| The Precious Cotton Fabric No One Knows How to Make Posted: 02 Jan 2022 10:17 AM PST
Dhaka muslin was made in Bengal, now Bangladesh, for thousands of years. This fabric was so fine, light, and transparent that it was considered a national treasure. Around 200 years ago, it revolutionized fashion in Europe, as stylish women such as Joséphine Bonaparte and Jane Austen ditched their heavy, wide dresses in favor of the Empire-style muslin chemise, which could be scandalously thin. Dhaka muslin was made by skilled artisans in a 16-step process taken on seperately by villages around the city of Dhaka. The cotton fibers used were so fine that thread counts of 800 to 1200 per square inch could be achieved and the muslin would still appear diaphanously thin. But it's been 100 years now since Dhaka muslin was produced this way. The British Empire killed the industry, artisans turned to other fabrics, and the unique cotton plant that produced the fiber went extinct. An effort is being made to reproduce Dhaka muslin, but they're not quite there yet. Read about Dhaka muslin and what happened to it at BBC Future. -via Nag on the Lake
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| Cold Weather Demonstrations in Yakutsk Posted: 02 Jan 2022 06:34 AM PST 
The point where the Fahrenheit and Centigrade temperature scales meet is -40. Once you get that cold, a degree here or there makes little difference because you do not want to be out in it. Winter is a lot colder than that in Yakutsk, Russia, the coldest city in the world. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Yakutsk was −64.4 °C (−83.9 °F). It also has the distinction of being the city with the greatest temperature differential, because the short summers can be quite warm. Yakutsk is where cold weather is a way of life for most of the year. If your car isn't in a heated garage, you leave it running all the time. You learn early how to dress for the weather. And when you want to impress people, you do some crazy experiments to show how fast things will freeze.
Kiun B has a bunch of videos about living in Yakutsk, the cold weather, and her Sakha culture.
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| Pareidolia in the Cleveland Browns Logo Posted: 01 Jan 2022 04:20 AM PST 
This is the logo for the Cleveland Browns football team. It is a football helmet; everyone can see that. But if you cropped it in a certain way, as Fox Sports did for the Christmas Day game against Green Bay, you lose that context and it looks like something else. No, you weren't the only one who saw it. Far from it. It's definitely a bunny rabbit, but people are split on whether it is pushing a shopping cart or using a walker. The difference may have to do with one's experience with such devices. This is a prime example of pareidolia, when we see a familiar pattern in an image that is not necessarily there. In the Browns' logo, the cropping took away the most important element of a helmet- it's head shape. The helmet being the same color as the background doesn't help. What was left was a jumble that our brains needed to make sense of. See more of these Tweets at Design Taxi. -via Digg
(Top image credit: Erik Drost) |
| Fish Rained Down on Texarkana Posted: 01 Jan 2022 04:11 AM PST 
If you had "raining fish" on your 2021 Bingo card, you can check that one off. The City of Texarkana, Texas posted a notice on Facebook that residents aren't losing their minds; fish really did rain down on the town on Wednesday. Animal rain is a phenomenon that occurs when small water animals like frogs, crabs, and small fish are swept up in waterspouts or drafts that occur on the surface of the earth. They are then rained down at the same time as the rain.
The post asked residents to leave pictures of any fish they found in the comments. There are over four hundreds comments. As you can imagine, a lot of them are jokes, but some show small fish, or fish parts, found in lawns around town. We've seen phenomena like this before, when frogs, worms, snails, or other critters manage to fall from the sky. That time it rained meat in Kentucky was the strangest. For now, we can just take flying fish for what they are. -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: The City of Texarkana, Texas) |
| Best Illusion of the Year Posted: 01 Jan 2022 03:42 AM PST 
The illusion shown above is called "The Phantom Queen." It took a lot of work to make it perfect, but that work paid off as the illusion by Matt Pritchard was crowned the Best Illusion of the Year in the annual contest held by the Neural Correlate Society. Check out the illusion that won second place below. Don't read the description until after you've seen the video.
Michael A. Cohen of Amherst College/MIT created "The Changing Room Illusion" to illustrate how we don't notice changes if they are gradual enough. Yeah, like watching kids grow up.
Those who have been following this contest over the years may be surprised that Japanese mathematician Kokichi Sugihara did not win the top prize this year, as he has so many times before. Sugihara hasn't retired; one of his illusions made the top ten. You can see all the top ten finalists for the 2021 competition at the contest site. -via Gizmodo
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