You need to be well versed in psychology, or at least a Ph.D. in the field. Or you can have a willing professional poker player teach you the ropes. Maria Konnikova has both: a Ph.D. and a willing coach. Konnikova shares her experience under the wing of well-renowned professional poker player Erik Seidel: 

Seidel is notoriously reticent, and he hates sharing his tactics. I was, however, an ideal pupil in a few ways. Most important, I have a Ph.D. in psychology, and so I was well positioned to understand Seidel’s style of play. I also never had much of an interest in cards, meaning Seidel wouldn’t have to rid me of any bad habits. My academic training and my inexperience made me a perfect vehicle for an experiment to see if Seidel’s psychological game could still triumph over a strictly mathematical style. 

The game served as the perfect laboratory for my own questions about the role of luck in our lives. Poker isn’t the roulette wheel of pure chance, nor is it the chess of mathematical elegance and perfect information. Apart from the underlying mathematics, poker depends on the nuanced reading of human intention, interactions, and deceptions. It gives you parameters that are just clean enough to allow you to grapple with that uncertainty.

image via The Atlantic

Inspectors found a 36-kilogram iguana stored in the freezer of a local pizza joint. I didn’t know iguanas are now a pizza topping option! The frozen iguana the inspectors from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation found was a personal gift to the owner, as AP News details: 

The restaurant could not be reached for comment, but an employee told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the reptile was given as a personal gift to the owner. It was stored in a separate freezer away from the restaurant’s food and was immediately trashed after they were informed it was a violation.

Iguanas aren’t dangerous or aggressive to humans, but they damage seawalls, sidewalks, landscape foliage and can dig lengthy tunnels. The males can grow to at least 5 feet (1.5 meters) long and weigh nearly 20 pounds (9 kilograms) and female iguanas can lay nearly 80 eggs a year.

The reptile is considered a delicacy by some. One company even makes iguana sausages and burgers.

image via wikimedia commons

To recuperate from the losses brought by the pandemic, Fiji is now proposing a “travel bubble”. Fiji hopes to welcome visitors from virus-free countries to revive its economy. Due to the pandemic, thousands of Fijans were left without work, as Yahoo News details: 

The Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association (FHTA) says even that figure underestimates the industry's influence, putting it closer to 60 percent once related jobs are factored in.

In many communities, tourism has provided a lifeline for decades, helping the economy survive coups, natural disasters and the decline of the sugar and garment sectors.

Hopes for a quick recovery now rest on the creation of a "travel bubble" that would bring holidaymakers from nearly virus-free Australia and New Zealand. Those two countries supply about 70 percent of traffic to Fiji, general manager of the Treasure Island resort Jim Saukuru told AFP.

"The tourism industry is zero," he said. "To make things viable for our industry, Australia and New Zealand need to open up."

Officials in Canberra and Wellington have already opened discussions on a quarantine-free bubble across the two countries, to capitalise on their success in containing the virus, with plans to eventually expand it to include Pacific island nations.

image via Yahoo News

I hope this doesn’t happen. Scientists think that cockroach (yes, those pesky insects that flutter in your home) milk could be a new superfood. The milk is four times as nutritious as cow’s milk! The predicted future superfood can only be produced by Diploptera punctate, as ScienceAlert details: 

The fact that an insect produces milk is pretty fascinating – but what fascinated researchers is the fact that a single one of these protein crystals contains more than three times the amount of energy found in an equivalent amount of buffalo milk (which is also higher in calories than regular cow's milk).

Clearly milking a cockroach isn't the most feasible option, so an international team of scientists headed by researchers from the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in India decided to sequence the genes responsible for producing the milk protein crystals to see if they could somehow replicate them in the lab.

image via ScienceAlert

Taking your beloved dog’s nose will result in him cutely yapping and yawning. Well, don’t take your dog’s nose literally! Twitter user KNGRK9 shares a video of play-pretending to take his dog’s noise. It’s very cute! 

image screenshot via Twitter

The reality we see isn’t something we directly perceive; it is a result of our brain making sense of the sensory signals we receive from our environment. Our experience of reality is not perfect. It’s somehow like a story created for us, as Vox explains: 

“It’s really important to understand we’re not seeing reality,” says neuroscientist Patrick Cavanagh, a research professor at Dartmouth College and a senior fellow at Glendon College in Canada. “We’re seeing a story that’s being created for us.”

Most of the time, the story our brains generate matches the real, physical world — but not always. Our brains also unconsciously bend our perception of reality to meet our desires or expectations. And they fill in gaps using our past experiences.

All of this can bias us. Visual illusions present clear and interesting challenges for how we live: How do we know what’s real? And once we know the extent of our brain’s limits, how do we live with more humility — and think with greater care about our perceptions?

Rather than showing us how our brains are broken, illusions give us the chance to reveal how they work. And how do they work? Well, as the owner of a human brain, I have to say it’s making me a little uneasy.

image via Vox

After rumoured leaks online, it has been confirmed that Toys for Bob is making a new Crash Bandicoot game. The new game to the franchise is Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. A fitting title, no? It’s a brand-new game in the long-running Crash Bandicoot series, picking up after the events of Crash Bandicoot: Warped. Polygon has more details: 

villains Neo Cortex, Dr. N. Tropy, and Uka Uka stranded on a far-off planet. In Crash 4, the antagonists escape and once again threaten to take over the multiverse; players will inhabit Crash or Coco, as well as Neo Cortex, who will have his own special levels along the way.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time will be released on Oct. 2 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

image via Polygon

It won’t be a surprise if you haven’t heard about it, as the ambitious pitch got nowhere. Jon Burton, founder of LEGO series stalwarts Traveller’s Tales, shared footage from a scrapped Lord of the Rings / Hobbit game attempt he and the studio made. Kotaku has more details: 

Technically, it was a pitch for a Hobbit game, to be based on what was at the time a project still headed by Guillermo del Toro (Lord of the Rings director Jackson would only take over later). But in order to best capture the feel of Middle Earth without actually having seen any of the visual design that had been done for the Hobbit films, Traveller’s Tales decided to use iconic sequences from Lord of the Rings to illustrate their vision and tech.

Sadly, as Burton says, the pitch never got anywhere because rights holders Warner Bros. wanted a game that ran alongside the movie, not recreating its events. And it’s not like TT didn’t then get to make two LEGO games based on The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings a few years later anyway.

image via Kotaku

The newly-released Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is Samsung’s second generation of foldable phones. The Z Flip might resemble the old flip phones, but the new phone model doesn’t resemble the old flip phone’s simplicity. Priced at $1,380, IGN details the full specs of the Galaxy Z Flip: 

Display: 6.7-inch Foldable Dynamic AMOLED capacitive touchscreen

Processor: Qualcomm SM8150 Snapdragon 855+

Internal Storage: 256GB

Memory: 8GB RAM

Battery capacity: 3300 mAh battery

OS: Android 10.0; One UI 2

Cameras: Dual rear camera setup with 12MP (Wide) + 12MP sensors; 10MP (wide) selfie camera

Ports: USB type C

Dimensions: Unfolded: 167.3 x 73.6 x 7.2 mm; Folded: 87.4 x 73.6 x 17.3 mm

Weight: 183 grams

image via IGN

Setting up a good sitting place and throwing a fishing line into a body of water can lower stress, make you smarter, and lift your mood. Some say that a bad day fishing is better than a good day at the office. Fishing is a simple, calming activity that can make you temporarily escape the woes of life. Outside lists how fishing can make you feel better here. 

image via Outside

Not the Internet type of troll. Copenhagen artist Thomas Dambo is known for creating giant outdoor trolls from salvaged or trashed wood. The Danish sculptor and self-proclaimed “recycled art activist” creates massive troll sculptures, each four to seven feet tall with comical yet creepy expressions. His trolls will soon be displayed in Dambo’s latest installation, “The Great Troll Folk Fest.” National Geographic has more details: 

Over the next few months, with help from volunteers and staff (and funding via private donations), he’ll assemble and install 10 figures in all. The colossal 15- to 21-foot-tall giants will be hidden in lesser-known greenspaces around Denmark, including tiny islands near Copenhagen and out-of-the-way parks. He’ll release clues about their locations on social media. “It’s a kind of treasure hunt, a gift for families in Denmark, who may feel sad that they can’t go on vacation this summer,” says Dambo. “The trolls help remind us that there are these beautiful places practically in our backyards.”

image via National Geographic

A fox managed to get its head stuck in a car wheel. The animal peered inside a spare alloy wheel, and was unable to get its head out. The poor animal’s neck was swollen from trying to get out! Thankfully, the owners of the wheel called the RSPCA for help, and they were able to rescue the animal using special equipment to cut through the metal. 

image via Metro UK

Onions are a great addition to dishes, but preparing them is a task not many can handle well. If you haven’t shed any tears while peeling one, I would applaud you for being such a strong person, or ask if you’ve seen @James_Rembo’s onion-peeling hack. Apparently you can easily peel it with his method. Will you try it? 

image via wikimedia commons

I honestly thought the title was just clickbait, and I bet you do, too. However, that fact is true. The pearl fish makes itself comfortable inside a sea cucumber, one of the strangest relationships in the animal kingdom. The fish enters the sea cucumber as it sucks in water through its anus. Strange, but true. Watch the rest of the video as Be Amazed lists facts you might not know. 

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a strategy game that is best played with the full number of available characters, especially if the difficulty is raised. But where’s the fun in playing a game as is? In Mekkah’s 40,000-subscriber special he tries to finish the game using only the game’s main character in battles. Can he do it when the difficulty is raised to maddening? I’m sure I can’t. That mode is too difficult for me!