[TAKE NOTE - this post is in Factual Questions. Please return to the Pit thread to share commentary.]
A swastika flag was seen in a congressional office wall during a zoom call yesterday. Fox News is describing it as an “optical illusion” where the swastika is not visible in person, but shows up clearly on camera.
How would this work? I’m aware that there are supposedly things like filters you can put over your license plate to make it unreadable to traffic cameras. Is this something similar?
"Sources, including those investigating the issue, said the American flag had a swastika embedded into the ink or weaving, making it hard to see with the naked eye.
However, when captured on video or in a still image, they said the symbol becomes clear." So says Yahoo News
I’d like to see one in person. I blew up a photo (of your linked pic) and it seems like it would be pretty easy to pick up on.
I heard his office was ‘raided’ by capitol police and, with that, I assume the flag was confiscated. It should be easy enough for someone to confirm whether or not it’s visible to the naked eye.
Fox news, of all places, says these flags were distributed to a bunch of people and “One office staffer said the swastika on their flag was clear, so they tossed it out”
A moiré pattern effect can be a concern in a number of modalities including video. Hybrid images are another example of a physical image that looks different in different situations, in this case a mixture of high and low spatial frequency components. Whether this is what happened here, we don’t know.
That’s terrible if he got conned into displaying it. Imagine his thrill in seeing it, realizing that it would fit perfectly into that empty spot on his corkboard.
Sure, that’s easily confirmed by someone. But since everyone with in-person access to the flag has a vested interest in the “optical illusion” explanation, it doesn’t help people like us get the accurate story. So in the absence of that, I’m wondering if it’s possible.
Yes, and I suppose at first they checked clothing out in the camera, and then figured out how to fix it. But you definitely can see it on some old black & white TV, esp. game shows where they might not have had time to test.
Yet again, it’s gotta be the user who is contorting stripes into whatever in phone photos.
You might be able to do it from a very specific, very precisely-controlled angle. And you might be able to make a pattern of some sort show up in a sort of shimmery effect that didn’t stay stable on any one thing. But a clear, sharp shape like that, with both red replaced by white and white replaced by red, from a random camera angle from a random camera at a random distance? I’d be extremely surprised if there was any way to do that that wouldn’t be blatantly obvious to the naked eye.
I think those were caused by interference between certain patterns on items of clothing and the television scan lines. Whenever the person or camera moved even slightly, the patterns would jump between one scan line and another, producing a shimmering effect.
As for the swastika, I think there’s some fakery going on here. I don’t believe for a moment that what we see in the photo would not also be clearly visible to the naked eye.
The swastika has lost its charm to fascists. Last night on BBC they showed the documentary “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” - Denmark’s entry into the foreign awards, about a teacher/filmmaker who gets out. Russia has none. Yet there was the Z - not sure if it’s still in use yet at one time it meant something to ignorant or evil people. Sorry for getting OT on FQ.
One of our tv stations back in the 1960s used this idea to create “Action Weather” maps. They would stick moire images on the map that would make the sun spin, rain drops fall from clouds, and weather fronts sparkle. It was wonderful, but they didn’t use it for long. Maybe it only worked on B&W TVs.
Even the Capitol Police? Even the person who already said they threw out the one that was given to them specifically because of the swastika?
So then we ask Dave Taylor to prove it. Show us another flag that looks like a normal flag to the naked eye, but displays a swastika on video. I’ll bet he can’t.
That photo looks suspicious, as if it has a couple of pieces of white tape on the flag. It looks like some made two "T"s with a crossbar of red tape behind a vertical piece of white tape and stuck them to the flag., the left one inverted.
