What happens when two spaceships have the same registration number? Awkward! Karl Poyzer, Joseph Roberts, and friends worked on this animated sci-fi comedy short during lockdown. Contains NSFW language at the very end. -via Geeks Are Sexy

With the upcoming release of the PS5 and Xbox Series X for this year’s holiday season, video gamers will surely be breaking their piggy banks in order to buy one of the two consoles. The question is, is there enough space in their homes for the game consoles that they are buying? A Japanese illustrator helps us to put things into perspective.

Now that we have official dimensions for both consoles, Keisawada, an illustrator in Japan, decided to create computer-generated models to put their sizes in perspective. The image above shows the relative sizes of a PS5 in vertical mode, an Xbox Series X, and a Nintendo Switch for comparison. When placed alongside each other, you can see that the PS5 towers over the others, while the Xbox Series X takes the prize for girth.

Check out the comparisons that Keisawada illustrated over at Technabob.

Which console do you plan on buying this holiday season?

(Image Credit: keisawada/ Twitter)

With the many things that it can do, such as create poems, songs, and even articles that look like a human wrote it, OpenAI’s GPT-3 has certainly caught the eyes of the people. It could be considered as advanced AI already, but scientists are still looking towards making an AI more advanced than this one.

GPT-3 trained on an enormous amount of text data. What if the same methods were trained on both text and images?

Now new research from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, AI2, has taken this idea to the next level. The researchers have developed a new text-and-image model, otherwise known as a visual-language model, that can generate images given a caption. The images look unsettling and freakish—nothing like the hyperrealistic deepfakes generated by GANs—but they might demonstrate a promising new direction for achieving more generalizable intelligence, and perhaps smarter robots as well.

[...]

The final images generated by the model aren’t exactly realistic. But that isn’t the point. They contain the right high-level visual concepts—the AI equivalent of a child drawing a stick figure to represent a human. (You can try out the model for yourself here.)

Learn more details about this AI over at Technology Review.

I feel excited and at the same time fearful about the future. What about you?

(Image Credit: Technology Review)

“Why is she crying?” you might ask upon seeing the photo on the left. But when you see the photo on the right, you probably would go “Oh, I see” after realizing the reason why the girl was crying on the first photo.

Still can’t figure it out? Head over at Awkward Family Photos to find out why this girl cried.

(Image Credit: Brit/ Awkward Family Photos)

The Astatotilapia burtoni. A species of cichlid fish. In this species, there are two types of males: the “leaders”, who are aggressive and territorial, and the “subordinates”, the weaker, non-territorial males. The former has the control on the group’s resources, territory, and space, and pushes everyone around. The latter, on the other hand… well, they just follow. Surprisingly, when it comes to complex tasks, it is not the “leaders” who wield much influence. Rather, it is the silent subordinate who has the greater influence. These were findings from a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a few months ago.

"The same traits that make you powerful in one context can actively reduce your influence in others, especially contexts in which individuals are free to choose who to follow," writes Alex Jordan, the senior author of the study. 

"More aggressive domineering personalities are most often in positions of power, but they may be least effective and have little influence when compared to their consensus-building coworkers."

When Polly found out about this study and its findings, she knew that she learned something very important.

… when it comes to staying focused and coming together to push through a challenge, to build the collaborative team needed to function well and improve despite adversity, those who adopt a less in-your-face approach might be the most effective.

As the assertive voice in her family, Polly is now trying her best to be the passive, yet powerful, voice, just like her husband.

I’m practicing this wait-and-see style more often now too. Learning to listen better. Pausing to think before I answer. Realizing, not everything requires my input or opinion. And that collaboration, particularly in family and friendships—really in any group where you need to come together to get through—makes things better for all.

[...]

Like the fish, I imagine we all work better when we aren't pushed around, but when we are hungry for leadership, ready to be guided and led by people who respect others and leave room for others to collaborate and share. For other voices to be heard. 

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Russell D. Fernald and Sabrina S. Burmeister/ Wikimedia Commons)

It has been a long-standing belief that birds are dumb animals due to their rather weird brain structure, which lacks the neocortex, the part of the mammalian brain responsible for working memory, planning, and problem solving. But in recent years, scientists found out that birds are, in fact, smart animals, who are capable of making tools, as well as understanding abstract concepts. They can also recognize paintings by Monet and Picasso. But what makes them capable of doing these things? They don’t have a neocortex, right?

Now, researchers have found a previously unknown arrangement of microcircuits in the avian brain that may be analogous to the mammalian neocortex. And in a separate study, other researchers have linked this same region to conscious thought.

The two papers are already being hailed as groundbreaking. “It’s often assumed that birds’ alien brain architecture limits thought, consciousness, and most advanced cognition,” says John Marzluff, a wildlife biologist and specialist on crows at the University of Washington, Seattle, who was not involved with either study. Researchers who have “demonstrated the cognitive abilities of birds won’t be surprised by these results,” he adds, “but they will be relieved.”

“This research confirms the old adage that looks can be deceiving,” Marzluff says. Although bird and mammalian brains “look very different, this study shows us they are actually wired in very complementary ways.”

So the next time someone calls you a “bird-brain”, thank that person for complimenting your intelligence.

Learn more details about this study over at Science Magazine.

(Image Credit: MabelAmber/ Pixabay)

The life of a galley slave was miserable, pulling an oar all day long to propel himself to a penal colony. In 1774, a French galley slave named Bazile complained of illness. He was under the care of two different doctors for about five weeks before he died. Not knowing what the problem was, Dr. Fournier did a post-mortem. He found the man's organs in such an odd state that he decided to wait for his colleagues to witness the complete autopsy.

A few hours later, more than fifty people – physicians, surgeons, students and others – were there to watch the autopsy. Dr Fournier began by pointing out that the stomach was an unusual shape, distorted into an elongated cuboid by its contents. Then he made an incision into the organ and removed a catalogue of items so extensive and bizarre that one of his assistants recorded it for posterity.

The man had ingested 54 foreign objects, some large enough alone to cause his death, yet he lived under medical observation for more than a month. See a list of what was found inside, and the investigation that followed, at Thomas Morris. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Bubzyyy)

Why do cats follow us into the bathroom? They love to sit in the cool porcelain sink. They are fascinated with flushing. They know you don't have anything better to do while sitting on the toilet than to pet the cat. And they are terrified of baths and showers. Is that it? Or could it be that the things humans do in the bathroom are just so strange to them that they have to watch?

(Image credit: BowChikaMeowMeow)

For whatever reason they do it, once you have a cat, you will not have privacy in the bathroom. See a roundup of 50 cute and funny pictures of cats invading their human's bathroom privacy in a ranked list at Bored Panda. 

Davie504 shows us once again that the bass guitar is not just a musical instrument; it can also be a game controller. Thanks to a code that his friend made, Davie was able to control his in-game character as he plays notes on his bass. Surprisingly, he even wins a few games. While everyone struggles in playing the game using either a mobile phone or a mouse and keyboard, he owns the game by his bass.

Now that’s the power of bass.

(Image Credit: Davie504/ YouTube)

If you had the hands of a LEGO minifig, what would they look like? Comic book artist James McKelvie directs us to this image. These flesh claws would actually be useful for precision tool work. We'll have to change the way keyboards are designed, though.

-via Super Punch

Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio was a #1 hit in 1995. For the upcoming Oktoberfest, YouTuber There I Ruined It (previously) turned it into a Bavarian polka. All it took was a couple of tubas, an accordion, some lederhosen, and lots of nerve. (via Laughing Squid)

What are Fall Guys? Some thought that they are humans inside a suit. They thought wrong.

Fall Guys developer Mediatonic has revealed an awful piece of concept art designed to show exactly what is going on underneath your character's suit.

And it is a horrifying revelation. They might look cute and jelly-like on the outside, but it’s a different story on the inside.

While an adult human is shown in the image below for scale, it is clear the skeleton within the Fall Guys' costume is a different species entirely.

The bent legs and long neck remind us of a chicken. But then we get to the head. Oh, the head.

Scary!

(Image Credit: Fall Guys/ Twitter)

Being around here on the planet millions of years even before the appearance of the first humans, it is not surprising that hippos know more about life than we do. Having been here on this planet longer than we have, these animals have realized many truths about life. Most of these truths, however, are hard-hitting truths, and we still might not be ready to hear them.

But if you’re ready, head over at Sad and Useless.

(Image Credit: Sad and Useless)

From afar, the squirrel sees the hazelnuts that Jeffrey Wang placed strategically inside the soundboard of a teeny-tiny grand piano. As the squirrel approached the tiny musical instrument, Wang, a musician and photographer, knew that his lure worked.

And as it reached its tiny claws inside to retrieve the snack, it was caught ‘playing’ the piano.

But the squirrel was not a beginner piano player, as...

Reliable sources say he [played] The Nutcracker.

Epic!

(Image Credit: SWNS/ Classic FM)

The player you control hits the tennis ball back to the other side of the court. Unfortunately, the ball goes out of bounds. And then you see the player blurt out a curse word on your screen.

When Super Tennis was originally released in Japan in 1991, the in-game tennis players would exclaim the world “s***”. The North American and UK versions, however, substituted “rats” instead.

Recently, however, the game was re-released on the Nintendo switch, but the Japanese version remains unchanged. The profanity is still there.

While some people in Japan might be aware that the word is profanity, many are not, and it does pop up in mainstream media. On a recent Japanese TV drama, for example, one character exclaimed the word.

Though, it’s still wild to see the word on kid-friendly Nintendo hardware.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: @FarmboyinJapan/ Twitter)