Huh. The first thing I saw was that they were straight and then I looked at the horizontal bars. I think that this must be a sign of my inability to employ gestalt reasoning when looking at visual information.
Meant to say that I looked at the vertical bars afterwards. In any case, they all look straight to me.
Optical illusions should remind us not to get too smug about the effectiveness of adversarial attacks on neural networks. But both are still cool:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/2/16597276/google-ai-image-attacks-adversarial-turtle-rifle-3d-printed
The colors are too close to that dress for me to look at this.
Derauqsed had a funny tweet a while back proposing a website for fake optical illusions. These lines are the same length!
--
-----------------------
https://twitter.com/dsquareddigest/status/951593832570916865
The lines look straight to me if I'm scrolling the window vertically and see them go by, but otherwise the illusion is pretty convincing.
If I squint enough to blur the image sufficiently the horizontal lines become parallel. If I vary the blurriness I can change the apparent skew in the lines.
Very excellent illusion.
They look perfectly straight to me but the non-parallel effect is pretty spectacular.
||
NMM to acclaimed vibraphonist Jerzy Milian. Anyone else love listening to Eastern Bloc jazz/funk music? Especially my favorite YouTube channel, "Funked Up East"? Anyone?
|>
10. Your brain's hard-wired Bayesian Priors.
10: I don't think anybody (me included) is going o be able to give you a terribly empirically well-supported answer, but it's likely something like: the high spatial frequency local features (e.g. the relative alignment of the blue bar and the features inside the blue bar) take precedence over global features (the relative heights of all the features within the light blue bars compared to the boundaries of the image, say) because the earlier regions of the visual cortex (where the raw material for judgments of things like basic geometry of scenes comes from) are generally integrating over spatially quite constrained areas of an image, and judgments of larger-scale forms depend on the existence of consistency that is almost always there in natural scenes.
That is a fantastic optical illusion. Even when I put a straight paper edge against the top line so I don't see anything else, it's hard to force my mind to believe it's parallel to the paper edge.
Would the Geneva Convention allow locking someone in a room completely wallpapered with that?
I remember the 70s. Plenty of people voluntarily went into rooms with much worse wallpaper.
So what causes the illusion?
This is helpful.
They look perfectly straight to me but the non-parallel effect is pretty spectacular.
Heh.
I can get them to look parallel by really squinting. Why does squinting work for that kind of thing?
OT: is this an appropriate current thread to disrupt with personal whining and pitiful requests for reassurance?
Oh, hell, I'm going to assume it is. When we got home from seeing a movie with the kids last Saturday night, we got the kids to bed and then my wife told me that she wants a separation, and immediately walked out the door. I'm totally devastated and could use support from some imaginary friends. (I don't have that many real friends.)
Practical advice is that you have equal rights to parenting time, etc, and the state uses a calculator so you can easily figure out child support. (You can mutually decide not to go with that, but there are at least expectations.) Our courts are strongly biased toward 50-50 custody right now but there are a lot of ways to do that. And kids thrive in stability and love, the former of which is often in short supply in the time leading up to a separation. Things may get better more quickly than you realize and I hope will in the long term.
Thanks. That's helpful. Right now I have custody 7 nights a week.
Mostly I want to know how long it will be before I can breathe normally again. Or sleep. Because not doing either of those for 6 days is starting to wear on me.
In the early days, I had a sleeping pill (trazodone) for depression/anxiety that let me wake easily when the girls needed me in the night but then get back to sleep after. Not sleeping or breathing is obviously not sustainable and if there's no obvious break on the horizon, you need to save your strength.
Practical advice is be sure she doesn't have a sword.
Gosh, urple, I'm so sorry. That's awful.
Oh, man, I'm sorry. If it helps to hear, I'm just short of two years from the same announcement, and things are really very good. The first six months or so were pretty terrible, though.
So sorry, urple. That sounds so awfully sudden for you. Take care of yourself.
Christ, urple, that sucks. Just get through days, man.
Sympathies, urple. One more voice here to say things get better, but the transition's tougher.
Get enough sleep, maybe buy some prepackaged Trader Joe's food to have around.
Saying this in a spirit of solidarity and kindness: Probably don't cook improvised recipes for the kids though, man.
Sympathies, urple. One more voice here to say things get better, but the transition's tougher.
Get enough sleep, maybe buy some prepackaged Trader Joe's food to have around.
Saying this in a spirit of solidarity and kindness: Probably don't cook improvised recipes for the kids though, man.
Urple, what a terrible shock and upheaval, I'm so sorry. Seconding or thirding prepared food, anything you can do for self care and constructive guarding of your energy. A good professional listening ear asap will help, because you'll need to tell this a lot without worrying that you're over-telling it. And do keep talking here. This will get better.
11: Thanks Cryptic Ned for that excellent mid-century Polish vibraphone link. Makes me want to write an action movie just to use it as the score.
Urple, how awful. As someone who has been through something similar, it sucks, it super sucks, and then it slowly gets better. If you want, I'm happy to talk -- happy to send my number privately. Hang in there.
Oh, urple! That's horrible. I don't have any advice; others here do have hard-earned lessons. But you have my sympathy.
Thanks everyone. I feel like an asshole posting that last night and then disappearing--wasn't trying to do that. I posted that comment partly because I've been going stir crazy having no one to talk to about this (and having lots and lots I wanted to say), and then last night just after I commented, an IRL friend showed up to talk. (It helped. Some.)
Urple, you weren't an asshole. I'm glad you got a chance to sit with a friend. This week must have been very difficult.
Sympathies, Urple. It does suck and continues to do so for some time. On the other hand, it does, eventually, get better, as everyone says; and that better is much better than the state before the breakup.
Talking is good and very necessary.
My only practical advice is to listen to a lot of Loudon Wainwright songs, a witty man who has been divorced more times than most of us.
Oh, I'm really sorry, urple. A good therapist could be helpful. I don't know what's covered in your area insurance-wise etc. or how you would go about finding one, but take care.
And everyone's right about talking being good. The emotional support I got here during changing jobs and other stuff really made a difference.
I'm really sorry, Urple. In my experience, simple survival was about all that was possible for the first six weeks or so. Having kids to keep fed and clothed was helpful in terms of having to stick to a normal schedule, and they don't seem to have taken too much long-term harm from their mother's bouts of uncontrollable sobbing and yelling and generally breaking down at the slightest provocation. Journalling helped a lot, too. It was undoubtedly the worst experience of my life so far, but you do get through it and life does get much, much better eventually.
I did start therapy this week, which I've never done before and I think I badly needed anyway for all sorts of independent reasons. That feels like it will be a very positive change, regardless of what else happens. It's expensive as hell though, and the therapist I'm going to doesn't accept any insurance.
49: Do you have out-of-network coverage through a PPO? It's usually not great, but it's something. For example, my insurance - sadly - has an out-of-network deductible of $1,000. It should be like $100 or $200, but after that, they will pay 70% of the cost.
The catch is that It's 70% of their rate. So, around here, individual therapy with a psychologist costs around $150. The insurance rate is $100, so, they'll pay $70 after you meet the deductible. That leaves you on the hook for $80 after the deductible (which is unaffordable for a lot of people), but that's still better than than $150.
Oh wow, Urpie, I'm so sorry to hear of this shock. Please vent here as much as you want.
It sounds like the issue isn't the specific insurance so much as the provider not being willing to deal with any insurance at all.
53: If you have our-of-network benefits, the provider doesn't have to deal with the insurance. The patient pays the bill and then submits to the insurance company for reimbursement. They do have to write down a CPT code, but that's it.
Oh. That sounds good.
Anyway, my neighbor is a therapist and her dog walker is sitting outside shouting "You asshole" at either a dog or somebody on the phone with her, so I'm starting to wonder is it works.
55: Her dog walker isn't her patient/client.
It occurs to me that people go to therapy to find a way to get over something or how to function better or something like that. But nobody ever goes to learn how to better inflict emotional discomfort and pain on others. Or at least, if they do, they don't mention it. It's like finding out there are lawyers working defense but the plaintiffs have to figure things out on their own.
Sometimes what is most therapeutic for the patient is irreconcilable with society's expectations.
Well, there's certainly no ICD-10 code for "ex not experiencing enough sorrow."
Probably. I did not actually check.
Really shocked to hear this, Urple. If it's any consolation, not just the commentariat but lurkers around the world are all pulling for you.