The right ring appears to rotate faster than the left one, though the velocity is the same. pic.twitter.com/YnJ9Uh6Hvq

— Akiyoshi Kitaoka (@AkiyoshiKitaoka) October 8, 2022

If you talk about optical illusions, eventually the conversation will turn to the work of experimental psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka, which has been featured many times here at Neatorama. One of his latest illusions shows us a couple of circles made of ovals rotating counterclockwise. Which one is going faster? The one on the right, of course! (It's only a couple of seconds long; to watch it again, click the GIF sign on the bottom left.) But when you study them individually, you realize they are rotating at the exact same speed. The right circle gives the illusion of faster movement because the parts of each oval are flashing pretty fast. Kitaoka didn't tell us the name of this illusion, so I just made one up. -via Digg

Volcanic eruptions are graded on a scale, the Volcanic Explosivity Index, to compare which ones are really the biggest. We've seen some pretty big ones, but nothing above a VE7. For those, you have to go back millions of years. Kurzgesagt explains the what causes volcanic eruptions, how we measure them, and whether we should be worried about a supervolcano. Hint: a wise man once told me that there's no use in worrying about things you can't do anything about. Also, Volcanic Explosivity Index would be a great band name.

The Amityville Horror came out in 1979. The horror film was about a haunted house in Amityville, New York, where a real-life mass murder had taken place in 1974, and new owners fled from the haunting in 1975. It was the second-highest grossing movie of 1979, and the highest-grossing independent film ever at the time. Of course there were sequels, prequels, and a reboot that followed. Only a few were in the so-called Amityville canon. Eventually the word "Amityville" came to be a shortcut for saying "this is a horror film." There are ten movies containing that word released in 2022 alone!

Most of the recent Amityville movies are direct to video or streaming. They stretch the limits of the imagination with titles like Amityville in Space, Amityville Karen, Amityville Bigfoot, and Amityville Christmas Vacation. These are real movies. I had to look them up to be sure. If you just type "Amityville" into IMDb, you get a ridiculously long list. Even when you discount the TV episodes, it's still a long list.

How do so many different filmmakers get away with this? The answer is in the 1989 lawsuit Lutz v. De Laurentiis, which is explained in an article at Paste magazine. Besides that, it has trailers for some of the more outrageous Amityville movies. -via reddit

Tom Scott showed us the fun of driving simulators, flight simulators, and even a railroad control simulator. Simulators have long been the safer and less expensive method of learning to operate expensive machinery, long before computer screens and virtual reality. That expensive machinery includes tanks, so Tom went to the Swiss Military Museum to check out how they trained tank operators in the 1970s. The terrain he's traveling is real, but it's very, very small. The trip is anything but smooth. 

The existence of cruel, crazy, and even murderous cults throughout history tells us that no matter what you're selling, if you cast your net wide enough you'll find people will will buy it hook, line, and sinker. These cults all had something to offer their followers at one time, but once they had total control, their members suffered greatly -or else rained suffering on outsiders. For example,

It sounds like a ‘90s Nickelodeon show, but the Ant Hill Kids were actually a doomsday sex cult led by Roch Thériault, so named because members “scurried like ants while their leader supervised.” While they all awaited the apocalypse, Thériault sexually abused and tortured his followers, up to the point of pulling out one’s teeth and then cutting off her arm because she failed to make enough business for their bakery. He almost certainly killed people, but he was only ever convicted of that. And bakers always seem so nice.

Read about 15 scary cults you've never heard of at Cracked, and you'll feel lucky to just fall into a group who wants all your money. Each entry has links to find out more.

Each military service has their own camouflage patterns, which are often copyrighted. The US Army's is called the Universal Camouflage Pattern. When it was developed, they skipped over the testing phase and went straight to using it in the field, which is where its flaws started showing up (pun intended). The reasons behind why some camouflage colors and patterns work and others don't involves the science of perception, which is explained here in a video from Half as Interesting. The camouflage part only takes five minutes; the rest is an ad. -via Digg

Way back in history, the king (or queen) owned the country and had absolute power over the people. His word was the law. Today, we still have kings, but European nations are ruled by parliaments or other bodies and abide by written law. The journey from absolute monarchy to the rule of law was gradual, which caused some problems. When Queen Elizabeth I died with no heir, it wasn't exactly all that clear ahead of time that King James VI of Scotland would become the English king. Even if that were a sure thing, it would take time to notify him and arrange a formal coronation. So there was an "interregnum," a period of about four months in which England appeared to have no official monarch.

As for the rule of law during the interregnum, it was less Camelot and more of The Purge. Quite a few people interpreted the absence of a monarch to mean the absence of law. And indeed, during other transfers of power, a general pardon was granted as part of coronation festivities. Clans along the Anglo-Scottish border stole sheep and cattle from their rivals. English citizens who objected to a foreign king vandalized state property. Catholics came out of hiding and re-consecrated their altars.

However, the idea of automatic succession had been firmly established for hundreds of years. While the rule of law had yet to be established as fully separate from the monarch, England was not "monarchless" during the interregnum. Even before he knew it, King James was technically king of England. Those who took advantage of the supposedly lawless period between monarchs did not get off scot-free (a phrase which has nothing to do with the King of Scotland). Read about this confusing time in legal history at Legal History Miscellany. -vis Strange Company

 



Every year, we get a new map of the most popular Halloween candy in each state. But fictional candy is even more fun. Janelle Shane of AI Weirdness gave a prompt for each state to an algorithm, such as "Product photo of the most popular halloween candy in Alabama" and snagged a picture of what machine learning has learned.

Shane soon found out that Halloween candy always seemed to mean some form of candy corn. So she changed some of the prompts  to mention "candy bar" and in some she made the state more prominent. That made some states (Tennessee and Wyoming stand out) seem to generate their own individual candy. In fact, it appears that all states did, since no candy was the most popular in more than one state.

Otherwise, we can assume that the algorithm learned that candy titles are usually random words or nonsense words. Which makes for some funny, if unappetizing, candy. Just like in the real world. Check out all the Halloween candies for 50 states and some territories at AI Weirdness. It's a bonus post attached to a previous post about Halloween candy, in which the generated candies are more familiar clones of existing sweets. -via Nag on the Lake

A mountain climber was making his way down the rock ridge of Mt. Nishidake near Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, with an attached GoPro camera. He didn't see the bears, but mama bear saw him descending toward her cub, so she went into attack mode and surprised him from behind. The climber, who does not give his name, immediately began screaming, kicking, and using a Hammer Fist. It could have ended much worse, but the mama bear fell and ran to her cub. The climber, now full of adrenaline, climbed back up to put some distance between himself and the bear, and to get a better view of where she might have gone. This happened on October first. He may still be there. -via reddit

Henry Paget held several titles: he was the 2nd Earl of Uxbridge, the 1st Marquess of Anglesey, and during the Battle of Waterloo, he was a cavalry commander. He also held several military ranks afterward, but it was at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 that Paget's leg was injured so badly that it was amputated.

Paget stayed at the house of Monsieur Hyacinthe Joseph Marie Paris during his surgery and recovery. Paris asked if he could have the amputated leg so he could bury it, and Paget consented. The leg was buried in a wooden box with an inscribed tombstone marking the spot.

Paget later used a wooden leg that was state-of-the-art at the time, with tendons and an articulated knee, so innovative that its maker applied for a patent. The discarded leg, however, became a tourist attraction in Belgium. This situation did not sit well with Paget or his descendants, and the controversy over the leg lasted until 1934! Read about Paget's right legs, both his first one and his wooden one, at Amusing Planet. 
 
If the name sounds familiar, this Henry Paget was the great-grandfather of another Henry Paget previously featured at Neatorama.

(Image credit: Constantinus Fidelio Coene)

The birds have declared war on earthbound animals, threatening them and making life miserable by bombing them with poop. They've even harnessed a rooster to provide more ammunition! The situation couldn't be more dire. The humans don't know what to do, and the dog is useless as usual, so it's up to the cats to save the day. You might not know it, but our feline friends have fighter jets at their disposal. Go figure.

This war movie from Aaron's Animals (previously at Neatorama) is incredibly elaborate and richly-designed, yet still as ridiculously stupid as cats flying fighter jets should be. It's got action, comedy, romance, and rooster poop. What else could you ask for?

In the 1970s, NBC was presented with an idea for merging a cop show with a medical show by focusing on forensic pathology. The show would revolve around a young, attractive medical examiner who solved crimes from the morgue. The premise of Quincy, M.E. was somewhat changed when the production snagged the very popular Jack Klugman for the role of Dr. Quincy. Klugman himself had a vision for the show. He wanted it to focus on people and their problems more than chase scenes and shooting. Klugman won that battle, which is one reason why Quincy M.E. scripts were 50% longer than that of a typical cop show.

Over time, the series focused more on little-known social justice issues, such as child porn and elder abuse. A 1981 episode titled "Seldom Silent, Never Heard" was inspired by Adam Seligman, a man who suffered from Tourette’s syndrome and testified before Congress about the difficulty of obtaining effective medicine. The episode introduced viewers to the idea of "orphan drugs," medicines that pharmaceutical companies didn't want to invest in because there were too few people affected to make a profit. Read the story of how Quincy -and Klugman- rallied popular opinion to pass the Orphan Drugs Act of 1983. -via Metafilter

Remember the uproar about red dye #2? It was banned in the US because in high doses, it can cause cancer in rats. But that was small potatoes compared to other colors that lead to real deaths among real people in history. Humans have always treasured bright, true, and lasting pigments to give color to... well, everything. It's only been relatively recently that their chemical nature became closely studied and regulated. Before that, way too many people died because of our search for pretty colors. This TED-Ed lesson looks at white, green, and orange and how deadly they once were. -via Nag on the Lake

David Bingham writes about cemeteries and the stories behind the people buried in them at the blog The London Dead. He admits he usually skips the more recent gravestones, as he prefers to dig up history, so to speak. But during one visit to Highgate East Cemetery in London, where relatively wealthy people are buried, Bingham noticed an intriguing headstone for a woman who died in 2019. It said, "This is life." That's a definite head scratcher. So he looked at others and found that the way many people want to be remembered (or really were remembered by the person who ordered the stone) were stories in themselves. Sally Hunter, who died in 2015, has a grave marker saying "LAWYER should have been a marine biologist". He hunted down the stories behind that and other epitaphs, such as the man who had five words describing his life, including "nudist," but couldn't find out anything at all about the man buried under the gravestone you see here. -via Strange Company

King Tut, who ruled Egypt over 3,000 years ago, captured America's imagination in the 1970s when the exhibit called The Treasures of Tutankhamun toured the US and showed off the golden artifacts he was buried with. The impression we've had ever since was that King Tut lived a glorious life of immeasurable wealth. While he was a wealthy king, he suffered from birth defects and poor health, then died while most likely still in his teens.

The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922. His embalmed remains got their first x-rays in 1968. A full CT scan of his body was performed in 2006. They reveal that Tut suffered a cleft palate and a club foot, possibly due to generations of inbreeding. He also had malaria and a broken leg. An article at Mental Floss looks at the speculation on what his cause of death may have been, and there are plenty of possibilities.

(Image credit: EditorfromMars)