Small white dots placed on some of the squares of a checkerboard-like grid make it looked warped. (Via Fogonazos)
/
/
9:08 am Fri
Dec 18, 2009
Checkerboard optical illusion
Georgia gas-station DVDs, like a scene from a racialized, porny Repo Man
Yes, they made the “Asian” porn yellow — apparently this is a pretty common sight in Georgia gas-stations, though the proliferation of network connections in big rigs will surely cut into that market (and create some serious potential for mischief).
READ THE REST
A man walked into a McDonald's with a dead badger...
I’m loving it: On Saturday, a fellow strolled into a McDonald’s in Falköping, Sweden carrying a dead badger under his arm. The staff asked him to leave, which he reportedly did, but then began whipping the badger around the parking lot, hitting cars with it before tossing it onto the roof of one vehicle. “We […]
READ THE REST
Maine Man accused of "nearly decapitating" neighbor with machete, burying him with rotting dead deer
A very bad man in Maine is charged with a very weird murder. Prosecutors say Bruce Akers used a machete to try and decapitate a neighbor (is “nearly decapitating” worse? because that’s what happened), then buried the victim’s remains together with the partially decomposed carcasses of deer he killed previously. Yep.
READ THE REST
WordPress Wizard Bundle: Maybe the first step toward being your own boss, just $49
Whether you’re trying to start a quirky news blog, open a local Irish pub, or sell handmade furniture out of your garage, one thing’s for sure: your business is not going to succeed if you don’t build it a professional-looking website. That’s why we’re excited to share the WordPress Wizard Bundle.This is a bundle that includes 12 courses about […]
READ THE REST
Eliminate your ancient USB flash drive with drag and drop file sharing
If you’ve ever tried to quickly share a file with someone, you know there’s nothing actually quick about it. Between permissions, log-in credentials, size limitations, and download issues, it’s a miracle if you’re ever able to share the document at all. That’s why we think Droplr Pro is so essential.Droplr Pro lets you quickly, easily, and […]
READ THE REST
Don’t be that friend at the music festival—be the festival mom with this survival kit instead
You won’t want to hit another music festival without these essentials. Read on to find out what we’re packing for the final festivals of the year.This Smart Charger Always Knows Where The Car Is ParkedIn addition to charging your phone, the Zus Smart Car Charger and Locator ($29.99) helps you locate your car no matter […]
READ THE REST
15
Comments are closed.
Very cool! Of course, if you use the artists trick of squinting at the image through your eyelashes, the effect of the little dots disappears.
I’ll have to do this next time I put down a vinyl tile floor.
little dots make a wonderful difference :)
This is hardly a normal checkerboard, at least not one to play checkers on. That grid is 8×8.
I love how pervasive this particular illusion is. With a number of optical illusions, once I figure out how they work, I can kind of force my brain to “see past” them. But as much as I stare at the first image, I can’t convince my brain that it’s looking at straight lines no matter how hard I try.
Anyone else feel slightly dirty when it cut to “The Slow Mothin View?”
This is esp. fun if you wear glasses. Look over your lenses; miss the white spots; see straight lines. Look through your lenses; everything warps.
The glasses effect is even better if you take off your glasses so you see it normal, then move it so you can see it clearly. There is a point as it is coming into focus where it seems to instantly jump from normal to warped.
Try defocusing your eyes, like you do for those old “magic image” posters, and it creates an odd 3D effect.
…pick a square and stare fixedly at it for 5-10 seconds;
effect cancelled.
So this has something to do with filling in the blanks of the image from your saccadic patterns?
It’s called General Relativity, dangit! Look it up!
Why is this unusual? The white dots obviously have a very large mass, i.e. are very dense, and just warp the space around them.
OK…so what is the big round blue thing that makes the dots disappear?
Obviously a gravity attractor. It draws the gravitational field away from the dots to itself.
Can someone PLEASE explain to me how
“Illusion#2-Crazy Diamonds” works?
Had to websearch to find the one you were referring to; a link would have been appreciated…
The circuitry which preprocesses images before we’re consciously aware of them has a lot of shortcuts wired into it. That makes detecting “important” things — motion that might be prey or threat, colors that might be food, and so on — a lot faster. But if you understand what those shortcuts are (or just experiment enough), you can find ways to make them produce the wrong answer.
This one’s very simple, actually. The diamonds are not single color, but a gradient from dark to light — and they’re all colored identically, despite what you think you’re seeing. We’re wired to judge relative color by contrast with adjacent colors; that’s a good thing when lighting conditions vary (eg with distance or shadow) but it means the pattern detectors can be tricked into erroneous judgements, as here.
“This is darker than that at all points along the edge, therefore it must actually be darker, and only lighting conditions keep me from seeing it that way.” Except that in this case, the latter doesn’t follow from the former.