This image posted at reddit is an illusion. The twelve circles appear to be four different colors, but they are actually all the same color. You can enlarge the image here, which will help you see the real color of the circle. It's kind of peach. They appear different due to the different colored stripes allowed to cross them. What we have is an example of a Munker Illusion.
Yes, there are some people that the illusion will not work on. You can see a video that explains the illusion further at Digg.
Every once in a while, we have a real estate listing here at Neatorama. They are all either outrageous, unbelievable, or have a great story behind them. But if you are selling an average house, a nice place at a decent price, how do you get people to take a second look? A realtor trying to sell a two-bedroom house in Granbury, Texas, enlisted the help of a T-rex!
Among the lovely shots of hardwood floors, lake views, and a screened-in patio, we see ol' Tyrannosaurus raiding the fridge, taking a nap, fishing in the lake, and even mowing the grass. That's pretty impressive for a guy with such tiny arms, no?
Heathrow Airport in London is a huge global flight hub, but it only has two runways. Really. Landing slots at Heathrow are therefore extremely valuable to airlines, and some weird things can happen in order to keep those slots, like "ghost flights." The practice seems wasteful, but the airlines see them as an necessary investment. Half as Interesting, a channel from Wendover Productions, explains how that happened. This video slides into an ad at about four minutes. Also, I personally would not call Cardiff "Nowhere," but that's the title the video came with. -via Metafilter
Last week we read about a black granite sarcophagus found underneath the city of Alexandria. The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities has announced that the sarcophagus has been opened. Sadly, the archaeologists found that while the stone coffin was sealed, it was not waterproof. The contents most likely do not include the remains of Alexander the Great, but we now know why it is so big- there are three skeletons inside. The automatic English translation of the Facebook post says,
Dr. Mostafa Ministers, Secretary-General of the high council of Antiquities, directed at the head of a scientific archaeological commission to the city of Alexandria to open the sarcophagus, which was detected in sidi jaber district And he stated. My Minister has opened the coffin, showing that it was filled with sewage, which was leaked through the grove in this area, plus three skeletons.
Shaaban Abdul, specializing in the study of mummies and skeletons, confirmed that the initial preview of bone structures suggests that they are most likely to belong to three officers or military soldiers, where one of the skeletons found a blow to the arrow. I He added dr. I would like to say that these structures discovered inside the coffin will be transferred to the museum of Alexandria's National Restoration Museum and study to learn more about skeletons, cause of death and historical era. The coffin will be lifted after its initial restoration and transferred to Mustafa's entire warehouse in cooperation with the north military (engineering body).
As expected, there were no demons inside, but it will be some time before we can ascertain whether there is a curse attached. See more pictures at the Facebook post. They may be rather gruesome for sensitive souls. -via Buzzfeed
Seth Meyers tells the tale of DeDe Phillips, who was attacked by a rabid bobcat. As he proved when his second son was born, Meyers really knows how to tell a story. Since the June 7 attack, Phillips has undergone rabies vaccination, and is okay. Well, she's not only okay, she's a badass.
This year, two movies and a TV series prominently features dollhouses. That inspired Gwynne Watkins to look at other dollhouses that have shown up in our entertainment, and that happens a lot more often than I would have guessed. There are 23 of them in this list, mostly from the past twenty years or so, but they go back as far as 1963.
The museum dollhouse in The Twilight Zone In the Season 4 episode “Miniature,” introvert Charley Parkes (young Robert Duvall) becomes smitten with a beautiful doll in a museum display. After hours of gazing at the antique dollhouse, Charley discovers that his beloved is in an abusive relationship, and he breaks the glass on the display to stop a mustachioed male doll from raping her. It’s The Twilight Zone, so you know where this is going, but the attempted doll-rape definitely sours the happy ending.
The dollhouses are divided into the categories Delightful, Suitably Whimsical, Vague Unsettling, and Definitely Creepy. The Twilight Zone house was ranked as only Vague[ly] Unsettling, so you know they get a lot worse at the bottom of the list. Read about all of them, with plenty of video evidence, at Vulture. -via Digg
Oceanographers were watching the bottom of the ocean from the vantage point of the Windows to the Deep 2018 expedition a couple of weeks ago. They see a benthic fish in a hole, waiting for something to come along that he can eat. A snail approaches. There are quill worms around. Then a barracuda comes along and upends all expectations. The live narration makes the drama all the more exciting. -via Tastefully Offensive
No one wants to throw away books, so people pass them along to others. A used book is as good as a new copy, as long as all the pages are there and it's not disgustingly moldy. So we read books that have been read before, and sometimes we find notes jotted in them. Some are informative, others inexplicable, and some are just plain funny. Atlas Obscura asked its readers to submit the strangest notes they've found in books, and they responded with both stories and pictures. These include criticisms, recommendations, dedications, communications out of context, marginalia, snark, spoilers, secret code, and jokes. Some tell stories, while others only hint at the story behind it. Read them all at Atlas Obscura.
Comic Con San Diego opens today and will run through Sunday. All the comic book superheroes are there, including Batman. It's his chance to do what he's always wanted- to ditch DC and join the fun of the Marvel Cinematic Universe! The Marvel superheroes respond by having some fun at Batman's expense. -via Laughing Squid
Thousands of entries in the Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest have been winnowed down to the top 25. The pictures are stunning, and they'll make you wonder how on earth did they shoot that? For some, it was quite an effort, like the picture shown here of the Orion Nebula, captured by Bernard Miller of the U.S.
The Orion Nebula, located 1,500 light-years away. For you photo geeks, this stunning image was produced by combining 36 hours of total exposure using six different filters; Ha, SII, OIII, Red, Green, and Blue.
But not all the top pictures were so complicated. Casper Kentish took a picture of the moon through his new telescope with an iPad and made the cut. See all 25 finalists at Gizmodo. The winners will be announced in October.
What can we learn about Las Vegas that we already didn't know? How about the proper way to pronounce Nevada? You might be surprised. In this episode of the Mental Floss show Scatterbrained, we'll also learn the history of the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign, Vegas misconceptions, some gambling research, and why Sinatra's friends were called the Rat Pack.
More than 12 million people took DNA tests from companies such as 23andMe and AncestryDNA in 2017, and the number is only expected to rise. While many of them only want to find distant relatives or find out what part of the world their ancesters came from, sometimes the results are completely unexpected. Imagine finding out you are not genetically related to your father, or less commonly, your mother. Or even a sibling or aunt, because DNA tests can reveal family secrets that don't directly involve the person taking the test.
Lynn, 55, of all people, understood that DNA tests can reveal family secrets. Her husband had been adopted, and Lynn set out to use her son’s AncestryDNA tests to find his paternal grandparents. In the process, she compared her son’s results to her brother’s and quickly realized something wrong. It didn’t look like a typical uncle-nephew relationship. The reason, Lynn eventually found out, was that her biological father was not the father she grew up with. “I just didn’t see it coming,” she says. “If you go looking into other people’s secrets, you just might find one of your own.” Her mother still refuses to reveal what happened.
Such results can cause rifts in the family and send the subject into depression. But it's happened to so many people that online support groups have sprung up to help people deal with the fallout. Read about those groups at the Atlantic. -via Digg
Everything you see on the internet is coded by using only zero or one. Since there are only those two options in binary zero and one, they can be defined as "off" and "on." You might already know that, but you'll learn a lot more in this TED-Ed video from José Américo N L F Freitas. -via The Kid Should See This
If you ever visit a local hardware store, you are familiar with their ambience of community. This is where professional contractors and do-it-yourselfers meet and exchange knowledge, support, and friendship. They are a reminder of our own infrastructure, of how things fall apart when you don't take care of them, and how skills can be developed by tackling concrete problems. An example is Crest True Value Hardware in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. In business since 1962, the Franquinha family not only sells hardware, but also incorporates the history of the neighborhood, and even works with local artists to bring the different types of neighbors together. One of their secrets is to stick with what's worked in the past.
When Crest was planning its renovation, Joe sought out the advice of True Value’s specialists. “The first blueprint they gave me had no back counter,” he said. The consultants advised that his plan to keep all the nuts and bolts behind the counter was not an efficient use of space. “Says who?” he protested. “Do you have any idea how many times I get returns of ripped-open nuts-and-bolts packages … because customers bought the wrong one the first time, because there was no one helping them and they just grabbed it? Now they go to the back counter, because it’s the only place we sell nuts and bolts, and they get the right thing the first time.” That exchange has a value that doesn’t show up on the balance sheet, Joe said. The customer “might’ve only spent a dollar-fifty, but they walked out with a wealth of knowledge, with exactly what they need, and with the confidence knowing that the next time they have a project, they have a place that they can rely on.” Here he makes an argument that is extremely rare today, an argument against the casualization of labor and against the “responsibilization” of consumers to be self-sufficient.
Shannon Mattern, who grew up in a hardware story family, tells us how these stores evolved from general stores, how they changed with the times, and how they survive in an era of big box home improvement stores. -Thanks, Deborah!
Photo editors get some strange requests. James Fridman (previously at Neatorama) explains, while showing off his editing skills in epic fashion. Yeah, she should have worded that a little differently. He "improves" photos for those who request (as time allows) and the results are always gratifying.
