There’s no harm in spending a lot of hours on your favorite gadget, provided that you’re doing it in your free time. However, if you’re casually browsing on your phone during work-- then that’s a different story, especially if you’re a politician. An AI is now out for politician’s necks as they call out political figures who spend time on their phones during parliament sessions. The AI, called The Flemish Scrollers, is a computer program that uses facial recognition to automatically call out politicians in the Flemish province of Belgium:

Launched Monday, Depoorter's system monitors daily livestreams of government meetings on YouTube to assess how long a representative has been looking at their phone versus the meeting in progress. If the AI detects a distracted person, it will publicly identify the party by posting the clip — on Instagram @TheFlemishScrollers, and Twitter @FlemishScroller.

The accused representative will be named and shamed with their social media handles. The bot also politely requests they "pls stay focused!"

According to Depoorter's website, if there is no session in progress, the software will begin analyzing and learning from archived livestreams instead. Whether this means the software will routinely post evidence of past distraction wasn't clear. Depoorter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Image credit: Dries Depoorter 

Sharks get dandruff? Now that’s something I never knew until today! Smithsonian scientists revealed that a shark’s shedded dermal denticles can protect coral reefs from declining. The denticles are microscopic scales that cover a shark’s body, which protects them from abrasion by hard substances and ectoparasite attachment. Scientists hope that the denticles can be used for innovative reef conservation strategies: 

Just as humans shed dry skin and dandruff, sharks shed their denticles, which accumulate in marine sediments. The oldest denticles found so far, in the Harding Sandstone of Colorado, are about 455 million years old.

STRI paleobiologist, Aaron O’Dea, pieces together clues from fossil- and modern coral reefs to reconstruct baseline conditions before human colonization, and to understand how ecological and evolutionary processes change through time.

“Placoderms in the Paleozoic, and then marine reptiles in the Mesozoic, were larger and ate sharks.” O’Dea explained. “Placoderms ruled the oceans for around 70 million years and marine reptiles of the Mesozoic ruled for more than 100 million years. Sharks are only top predators now because extinction events preferentially took out other groups but allowed sharks to survive. Sharks seem to have remarkable evolutionary resilience and I was fascinated to work on a technique that would help us explore how sharks have fared more recently when humans step into the picture.”

Image credit: STRI

An international team of geologists have found a geological secret under Iceland. Meet ‘Icelandia,’ a sunken continent hidden underneath the country and the surrounding ocean. Scientists now believe that the sunken land mass covers an area ~600,000 km2 . The discovery challenges scientific ideas about the extent of continental crusts in the North Atlantic region, as Phys Org details:

Speaking about the new theory, Professor Foulger said, "Until now Iceland has puzzled geologists, as existing theories that it is built of and surrounded by oceanic crust are not supported by multiplegeological data. For example, the crust under Iceland is over 40 km thick—seven times thicker than normal oceanic crust. This simply could not be explained.

"However, when we considered the possibility that this thick crust is continental, our data suddenly all made sense. This led us immediately to realize that the continental region was much bigger than Iceland itself—there is a hidden continent right there under the sea.

"There is fantastic work to be done to prove the existence of Icelandia but it also opens up a completely new view of our geological understanding of the world. Something similar could be happening at many more places.

Image via wikimedia commons

Take your dreams of building an island getaway to a board game! Bear with me, I know that statement doesn’t make sense at first, but hear me out: Animal Crossing Monopoly. Thanks to photos initially shared by reddit user calysunflower, we now know that a Monopoly game has been made inspired by Animal Crossing: New Horizons! The board game will be released in August 2021, and can be preordered here. 

Image credit: calysunflower

Don’t worry, it’s not literally a land made of Swiss cheese. Within a few weeks, a weird phenomenon has occurred in different villages in north-east Croatia. Sinkholes of varying depths and sizes have popped up suddenly and without warning in the villages of Mečenčani and Borojovići. While an earthquake happened before the appearance of the sinkholes, experts were still baffled as almost 100 sinkholes materialized a month after the earthquake: 

Sinkholes are not the most common consequence of powerful seismic shocks but they do occur, especially in the areas with hidden underground cavities. After the devastating earthquake near the Italian city L'Aquila in 2009, two sinkholes immediately opened on roads in the old part of the city. Experts at the time suspected that a previous excavation of vertical trenches for a sewage conduit weakened the conglomerate roof of the underground cave, contributing to the collapse.

"The real anomaly in Croatia's case is a very high number of sinkholes with significant dimension," says Italian geologist Antonio Santo at University of Naples Federico II.

Image credit: AFP/Getty Images

Lady with an Ermine is a commissioned portrait that is a classic example of High Renaissance portraiture. The artwork is mostly unheard of or forgotten as it preceded the better-known Mona Lisa. However, Lady with an Ermine is an excellent display of Da Vinci’s fixation with anatomical realism. In addition, Da Vinci uses the ermine as a symbol with meanings related to the subject of the portrait. Check out My Modern Met’s full analysis on the oil painting here! 

Image via wikimedia commons

Well, hopefully the lynx doesn’t accidentally destroy it, right? Surprisingly enough, when wildlife ecologists conducted a study on a Canada lynx, the mic they used wasn’t smashed into smithereens! Researchers delved deeper into the lives of these elusive predators through safely attaching a small microphone to lynx collars: 

Much to our excitement, these recorders were very effective at capturing the behavior of the lynx: “cats being cats” (grooming, sleeping); social behavior (aggressive interactions, purring, long-distance social calls); and hunting behavior (chases, kills, feeding).

Over the five years of our study in the Yukon’s Kluane region, we collected over 14,000 hours of audio recordings from 26 individual lynx. After using various methods of data processing, we were able to identify kills by Canada lynx with 87 percent accuracy — an impressive feat.

Previously, to know that a single kill had been made often required a full day of intensive snowshoeing and tracking during the short winter days in the Yukon. But by recording multiple lynx, we could collect information 24 hours a day, while we warmed our feet by a wood stove in a rustic cabin.

In addition to audio recorders, we also attached accelerometers — small devices that measure activity over time like you would find in a FitBit. Together with GPS tracking devices, these “biologging technologies” provide unprecedented insight into the complex behaviors of these cats.

Image credit: Zdeněk Macháček (Unsplash) 

Titus Poplawski’s analog photos invoke a sense of nostalgia, longing, and mystery. His photos are full of character, and as The Phoblographer states, ‘his analog photography is some of the best we’ve seen.’ You know what, they’re absolutely right. Looking through his images, from the composition to the colors, these photos make you conjure a story for each of them. Check out the Phoblographer’s full interview with the photographer to learn about him and his works here! 

Image credit: Titus Poplawski 

London’s police boxes are getting a redesign! Details for the new police box design have been unveiled by the government. A competition was launched to find a ‘modern and multifunctional’ replacement of the staple structures of the city. The winning design, called The London Stones, is from architecture and design studio Unknown Works, as Design Week details: 

Each hub will feature digital information screens, “essential” communication technology and space for the storage of life-saving emergency equipment.

Unknown Works’ winning design will also seek to celebrate the aesthetic and cultural heritage of the surrounding city.

Details from “buildings, stories and images of the past, present and future” will be collected and digitally carved into the stone exterior of each hub. The City of London says this will provide “an active and engaging addition to the public realm”.

“Our starting point was the London Stone [a limestone block landmark located on Canon Street], a humble fragment of the City’s past that’s been watching the City grow for thousands of years,” says Unknown Works director and co-founder Theo Games Petrohilos. “It’s mottled skin hums with myth and wonder – something we hope to echo in The London Stones.”

Image credit: Unknown Works

Here’s a good reason to pick up Skyrim again! Thanks to modder Cooleoj’s efforts, Skyrim’s dungeons are being enhanced and resized to provide more ways to have fun in the game. The mod, called ‘Dungeons Revisited,’ adds a “lot of new paths, rooms, and enemies”, and new “confusing” elements to the game’s dungeons. While not revealing a lot about the mod, Cooleoj assures that both veteran and new players will get lost playing through the new modded dungeons: 

All of the changes are in harmony with the themes of the base game’s dungeons, as Cooleoj says they want the enhancements to be both lore-friendly and indistinguishable from the experiences Bethesda crafted.

The dungeons enhanced so far include some fan favourites, like Bleak Falls Barrow, which looms over Riverwood and plays host to one of the game’s early main quests, and others. The list “thus far” is Ustengrav, Embershard Mine, Steepfall Burrow, Halted Stream Camp, White River Watch, and Hillgrund’s Tomb – though it sounds like the modder’s planning to revisit more.

If you’re keen to grab the mod for yourself, you can find it at Nexus Mods here. As ever, mod with caution, and be sure to check out our rundown of the best RPG games and best Skyrim mods on our home platform.



Image via PCGames

Have you ever written a full paper for a subject without much effort at all? Alternatively, have you defended your position (whether in a personal conversation or in a more academic setting) through purposefully convoluted arguments that really aren’t that good? Well, it seems that our ability to bullshit through real life events is a sign of intelligence. The proof lies in a study published in Evolutionary Psychology: 

The researchers measured respondents’ intelligence through a cognitive ability test, and tested their ability to bullshit through a verbal exercise that required them to explain 10 concepts (like general relativity), only the catch was that some concepts didn’t even exist. The researchers found the skilled bullshitters who satisfyingly and persuasively tried to explain completely made up theories and concepts.

Unsurprisingly, those who tested high on the bullshit scale also tested well on the cognitive ability test, thereby proving that sometimes, you can actually fake it till you make it.

Maybe bullshitting is just another way of finding connections, or maybe it’s a sign of a charismatic persona. Either way, we now have further proof that bullshitting can make you smarter—or at least make you look smart.

Image credit: Paramount Pictures 

Steve Lindsay  has created a device that can hug any object placed between them, regardless of shape! The fractal vise has passed through different iterations, and now, its latest version, has finally met the Nebraska-based artist’s approval. Lindsay actually spent six years working on the vise’s design! The device was based on a 1900s milling machine, with its components creating a tight grip on irregular shapes like wrenches and scissors.

Image credit: Steve Lindsay via Colossal 

Now this application is very convenient! Brickit is an app that uses an AI camera to scan your LEGO bricks and suggest projects you can build with your current inventory. The application uses machine learning to scan your entire spread of bricks to recognize as many bricks as it can. In addition to taking inventory of your collection and suggesting potential projects for it, Brickit can also show you exactly where the necessary bricks are in your messy pile. Isn’t that amazing? 

Image via PetaPixel 

Four years after the release of the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch, players are still finding new ways to exploit the game or find hidden items buried in the game’s files. MrOrdun has achieved something that no player has done before. The player shared a video on Twitter of them opening an ‘impossible chest,’ a chest that the game recognizes but the player can’t reach in the overworld: 

As spotted by Kotaku, the video shows how they were able to uncover the “impossible” chest found 80 meters below the ground at Aris Beach in the game. According to the player, “it has never been opened prior to this moment”.

As the player mentioned in the tweet, the chest despawns after seven seconds of sinking from loading into the game, so they had to intercept the chest along the way.

The player takes multiple steps in order to collect the chest, including using a game bug that lets you fall through the ground as well as utilising Breath Of The Wild‘s multiple Sheikah Slate abilities to reach it.

The full YouTube video, which goes through the entire process, reveals that the prize within the impossible chest was, after all this time, just a piece of amber.

Image credit: Nintendo

Heartbreaking and disappointing. Imagine having a fun time with a potential significant other only to wake up and have your valuables taken from you! A woman managed to steal her date’s jewelry valued at a million dollars stored in the hotel safe. The news claims that the date stole the jewelry as the man slept in his hotel. Check out the full story here. 

Image credit: Immo Wegmann (Unsplash)