Martin Jambon 🌍🌎🌏 @mjambon@qoto.org

What unusual lighting does to depth perception:

This is the same photo, rotated by 180°.

#vision #3d #vr #science #perception #movies #illusion #photography

To whomever wants to hear it:

There's a common misconception that stereoscopic vision is necessary to perceive depth ("3D"). It's not. Especially when things move: typical action movies are the worst candidates for stereoscopy. One of the best applications is still photography of unfamiliar large objects with unusual light sources.

Why:
1. unfamiliar objects: no cue as to how big they are or how they move relative to the rest of the scene.
2. large: everything is far from the camera => everything is equally in focus.
3. unusual lighting: if light comes from below, shadows are interpreted wrong by our terrestrial minds (e.g. flip a photo of footprints in the sand upside down, they will appear bumpy)

#vision #3d #vr #science #perception #movies #illusion #photography

Contains peanut!

#peanuts #food #usa #america #murica

To be clear, nonsense happens all the time, it's normal. What bothers me is the passivity in the face of recurring nonsense.

By the way, vitamin D is not a vitamin but it's called a vitamin anyway. I'm glad I'm not a biologist anymore. This sort of nonsense used to drive me nuts.

They should make alphabet soup pasta with only the names of vitamins - A, B, C, D, K - to make it healthier.

#health #nutrition #pasta #soup #wow #alphabet #letters #science #win

I was wondering why the UK was not called a "federation".

After some back-and-forth, ChatGPT clarified:

In a federation, there's typically a constitutional division of powers between the central government and the subnational entities (states, provinces, etc.), and this division is usually fixed and applies uniformly to all members of the federation. Each level of government has its own sphere of authority, as defined by the constitution, and these powers are often enshrined and protected by law.

In contrast, the UK's system of devolution is more flexible and asymmetric. The powers devolved to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have been granted through separate pieces of legislation (Scotland Act, Government of Wales Act, Northern Ireland Act), and the specific powers vary between them. Additionally, these powers can be amended or repealed by the UK Parliament if there is sufficient political will to do so. So, while devolution grants a degree of autonomy to subnational entities, it does not involve a fixed constitutional division of powers like in a federation.

What's more suspicious than someone with their country's flag in their display name?
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A display name with flags of countries they've never been to.

I'm still puzzled that the phrase "I was today years old when ..." makes sense to people. Let's see what we have:
- <today> is a placeholder for the person's age;
- the grammar is wrong unless we view "today" as some sort of placeholder, making the expression funny;
- this is to hide the embarrassment of just having learned something important that they wish they had learned earlier;
- there's nothing wrong in learning something late, making it hard for me to read to whole sentence other than literally: either you think it's cool to mock the lack of knowledge and want to pass for someone who knows a lot already, or you're humble about what you know and you're ignoring grammar completely which is weird for someone who reads.

#english #grammar #learning #boring #weird

Acrylic on oil. There are no rules.
#art #artistonmastodon #experimental

Having never lived near the equator, it's only today that I theorized that although summer and winter are astronomically-speaking indistinguishable at latitude zero, these seasons receive different sun exposure than spring-fall.
The midday sun on the equator is vertical twice a year at the equinoxes. On the tropics, the midday sun is vertical once a year, at the summer solstice. For other locations between the tropics, I'm guessing it also happens twice a year sometime between the summer solstice and the nearest equinoxes.
Now, I'm curious about actual climate differences between December and June at specific regions on the equator.
#earth #climate #math #geometry #astronomy #bathroomthoughts

I try to tolerate people who are wrong or that I don't like.