It sure can. Click on uBlock’s icon and choose the little eyedropper icon to enter picker mode. Then click on the shorts. In that window that pops up go to the part that says cosmetic filters and click on the top one. I don’t remember exactly which one will remove the shorts but just scroll through those until the shorts are highlighted with a red box. Then click create. That should get rid of them. Until youtube changes the element, which they do. I’ve had to re-do it twice so far this year.