by Grania
Good morning, we’re firmly on track for the weekend now so things are looking up.
Today is somewhat of a grim day in history, it’s the anniversary of the Columbine High School Massacre (1999), the Deepwater Horizon Rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and of course the birth of Hitler in 1889 among an array of other disasters and horrors both natural and man-made.
On the science front, today in 1902 Pierre and Marie Curie refined radium chloride; and in 1862 Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard completed their experiment falsifying the theory of spontaneous generation.
Today on Twitter:
Object Optical illusion (found by no fewer than three people!) Click on the little white arrow if it does not play automatically for you.
Ambiguous Object Illusion: an incredible new design by Kokichi Sugihara of Meiji University in Japan, the inventor of this illusion and art form. A clever combination of reflection, perspective, and viewing angle produce this striking illusion https://t.co/xNch507rfI pic.twitter.com/Lt9dtQ4i3S
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 19, 2018
Another advertisement featuring cats for no apparent reason.
Today's Vintage Ad With Bizarrely Out-Of-Place Cats promotes Finnish candy.
Do take note of the expression of the fellow on the left. pic.twitter.com/ihNJ54xvjj
— Undine (@HorribleSanity) April 19, 2018
A crow at the Tower of London.
#theravenmaster#toweroflondon pic.twitter.com/oBlrs25icH
— Ravenmaster (@ravenmaster1) April 19, 2018
Things to do to avoid recycling. Or does this count as technically recycling?
Been spending most our lives
Living in a ganster's paradiseMe: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaaaaah Aaaah pic.twitter.com/n6hABvHevn
— Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) April 19, 2018
Mistakes were made…
https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/987134302549938176
Caught in the act
Well-trained human.
A loyal customer… pic.twitter.com/s45LSoJ94U
— LADbible (@ladbible) April 18, 2018
Finally, on to Poland where Hili is not having any of it today.
FELINE SARCASM
A: I have a great idea.
Hili: Oh, really?
(Photo: Zuza)
In Polish:
KOCI SARKAZM
Ja: Mam wspaniały pomysł!
Hili: Naprawdę?
(Zdjęcie: Zuza)
Hat-tip Barry, Matthew, vampyricon
Re: The Finnish Candy
Why do you assume there SHOULD be a reason for cats?
That illusion is remarkable for being fully revealed so to speak and still almost impossible to comprehend.
I did find it just possible to follow if I stopped the video when the object was rotated half-way so the curves of the top edge could be seen in profile. Still hurts my brain though.
I imagine the shape of the whole thing was computed mathematically and produced on a 3-D printer.
cr
“A crow at the Tower of London”.
Aaack! That is a raven. Even the tweet caption suggests so. Calling it a ‘crow’ is a bit like calling an ocelot a ‘moggie’. In fact I’m not sure if that post isn’t a poe.
cr
I always tell them apart with the slightly curved bill that ravens seem to have. This oddly looking one is very very close to straight, so …
I don’t think you’ll get throat feathers like those on a crow.
Glen Davidson
Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion
Kokichi Sugihara, Meiji University, Japan
The trickiest aspect [I think] is light sources & object surface colour/texture – to minimise the shading difference each side of the squarcircle corners…
If I’m not mistaken Jerry posted that one earlier, but I’m not 100% sure it actually was our host.
Absolutely brilliant!
Yeah he did, but I think someone sent it to him, and it’s so cool it’s great to see it again anyway. 🙂
Noted in passing and ref the ad, from 1924 until he died in 1951, Baron Carl Gustav Mannerheim – more or less the George Washington of Finland – lived in a villa he rented from Karl Fazer.
Interesting that he does not have a Finnish name. In fact, is “Mannerheim” even Swedish? Wikipedia says the family came from Germany in the 17th century or something.
(Shows how silly ethnic nationalism is!)
Regarding the can recycling photo. Nice to see a fellow Fever Tree fan. Hope the attending spirit was of good quality
It might help to note that “kissa” is Finnish for “cat”.
Indeed, “kissa” means “cat”. Furthermore, “kiss kiss” is an idiom and it means same as “kitty kitty”.
It looks like the local name for Kit Kat candy [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_Kat ], or some local Kopy Kat.
That “crow” sends me ravin’.
Might Columbine have been deliberately set to occur on Hitler’s birthday? I know Harris and Klebold were into some Nazi stuff, saying “Heil Hitler” at times.
Glen Davidson
Yes, and unfortunately they were (UNLIKE the Nazis) social Darwinists as well, thus feeding the trough of creationists.
Wikipedia reports,
“Dave Cullen, author of the 2009 book Columbine, cites evidence that Harris did revere the Nazis. He praised them often in his journal, and some of his friends grew irritated at his frequent Nazi salutes and quotations in the months leading up to the shooting. At a certain point, Harris realized he needed to reduce this behavior, for fear of revealing his plans. He commented in his journal about how hard it was to wait until April to express all his hatred for the human race.[44] In his journal, Harris mentioned his admiration of what he imagined to be natural selection, and wrote that he would like to put everyone in a super Doom game and see to it that the weak die and the strong live.[23] On the day of the massacre, Harris wore a white T-shirt with the words “Natural selection” printed in black.”
(From Wikipedia article entitled “Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold”, not the one on “Columbine High School massacre”. I’m avoiding too many direct links in this post, to avoid the comment being held for moderation.)
The Guardian reports
“They not only hated jocks, they were racists who picked 20 April for the attack because it was Hitler’s birthday. Supposedly, they also had a grudge against evangelical Christians. A story soon spread that one of the murder victims in the library, Cassie Bernall, had been asked at gunpoint if she believed in God. When she answered yes, Harris laughed and pulled the trigger.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/17/columbine-massacre-gun-crime-us
Thanks, good to know.
It’s quite strange how Klebold was half Jewish, or so, and still got into that Nazi shit.
Glen Davidson
Raven! Raven! No mere crow!
Back in the early 1990s with the resurgence of “normative ecology” the slogan was “reduce, reuse, recycle”. I think the cans count as a “reuse”.
Adolf Hitler was born precisely 4 days after Charlie Chaplin, the latter of whom was haunted by several similarities between Hitler’s childhood and his own, eventually inspiring his film “The Great Dictator”.
The date also inspired one of my favorite Woody Allen lines:
“Honey, you’re the one who stopped sleeping with me, OK? It’ll be a year come April 20th.
I remember the date exactly, because it was Hitler’s birthday”
(It’s from one of Allen’s serious dramas “Crimes and Misdemeanors” IMO his very best film ever!)
Many years earlier, Allen wrote an article in the New Yorker claiming his first wife would only sleep with him on Hitler’s birthday, which caused her to sue him.
It is also precisely 6 months away from my mother’s birthday, October 20th.
Stop the optical illusion at 21 seconds to figure out what is happening.
Still have no idea how that illusion works.