razor blades in your burger, will begin selling “Satisfries” Tuesday, a crinkle-cut french fry with 20 percent fewer calories than their regular french fries. A small order of Satisfries will contain 270 calories as opposed to a 350-calorie small order of their regular fatty-fat fries.

So what’s the difference between regular fries and Satisfries?

Burger King executives say people won't be able to tell that Satisfries are lower in calories. It says they use exactly the same ingredients as its regular fries — potatoes, oil and batter. To keep kitchen operations simple, they're even made in the same fryers and cooked for the same amount of time as regular fries.

The difference, Burger King says, is that it adjusts the proportions of different ingredients for the batter to block out more oil. The company declined to be more specific. Another difference, the crinkle-cut shape, is in part so workers will be able to easily distinguish them from the regular fries when they're deep frying them together.

They will also cost more as a small order of Satisfries will be $1.89 compared to $1.59 for regular fries.

But there is good news for fry purists and everyone who will complain about the abomination that is “healthy” fast food: no one will ever order Satisfries because no self-respecting person will ever want to say “Satisfries” aloud. Ever. Fine, maybe in the drive-thru once, but only because no one will see you.

[Image via AP]

A woman in Utah has pleaded guilty to attempted criminal solicitation and possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person after persuading her husband to shoot their neighbor by claiming she was the victim of "telepathic rape."

Meloney Selleneit was accused of illegally purchasing a gun for Michael Selleneit, a violent felon, and inciting him to shoot Tony Pierce twice in the back while Pierce was working in his yard.

Michael, 53, later told police Pierce, 41, had been telepathically raping his wife for years and was using crack cocaine to control her mind.

A judge found Michael competent to stand trial despite some hesitancy from mental health evaluators.

He pleaded guilty but mentally ill to attempted manslaughter and use of a firearm by a restricted person, and sentenced to two one-to-15 years prison terms to be served consecutively.

He is being held at the state hospital until such time as he is deemed sane enough to join the general prison population.

After being found competent herself, Meloney, 55, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to her charges last week.

She was then returned to the same state hospital, where she has been receiving treatment for the last year.

Her sentencing will take place on October 31st.

[mug shots via SLTrib]

It's National Punctuation Day, a day for prescriptivists and schoolmarms to lord their shibboleths over everyone else, as opposed to every other day of the year, when everyone is very mellow and forgiving and aware that correct ("correct") use of punctuation is contingent and arbitrary—that it is often a weapon for enforcing social status distinctions rather than a tool for fostering understanding. Here are punctuation marks, ranked in order of their quality and value.

1 . period

2   space

3 ! exclamation point

4 ; semicolon

5 — em dash

6 " " double quotation marks

7 ' apostrophe

8 ? question mark

9 , comma

10 - hyphen

11 : colon

12 – en dash

13 ( open parenthesis

14 ... ellipsis

15 ) close parenthesis

16 ' ' single quotation marks

17 ] close bracket

18 [ open bracket

[Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Shutterstock]

If you've ever wondered why so many Russians have dash cams, this is why. This is why right here, ladies and gentlemen.

Behold! A three-minute supercut of some of the dumbest pedestrians in all of Russia, and from the looks of it, a few other countries too. You need a license to drive a car, but these people will make you think we should require licenses for people who walk around cars as well. I'd like to formally apologize for the dubstep/nu-metal soundtrack, but the video itself is pretty shocking.

And since so many of these incidents — like the guy who lays down in the middle of the street and gets run over around the 1:30 mark — seem to have been done on purpose, it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. Insurance fraud is rampant in Russia, which is one of the many reasons so many drivers carry dash cams.

I think at least a few can just be chalked up to carelessness and idiocy, though. Also intoxication. I hear they do that in Russia too.

Hat tip to Carscoops!

E.D.M. will be the death of our culture, if molly doesn't kill us all first. That is what I gathered from "Night Club Royale," the New Yorker's semi-profile of Paris Hilton's ex, producer/DJ Afrojack, who amused me so when I saw him at the Electric Daisy Carnival in 2012, and through whom writer Josh Eells gives us a good look at the entire Vegas nightclub casino scene. (Between this and the Rolling Stone Miley Cyrus profile, Eells having the best culture-writing week ever.)

Really, what's sickening is the way the resorts push piles of money (hundreds of thousands of dollars a night) at DJs who provide soundtracks to people pushing piles of money back at the resorts to play for entry and bottle service (again, hundreds of thousands of dollars a night). Mainstream music is a product, yes, but rarely has it been presented in such crassly commercial terms. "They shouldn’t even call it dance music,” Black Eyed Peas frontman/Wynn DJ will.i.am says in the piece. “They should call it look-at-the-d.j.-and-get-drunk music." His tone is hard to determine, but as someone profiting from the industry, he's probably not too angry about this.

It's embarrassing to be the old guy shaking his fists at Kids Today and their corruption of a hallowed piece of culture, but the world of E.D.M., as presented in Eells' piece is so far removed from the foundation of house music that it bears at least brief mention. That the vast majority of the capital—social, cultural and actual—generated by E.D.M. is enjoyed by white (and almost entirely straight, from what we can tell) men is an affront to house music's roots among gay blacks and Latinos in poor neighborhoods. will.i.am's comment is particularly galling when you consider clubland beyond Chicago house sweatboxes—legendary venues like David Mancuso's Loft and the Paradise Garage, where Larry Levan spun, had strict no-alcohol policies.

But even if you don't look back on dance music history with romantic over-fondness, and even if Vegas' E.D.M. industry doesn't strike you as effrontery, there is plenty in the piece to turn your stomach, make you cry, or reduce you to cackles, depending on your method of coping with other people's excess and others' inflated salaries. Here are those bits, ranked:

10.

To determine how much profit the Wynn could pay a d.j. and still turn a profit, [managers] [Sean] Christie and [Jesse] Waits used a formula that included everything from the number of a d.j.’s Instagram followers to the weather forecast.

9.

The d.j. market was entering a bubble. Skrillex had been earning fifty thousand dollars a show. “Now he’s worth five times that,” Waits said.

8.

“It’s a whole new metric,” will.i.am, the leader of the Black Eyed Peas, who also d.j.s at the Wynn, told me. “What makes a hit in pop music is how many times a song gets played on the radio. A hit in d.j.-land is how much alcohol is bought.”

7.

A restaurant called Andrea’s, which is named for Steve Wynn’s wife, opened in December. It combines Asian-fusion cuisine with an E.D.M. soundtrack selected by a dance d.j. billed as a “musical chef.”…The music is played at a volume that makes conversation difficult. The Wynn calls it “vibe dining.”

6.

…These days when [Afrojack] writes a song his ambition is to create a hit. “I know what people like, and I give it to them,” he said. Although he has no formal training, and cannot read music, he has an intuitive talent for assembling the parts of a song so that they deliver the maximum impact. To illustrate, he played a song called “Beyond” from the latest album by the French duo Daft Punk. “It’s cool,” Afrojack said. “But where’s the hook? Where’s the drop?” Then he played one of his own unreleased songs. “Sonically, it’s not half as genius as Daft Punk,” he said. “But the kids are gonna love it, because it has all the elements they love.”

5.

"I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with all of this money," [Afrojack] said...At the beginning of April, Afrojack flew from New York to Las Vegas to perform at XS’s fourth-anniversary show. He had hired a ten-seat Gulfstream G-IV, at a cost of thirty-eight thousand dollars. It was the latest splurge in a splurge-heavy few months: in February, he had bought another new Ferrari, which he totaled after forty-five minutes, when he hit an oil slick; in March, he’d rented an eight-foot yacht in Miami to throw a first-birthday party for his daughter.

4.

When Afrojack played his most popular song, “Take Over Control,” a column of waitresses appeared, carrying a thirty-lire bottle of Armand de Brignac champagne that a customer had just bought for a hundred thousand dollars.

3.

Last year, XS earned more than eighty per cent of its revenue from alcohol sales. A bottle of Grey Goose that wholesales for forty-five dollars costs more than six hundred in the club—a markup of more than a thousand per cent. The biggest customers often spend half a million dollars on drinks in a night.

2.

Afrojack liked the vocal line [of a song he was working on], but he wasn’t sure about the song’s structure. “It’s a thirty-second verse, a thirty-second pre-chorus, and a thirty-second chorus,” he said. “Is that right for a radio song?”

“You don’t go by time,” [songwriter Antony] Preston said. “You go by bars.”

Afrojack cocked his head. “What’s ‘bars’?”

1.

In January, the Wynn announced its d.j. lineup for 2013. Calvin Harris, Tiesto, and Deadmau5 were all decamping for Hakkasan, and Skrillex had signed a contract with Light. Waits said that, despite his years of building relationships, it had all come down to money: Hakkasan would pay Calvin Harris roughly three hundred thousand dollars per show; Deadmau5 would earn even more. (Neil Moffitt, the C.E.O. of Hakkasan, declined to discuss specific figures, except to say that Waits’s numbers were “bullshit.”)

Here's a bonus excerpt:

Near the lip of the stage, a young woman in stilettos started dancing on the arm of a couch, and a busboy motioned for her to get down.

“I won’t fall!” the woman told him.

“You’ll fall,” he said.

She danced for fifteen more seconds, then fell.

That one's not sad, though. It's just funny.

[Image via Getty]

Just as they do everything, rich people and entitled liars have tarnished Disneyland for everyone today with their disgusting and pitiful greed. Is nothing sacred? No, nothing is sacred.

Back in May the internet was briefly taken with a story about how rich people, eager to buy a leg up in literally every facet of their lives, were hiring disabled men and women to escort them through Disney theme parks. Disabled guests and their families had long been allowed to take advantage of line-skipping opportunities at Disney rides via special entrances, and so wealthy people were paying up to $130 an hour for handicapped "tour guides" to help speed things up. "My daughter waited one minute to get on 'It's a Small World,'" said one truly reprehensible parent at the time, "the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours. ... This is how the 1 percent does Disney."

Well, that was how the 1 percent did Disney, because today Disney announced it is putting the kibosh on its policy of allowing disabled visitors to skip lines. Amid widespread reports that wealthy people and able-bodied people—Disney did not require guests to prove they were handicapped—were abusing the disability policy, Disney has decided to do away with it. Reports KRON 4, "Starting October ninth, guests with a new disability access card will be issued a ticket with a time to enter an attraction, based on the current wait time, so they don’t have stand in line."

It's a cold world after all.

[Image via AP]

Two Bills, one selfie. Already having fun at #CGI2013 MT @BillGates A @billclinton selfie as we sat down to talk http://t.co/iK4Y7tGFIY

— Bill Clinton (@billclinton) September 24, 2013

[Via @AntDeRosa]

Have no fear, all you 14-year-old virgin boys in California who find it funny to post social-media bios that say that you're "hung like a rhinosaurus [sic]" and that you "get more ass than a toilet seat." As of 2015, you will be legally guaranteed the right to delete that dumb shit before serious people who can influence your future see it!

Yesterday, California governor Jerry Brown signed a law confirming minors will be easily able to erase anything they've posted on the web. The provisions are fairly simple: any Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application must allow underage users to delete their own data—or at least be easily able to request that it be removed.

There are two substantial caveats. One, as SFGate points out, Senate Bill 568 doesn't require the internet provider or service company to delete information from its internal servers, but rather to prevent other users from accessing whatever data a minor has asked them to remove. Two, the provision also specifically doesn't apply to information that third-party users have copied, shared, and/or rehosted. So if a kid posted a photo and someone else downloaded the image or took a screenshot and reposted the picture, this law doesn't apply. (Site operators will also be obligated to alert kids of this fact.)

Those are two big exceptions, and since most sites allow users to delete information themselves, it's fair to wonder what this law will actually change. But if you read the legislation's text carefully, posted in full here, the law is written as a protection for minors, something to ensure that underage people have a means to remove anything they've posted, from the source, no questions asked. Something that before this, apparently didn't exist officially in California.

Some kids in San Francisco think this sounds good:

"As a youth, you make a bunch of mistakes," said Alicia Cabral, 17. "If you put it on the Internet, it follows you everywhere."

Her friend, 15-year-old Diana Cortez, added that caution is still in order.

Even if you make sure not to post photos of yourself, you can't stop your friends from doing so, she said. "If you use drugs and there are pictures of you doing that and you apply for a job, you won't get hired."

SB 568 takes effect January 1, 2015.

[h/t Daily Dot; image via Shutterstock]

To contact the author of this post, email camille@gawker.com.

On Tuesday, Rolling Stone published its first Miley Cyrus cover story online.

Over the course of its four pages, Toluca Lake's most fearsome little young person has the name of the magazine tattooed on her "dirty feet," jumps out of an airplane with a reporter in tow, dances on a banquette at a club where a little person dressed as an Oompa Loompa is lowered from the ceiling on a harness to deliver liquor, and poses for paparazzi pictures in front of a dumpster. It’s a lot to take in. So we’ve broken it down by number.

12

Number of tattoos explicitly identified in the profile

• 9 on Cyrus' hands, arms, ribcage, and ear
• 2 more she receives during her interview (“ROLLING” on her right foot; “$TONE” on her left foot)
• 1 of fictional teenager Hannah Montana’s initials, located on the shoulder of Stephen Baldwin

"Did you know Alec Baldwin has Hannah Montana's initials tattooed on him? No, wait – Stephen Baldwin. He said he was my biggest fan, and I told him my biggest fans have tattoos. So he got hm tattooed on his shoulder." She shakes her head. "People do fucked-up shit."

19

Number of words in the Theodore Roosevelt quote permanently inked on Miley Cyrus' left forearm

3

Number of affable text messages received from famous hippity hoppers, read aloud by Miley Cyrus

• 1 from Kanye West

"He said, 'I still can't quit thinking about your performance,'" Miley says.

• 1 from Pharrell

"This is why I love Pharrell so much," she says, then reads a text that he sent her out loud. It's at least 1,000 characters long; she scrolls forever.

• 1 from Lil Kim

She checks her phone and reads a text from Lil' Kim out loud: "My little pumpkin, I just had to tell you you're so fucking smart. I love you and all the press you are getting. Sad I didn't run into you at the VMAs. Keep killing it, boo." Miley laughs.

2

Number of times Miley Cyrus says, or imagines saying, "Yo" to rapper Kanye West

I was like, 'Yo – can you say that again?!'"

It's good to have someone you can call and be like, 'Yo, do you think I should wear this?'

3

Number of times Miley Cyrus uses the word "homies"

• On Kanye West giving her advice:

"That's what homies are supposed to do."

• On black back-up dancers:

"Those aren't my 'accessories.' They're my homies."

• On the friends that inspired the "Can't Stop" music video:

"This is actually the house! [...] And these are the homies!"

2

Number of times Miley Cyrus refers to her home as "the crib"

We could order some food and shit! Hang at the crib!"

"I call myself Rapunzel with a mohawk. Standing by my window, looking at the paparazzi, just wanting to leave the crib."

365

Days per annum Steve Carrell regrets his choice of neighborhood

"He always gives me the stank-eye because I drive so fast," Miley says. "The other day I was trying to reverse and I almost hit a thousand things, and I was getting nervous because I could see him going" – she crosses her arms and lets out a big, annoyed sigh. "I'm like, oh, my God, Dan in Real Life is watching me right now!"

10

Number of dollars Miley Cyrus was paid, as a child, to pick up the bras and underwear tossed onstage by her father's fans.

"I'd get a really big one and be like, 'Dad! I found your biggest fan!'" she says, laughing.

6

Maximum number of months in prison one could face if convicted of trespassing on private property, under California law

One time she went out to her backyard and saw a shadowy figure in the bushes. "I thought I was gonna get murdered," she says, "and then I see my dad climbing my fence. He's like, 'Sissy! I found a secret path where I can get from my house to your house without having to go on the street!' I'm like, 'Dad, you definitely just trespassed through someone's yard.'"

108

Force of the Earth's gravity on Miley Cyrus, measured in pounds

23

Name of a new song by Miley Cyrus' record producer Mike WiLL Made It, the video for which features Cyrus smoking and rubbing herself and wearing a bra—just generally doing all the things she does now. (It's not discussed in the Rolling Stone piece, but it was released Monday and you've already demonstrated a clear interest in Miley Cyrus.)

2

Number of Gatorades consumed over the course of the profile

• 1 pre-skydiving
• 1 post-skydiving, with Malibu rum

2-???

Number of Malibu rum-based drinks consumed over the course of the profile

• 1 pre-club, with Gatorade
• enough to last "the whole night" at a club

1

Thing that "was dope," according to Miley Cyrus

• bonding with Demi Moore on the set of the 2012 movie LOL

2

Pairs of shoes destroyed by Miley Cyrus in recent memory

• 1 pair of Doc Martens

At one point, Miley fell asleep in front of a fireplace and melted her Docs.

• 1 pair of fur slippers

She also happened to mention that a pair of fur Céline slippers she'd bought were falling apart...

5

Pairs of fur Céline slippers given to Miley Cyrus by the pair that was falling apart

....and Kanye bought her five more pairs.

12

Number of years Brooke Shields had been alive when she played a prostitute in a movie, so Miley Cyrus doesn’t want to hear her any of her shit

She was especially amused by the criticism from Brooke Shields, who played Miley's mom on Hannah Montana and called the VMA performance "desperate." "Brooke Shields was in a movie where she was a prostitute at age 12!" Miley says with a laugh.

2,008

Number of years that had passed the birth of Jesus of Nazareth when Miley Cyrus changed her name from "Destiny Cyrus" to "Miley Cyrus"

Billy Ray named his daughter Destiny Hope because he thought it was her destiny to bring hope to the world.

[Image via Getty]

Jalopnik I Can't Stop Watching This Supercut Of Idiotic Pedestrians | Lifehacker Seven Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Running | Gizmodo YouTube Comments Will Soon Be Less Racist, Homophobic, and Confusing | Kotaku Myst Is 20 Years Old Today. Go Turn a Crank To Celebrate.

Prabhjot Singh, the Sikh Columbia University professor who was attacked in Harlem on Saturday, has graciously offered to educate those who called him a “terrorist” and broke his jaw: “I would ask them if they had any questions, if they knew what they were doing? Invite them where we worship. Get to know who we are and then share it...”

Two firemen with the Sodus Point Volunteer Fire Department have been arrested in Old Forge, N.Y. for breaking into the Enchanted Forest Water Safari park while in town for the annual Firefighter’s Drill School. While inside the park, which had been closed for the season, the firefighters stole food and stuffed animals and then damaged arcade games and “an animated band that was more than 30 years old.” One of the men also defecated on the floor

Eric Frisbie, 29, and Jacob Williams, 26, have been charged with burglary, criminal mischief and petit larceny, but their arrest did not come easily. Frisbie’s brother, John, also a firefighter, was at a local bar with the duo when police came to question them:

“The cops walk into the bar and start asking for IDs,” John explained. “I start being a smarta**. I start saying, ‘What do you want IDs for? You can't come in here asking for ID's. We have rights. I'm going to video tape you.’ I grabbed the phone right off the table and then, I got maced.”

But he did not get maced protecting Eric and Jacob, as he had no knowledge of their romp in the Enchanted Forest:

Despite his own actions, John said he was not, in any way, trying to protect his brother or prevent him from getting arrested. In fact, had he known what Eric and Jacob were accused of doing, he says he would have turned them in himself.

Shockingly, Eric and Jacob are no longer working for the fire department and John, the incredibly stupid smartass, “is suspended from the fire department for six months pending the outcome of his case.”

But all is not lost. Eric’s girlfriend is standing by her maybe-floor-pooping boyfriend:

“Eric is a great person. He is a wonderful dad. He is a great companion. I'm very upset with what people are saying about him. They're making him look like this terrible person which he's not. Yeah, he made a mistake. He understands that. He understands the effects of what he did.”

[Images via WHEC]

Six hours later, GOP Senator Ted Cruz is still bloviating on the Senate floor in opposition to funding the Affordable Care Act. This is not a filibuster, as Cruz isn't actually delaying action on a bill. This is just a politician who wants to be famous talking endlessly for his own benefit.

This is what a faux filibuster looks like: Senator Ted Cruz reads Green Eggs and Ham to his daughters because Green Eggs and Ham, according to him, is just like Obamacare for the American people: “they do not like Obamacare in a box, with a fox, in a house, or with a mouse.”

Except he seems to completely misunderstand the book because, as the narrator in the story learns, once he actually tries green eggs and ham, he realizes they’re delicious.

Senator Cruz, you do not like Obamacare, so you say? Try it! Try it! And you may!

[Video via CSPAN2]

Whoops. Mississippi newspaper The Sun Herald accidentally published the closely-guarded list of MacArthur “genius grant” recipients several hours before the MacArthur Foundation’s press embargo. We’ve copied the full list of winners below. Each receives $625,000 over five years, to spend on whatever he or she wants. (Spoiler: You did not win. Maybe next year.)

— Kyle Abraham, 36, New York City. Choreographer and dancer who explores the confluence of personal history and identity.

— Donald Antrim, 55, New York City. Teaches writing at Columbia University and is being recognized for his fiction and nonfiction.

— Phil Baran, 36, La Jolla, Calif. Organic chemist at Scripps Research Institute who invents ways to recreate natural products with potential pharmaceutical uses.

— C. Kevin Boyce, 39, Stanford, Calif. Paleobotanist at Stanford University who looks at links between ancient plants and today's ecosystems.

— Jeffrey Brenner, 44, Camden, N.J. The physician founded a health care delivery model that finds, tracks and serves the city's poorest and sickest residents.

— Colin Camerer, 53, Pasadena, Calif. Behavioral economist at the California Institute of Technology whose pioneering research has challenged assumptions in traditional economic models.

— Jeremy Denk, 43, New York City. Writer and concert pianist who combines his skills to help readers and listeners to better appreciate classical music.

— Angela Duckworth, 43, Philadelphia. Research psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania helping to transform understanding of just what roles self-control and grit play in educational achievement.

— Craig Fennie, 40, Ithaca, N.Y. Materials scientist at Cornell University has designed new materials with electrical, optical and magnetic properties needed for electronics and communication technology.

— Robin Fleming, 57, Chestnut Hill, Mass. A medieval historian at Boston College who's written extensively on the lives of common people in Britain in the years after the fall of the Roman Empire.

— Carl Haber, 54, Berkeley, Calif. Taking insights from his work on imaging subatomic particle tracks, the experimental physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed new technologies to preserve rare, damaged and old sound recordings.

— Vijay Iyer, 41, New York City. Jazz pianist, composer and bandleader and writer reconceptualizing the genre through compositions for his ensembles, as well as cross-disciplinary collaborations and scholarly writing.

— Dina Katabi, 42, Cambridge, Mass. A computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has worked at interfacing computer science and electrical engineering to improve the speed and security of data exchange.

— Julie Livingston, 46, New Brunswick, N.J. Medical historian at Rutgers University interested in the care of chronically ill patients in Botswana who exposed the unlikelihood that technology will fix health issues in Africa or the rest of the world.

— David Lobell, 34, Stanford, Calif. Agricultural ecologist at Stanford University who has investigated the impact of climate change on crop production and food security around the world.

— Tarell McCraney, 32, Chicago. Playwright at Steppenwolf Theater Company who examines the diversity of African-American experiences.

— Susan Murphy, 55, Ann Arbor, Mich. A statistician at the University of Michigan, she has translated statistical theory into tools that can be used to evaluate and customize treatment regimens for people with chronic or relapsing disorders.

— Sheila Nirenberg, New York City. Neuroscientist at Weill Cornell Medical College exploring the nervous system and creating new prosthetic devices and robots.

— Alexei Ratmansky, 45, New York City. Choreographer and artist-in-residence at the American Ballet Theatre revitalizing classical ballet with interpretations of traditional works and original pieces.

— Ana Maria Rey, 36, Boulder, Colo. Theoretical physicist at the University of Colorado working on how to control states of matter through conceptual research on ultra-cold atoms.

— Karen Russell, 32, New York City. A fiction writer and author of the novel "Swamplandia" whose work blends fantastical elements with psychological realism.

— Sara Seager, 42, Cambridge, Mass. Astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology creating a theoretical framework for determining the characteristics of planets outside our solar system.

— Margaret Stock, 51, Anchorage, Alaska. Immigration attorney who founded a program that pairs volunteer attorneys around the country with military families in need of legal assistance with the deportation of loved ones and other immigration issues.

— Carrie Mae Weems, 60, Syracuse, N.Y. Photographer and video artist who examines African-American identity, class and culture in the United States.

(Updated with descriptions of winners from The Daily Press, which also broke the MacArthur Foundation’s embargo.)

[Photo credit: Shutterstock]

Early Friday morning on CNBC Squawk Box, host Joe Kernen had some really interesting things to say about rupees. Actually he didn’t, but that didn’t stop him from adopting an Indian accent while talking about the currency. When it was clear his co-hosts Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin were uncomfortable, he tried with all his might to hold back the hilarity on the tip of his tongue: “No, I can’t do it. I was going to say something.”

Becky Quick, sitting next to him, quickly begs: “Please don’t.”

And then the rest unfolded:

Kernen: “I really can't?"

Quick: "No, you can't."

Kernen: "Are they good at 7-Eleven?"

Then Kernen defends himself because “people say that all the time!” He follows this up with an incredibly sincere apology: “Alright, I'm sorry, I take it back. I apologize, before I have to." After, some nonsense about Miss America is mumbled thus making the situation even more uncomfortable.

But it appears Kernen’s had to further apologize. When asked to comment on the situation, he responded:“I made an inappropriate and insensitive remark on Squawk Box. I apologize for any offense it caused.”

CNBC has not responded to requests for comment.

[Video via CNBC]

Child psychologists are now being told to acknowledge that 25—and not 18—is the cut-off age for adolescence. These new guidelines, defining 18-25 as “late adolescence,” will apparently stop children from feeling “rushed” though childhood.

For the past 17 hours or so, Senator Ted Cruz (and his pals) have been pointlessly fake filibustering the U.S. Senate to, as the AP put it, “urge his colleagues to oppose moving ahead on a bill he supports.”

Here's some background and an explainer on the situation, but basically Cruz is trying to prevent the Senate from voting on a House-approved bill that would continue funding the federal government for the next two and a half months only if Obamacare is defunded. The Senate will – as anyone who's been paying attention knew weeks ago – vote to remove the anti-Obamacare language from the bill before sending it back to the House. Cruz is attempting to convince fellow Republicans not to let the bill come to vote, so the anti-Obamacare section won't be removed. Never mind that the bill he's currently fighting against is the exact bill he spent months encouraging the House to pass.

But why isn't this actually a filibuster? Because of Senate rules, Cruz would need 41 votes to deny cloture and actually delay the legislation. But because he doesn't have 41 votes, Cruz (and his supporting case of Mike Lee, David Vitter and Marco Rubio) will have to leave the floor by 1 p.m. Wednesday. As Talking Points Memo put it, this “filibuster” is “merely a speech to kill time.”

Not that Cruz et al haven't killed time in a memorable way. For instance, Cruz read Green Eggs and Ham as well as some supportive tweets. And he quoted a song by Obama supporter Toby Keith. Sounds like a great time.

UPDATE: And here is Cruz's Darth Vader impersonation:

[Image via AP]