You don't have to worry about your pharmaceutical reaction so as long as inanimate objects are waiting to affirm your life choices, as seen in Ryan Hudson's Channelate. And let us be glad that Kyle chose to have a normal throw pillow instead of an anime hug pillow as his companion (I'll let you Google that on your own).

Inverness Caledonian Thistle don’t employ a cameraman as their camera is programmed to follow the ball throughout the match. The commentator had to apologise today as the camera kept on mistaking the ball for the linesman’s head... pic.twitter.com/LeKsc2bEj7

— Tom Cox (@seagull81) October 24, 2020

The Scottish football team Inverness Caledonian Thistle decided to forego paying a cameraman and employed a robotic artificial intelligence algorithm to operate the camera for games. This is an important job, as spectators are banned from attending games due to the pandemic.  

The club announced a few weeks ago it was moving from using human camera operators to cameras controlled by AI. The club proudly announced at the time the new "Pixellot system uses cameras with in-built, AI, ball-tracking technology" and would be used to capture HD footage of all home matches at Caledonian Stadium, which would be broadcast directly to season-ticket holders' homes.

Cut to last Saturday, when the robot cameras were given a new challenge that hadn't been foreseen: A linesman with a bald head.

The robotic camera operator couldn't help but focus on the referee's head, which is stunningly round and white, instead of the ball in play. While this kept the action on the sidelines for viewers, there were plenty of jokes about how this improved the broadcast, "given the usual quality of performance." You can see a highlight video of the game at IFLScience. -via Metafilter

Back in the day, Halloween was taken seriously. Back then, this was believed to be the day when the world of the gods became visible to us, and this resulted in “supernatural mischief.” Some people would offer treats and foods to these gods, while others wore animal skins and heads to disguise themselves as wandering spirits. In doing so, they won’t be disturbed by these spirits. And that is why Halloween back then was really scary.

Know more about the history of Halloween over at CNN.

(Image Credit: Toby Ord/ Wikimedia Commons)

Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines (previously) constructed five different Rube Goldberg contraptions in order to make a sandwich. That in itself is not so surprising, but the mechanisms he uses along the way are astonishing. How did he know precisely how that hand mixer would act? Surely he isn't going to eat jelly out of a toy truck! He doesn't, but how its used is genius. Be sure to stay for the credits, because they get a little messy. -via Digg

I’d say this offer is a steal even in a non-pandemic timeline, but if you have the opportunity, maybe this offer will be of interest to you! Travel company Booking.com is offering $50 weekend-long stays — to represent the unity of the 50 states — at 10 select hotels in culturally rich neighborhoods as part of its America Is for Everyone campaign. Clients who take advantage of  the promo will be able to experience the destinations with a “custom-designed and safety-first itinerary” in order to “enjoy authentic meals, historical tours, and more unforgettable experiences,” as Travel and Leisure details: 

The destinations include hotels in the Vietnamese neighborhood of Factors Row in New Orleans; Little Ethiopia in Silver Spring, Maryland; Greektown in Tarpon Spring, Florida; Germantown in Frankenmuth, Michigan; the Dutch area of Oak Harbor, Washington; Little Haiti in Miami; Little India in Jersey City, New Jersey; the Mexican Cultural District in Denver; the Japanese area of Honolulu; and the Danish Village in Solvang, California.

“In these challenging times, it’s important to remember that it’s the diverse backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives representing so much of the world that have made this country what it is today,” Booking.com’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Arjan Dijk, said in a statement. “We hope the ‘America Is For Everyone’ experiences help quench Americans' collective curiosity and inspire travelers to seek out new experiences they may not have realized existed so close to home.”

Image via Travel and Leisure 

Samir Mazahem thought that he was saving numbers on the lottery app. What he had done, however, was very different from what he thought he was doing. Apparently, he had just bought an extra ticket with the same numbers that he had picked for the previous ticket that he bought. When he realized that he spent an extra $2 for the June 9 Mega Millions Game, he got upset. But he didn’t think much about it.

But his mistake turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

As he logged on recently, he found out that he had two $1 million winners.

“I couldn’t believe it was real,” Mazahem said. “It took several days for the reality to set in that my mistake had paid off to the tune of $2 million!”

He recently claimed his prize and plans to buy a new house and save the rest.

Lucky guy.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Limited money. No friends. No associates. No job. But, this guy still managed to put out an incredible music video with some great acting skills included.

Click here for his incredible video. Make sure to like and follow.

In this sea of carved pumpkins, there is one that is slightly different from the others. Unlike its peers, this one doesn’t have a nose. Can you find where it is?

This puzzle was made by Hungarian artist Gergely Dudás, who is also known online as Dudolf.

If you found it, congratulations. And for those of you still craving more, we also have this other visual puzzle from Dudás featuring a lone ghost hiding within an army of skeletons.

Via Mental Floss

(Image Credit: Dudolf/ Mental Floss)

Longtime Neatorama readers know that Josh Sundquist comes up with amazing Halloween costumes every year that utilize the fact that he has only one leg. He's also an athlete, so he can do some pretty amazing things with his ideas. This year, he is Baby Groot! If you've been keeping up over the years, you can skip ahead to 2:40 to see him walking around as Baby Groot, and how the costume was made. -via reddit

It was an early June evening, and two scientists, physicist Raphael Sarfati and computer scientist Orit Peleg, can be found deep in the forest trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, bringing with them gear that is vital to photographing their subject, like butterfly nets, and GoPro cameras. Their subject: fireflies who turn on and off their lights in sync with each other.

Unlike many firefly species that flash in individualized patterns for months every summer, these special fireflies display in a specific, collective pattern that the scientists wanted to track.

With their tent and cameras set up and dusk descending, the sporadic blinking of individual fireflies harmonized into synchronous flashing. “They are everywhere around you. You can’t even count how many there are, all flashing at the same time for a few seconds and then they all stop at the same time as well. It’s dark and then it picks it up again,” Sarfati says. “It’s really astonishing.”

But why fireflies? Their study, it turns out, would be helpful in improving robot communication and synchronization in the near future.

Learn more details about this study over at Smithsonian Magazine.

(Image Credit: Radim Schreiber/ Wikimedia Commons)

1983. American physiologist Benjamin Libet invited some people to participate in his experiment. It was an experiment that would spark interest in psychologists, philosophers, and even neuroscientists.

The study itself was simple. Participants were connected to an apparatus that measured their brain and muscle activity, and were asked to do two basic things. First, they had to flex their wrist whenever they felt like doing so.

Second, they had to note the time when they first became aware of their intention to flex their wrist. They did this by remembering the position of a revolving dot on a clock face. The brain activity Libet was interested in was the “readiness potential”, which is known to ramp up before movements are executed.

It wasn’t the experiment that was controversial. Rather, it was the findings. Through his experiment, Libet found out that the “participants’ brains had already “decided” to move, half a second before they felt consciously aware of it.” This seems to support the argument that there is no self that is distinct from the brain. In other words, there might be no such thing such as “free will”.

But is that really the case?

Know more about this controversial study over at The Conversation.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: waldryano/ Pixabay)

For a person who is not used to lying, the said activity could be very stressful for him. When he lies, his respiratory and heart rate will increase. But why is this the case?

Lying generally involves more effort than telling the truth, and because of this, it involves the prefrontal cortex. A 2001 study by late neuroscientist Sean Spence (University of Sheffield in England) explored fMRI images of the brain while lying.

This is what the polygraph, more commonly known as the “lie detector”, is used for — to provide continuous readings of a person’s blood pressure and respiration rate, elements in one’s body which could indicate if that person is lying or not.

But can someone outsmart the polygraph? The answer is yes.

… for example, psychopaths, who lack empathy… do not exhibit the typical physiological stress responses when telling a lie.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we should deem the polygraph as something unreliable.

According to the American Polygraph Association (made up largely of polygraph examiners), the estimated accuracy of a polygraph can be up to 87 percent. That means that in 87 out of 100 cases, the polygraph will be able to detect if someone is telling the truth.

Learn more about the polygraph, as well as what happens to a person when he lies, over at Big Think.

(Image Credit: Federal Bureau of Investigation/ Wikimedia Commons)

Presenting: a new Homestar Runner cartoon! Sadly, this will be the only one this year. In this Halloween special, familiar characters solve a Scooby-Doo-esque mystery -with no dog, which highlights how superfluous the dog was. Then they show off their Halloween costumes. Longtime fans will catch all kinds of self-references, while everyone else can just enjoy the chaos. -via Metafilter

This cat just wanted a tasty treat while it’s outside! Well, its owner tried their best helping, sure, by tapping the ice where the desired fish was trapped. Watch the short video of a cat trying to get a carp out of the ice. I’m sure it wasn’t able to get the carp. Hopefully its owner gave it a treat when they got home! 

Israeli artist Michal Levy, who has synesthesia,  created a short animation set to different classical pieces, such as Bach’s ‘Prelude in C Major’, and Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps.’ Levy saw the “rollicking notes” of Coltrane’s Giant Steps as a “kinetic, cascading cityscape built from colourful blocks of sound” and was able to visualize it. Levy then created the short animation ‘Dance of Harmony’ to show what she sees when she hears  Bach’s ‘Prelude in C Major,’ as Open Culture details: 

During a maternity leave, working with her friend, animator Hagai Azaz, she set herself the challenge of showing, as she describes it, “the cascading flow of emotion, to make the feeling contagious, by using only color, the basic shape of circles, and minimalist motion, assigning to each musical chord the visual elements that correspond to it synaesthetically.”

It is fascinating to compare Levy’s descriptions of her condition with those of other famous synesthetes like Vladimir Nabokov and, especially Kandinsky, who in essence first showed the world what music looks like, thereby giving art a new visual language. Levy calls her synesthesia art, an “emotional voyage of harmony,” and includes in her visualization of Bach’s famous prelude an “unexpected elegiac sidebar of love and loss,” Maria Popova writes. Read Levy’s full description of Dance of Harmony here and learn more about the “extraordinary sensory condition called synesthesia” here.

Image via Open Culture