“People from around the world respond to optical illusions different.”
I would have expected better grammar from The Smithsonian; very disappointing. “Optical illusions evoke different responses from people around the world,” would have been far better.
I’ll see your psychedelic op-art thingie, and raise you
Marcel Duchamp!
A number of his spirals machines, the Rotoreliefs, live at The Detroit Institute of Arts.
Visitors used to be able to play with them - they were set up on big white cubes, and there were buttons we could push & watch 'em go. The displays were altered a number of years ago, and the fun ended. I perfectly understand why the museum made the change, but it’s still sad. They were created to be set in motion by their viewers; it’s their raison d’être. They’re really cool to look at even when they’re in repose, but I am more than grateful I got to play with them when I was a child!
I didn’t get hip to dada until high school, and when I saw the Rotoreliefs in the art books, I was so happy 
Bonus:
The Soft Moon provides an infinitely better soundtrack, too, also.
The video worked quite nicely for me, but staring at the center became almost physically tiring after a while.
Yes. That jarred. Cruel and unusual syntax.
Off topic: why are adverbs? They do not seem to do anything that you couldn’t do with an adjective were this Smithsonian use correct. They do not distinguish whether they apply to the subject or the object. “You write English well,” and “The treatment made him well” are both good. I suspect this is another case of having to make Anglo-Saxon work like Latin or Greek. Here is a good summary…
I expect they had a sport commentator write it. Those guys (it’s nearly always guys) know nothing about the existence of adverbs. “He done brilliant”, “They played fantastic” being the sort of stuff they spout.
But as to what would have been better, why not just end the sentence differently?
Worked for me which is surprising since I normally don’t get a strong response from such things. When I looked away and out my office window I found the trees rapidly approaching. Only lasted for maybe five seconds but it was a strong effect.
I only had a couple of minutes to watch it before going to work on a project, and that was all it took to make me just about barf. While it is true that I’m a pretty easy barfer, I don’t know how it wouldn’t make just about anybody spew their morning Starbucks. When I hit the “Uh oh, better stop watching” point it was too late, and when the walls of the office started swirling on me I just laid down on the floor and tried to keep from falling off the earth. Even though I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, I was never one for drugs and if this is what it’s like, I made the right decision.
Just like many things involving the human brain, we don’t know exactly how this effect works,
Oh?
My neurobiology course some 20somethings years ago explained this, and there weren’t much other hypotheses back then. Interesting. Not that I can recall much of the details. Must have stared at parallel lines for to long…
Same for me. Although I chickened out** after about 60 seconds of watching the video and so that probable explains the short duration of the effect.
** and which i shall henceforth rebrand as micro-dosing
Anyone here play much Guitar Hero a decade ago? If you played that game for any amount of time and then looked at a white bare wall it looked like it looked like the wall was running down the wall.
Made my cat look more demonic than usual.
Persistence of vision is not hallucinating… but it does give you an idea of what it is like to be a republican these days…
Oh, I dunno, they’re pretty fun. They invented a whole bunch of new ones too.
Someone explain to me why, after climbing the Stairmaster for 20 minutes, walking on a level floor seems like you’re floating.
The instructions in the video to watch for the entire 5 minutes were total BS. There’s absolutely no need. It will not significantly increase the amount of time the illusion lasts for, and simply wastes 5 minutes for that 5-20 second effect.
Instead, to greatly increase the effect, watch the video for about 30 seconds, look away and see the room warp for 5-10 seconds, look back at the video and repeat as often as you like over the course of the video.
You’ll end up with a net of much more warping for your same 5 minutes.
It’s like being aboard a boat for a (unique to each person) period of time.
Spent every day of a 4-day weekend out on a boat, from late morning until at least 11pm each night. When we got home on the last night, I called dibs on the bathroom and rushed upstairs. While sitting there, the floor began moving up and down at an angle, like I was in a heaving Batman villian’s lair. I LMAO, and told mom, her then BF, and our pal J what had happened. I knew why it happened, of course, but I knew they’d all have a Jolly Good Laugh. I sure did!
Good thing the process of re-acquiring my “land legs” didn’t betray me on the long way up our oaken stairs - it could’ve been V painful and messy!
Yes, it’s obvious that few of today’s sportscasters have acquired truly useful English nor communications degrees. I’m perfectly willing to forgive the color commentary-ists: they’re jocks who were busy perfecting their sportsing abilities, and rarely working on an actual degree, but not the sportscasters.
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