Behind the mask

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today: Takeaways from Kevin Warsh’s first meeting as Fed chair; Who doesn’t love a good date; and LEGO launches its own pinball machine! 😎

But first, our weekly poll!

People have been eating dates for at least six thousand years, but this year the dried fruit is having its long awaited moment.

According to Joolies, which sells dates out of the Coachella Valley, direct to consumer sales have exploded this year.

“We're now in 9,000 to 10,000 doors,” said Amanda Sains, VP of marketing and founding team member at Joolies. “As a whole, the date category—us and our competitors—is up 33% year over year.”

Like most dishes that have overnight success these days, dates are getting a push from both the growing health consciousness of consumers, and viral social media videos of influencers trying and taste-testing the food.

“While dates might be a newer trend for consumers, they’ve been the go-to ingredient among dietitians to sweeten smoothies and lower-sugar dessert foods for years,” registered dietitian Lisa Moskovitz told Fox News.

Dates are packed with antioxidants, and possess digestive health benefits, while also reducing the risk of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

The global market is currently valued at around $33 billion and could hit $55 billion by 2034.

A study published in Nature Neuroscience by researchers at the U.K. Dementia Research Institute at University College London (UK DRI, UCL) looked into the potential reversibility of neurological damage caused by tauopothies.

Tauopothies are a class of neurodegenerative disease caused by protein clusters called tau tangles, and include Alzheimer’s, frontotemporal dementia, and others. The protein builds up in the brain’s neurons, damaging the communication highways (axons) that connect them, before killing the neurons themselves.

The researchers wanted to see if such damage could be treated and reversed at any point prior to neural death, and zeroed in on the restoration of “axonal transport” in mice.

Using a technique called two-photon imaging, the researchers anesthetized mice and observed axonal communication in their visual cortices after introducing tau into their brains. The researchers noted axonal damage early in the process, but also determined the damage could be reversed before tau tangles formed, by inhibiting a signaling enzyme.

The researchers determined there’s a potential window in the early stages of a tauopothy when further damage can be prevented and existing damage reversed, fending off cognitive decline.

If you can imagine it, you can build it, and with building and imagination as two core values of the LEGO brand, it’s probably a little surprising that for all its creative inventions over the decades, the company has never launched a pinball machine.

Those days are over, though. The void was filled for years by DIY pinball machines constructed out of LEGO (including this doozy), but they were never official issue sets.

On July 4, the fully-functional LEGO pinball machine will launch, with the company already taking pre-orders.

Retailing for US$230, the set is pretty reasonably priced compared to some of the grandiose concoctions LEGO has been offering lately (i.e. Sagrada Familia or the city of Gondor).

It’s got a space theme, which is par for the course for both an iconic LEGO set and for a pinball machine. It has 2,274 pieces, many of which will light up, and some of which will feature a progress bar for the actual game of pinball builders can play after constructing the machine.

Is it possible it will also feature brand new functional pieces? After all, the bumpers need to move, and the shooter for launching the ball will have to be spring loaded.

Time will tell, but you can find more on the set here.

Oh behave!

Mike Myers joined Trevor Noah’s World Cup Watch Party the other day, and as is usually the case any time the Scarborough, Ontario native appears in an unstructured interview setting, he was asked about Austin Powers.

The beloved satirical franchise about a 1960s British sex icon/spy and his archnemesis Dr. Evil first debuted in 1997, and its success yielded a second and a third film.

Austin Powers in Gold Member came out in 2002, so any new sequel would likely be out over 25 years years after. Still, Mr. Powers is no stranger to being cryogenically frozen for entire generations, so there’s precedent here.

Perhaps that’s what Myers has been thinking, because when asked if there will be an Austin Powers 4, he gave his most direct answer in all the years he’s been asked:

“Yes.”

Yeah baby, yeah!

While he provided no further details, he has said in previous interviews that if he were to make another one, he’d like it to focus more on Dr. Evil.

Was the beloved actor telegraphing something in the Verizon ad that launched the other day, featuring a reunion of Dr. Evil and his accomplices?

Quizmaster’s choice

You know the drill, Stakers! It’s Friday, and that means it’s another round of à la carte for today’s trivia!