Focusing at a point behind the image is exactly what we've always done for every other magic eye poster because it only requires relaxing your eyes (staring off into the distance) for the image to pop into focus. Cross eyed viewing is damn near impossible on any screen at less than an arm's length away without significant eye strain or external devices (like the stereoscopic viewers that photogrammetrists would use to view these kinds of images without inducing a migraine) and since the dot is on top holding a finger up as a guide ends up obstructing the entire view unless your arms are growing out of your forehead. The wall eyed view has none of these issues.

I appreciate the post and your effort. But, the images themselves are frustrating and have killed my initial reaction, which was to share them further. Because I'm nearly the only person I know that wouldn't loose interest in the explanation for "correct viewing" half way through. If they were wall eyed stereoscopic images, I could just say "Magic Eye", they'd remember Mallrats, see the schooner, and go "Ooh neat."

Because stunt people never get injured right? Is that the point your trying to make?

Kinda surprised they hadn't made Naomi Wildman an ensign by the end of their run.

We killed our trajectory because the cold war ended and we were no longer engaged in an arms race involving rockets. Once capitalism figures out how to exploit space for infinite growth we'll get back on track assuming we don't great filter ourselves first.

They may have used the word wrong, but getting parodied by Weird Al is actually more prestigious than winning a Grammy. Not because Weird Al parodies are rare, but because he only parodies songs that are actually pretty good. I have trouble believing that if the song were actually bad, playing it on accordion with jokey lyrics would be an improvement. There's no Weird Al parody of a Nickelback song, that I know of.

Give em The Harkness Test

I don't ask people about their politics. I just act like true things are true, e.g.: human instigated climate change, COVID, the efficiency of a single payer healthcare system, a oblate spheroid earth, and the moon landing. I'm politely understanding of the flaws in their world view, but I NEVER pretend that any of it is even up for debate. You can balance not being rude with not backing down from the objective reality you live in by showing an genuine fascination with their weird cult beliefs.

Conspiracy theories, religion, myths, and magic are all very comfortable fantasies that wither in the face of the existential dread from understanding that the universe is horrific and absolutely indifferent to your personal suffering. Being excellent to each other and maintaining faith in the potential of humanity (tempered by knowledge of our depravity) is our only hope of survival both physical, philosophical, political, and spiritual.

Ok, sorry that turned into a rant. This shit matters though, so not that sorry.

"Sensors" sounds like a magical solution that hasn't been thought through, but the marketing guys already sold it and won't listen to the engineers explaining how difficult it is to actually build such a thing.

Similarly, there are a lot of really lazy bad maps out there that are trying to make some point about a statistic, but are really just population density maps. Give your up votes to the person that links the appropriate xkcd.

I feel your pain.

I edit the URL to remove the first part of the URL and replace it with "http://old.reddit.com". That still seems to work, last I checked, but I fully expect it to be killed any day now.

If I was about to go on tour with my best friend and he said something stupid that put us in danger from real life lunatics with guns, I'd fucking cancel the tour too because I cared about us both and our relationship. Besides, if you can't tell your friends they're wrong when they're wrong, they're not really your friend. This isn't necessarily the act of betrayal you're making it out to be.

I'm betting that making this statement publicly makes it easier to break the tour contracts, rather than backing out of the tour without saying why.

I'm no nationalistic fanatic of the flag, but is it really so difficult to understand that the flag is a symbol?

Obviously each flag, be they for nations or other groups, represents more than just a piece of cloth to many people. Taking offence at someone else's identifying with what a flag symbolizes is not okay. But, I tend to look skeptically at worship of any kind of idol, be it flag, cross, or text. That still doesn't mean it's okay to hate or persecute people for their beliefs, even if they appear silly to you and as long as they don't hurt others.

One group can demonstrate their respect for the nation by physically following some rules around the flag and others can demonstrate their loyalty to their ideals of the nation being violated by flying the flag upside down or burning a flag.

A flag or banner is not just a piece of cloth, never has been.