Earlier this week, Britain’s Andy Murray and Argentina’s Juan Martin Del Porto squared off in a gold medal match played on a giant green court. It didn’t take long for the Internet to notice the ‘green screen‘ potential and before you knew it, Murray and Del Porto were playing underwater, on top of lava and of course, in space.
All credit for the creative edits below go to Imgur user factionman.
[via Imgur]
When redditor JasonKetoAccount heard commotion in his backyard he decided to check his security cam footage to see if he could discern what happened.
Lo and behold, his camera caught a Red-tailed hawk swooping in to nab one of his chickens as it tried returning to its coop. However this time, his Muscovy duck, Felix, charged in to protect his chicken friend. Jason says the two have lived together for over three years.
Check out the security cam footage below of the dramatic rescue from certain doom. Felix is a bro!
[via JasonKetoAccount on reddit]
Reddit user Auir2blaze recently put together an awesome compilation of movie effects from the Silent Film era, along with a brief explanation on how each effect was achieved. You can see the entire album on Imgur.
If you enjoyed this compilation be sure to check out SilentMovieGifs on Reddit and/or Twitter!
[via Auir2blaze on reddit]
When Safety Last! was made, it wasn’t feasible to insert a fake background using rear projection or a green screen, so they used a trick of perspective. The set was built at the right height for Lloyd’s climb, but on the roof of a building across the street. As Lloyd climbed higher, the set was moved to taller buildings. [source]
The method for achieving this much copied shot was figured out by Fairbanks’s brother Robert, an engineer. The camera and the sail were both placed at an angle. Fairbanks’s knife was connected to a hidden pulley and counterweight. Airplane propellers were used to make the sails billow. [source]
The two halves of her face were filmed separately, using a matte shot. Basically, a piece of glass with half the frame painted black was placed in front of the camera, so only one side the film was exposed. The film was then wound back, the glass was switched for one with black on the other side. The key was to avoid having either the camera or the Moore’s face shift in position while shooting, or the effect would be ruined. [source]
A good example of the classic movie making technique of glass matte painting. Part of the background was painted on a piece of glass, which was placed in front of the camera. [source]
@TrumpDraws put out its first tweet at 1:03 am ET on January 31st. It’s about to cross 100K followers and it’s not even 11pm.
What does Trump draw exactly? Say no more fam.
The Internet remains undefeated
The subreddit r/DataIsBeautiful is one of the most popular communities on reddit and its members have become well-known for creating original and engaging content that helps us all make better sense of the world.
A recent post by vinnivinnivinni that recently went viral showed an animated comparison of the Berlin subway map vs its actual geography.
The post inspired a lot of other community members to create equivalent maps for cities around the world and now most of the major subway systems have gotten the same animated treatment.
Below you will find 15 animated subway maps compared to their actual geography. You can find links to the original post under each image to learn more about how it was created and which source maps were used.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out r/DataIsBeautiful, but be warned you may spend a lot of time on there!
[via r/DataIsBeautiful]
The missing square puzzle is an optical illusion used in mathematics classes to help students reason about geometrical figures; or rather to teach them not to reason using figures, but to use only textual descriptions and the axioms of geometry.
It depicts two arrangements made of similar shapes in slightly different configurations. Each apparently forms a 13×5 right-angled triangle, but one has a 1×1 hole in it. [source]
The key to the puzzle is the fact that neither of the 13×5 “triangles” is truly a triangle, because what appears to be the hypotenuse is bent. In other words, the “hypotenuse” does not maintain a consistent slope, even though it may appear that way to the human eye. [source]
According to Martin Gardner, this particular puzzle was invented by a New York City amateur magician, Paul Curry, in 1953. However, the principle of a dissection paradox has been known since the start of the 16th century. [source]
Artist and designer James Curran of SlimJim Studios recently travelled to Japan, spending the month of April in Tokyo. In a 30-day challenge he dubbed #TokyoGifathon, Curran animated a new GIF each day inspired by something that happened during his stay.
You can see all the looping GIFs on Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram with #TokyoGifathon. Sound for the fantastic video below was composed by David Kamp.
For more from Curran, check out his work at the links below.
High fives and fist bumps are an integral foundation to any solid friendship. And this is not limited to human relationships; this level of camaraderie and kinship is key with your animal bros too.
Below we focus on our feline friends and pound our chest one time for these 10 cat bros that will never leave you hanging. 
There’s a glorious subreddit called.. you guessed it: Combined Gifs, that does exactly that. Gifs have become ubiquitous in our communication; deployed in texts, group chats and social networks to succinctly convey our reactions and emotions. They’re even big business now.
So what better way to further enjoy gifs than by combining two seemingly disparate ones into a single Internet masterpiece? Below you will find 10 outstanding submissions to /r/CombinedGifs. Be sure to check out the subreddit for hundreds more :)
In random Internet news, KFC’s official twitter account only follows 11 people: All 5 spice girls and 6 random guys named Herb. For those unfamiliar, Colonel Sander’s Original Recipe of “11 herbs and spices” is one of the most famous trade secrets in the food industry.
In fact, the recipe is not patented, because patents are published in detail and come with an expiration date, whereas trade secrets can remain the intellectual property of their holders in perpetuity.
Did you know a copy of the recipe, signed by Sanders, is held inside a safe inside a vault in KFC’s Louisville headquarters, along with eleven vials containing the herbs and spices? To maintain the secrecy of the recipe, half of it is produced by Griffith Laboratories before it is given to McCormick, who add the second half. [source]
Now please enjoy these random fried chicken gifs:
In an ongoing series of cinemagraphs, artist Armand Dijcks has teamed up with award-winning photographer Ray Collins (featured previously) to bring his incredible wave photography to life.
Dijcks, a cinematographer and photographer from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, has made a name for himself as a creator of cinemagraphs. For those unfamiliar, cinemagraphs are still photographs in which a minor and repeated movement occurs, forming a video clip. They are published as an animated GIF or in other video formats, and can give the illusion that the viewer is watching an animation. [source]
To see more from Ray and Armand check them out at the respective links below.
In this optical illusion, a horizontal gray bar in a single shade of gray is placed in front of a gradient background. Suddenly the bar also appears as a gradient, getting darker from left to right.
The optical illusion is known as the Bezold effect, and was named after a German professor of meteorology, Wilhelm von Bezold (1837–1907), who discovered that a color may appear different depending on its relation to adjacent colors. [source]
The simple illusion was recently shared on reddit by tattiesbljt and I’ve created a gif below to help demonstrate the effect.
[via reddit]
Data is Beautiful is a fascinating subreddit described as: A place for visual representations of data: Graphs, charts, maps, etc.
A recent submission by reddit user anvaka included not just a dazzling visual but an elegantly written javascript code which he has made available on GitHub.
To create color analysis graphs like these, anvaka wrote a script to do the following:
Took color of each pixel in the image, made L component (i.e., Lightness) of the HSL color space as X coordinate, Y coordinate corresponds to number of pixels with given L value. Used interpolation function to move pixels from their original position to the destination over randomly assigned number of frames. [source]
For those unfamiliar HSL colors take three values:
– Hue is a degree on the color wheel; 0 (or 360) is red, 120 is green, 240 is blue. Numbers in between reflect different shades.
– Saturation is a percentage value; 100% is the full colour.
– Lightness (used above) is also a percentage; 0% is dark (black), 100% is light (white), and 50% is the average.
This gives a very wide spectrum of available colors and tones. [source]
Below you will find more examples of animated color graphs made by various reddit users using anvaka’s code. To try yourself, check out GitHub. You can also find the original thread on reddit here.
Last week, former US President Barack Obama unveiled his official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery’s ‘America’s Presidents‘ collection.
Beginning with President George H. W. Bush, the National Portrait Gallery initiated a process by which the museum would commission a portrait of each president, and beginning with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, this process expanded to include a commissioned portrait of the first spouse. All are privately funded and are owned by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
For his official portrait, the 44th President of the United States selected artist Kehinde Wiley whose painting of the President measures just over 7 feet tall.
As per the Washington Post:
Wiley has included flowers in the background (another nod to historical portraiture) to reference elements of the president’s personal history, including jasmine for Hawaii, African blue lilies for his father’s Kenyan heritage, and chrysanthemums, which are the official flower of Chicago…
A swelling vein on the left side of the president’s face, and the intensity of his gaze, suggest the “doesn’t suffer fools gladly” impatience that occasionally flashed from him. [source]
Unsurprisingly, reaction to the painting online has been mixed. Equally unsurprising, are the comedic responses to the painting. If one thing’s for certain, the Internet is always ready with the retorts, Photoshops and memes in response to anything newsworthy. And with that, here are some of the funniest responses making rounds online.
This may or may not have been the inspiration for @BarackObama's official portrait: https://t.co/d9yJTYImm7—
Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) February 12, 2018
This portrait immortalizes my two favorite things about President Obama. He placed furniture wherever. And zero a… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…—
Anthony Jeselnik (@anthonyjeselnik) February 12, 2018
It looks like they painted Obama outside the White House behind the Oval Office #ObamaPortraits https://t.co/jFN1M96xnP—
AJ (@ajfyi) February 12, 2018
For the last three years, Don McHoull has been faithfully uploading gifs from silent era films to Twitter under the handle @SilentMovieGIfs.
Not surprisingly, the account heavily features the work of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Fritz Lang. McHoull also routinely adds context and supplemental information to the clips, fostering greater appreciation for the filmmaking and talent of the period’s most famous actors.
The Sifter hopes the 10 gifs below will pique your curiosity and encourage you to check out more amazing silent film moments at @SilentMovieGifs on Twitter!
Every year we love to highlight amazing, funny, and clever Halloween costumes we came across online (see 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010).
The most popular costumes posted online always make their way to Reddit so we tend to start there first. If you want more information on each costume highlighted below, be sure to follow the link to the original post!
We hope you all had a spooky and fun-filled Halloween!
Fellow Shirkers! It’s the last Friday of 2018 which means you’re either stuck at work or on glorious holiday. Either way, you’re here and we can’t thank you enough for your ongoing support. You’re the only reason this site is still going nearly 10 years strong.
The TwistedSifter team (me) is currently with family so this Shirk Report will be a modified ‘end of year’ edition. Below you will find our 50 favorite gifs from every shirk report in 2018. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled shirk report next Friday :)
– Friday!
– Me vs all responsibilities this week
– When you think it’s New Year’s Eve but realize it’s not for another 3 days
– People did some amazing things this year
– Others, not so much
– Some were on auto-pilot
– Some were just happy to be here
– Birthdays came
– Birthdays went
– We danced
– We laughed
– We cried
– We tried
– We improvised
– We laughed again
– My fav gif of 2018 might be this guy trying to take a pic and taking a selfie instead
– Holy crap the Olympics were this year!?
– A crab threatened to kill me
– COWS!
– Minds were blown
– Winds were blown
– Shoes were lost
– Buzzers were beat
– Your mind played tricks on you
– And not all heroes wore capes
– That was fast | but this was faster
– Mr. Steal Yo Girl
– Mr. Did I Stutter Motha%$@#*&
– Just once, I’d like to enter a party like this
– And put on my glasses and raise my eyebrows like this
– When your opponent calls your bluff
– And launches the ultimate sneak attack
– Okay let’s do a quick warmup and marvel at humans doing awesome things
– Like this
– Like that
– And let’s never forget little wins like this
– Kiki challenge can stay in 2018
– Guy in the middle did pretty good! (okay now look at the guy on the left)
– Talking about politics in 2018
– Fifth time’s the charm!
– #1 sports play of the year
– Most gratifying instant karma of 2018
– How I will scale all fences in 2019
– “Not now chief I’m in the zone”
– One final *boop*
– One more jump
– 2019 is your year
– Here’s to 52 more
– K bye 2018
– Until next year
Check out this gif. It’s simple, it’s beautiful, it’s elegant.
Like life, you can take from it what you want. To me, it shows how people can look at the exact same thing and see different patterns (you see triangles, I see squares) or focus on one aspect that fits their narrative. And before we see the lines drawn and patterns shown, it can easily seem random and arbitrary (maybe it still is?).
Now I can admit that’s all just basic blogger bloviating. If we want to get more scientific, here’s a summary from MIT Research fellow Talia Bronshtein:
In that same tweet she linked to this article by Denny Borsboom which expands further on these concepts.
Also worth a read is this Vox article, Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong, which is what first led me to this fascinating gif :)
In photography—and especially portrait photography—lighting and focal length (more specifically, the right lens at the right distance/positioning) can have a dramatic impact on the end result. Even the same person can look quite different depending on where the light source is and what lens/distance the photographer is shooting from.
While those are easy statements to agree with, seeing this demonstrated visually can be quite compelling. In the 4 gifs below we can truly see the power of lighting and focal length.
And to further clarify and expand on ‘focal length’ the examples seen here use different lenses/focal lengths but maintain the same framing of the image, which behind the scenes would require the photographer to reposition the camera. If the camera was in a fixed position and lenses of different focal lengths were simply swapped out, the shots would just be parts of cat at different magnifications.
Anyway, on to the gifs!
Joseph Francis Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966), known professionally as Buster Keaton, was an American actor, comedian, film director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer.
He has not one but two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was presented with an Academy Honorary Award in 1959.
He is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential comedians and stunt performers of all time and the compilations of stunts below demonstrate what a truly brave and talented performer he was. Enjoy!
