Neatorama

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• This Fish Statue Looked So Obscene That It Was Demolished
• This Fashion Show At Home Ended In The Pool
• Happy 60th Anniversary To Nixon’s Unfinished Sandwich!
• Helicopter Hoists Horse Out Of A 60-Foot Ravine
• The "Coronavirus Romeo and Juliet" Met in Quarantine on Balconies in Verona
• How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics
• A Socially Distant Halloween
• Artificial Intelligence Turns Head Shots Into Cartoon Characters

This Fish Statue Looked So Obscene That It Was Demolished Posted: 25 Sep 2020 05:35 AM PDT A fish statue in Morocco has sparked outrage and controversy from social media users. Located in the coastal town of Mehdia, the statue, which shows two peach-colored fish jumping into the air, was called 'pornographic'. Some locals complained about the local government's decision to erect the statues instead of spending money elsewhere, as the Daily Mail detailed:  The mockery and outrage was so intense that local authorities in the coastal town of Mehdia began demolishing the statues on Thursday 'People in Kenitra and Mehdia told authorities they want reforms in the city. And authorities bring them these statutes,' one social media quoted by Morocco World News said. 'Pornographic fish. People in Kenitra asked for reforms, authorities [brought them this],' another posted.  Mehdia, where the statues are located, is in Kenitra province but is not part of the city of Kenitra. Image via the Daily Mail

This Fashion Show At Home Ended In The Pool Posted: 25 Sep 2020 02:14 AM PDT I believe that the models in this story deserve the highest praise or a pay raise. Christian Siriano decided to have a fashion show in his backyard in Westport, Connecticut. Fashion editors and guests sat socially distanced, but the models strutted on very squelchy-looking grass and crossed a small bridge over Siriano's pool in their elaborative outfits and high heels. The Daily Beast has more details:  the models, decked in all manner of vision-obscuring ruffles, tiered gowns and diaphanous skirts and wearing HEELS somehow walked as if this were the most natural thing in the world. There was the odd stumble. Most of us would have ended up on our asses with one step. The clothes, as ever, were for women of different shapes and sizes—even the strangest outfit, which looked like it had lots of black creatures squashed on to it. Another dress was covered in flowers.  Siriano told WWD that it had been the most expensive fashion show he had ever produced, that Sarah Jessica Parker had supplied the shoes, and that the show had been inspired by movies like Clueless (Alicia Silverstone is a friend of Siriano's), and Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, where Christina Applegate ends up hosting a fashion show at home, bridges over the pool. Image via The Daily Beast

Happy 60th Anniversary To Nixon’s Unfinished Sandwich! Posted: 25 Sep 2020 02:14 AM PDT Okay, this might seem unusual, but hey, it's been sixty years since late US President Richard Nixon didn't finish his sandwich. But how did we know that? Steve Jenne, 74, of Sullivan, Illinois, preserved Nixon's half-eaten bison barbeque sandwich when the president left on September 22, 1960. Jenne preserved the sandwich by storing it in his freezer for decades, as Oddee details:  But how come Jenne came to possess the lunch of Nixon, whose legacy would years later become forever tarnished in the Watergate scandal? For answers, let's accelerate to 88 mph and take a trip back in time. We find ourselves in the city of Sullivan on that more or less fateful date: 9/22/1960. In case any Europeans are reading this, that'll be 22/9/1960. Don't get too confused, now. On this date, Nixon was out on his presidential campaign. He was running against a Massachusetts senator, one John F. Kennedy. As we know from history, a couple months later Kennedy would win the presidency. Nixon would have to wait until 1969 for his turn in the White House. But on this September day, Nixon was in Sullivan on a campaign trip. For lunch, he was served the aforementioned bison barbeque sandwich. Whether he wasn't all that hungry or just straight-up didn't like the sandwich has been lost to history. The facts are that he ate about half of it before proceeding to the park where he was supposed to debate Kennedy. However, Kennedy failed to show up, so Nixon took the chance to give a speech of his own. While he was speaking, Steve Jenne – then a 14-year-old Boy Scout – kept an eye on the Senator's unfinished lunch. "Being the good Boy Scout that I was, I stood there and guarded that sandwich," Jenne recounted to the University of Illinois. Image via the Journal Gazette

Helicopter Hoists Horse Out Of A 60-Foot Ravine Posted: 25 Sep 2020 02:14 AM PDT A horse trapped in a 60-feet ravine was saved by California firefighters. They used a harness and a helicopter as they hoisted the poor creature out of the ravine. Lola, the 8-year-old horse, fell down a ravine at Caspers Wilderness Park in San Juan Capistrano after bucking her rider, as UPI detailed:  Firefighters said the Orange County Fire Authority technical rescue team's helicopter was summoned to the scene after rescuers determined the terrain was too rough to attempt to walk Lola out of the ravine. A veterinarian sedated Lola so she could be harnessed and air-lifted to safety. Lola was reunited with her owner, who was not injured from being thrown from the horse. Image screenshot via UPI

The "Coronavirus Romeo and Juliet" Met in Quarantine on Balconies in Verona Posted: 25 Sep 2020 02:14 AM PDT For now, we're going to ignore the fact that Romeo and Juliet is about two idiotic teenagers who got themselves and four other people killed in four days. And we're going to hope that this couple has a happier life. But, like the lovers in Shakespeare's tale, they did meet in Verona and woo from balconies. Quarantined in apartments across a street from each other, they felt an immediate attraction. The Washington Post describes their love story: Michele D'Alpaos, 38, first laid eyes on Paola Agnelli, 40, in mid-March when she walked out on her balcony. Agnelli spotted D'Alpaos that night on his terrace, and said it was love at first sight. "I was immediately struck by the beauty of this girl, by her smile," D'Alpaos said. "I had to know her." Agnelli stood directly across from him on her sixth-floor balcony while her sister performed a violin rendition of "We Are The Champions" as part of a nightly 6 p.m. musical performance, intended to uplift the quarantined neighborhood. "It was a magical moment," said Agnelli, who has lived in the same apartment complex since she was 5 years old. She had never met D'Alpaos, even though he has lived opposite her, on the seventh floor, for most of his life. "I immediately thought, 'What a beautiful boy,' " she continued. They met online and dated that way, eager for the next ten weeks to meet in person. Barred from stepping closer than 200 meters away (about 220 yards), a smitten D'Alpaos was desperate to show his affection to Agnelli. He started by sending multiple bouquets of flowers, but then decided that wasn't enough. In an effort to put his love on full display, D'Alpaos hung an old bedsheet with "Paola" emblazoned in big, bold bubble letters from his apartment complex in late March. They finally met in person in May and are now engaged. -via Dave Reaboi | Photo: Paola Agnelli

How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics Posted: 24 Sep 2020 10:12 AM PDT When Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, the Americas were not a sparsely-populated wilderness ready to be exploited. However, by the time serious colonial settlement began, a majority of the native people had succumbed to diseases the Europeans introduced, which made them easier to conquer. A plague called cocoliztli wiped out 80% of the Aztecs in the 16th century, opening the door for Spanish rule. Aztec authors wrote about the effects of the infectious disease that destroyed their defenses against invaders. Some of these accounts still survive. A writer thought to be Don Mateo Sánchez said, On the first day of August [of 1576] the great sickness began here in Techamachalco. It was really strong; there was no resisting. At the end of August began the processions because of the sickness. They finished on the ninth day. Because of it, many people died, young men and women, those who were old men and women, or children… When the month of October began, thirty people had been buried. In just two or three days they would die… They lost their senses. They thought of just anything and would die. Read about the epidemics of colonial Mexico and the accounts left by the Aztecs at Jstor Daily.  -via Digg

A Socially Distant Halloween Posted: 24 Sep 2020 10:12 AM PDT Now that autumn is here, you may wonder how trick-or treating can work in the era of social distancing. Matt Thompson figured out a way to deliver candy to costumed children without getting close to them- with a zip line! He recruited friends and neighbors to dress up their kids to demonstrate how it will work in this video. We assume that these people will be wearing face masks when everyone is out trick-or-treating. -via Laughing Squid

Artificial Intelligence Turns Head Shots Into Cartoon Characters Posted: 24 Sep 2020 10:12 AM PDT Justin Pinkney and Doron Adler have been working on a project called Toonify, which can turn a photographic face into a cartoon character. It's not yet perfected, but the story behind how they did it is kinda neat. The normal way to train an algorithm to do this would involve a large dataset of portraits and their corresponding cartoon characters. Since that does not exist (yet), they had to start from scratch and create such a dataset. First, Doron Adler trained a StyleGAN model—the same tech behind This Person Does Not Exist, a site which randomly spits out photorealistic people that, as the name implies, are entirely computer generated—on Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks characters so it could recognize features are quintessentially cartoony. The model then automatically selected fake people from the This Person Does Not Exist universe and augmented them with those cartoon features. But StyleGAN globbed all the styles from computer generates images, cartoons, and photographs together equally, which meant that the same person might have tufts of realistic hair, CGI meatball cheeks, and eerily flat hand-drawn eyes. This is where Justin Pinkney came in with his model, which they blended with Adler's. Pinkney developed a "layer-swapping" process to parse out the desirable characteristics from each image: the cartoon half affects only the structure of the resulting toonified face, while the human half contributes the lighting and other high-resolution details. There's a lot more to it, of course. Is there an app where I can make my own face into a cartoon? Yes, but you can't do it (yet). First, the program doesn't use your face. It will select a computer-generated photorealistic face from the This Person Does Not Exist library that looks like you -and the program is pretty good at that, although it takes some time. Second, when they launched the online app, so many people invested the necessary time to try it that they couldn't afford the bandwidth bill, so they took it down. Adler and Pinkney hope to work out the kinks and make it available to the rest of us soon. Read the story at Gizmodo. (Image credit: Justin Pinkney and Doron Adler)

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