Furhat Robotics, which is based out of Stockholm, is attempting to bring robots that mirror human emotion into the workplace.

The company, which hopes to incorporate the bots into training modules, has designed the product with pre-built gestures and facial expressions.  

Image: YouTube / Johnnie Lawson

This post is part of Hard Refresh, a soothing weekly column where we try to cleanse your brain of whatever terrible thing you just witnessed on Twitter.

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To the extent that “relaxing” online is possible, YouTube is full of relaxing content, from hot knife ASMR to unedited dog show footage. But sometimes I don’t have two hours to watch the 2017 Crufts sporting group competition. Sometimes I don’t have time to watch anything at all.

This is where relaxing nature sounds come in. When I find myself anxious but truly unable to take a break from work, I pop on a video from artist Johnnie Lawson’s YouTube channel to use as background noise.

The videos range in length from about 20 minutes (perfectly fine) to eight hours (what I actually want). They feature a wide swath of nature audio, from “Nature Sounds and Relaxing Classical Music” to “Forest Waterfall Sounds w/o Birds Singing” to “Forest Waterfall Sounds Birds Singing.”

OK, they are mostly just water sounds, but I love them. They’re muted, pleasant, and repetitive — not so repetitive that I notice, but enough to lull me into something resembling a productive rhythm. 

They’re helpful if you want to sleep, too: One video, “Relax 8 Hours-Relaxing Nature Sounds-Study-Sleep-Meditation-Water Sounds-Bird Song,” has become a famous source of relief for insomnia sufferers.

One video has become a famous source of relief for insomnia sufferers.

Per the BBC, Lawson started making his videos as a way to “bring nature into people’s lives.” He films them himself in the Irish countryside, traveling to discover new shots, new sounds, and new scenery.

Lawson, who seems like a very nice person, began making eight-hour videos so that if insomnia sufferers woke up in the middle of the night, they wouldn’t wake up to silence. Even though I don’t use the channel as a sleeping aid, I appreciate the eight-hour clips, too. Yesterday, I started listening to one at work around 3 p.m., and only made it halfway through by day’s end. I clicked nothing; I chose nothing; I forgot I had the window open. I simply pressed play on eight hours of waterfall noise and went about my day.

And if I had reached the end of the video, it would’ve started playing another video of waterfall noise — perhaps with birds, perhaps without. 

What a paradise.

Ranging from “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” to “meh,” critical reactions to Mary Poppins Returns are all over the place.

Some early audience members delighted in the revamped world of color, propriety, and nostalgia. While other critics, like Mashable’s Angie Han, say the sequel feels contrived, forced, and thoroughly unimaginative.

Starring Emily Blunt, Mary Poppins Returns takes viewers back to Cherry Tree Lane where Michael and Jane are all grown-up with children of their own. When Michael’s wife dies, Mary returns to the Banks’ home to set things right—with help from a newly imagined Bert-type, played by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Laden with Poppins puns and sequel-to-original comparison points, reviews indicates that one size does not fit all when it comes to this Disney tentpole. 

Before shuffle-ball-changing into Mary Poppins Returns on Dec. 19, check out critics’ takes below. 

Emily Blunt captures Mary (and Julie) in all the right ways

David Ehrlich, IndieWire:

Why, it’s Mary Poppins, of course, and she hasn’t aged a day! Talking parrot umbrella, smart red bowtie, a stern but enchanted approach to daily chores… the only thing that’s changed about the character is the actress playing her. But while the part only requires Emily Blunt to channel the spirit of Julie Andrews’ performance — once again, the eponymous nanny lacks a clearly defined character arc, and all but blends into the background during the second half of the film — the “Edge of Tomorrow” star can’t help but overachieve. Not only does she capture Andrews’ careful balance between severity and playfulness, but she constantly wobbles the scales in a way that adds tension to a movie that never manages to mine any from its plot, or from any of the mediocre songs that punctuate it.

Laura Prudom, IGN:

It takes a while to warm up to Blunt’s performance simply because she has a different rhythm from Andrews, but something clicks (perhaps not coincidentally) around the time that Mary and the children take a trip to interact with an assortment of anthropomorphic animals at a vibrant and lively animated music hall. From that point on, we have a better sense of Mary’s true self as she allows the children to see beneath her prim and proper exterior, and Blunt confidently makes the role her own with a little more sass than Andrews likely would’ve been allowed to portray in 1964.

The plot is messy and sad

Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times:

Dead moms, stolen homes, cynical banks and earnest Bankses: That’s an awful lot of complications for even a wizardly problem solver like Mary Poppins to unravel. The original picture constructed its emotional throughline slowly, stringing together a series of delightful, episodic adventures that meandered their way toward a startlingly cathartic finale. The hectic, calculated busyness of “Mary Poppins Returns,” by contrast, wears you out almost immediately, in part because every throwaway gag and narrative digression has been so vainly contrived to pay off in a flurry of climactic would-be surprises.

The musical numbers are hit or miss

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: 

Shaiman’s lush underscoring enriches the movie throughout, and his songs with co-lyricist Wittman are their best since Hairspray, full of personality and humor, and reverential without being slavish in their adherence to the musical patterns of the first film. Even the raucous “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” has an equivalent here: “The Royal Doulton Bowl,” full of “marvelous, mystical, rather sophistical” wordplay.

Josh Spiegel, Slashfilm:

Then there’s the real stumbling block: the musical sequences, which all desperately want to be crowd-pleasers. While composer and lyricists Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman mostly do a very good job of keeping the songs in the same early-20th-century style as those in the first film by the Sherman brothers, the songs quite simply fail to be memorable at all. A day after seeing this film, I would not have been able to recall the rhythms or lyrics of the film’s songs if my life depended on it.

That animated sequence is truly delightful

Brian Truitt, USA Today:

The highlight of the film is a sequence filled with talking animals that seamlessly combines live-action and hand-drawn animation as Blunt playfully growls through “The Royal Doulton Music Hall,” then grabs a bowler hat and cane with Miranda as they sing and dance (and rap!) alongside tux-clad penguins for “A Cover Is Not the Book.”

Alissa Wilkinson, Vox:

There are moments in the film that come near to matching the visual enchantment of the original — particularly a long sequence during which, as in the 1964 film, the human children find themselves in a 2D animated world of imagination, having been transported there by Mary, that’s plenty entertaining. 

Mary Poppins Returns is good, but too closely tries to mimic its predecessor 

Matt Goldberg, Collider: 

Probably the worst thing you can do before watching Mary Poppins Returns is to see the 1964’s Mary Poppins not just because it’s hard to compare to a film that has such a beloved reputation, but because you can see all the ways Marshall comes up short. His movie just doesn’t have the same level of imagination, and it certainly doesn’t have the songwriting chops (there’s not a song in Mary Poppins Returnsthat has the staying power of “A Spoonful of Sugar” or “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”). That’s not to say that the original Mary Poppinsis some untouchable gem, but rather that it appears Mary Poppins Returns didn’t even try to outdo the original in any respect.

Owen Gleiberman, Variety: 

That said, there’s a paradox built into “Mary Poppins Returns.” Nearly everything in the film is designed to evoke a song, a visual flourish, or a story detail from the original “Mary Poppins.” So in more ways than you can count, it’s “just like” the earlier film. But, of course, when you first watched “Mary Poppins” (and I’m old enough to have seen it when it came out — in fact, I saw it five times), you weren’t thinking, “Look! It’s just like that classic we love so much!” Nostalgia, in “Mary Poppins Returns,” is a transporting emotion, yet the movie is as calculated a piece of re-enactment as “The Force Awakens.” Even as it throws off sparkles of sweetness, light, and vaudeville fairy dust, the more the film mimics “Mary Poppins” the less it can be “Mary Poppins.”

To ask why Mary Poppins Returns exists would be to ask why Disney would want a license to print money. The studio has been on a tear remaking, remixing, and revisiting its old classics, to great box-office success; Mary Poppins Returns, with its nostalgia-inducing premise and family-friendly holiday release date, will surely be no different.

Now that Mary Poppins has returned, though, it seems worth asking: Did we really need her to?

The Banks family seems to. Returns picks up in the 1930s, with the Banks children now grown. Jane (Emily Mortimer) is an activist like her suffragette mother, while Michael (Ben Whishaw) is a struggling artist with three little moppets of his own—John (Nathaneal Saleh), Annabel (Pixie Davies), and Georgie (Joel Dawson). 

Everyone looks very cozy and cute in their bright wool cardigans and smart little peacoats, but the truth is they’re struggling. Michael’s wife has recently died, and as if grief weren’t heavy enough already, the Bankses find themselves unable to pay their rent. 

Into this chaos flies Mary Poppins, sassy parrot umbrella in tow, eager to get the Banks family back in order and impart some crucial life lessons.

Emily Blunt is practically perfect in every way

The new Mary is played by Emily Blunt, and she is, to quote the old Mary, practically perfect in every way. She recaptures the spirit of Julie Andrews’ performance in her stern yet loving attitude, in the almost imperceptible smirk playing at her lips—but she makes the character her own, with an extra dose of sauciness. 

Blunt’s voice is clear and confident as a bell, and her footwork graceful and quick. Whenever she’s onscreen, she casts a spell. It’s easy to see how care and advice from this woman might change the entire course of a young person’s life, as they did for Jane and Michael so many decades ago. 

A new generation of children may grow up thinking of Blunt’s Mary as an enduring icon, in the way older generations did of Andrews’, and I wouldn’t mind that one bit. If Returns has one saving grace, it’s that they chose exactly the right woman to bring everyone’s favorite nanny back to life. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda deserves better

Image: Jay Maidment / Disney

Unfortunately, the film does not treat everyone in the cast with such care. Before we reunite with Mary, we’re first introduced to Jack, a lamplighter played by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The opening scene has him cycling around early-morning London, warbling out a tune about the sky, and it’s… an inauspicious start.

Miranda can be a spectacularly compelling performer, as anyone who’s heard Hamilton or even just watched Miranda speak can attest. But Returns tends to play into his weaknesses, rather than his strengths. The songs are ill-suited for his voice, the Cockney accent sounds uneven and uncertain (at least Dick Van Dyke committed), and the character himself lacks the charisma that’s made Miranda so beloved.

It gives me no pleasure to say any of this, as a fan of Miranda’s. He tries his best and gets a few nice moments, like his Hamilton-style rap in “The Cover Is Not the Book.” If nothing else, he deserves credit for trying to step outside his comfort zone. But Returns does him few favors. I can only hope his next projects do better by him than this one did.

There are a lot of musical numbers (and most of them are bad)

Image: Jay Maidment / Disney

If it’s any comfort to Miranda or his fans, he’s not the only victim of Returns‘ mediocre songwriting. The film’s 130 minutes are positively stuffed with all-new musical numbers; you’ll rarely go more than a few minutes without stopping for another one. The problem is that none of them are especially memorable, though Returns seems determined to drill them into your head by making them both repetitive and interminable.

The most superfluous of these is “Turning Turtle,” which exists for no other reason than to give Meryl Streep anything, anything at all, to do. The most disappointing is “Trip a Little Light Fantastic,” clearly this film’s answer to the original’s “Step in Time,” without that number’s infectious rhythm. 

Songs like the latter would be easier to tolerate if they were at least fun to look at—a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, as a much better song once taught me. But between the frequent cutting and the close-ups, director Rob Marshall makes it difficult to sit back and admire the artistry of the dancers and the intricacy of these sets. There’s not much to do during most of these numbers but wait for them to be over.

But at least that animated sequence is great 

Most, that is, but thankfully not all. One sequence in Returns stands head-and-shoulders above the rest, and it’s an homage to the dazzling “Jolly Holiday” number from the original. (If you’re wondering why I keep insisting on comparing Returns to its predecessor, it is because Returns is in so many ways a beat-for-beat recreation.) In this one, Mary, Jack, and the children enter the illustrations on a porcelain bowl, traveling through the countryside to a music hall where Mary and Jack perform.

The entire sequence is a visual wonder, done up in a 2D style reminiscent of classic Disney. Yet the live-action characters fit seamlessly into this world, right down to Mary’s trompe l’oeil dress collar. This is Returns at its best, blending old-fashioned magic and newfangled technology to deliver something that truly stuns. 

It is the one part of Returns that approaches anything close to the inventiveness of the original, and it’s a shame that more of Returns couldn’t reach quite that level. 

Mary Poppins Returns is accidentally about the limits of whimsy

Image: Jay Maidment / Disney

Once that sequence ends, though, the Banks children return to the real world, where they are faced once again with their real problems. Like missing their dead mother, and taking care of their overwhelmed father, and worrying about paying for groceries, and scraping together enough money to save the house.

It’s not that Returns‘ more emotional moments fail to land. If anything, they land too well. An early number has Michael singing to his dead wife, his voice trembling. Another scene has the children planning to sell one of their late mother’s most cherished possessions. Returns is an extremely effective tearjerker, and I found myself reaching for the tissues multiple times over the course of the movie.

Which is precisely why Mary’s insistence on whimsy feels so odd. In this grim context, her fanciful diversions are just that, diversions, when what this family really needs is solutions. Being told to worry less won’t make their problems go away, and fantasies can’t keep the lights on. There’s a difference between taking a break from your worries and repressing or ignoring them, and Mary’s regimen of cheer feels more like the latter. 

No one needs that extra jolt of magic more than Mary Poppins Returns itself.

Perhaps I’m way overthinking this. Maybe I’m reading too much into Mary’s methods, or getting too invested in the Banks family drama, or fussing too much about what these fictional children “need” when they seem perfectly happy with what they’ve been given. Mary would surely purse her lips at me. But that’s what happens when you find yourself in the middle of a slog. Your mind starts to wander.

There is nothing wrong with seeking out joy and escapism in hard times. Indeed, they’re often how we make it through those times. It’s probably the case that another, better movie could’ve shown us how Mary’s charm fuels the Bankses through crisis, giving them something to smile about again in the midst of so much pain.

As it stands, though, Mary is just some lady distracting a family with warmed-over fantasies, while their lives fall down around them. All throughout the film, Mary tries to spread wonder where she goes. But ultimately, it seems, no one needs an extra jolt of magic more than Mary Poppins Returns itself.

Image: mashable composite:  Mark Wilson/getty images and Jon Kopaloff/getty images

Holy Donald Trump, Batman!

Apparently the president of the United States can’t tell the difference between the actor Christian Bale and the fictional character Bruce Wayne. Everything’s fine!

In an interview at the premiere of his new film Vice on Tuesday night, Bale was asked who he thought should play Donald Trump in a movie. Instead of answering, the actor recalled the awkward time he met Trump.

“He’s a tall gentleman. I met him one time when filming on Batman in Trump Tower and he said, ‘come on up to the office,’” Bale, who played Bruce Wayne aka Batman in the Dark Knight trilogy, explained.  

Bale then jokingly said, “I think he thought I was Bruce Wayne, because I was dressed as Bruce Wayne. So he talked to me like I was Bruce Wayne and I just went along with it, really.”

“It was quite entertaining,” the actor said, noting he had no idea at that time Trump would even consider running for president one day.

Bale went on to burn Trump by referencing his very own possible alternate identity, “Individual-1.”

After Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed a sentencing recommendation memo for Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, people began assuming the “Individual-1” mentioned within it was Trump.

“And this story is part of how we got to be here, with that ‘Individual-1’ being president,” Bale concluded. 

A beautiful trip down memory lane.

Image: GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images

Google published its “Year in Search 2018” report on Wednesday, and unsurprisingly, the global results are topped by the biggest sporting event of the year, the World Cup. Sports, elections, catastrophes and celebrities typically dominate these lists, and the year behind us was no different. 

There is one notable change compared to years past, however: Tech-related topics didn’t make any of the lists. 

World Cup aside, the global top list of searches is dominated by a heartbreakingly long list of celebrities who died in 2018: Avicii, Mac Miller, Stan Lee, Anthony Bourdain, XXXTentacion, Stephen Hawking and Kate Spade are all in the top ten. Black Panther and Meghan Markle (who also tops Google’s “People” list this year) round up the list. 

When it comes to news, Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael were popular search topics, as was the Royal Wedding, Mega Millions lottery results, and election results, both in the U.S. and in other countries, such as Pakistan. 

Despite all the tragic events that happened this year, in a blog post accompanying the lists, Data Editor at Google News Lab Simon Rogers highlighted an interesting trend: People were searching for “good” more than ever. 

The absence of tech in both the general searches and news searches list is notable — though mostly for Apple, whose phones are typically very popular search topics. Last year, iPhone 8, iPhone X and Bitcoin all made these lists; in 2016, it was Pokemon Go and iPhone 7 that dominated Google searches. Unlike in previous years, Google didn’t even publish a separate top ten list for Consumer Tech this year. 

The top athlete of the year was basketball player Tristan Thompson; top actor was Sylvester Stallone, and number one musician was Demi Lovato. Besides Black Panther, Deadpool 2 and Venom dominated movie-related searches. 

The U.S. list is generally very similar to the global list. Google, however, has a far more detailed breakdown for the U.S. with more categories such as “Food” and “GIF;” check it out here. 

Check out some of the top 10 lists for global searches, below, and see the complete list, as well as per-country lists, over at Google’s Year in Search 2018 page.

Searches:

1. World Cup

2. Avicii

3. Mac Miller

4. Stan Lee

5. Black Panther

6. Meghan Markle

7. Anthony Bourdain

8. XXXTentacion

9. Stephen Hawking

10. Kate Spade

News: 

1. World Cup

2. Hurricane Florence

3. Mega Millions Result

4. Royal Wedding

5. Election Results

6. Hurricane Michael

7. Kavanaugh Confirmation

8. Florida Shooting

9. Greve dos caminhoneiros

10. Government Shutdown

People: 

1. Meghan Markle

2. Demi Lovato

3. Sylvester Stallone

4. Logan Paul

5. Khloe Kardashian

6. Jair Bolsonaro

7. Brett Kavanaugh

8. Hailey Baldwin

9. Stormy Daniels

10. Cardi B

Image: Joe Maher/BFC/Getty Images/IKON IMAGES/mashable composite

There’s really no better way to recap the past year than to go back over what people were busy typing into search engines as our planet made its way around the sun. 

Google just released its “Year in Search” statistics, and it offers a pretty good glimpse into what was on our collective mind in the Year of our Lord 2018.

In the UK, the most popular overall search was, perhaps quite unsurprisingly, the World Cup, the 21st round of which took place this summer. Second place goes to one of the newest member of the British Royal Family, Meghan Markle. 

The ceremony that brought her into said Royal Family, the Royal Wedding, takes third place. 

Google, knowing that it’s still people’s go-to place for pretty much all the questions we’re too afraid to ask, also released stats for this year’s top “What is…” searches. The top two for 2018 are both tech related. 

First place goes to the question all of us still only kind of, sort of, maybe know the answer to; “What is Bitcoin” — oh, NBD, just the most famous cryptocurrency in the world. Followed by “What is GDPR?” — the General Data Protection Regulation. It’s also worth mentioning that Brits were also busy googling their own national history. The fifth most popular “What is…” search is “What is the Commonwealth”. 

The most googled movie was Black Panther and people apparently still have no idea how to do the floss dance, as this was one of the top “How to” searches. You can check out all the stats for yourself here.

Prediction: next year’s top google search will be “What is Brexit,” peaking right around March 29th. 

Since Kevin Hart stepped down as the host of the 2019 Oscars, there’s been much chatter online about who will replace him — or if the show will be hostless.

But, if the Academy is in fact going to keep the 91-year tradition of having a host alive, they need not look any further than Ken Jeong.

Speaking to Seth Meyers on Late Night, the Crazy Rich Asians star said that he’s actually desperate for the gig. 

“If I do not become the host of the Oscars, I will consider not only my career but my life a failure,” Jeong joked. 

Only if you promise to do Mr. Chow, Ken. 

Welcome to , an ongoing series at Mashable that looks at how to take care of – and deal with – the kids in your life. Because Dr. Spock is nice and all, but it’s 2018 and we have the entire internet to contend with.

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During a recent date night with my husband, my beloved babysitter let my 4-year-old daughter take a few (unpublished) pictures with a Snapchat filter that added blush and eyelashes while smoothing out her already blemish-free skin. My daughter was transfixed, and started referring to those pictures as “the pretty ones.” My jaw instantly dropped, as did my heart.  

“By age 4, children begin to compare themselves to others,” says Dr. Pam Roggeman, academic dean for the University of Phoenix College of Education. “There is now a new task added to the job of being a parent: teaching our kids to be critical viewers to help them develop an identity that is beyond their appearance.”

I’ve been ready for this task long before I became a parent, but I naively thought it wouldn’t become an issue so soon. When I wrote my first book, Body Drama, my goal was to educate teenagers about the plethora of airbrushed and digitally enhanced photos in magazines and on social media, and to warn them about how buying into the fakeness could be damaging to their self-esteem. This was revolutionary 10 years ago, back when only professional outlets had access to extremely expensive editing programs, and Photoshop was a well-kept secret weapon utilized by brands and businesses to sell aspirational products. 

Today, the teen years are way too late to begin building awareness. Due to the availability of countless cheap and free editing services, selfie filters, and enhancing apps, harmful beauty standards are being baked into the social DNA of small children. In our extreme perfection-obsessed world, where everyone is expected to have thousands of friends and fans online while always looking like a movie star (at least online), teaching kids about media manipulation needs to begin around the time toilet-training ends.

Dr. Roggeman agrees that parents must help kids learn how to identify images that have been altered, and they must also have age-appropriate discussions about the messages being conveyed therein. Basically, preschoolers need to become experts at sniffing out Fake News, which abounds in imagery everywhere from Instagram to the school yearbook.

Basically, preschoolers need to become experts at sniffing out Fake News.

After all, we’re living in a time when enhancements, . The expectation is that parents would prefer the “more attractive” version of their child, despite it being incorrect.

It’s not just young girls whose brains are being rewired this way, and the dangers of self-esteem issues brought on by social media and apps are not limited to beauty. When editor let her 8-year-old use a coloring app called Recolor, he figured out how to post his pictures on a public board to get “likes.” Soon, “he was refreshing the page and cheering when his like counter clicked up, and comparing other pictures to his — ‘why did this get more likes than mine?’” Dube’s initial impulse was to ban the Recolor app, which fits into an approach that many teenagers are voluntarily taking, of Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

It’s easy for parents of tweens and younger children to lambast social media as a scourge to avoid entirely. But while the idea of a childhood entirely free of social media is enticing, a zero-sum approach to social media is not realistic, even for the tween-and-under set. Like my daughter, children are bound to stumble into sticky situations where their self-worth is questioned, and they need to be given the tools to manage their own expectations as well as those of others. Instead of banning the Recolor app, Dube and her son “ended up having several great conversations about the ‘like’ phenomenon.”  Dube’s son “has a ‘you’re not the boss of me’ attitude,” so she tries “to apply that attitude to our digital world — social media is not the boss of you!”

Carol Sutton Lewis of is adamant that children need be taught to “understand the negatives, such as insecurity about one’s self-image,” that come with these types of apps and the social media outlets they are frequently attached to. Of course, like everything for the under-12 set, “parents should be clear on the boundaries,” Sutton Lewis continues, “and encourage their young children to come talk with them about anything happening on social media that they don’t understand or that concerns them.”  

It’s perfectly fine to treat selfie apps like you would a scary movie.

If all of this seems daunting, or if your child doesn’t seem capable of handling these big issues, it’s perfectly fine to treat selfie apps and other forms of social media like you would a scary movie or a roller coaster — let your kids wait, however impatiently, until you truly feel they are ready. Dr. Roggeman suggests that parents work with their children to create milestones for different types of social media or apps, establishing “benchmarks at which kids can earn the privilege for each platform.” For example, after the introduction of one social media platform is successful, “trust is earned, and they might be allowed to create an Instagram account.” Walsh maintains that it is crucial to make children prove themselves before being allowed to join additional social media platforms. “This delayed gratification communicates that using an app or participating on social media is a privilege which they have earned, and this privilege must be protected.”

Tonda Bunge Sellers of agrees with this approach, saying that it is important to initially eschew the more interactive social media players like Instagram and Snapchat. Instead she encourages parents to “start small” and “take quality time to explore social media together while letting the kid lead.” Some age-appropriate social media sites Sellers recommends are Lego.com, Kudos.com, and , a new style of connected play within a social network for kids under 12. 

In my household, we’re rolling back to social media 1.0. I let the babysitter know that we’re not ready for Snapchat and other apps that might affect our children’s sense of self, and are instead focusing on forms of social media and apps, like Roblox, where they can learn skills and build self-esteem and eventually communities in ways that aren’t related to their physical appearance.

Read more great stories from Small Humans:

Users of U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Gemini can now trade on the go with a new mobile app, launched for iOS and Android on Tuesday. 

The app lets you buy and sell cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, ether, litecoin, bitcoin cash and Zcash. 

Besides buying, selling, sending, receiving and storing cryptocoins, the app comes with a couple of advanced features. These include setting recurring buy orders and buying a basket of cryptocurrencies (called Cryptoverse) with a single order. 

And even if you’re not a Gemini customer, you can still use the app (provided it’s available in your region) to check prices and access historical price data for the cryptocurrencies that are available on Gemini. 

Gemini was launched in 2015 by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and was touted as one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges that’s fully regulated and fully compliant with U.S. laws. It currently operates in all U.S. states except Hawaii, as well as Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and the U.K.

“Cryptocurrency never sleeps so it’s important for us to make it easy for our customers to engage with it wherever they are and whenever they want,” Cameron Winklevoss, president of Gemini, said in a statement. 

The app is available now in Apple’s App Store, as well as in Google Play Store.