Bookmarks

A recent paper describes how laser pulses can be used in order to make us see novel colours. This post explains how that works, and asks if we could see similar colours through the use of optical illusions that induce negative afterimages (The answer is we’re not sure, but we do get some nice visulisations of different colour spaces on the way there). dynomight also created a generator for these kinds of illusions, which is very cool, and also linked out to this very early-noughties style website that I enjoyed.

One of the best educational videos I’ve seen for a while. Chris deep-dives into the (surprisingly short) history of 지산법 (romanised chisanbop), a method of finger counting developed by Hang Young Pai, and its attempt to be introduced as a tool for maths education in schools in the US. It is long, but deserves every second of it’s 1 hour 23 minute runtime. One thing not mentioned in the video which I think is of interest is the origin of the name chisanbop. It is made up of the Chinese characters 指算法, which mean finger, counting, and method respectively.

Why does the 11th of the month seem to appear so much less than the other days? I occasionally volunteer as a proofreader for Project Gutenberg, so feel like the answer should have been obvious to me, but I didn’t think of it at all! Also check out the follow-up post: The Missing 23rd of the Month.

Delightfully satirical, but also does exactly what it says in the title.

Some amazing css effects! See also: Josh Dance’s breakdown of the whole effect.

A not-that-short history of putting things next to each other on the web.