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I've acquired a new superpower

danielwirtz.com

311–320 of 583 posts

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#311
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Probably my peak fame right there. My son and I always make jokes about everyone's 5 minutes of fame. Some random person on the jumbotron at a sporting event "Yup, there's his moment, it's over now." At least yours got you something ;)

You may or may not be aware that Andy Warhol famously quipped that, "in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes," back in the late 1960s. As media has gotten to be ever more ubiquitous and the cost of entry lower, he was clearly onto something decades before the internet!

And then there’s Banksy’s “in the future, everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes“. For pretty much the same reasons you stated above, I assume.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#313

This whole "just cross your eyes" thing has never worked for me, not once. I've seen these strange patterns printed on the backs of notebooks that supposedly make some sort of 3D effect when you "just cross your eyes". Later, when I saw similar images online, I was able to at least visualize these hidden shapes by opening the image in photoshop, duplicating the layer, setting the copy to "difference" and moving it le…

Doesn't work for me either. I just made myself queasy while trying to cross my eyes for ten minutes haha

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#314

If you've done Magic Eyes, this is straightforward. Was able to get all 3 of the test images quickly. This is with focusing beyond the screen. Focusing in front of the screen is something I am unable to do, and not for want of effort. Also, your eyes might accidentally do this if looking at tiled patterns, e.g. wallpaper. Relative image size (e.g. view distance) is important.

Yup, I loved Magic Eyes as a kid. This was easy. Nevertheless, I was astonished that "impossible mode" literally took me only 1-2 seconds to find the missing star. Like, I knew our vision is good at interpreting depth from images. I figured it would be all right at finding large areas of differences. I had no idea a single freaking pixel could stand out like a sore thumb.

I had trouble finding the "shiny" pixels on that one simply because the stars also had that issue - but after enlarging the image a bit more and scanning back and forth I was able to pick things out a bit better.

Now, ask me to look at my code again for a couple minutes and it might be tough but it worked :)

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#315

This whole "just cross your eyes" thing has never worked for me, not once. I've seen these strange patterns printed on the backs of notebooks that supposedly make some sort of 3D effect when you "just cross your eyes". Later, when I saw similar images online, I was able to at least visualize these hidden shapes by opening the image in photoshop, duplicating the layer, setting the copy to "difference" and moving it le…

I've also always had a hard time with these. I suspect it's because one of my eyes was slightly lazy when I was a child, so my brain learned to put more importance on the signal from the other eye. When I cross my eyes, the image from the better eye tends to just totally override the other one, so it can be really hard to see these kinds of effects.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#316
Well this is interesting. I was able to find the impossible one within 2 seconds without crossing my eyes. The easy one took about 5 seconds, 3 seconds for hard. I've always been hyper-vigilant with patterns (to a fault), so not sure if that's playing into this.

Is that what other folks are experiencing also? I see most comments are trying it with their eyes crossed, but what about without?

EDIT: ok I just watched the video. No eyes crossed. For the balloons one I beat out the girl in the video by 2-3 seconds. For the birds about the same. The skittles one tripped me up, couldn't find it. The other few I found around the same time, the lights at the end I didn't find in time either. It seems I'm quicker when there's not too many colors involved. Still that's spooky.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#317
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid, I got a Magic Eye book and learned to see it by crossing my eyes (ie, focusing in front of the screen). I thought it was pretty interesting when I realized that I was seeing all the images inverted ("peaks" were "valleys" and vice versa) due to the way I was focusing. Alas, I never was able to see the images "correctly".

It's funny because even if you do the Magic Eye pictures "correctly" (focusing past them) you can still get funky images by going too far and locking the surrounding pattern a second time. If I remember right the first time I did this was on a heart picture (similar to [0]), which ends up looking like a big puffy W stacked on top of a slightly larger puffy W :D [0] https://i0.wp.com/www.magiceye.com/wp-content/upload…

Are you sure that's supposed to be a heart? I see the three peaks of a "W" as well -- I think it's supposed to be a tulip, no? That also matches the background theme.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#318
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Probably my peak fame right there. My son and I always make jokes about everyone's 5 minutes of fame. Some random person on the jumbotron at a sporting event "Yup, there's his moment, it's over now." At least yours got you something ;)

You may or may not be aware that Andy Warhol famously quipped that, "in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes," back in the late 1960s. As media has gotten to be ever more ubiquitous and the cost of entry lower, he was clearly onto something decades before the internet!

To update this excellent quote to 2025, change minutes to seconds and you just described TikTok.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#319
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid, I got a Magic Eye book and learned to see it by crossing my eyes (ie, focusing in front of the screen). I thought it was pretty interesting when I realized that I was seeing all the images inverted ("peaks" were "valleys" and vice versa) due to the way I was focusing. Alas, I never was able to see the images "correctly".

It's funny because even if you do the Magic Eye pictures "correctly" (focusing past them) you can still get funky images by going too far and locking the surrounding pattern a second time. If I remember right the first time I did this was on a heart picture (similar to [0]), which ends up looking like a big puffy W stacked on top of a slightly larger puffy W :D [0] https://i0.wp.com/www.magiceye.com/wp-content/upload…

I think I just locked the pattern also a third time where it looks like pillars but I’m not sure if I saw it correctly.

When I first looked at this picture I saw the W pattern and then blinked and suddenly saw the intended pattern.

When you lock on the non-intended ones it feels somehow like a secret/forbidden path you shouldn’t go, like consuming drugs.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#320

We got a magic eye book when I was maybe 6 - some time early elementary school. After learning how to do it, and also trying it by crossing my eyes to see an "inverted" image, I started doing it whenever I saw some repeating pattern IRL. It was most interesting when it was slightly uneven, for example a fence with sloppily applied vertical planks. Doing the magic eye would make it seem like some of them are closer to…

Wow I feel like I've never seen anyone talk about this. Doing it with fences can feel pretty magical, like the object is more "real" than other things.
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