Have you ever wondered what the best-designed rooms look like? Well, interior design enthusiasts, rejoice! The 2021 edition of By Design: The World’s Best Contemporary Interior Designers has been released. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically the bible of interior design. Introducing new or groundbreaking interior designers, the book also showcases well-designed rooms. Homes and Gardens gives us a preview of the book, presenting the nine best living rooms featured in the book. Check the full list here. 

Image via Homes and Gardens

Researchers from Wageningen University & Research believe that a facial recognition AI can be used to identify the emotional state of farm animals. If this machine could actually be created (and work), then checking an animal’s emotional state would no longer be exclusive to farming simulator games. However, there’s little evidence that emotion recognition systems could work, as the Next Web details: 

The same ‘science‘ driving systems that claim to be able to tell if someone is gay through facial recognition or if a person is likely to be aggressive, is behind emotion recognition for people and farm animals.

Basically, nobody can tell if another person is gay, or aggressive just by looking at their face. You can guess. And you might be right. But no matter how many times you’re right, it’s always a guess and you’re always operating on your personal definitions.

That’s how emotion recognition works too. What you might interpret as “upset,” might just be someone’s normal expression. What you might see as “gay,” well.. I defy anyone to define internal gayism (ie: do thoughts or actions make you recognizably gay?). 

It’s impossible to “train” a computer to recognize emotions because computers don’t think. They rely on data sets labeled by humans. Humans make mistakes. Worse, it’s ridiculous to imagine any two humans would look at a million faces and come to a blind consensus on the emotional state of each person viewed.

Researchers don’t train AI to recognize emotion or make inferences from faces. They train AI to imitate the perceptions of the specific humans who labeled the data they’re using.

Image via the Next Web

In 2009, Nadya Suleman achieved a Guinness World Record for multiple births when she had eight babies at once, and they all survived. Two instances of a woman giving birth to nine babies have been recorded, but none of the infants survived. But now a Malian woman has given birth to nine babies by cesarian, and they are all alive. Halima Cisse was told she was carrying seven babies; two more were a surprise.

Doctors in the West African nation had been concerned for her welfare and the chances of the babies' survival - so the government intervened.

After a two-week stay in a hospital in Mali's capital, Bamako, the decision had been made to move Ms Cisse to Morocco on 30 March, Dr Siby said.

After five weeks at the Moroccan clinic, she had given birth by Caesarean section on Tuesday, the minister said.

Cisse has one older daughter, who stayed behind in Mali with her husband. The nontuplets, five girls and four boys, are said to be doing well. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: the Malian Health Ministry)

Yep, you’ve heard that right -- it’s a toadlet. A small frog. Surprisingly, the actual scientific term for the newly-discovered tiny orange toadlet is toadlet. The B. rotenbergae is less than an inch long! The amphibian can be found in the Mantiqueira mountains in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Besides being small, did you know that its bones glow under UV light? Popular Science has more details: 

This pumpkin toadlet looks almost identical to another species of pumpkin toadlet. If you were walking in the forest and came across one (they are difficult to spot, as they hide amongst the leaf litter), you almost certainly wouldn’t know this tiny frog from its cousin. But if you’re a herpetologist, like those that described the new species in a recent PLoS ONE article, you might have noticed the faded spots on its back that differentiate it from its cousin, Brachycephalus ephippium. The new toadlet, B. rotenbergae, is also a little smaller, though the two share fluorescent bones. It’s unclear what function the fluorescent bones serve, though they might have something to do with communication. 

Image via Popular Science 

It’s for their own good, apparently. Yellowstone National Park  is now shooting paintballs at wolves. Since wildlife and human interaction is an issue in the park, signs and notices are scattered all over the park to warn visitors. However, it seems that these warnings are no longer enough to keep the tourists safe from accidents when they get too close for the animals’ comfort. Now, park officials are using paintballs to deter the wolves from engagement and interaction with the park’s visitors: 

“Instead of killing them, we want to do everything in our power to preserve them—that’s where non-lethal munitions come into play,” Smith said.

Hazing, used frequently on wildlife like coyotes, involves the use of deterrents, like loud noises, inflicted pain, and in many times, a combination of the two on an animal to discourage them from engaging in an undesirable activity or behavior. The idea with wolves is to essentially make them afraid of humans again, especially if they’ve lost that fear due to park visitors feeding them or getting too close to them.

According to Ausband, the use of wolf hazing doesn’t really work. “We tried hazing methods in the livestock industry in Idaho, but the wolves were pretty smart and caught on pretty quickly.”

Smith and his crew disagree. In fact, they’ve developed a method shared with Teton National Park, Denali National Park, and others, that involves bean bag rounds “in the ass,” which is according to Smith “the best place to hit a wolf,” rubber bullets, and cracker shells to create a cacophony of noise and a barrage of the senses that frightens the wolf and discourages it from interacting with humans again.

“I tell my guys to make it seem like the Fourth of July is happening right over their heads,” Smith told The Daily Beast.

Clear paintball rounds (that, importantly, don’t leave a mark on the animal), are also a tool used since, Smith says, “you’re lucky if you can even use one tool before the moment has passed.”

Image via the Daily Beast 

Did you know that there are houses being sold  for just €1 ($1.20) in Italy? The deal sounds too good to be true, of course. However, according to California resident Rubia Daniels, they’re real - just don’t expect brand new houses. Daniels was one of the first who bought a house in Mussomeli, Sicily. Travel and Leisure spoke with her to know what to do and what to avoid when you’re trying to buy one of Italy’s  €1 homes:

Does that €1 home really cost just €1? There are taxes and fees to pay, of course, along with the building work, but not all schemes are equal when it comes to the price of the house itself.

"I know some people who went to another town, and it turned out to be an auction," says Daniels.

Each town has different rules, whether that's the pricing structure, deposit system, number of architects or lawyers you must involve (and pay), or time in which you have to complete your renovations to avoid penalties. Make sure to pick the one that works for you.

You should also be aware of the criteria for renovations. In Mussomeli, for example, you can do what you like with the interior, as long as you keep the façade as it originally would have been. Daniels is already planning an art gallery on the ground floor of one of her homes.

Image via Travel and Leisure

Well, this kid has his priorities sorted. When a mother asked her son what he wanted for his birthday, he responded with two things: a Nintendo Switch and a trip to Buffalo, New York. Both of these choices are costly, so she told him he could only pick one. The little guy actually chose the trip to Buffalo to try out their famous pizza. What an unexpected choice! 

Image screenshot via WIVB

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the French Riviera was a popular retreat for the wealthy elite -as it is today. W. Somerset Maugham called it “a sunny place for shady people.” And so that's where Amélie Condemine went to relieve the rich of their cash and jewels. She passed herself off as the Comtesse de Monteil, which gave her access to the finest hotels and resorts, and kept suspicions from her victims at bay. In fact, she operated for twenty years before she was finally arrested in 1908.

After her arrest, the comtesse became something of a folk hero in the media. Newspapers emphasized her pluck and daring, such as when she robbed the same Swiss banker three times. The third time, he awoke and raised the alarm, but she sprinted back to her room, where she pretended to be asleep and was never suspected. On another occasion, in Alexandria, the hotel accused her and an accomplice of theft; the pair fought the accusation in court and won a defamation suit against the hotel. While she was a criminal conning the wealthy, she was also portrayed as a woman of the people. Le Petit Parisien noted that her maid liked and respected her, and that she was a generous tipper.

Read the story of the Queen of Thieves at Atlas Obscura.

The Carter Center shared a photograph of former president Jimmy Carter and his wife Roselyn hosting a visit from President Biden and his wife Jill. The initial reaction from everyone who saw it is What's going on here? The Carters look tiny while the Bidens appear to be giants. While the Carters are in their 90s, and people often become smaller with age, that doesn't tell the entire story. Maybe it's the wide-angle lens.

The presidential photo doesn’t have any EXIF data left to indicate exactly which lens was in use when it was taken, but it was obviously a wide-angle model. To say that it was simply “lens distortion” that makes the Carters and Bidens look disproportionate seems inaccurate.

Yes, there are other things going on here. The extreme distortion without obvious facial distortion is a confluence of several factors that are explained at Popular Photography. -via PopSci

One seven-year-old girl noticed that the dresses sold in the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons were more expensive than the jumpsuits or pants. Confused, she asked her mom about it, who had no answer to her question. Finding no answer, she then decided to write a letter to Nintendo on her own. We’re still waiting for Nintendo’s answer on her query! 

Image via Bored Panda 

Meet the Architeuthis dux, the world’s largest known squid. The animal is capable of growing to about 46 feet (14 meters long)! For reference, that is about the length of a semi-trailer truck. This huge sea animal inspired the tales of krakens, and now with scientists catching the elusive squid on camera, we can say that we finally have footage of a live kraken (well, sort of): 

Now, a study published online in the journal Deep Sea Research Part 1: Oceanographic Research Papers delves into why these giants of the deep are so elusive, and explains how a team of researchers was able to capture the first footage of A. dux in its natural habitat in 2012, and again in 2019 in the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the study authors (many of whom were present for the 2019 giant squid sighting), the creature's evasiveness is due, in part, to its enormous eyes.

Giant squids can live thousands of feet below the ocean's surface. Very little sunlight can penetrate this deep so to adapt, the giant squid evolved the largest eyes in the animal kingdom. Each of these cephalopods' peepers are about as large as a basketball — roughly three times the diameter of any other animal, Live Science previously reported.

These huge eyes not only help giant squids make their way around the deep, dark ocean, but probably also make them extra sensitive to the bright lights that marine researchers mount to their submersibles and underwater cameras, according to the study authors. That sensitivity could explain why giant squids are so hard to find in their natural habitats; by the time a research vehicle reaches a squid's swimming grounds, the squid has long since fled the craft's lights and vibrations.

Image via Live Science 

Tom Scott climbs to the top of a wind turbine so that we don't have to. We find out what it looks like inside, what the view is like from the top, how not to fall off, and for the purpose of the video, how to get down safely in an emergency. Now I'm convinced that all hard hats need a pair of googly eyes.

Fish can be convenient pets, particularly if you are absent from home for long hours. But you may miss out on fun activities with them, such as going on walks. Fish have notoriously low endurance for strolls through the neighborhood.

The Katsugyo Bag may change that. It appears to be a a pressurized water tank with a port on one end. The only information that I can find in English is second-hand, so we will have to wait for details about this invention will change human-fish relations.

-via Design You Trust

We love ranked lists of pop culture, but you always have to look at the source to decide whether one will be worth a look. This list of 100 sitcoms is from Rolling Stone magazine. They go back to the '50s, and aren't limited to American television, nor to broadcast TV, so the list had to be winnowed down from the mountain of shows that make us laugh.  

To choose the 100 greatest sitcoms ever, we first had to decide how to define the term. Sketch comedies were out, from the explicit, like Saturday Night Live and The Muppet Show, to the more ambiguous, such as The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Ditto comedy-drama hybrids that ran around an hour — Freaks and Geeks, say, or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Half-hour dramedies presented a blurrier picture; we took those on a case-by-case basis, applying our own version of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” Where Enlightened and The Wonder Years seemed to fall just too far onto the drama side of the line, for example, Atlanta and Better Things had enough comedy to qualify. This list is also composed entirely of English-language comedies, primarily American ones, with a handful of British and Canadian shows making the cut.  

So what's left? An amazing array of sitcoms spanning 70 years and several continents. Sure, you will disagree with their rankings here and there, but you'll probably appreciate that the top 20 are all golden. And you might find some new-to-you shows that you'll want to watch. -via Digg

Many American know Cinco de Mayo (May 5) as a celebration of Mexico. The date is not Mexico's independence day, but rather a commemoration of the Mexican victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. As such, it is more of a regional holiday in the state of Puebla. In the US, Cinco de Mayo is often an excuse to dip into stereotypes and chow down on tacos.   

But what America’s Cinco de Mayo misses is the traditional food of Mexico, named to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, a recognition given to only one other cuisine (French). And, nachos with refried beans, cheese wiz and jalapenos is nowhere on the list or in the country. Taco Bell has even tried opening up in Mexico but each time has failed, simply because no one will eat there.

What makes traditional Mexican fare worthy of such a distinction? You won’t find cumin soaked ground beef hard shell tacos topped with iceberg and cheddar. But, you will find lamb barbacoa that has been smoked underground in banana leaves or carnitas topped with queso fresco, pickled onions and homemade salsa verde wrapped in a warm homemade corn tortilla that has been ever so lightly heated on a comal. And Puebla, just so happens to be considered by many, including Rick Bayless and Mark Bittman, as the gastronomic capital of Mexico.

Therefore, learning about the authentic foods of the region would be an appropriate way to honor the region of Puebla. Smithsonian looks at the origins of three dishes from Puebla: Mole Poblano, Chalupas, and Chiles en Nogada, with links to recipes you can try yourself. Besides, tacos are for any day.