fact
In 2005, a Chinese man found that he could still buy lottery tickets within a 5 minute window after the winning numbers were announced. this allowed him to win over $4 million. when chinese authorities caught on, he was sentenced to life in prison.
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There is a popular resort town in China that is a near-replica of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, complete with its own Teton Village and Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. The town’s Chinese name translates literally to “Hometown, USA”.
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The descendants of the Ming Dynasty, whose last Emperor lost power in 1644, are not only alive and well, but still hold vast wealth and power over modern-day China, occupying top positions in the ruling Communist Party and various state corporations, schools, and societies.
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Chinese doctor Jiang Yanyong, who exposed the cover-up of China’s SARS outbreak in 2003, was barred from traveling to the United States to collect a human rights award. He spent several months in custody for his efforts.
The earliest form of smallpox immunization was used in China in the 1500’s. Doctors would take ground up scabs from people with mild cases of the disease, and blow the material into their nostrils. This lead to a mild version of the disease which had a mortality rate of ~2%. (20-30%if untreated)
Today China is experiencing piano frenzy with an estimated 40m children now learning to play. The instrument is increasingly in vogue among China’s burgeoning middle classes, who have the money to splurge on steep lessons and expensive fixtures. For many, owning a Steinway is a status symbol.
Fish can be called many things – slimy, weird, googly-eyed, delicious – but until now, human-like is about the last thing I would use to describe them.
If I had been the person to see this fish in the flesh – er, scales – I honestly am not sure that I would ever recover.
The video was captured at a freshwater lake in southwestern China, and the fish is believed to be from the species Cyprinus carpino (a carp). They come in a variety of colors ranging from olive to silver (in the wild), and in captivity, can sport any number of colors and patterns (like koi fish). And apparently, some of those patterns may involve black outlines that resemble a human face.
Image Credit: YouTube
The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (and other fish experts) says the human tendency to anthropomorphize animals (see human characteristics where there aren’t any) is responsible for the fact that the fish seems to have a face. But if you look closely, you can see that it actually has does not have one.
At least, not a human face.
Image Credit: YouTube
Scientists believe that humans anthropomorphize animals as a way to enhance our ability to read cues, body language, and other behaviors that have aided in our survival as a species. The ability is “supported by a set of cognitive mechanisms that are both an automatic response to any human-like behavior and reflective,” like thinking your dog is hungry when he sits in front of his food dish.
Image Credit: YouTube
Though a similar video was debunked by Snopes (after amassing over 9 million views) earlier in 2019, so far, the jury on this slimy little fellow is still out.
Here’s the video – you decide!
I don’t know what I think – except that I’m probably not visiting China any time soon.
What about you?
The post A Creepy Fish with a Human Face Was Caught on Video in China appeared first on UberFacts.
Tell me if this sounds familiar…?
Have you ever met someone who thought they were being really deep and spiritual with a Chinese or Japanese character tattooed on their body, but then they later found out that symbol meant “beef with broccoli”?
Lol,
It actually happens all the time, my friends. And these AskRedddit users shared some really good ones.
“Saw a girl with 魚 tattooed on her shoulder who swore up and down it meant poison… It means fish.”
“I was on the subway in NYC and there was a guy who clearly lifted a lot. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt and on his jacked arms in chinese were the words “牛肉麵” or “Beef noodle soup” for everyone to see. Man looked ready to get the rest of his favorite restaurant’s menu tattooed on his body.”
“He thought it said “Love my grandson”. It translated to something like “I love fat boys”. I think it was a google translate failure of epic proportions.”
“”Tiny chicken” my friend got that thinking it said his name.”
“Chinese speaker here. In high school I worked at a CVS. A white woman showed up at the register with a very poorly drawn 力 tattoo, and I said “cool tattoo, means power”. She scoffed and replied to me like I was satan himself, and said “you obviously don’t understand Chinese “letters” the tattoo artist told me it means the strength to overcome anything, even breast cancer…” then she rolled her eyes at me and walked away.”
“My friend got a tattoo that said “veni vidi vici” in chinese, well so he thought. The tattoo acutally said “three small dishes”.”
“I was scrolling through the web at some tattoos for fun,a person said they got a tattoo that said “Strength and courage” in japanese. It actually said “Little animal, big mistake.” Great quote imo, but I dont think they thought so after they got it permanently marked on their skin.”
“Not my story but a friend of mine.
She had a classmate in college with a kanji tattoo, confused she asked her what it meant.
“High princess”
Turns out it actually said “pig princess”.”
“I once saw this middle aged dude wearing “金魚佬” on his shoulder (the rough literary translation is “Goldfish Man”), which in cantonese means a sleazy older man who creeps on younger girls/children. Basically a pedo. Wonder under what circumstances he got that inked…”
“机 on his fist. I haven’t taken Chinese but in Japanese it means ‘desk’.”
“”Kitchen” – confused the kanji, what he wanted I have no idea. “Fat man” – he wanted “big guy” (tough guy?) apparently.”
“Gets a tattoo in google translate Japanese thinking it says “fear no one” but it really means “I fear everyone”.”
“I once had a roommate placed with me in the apartment our company ran for us here in Japan. He was loud, obnoxious, and I generally didn’t get on well with him. But, you try to get along, so we’d go to the izakaya up the street from time to time with other friends to drink and have a good time. The owners were this wonderful old Japanese couple who loved having all these weird gaijin come and entertain the locals.
Anyway, somehow we get talking about tattoos and the roommate is showing his off. He then says that he got the kanji for “friendship” (友) and “peace” (和) tattooed on his back and lifts his shirt to show everyone. There’s a bit of silence, broken by someone asking, “Who’s Tomokazu?”
What Roommate didn’t know, of course, was that those two kanji in that order was a man’s name.
He reacted well, though, taking a beat and then announcing, “I’M TOMOKAZU!” which became a running joke while he was there.”
“40+ year old bald white guy with Chinese characters that translated as “I’m a cute little princess” on the length of his forearm.
Had a good laugh the rest of that day.”
“I met a guy in the air port when I came back from living in Tokyo for 2 years who had just visited Japan. He had 2 symbols on his shoulder I noticed that were “off”. I stopped him and asked him what his tattoo said. He said ” It means strong will bro.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him….. his two symbols he picked in order were “dog poop”.
If you find this online…. im truly sorry bro. Ha ha.”
The post Chinese and Japanese Speakers Share the Dumbest Things They’ve Seen Tattooed on Someone appeared first on UberFacts.
Standard QWERTY keyboards are used in China. Chinese users are familiar with the sounds that Latin letters make, and they type in the way their characters sound when spoken out loud. Software then translates the sound they typed into a Chinese character.
Deepfakes are pretty creepy, if we’re being honest. Though they don’t seem to be especially helpful to anyone, deepfakes nonetheless look like they’ll be around for awhile.
Now, it’s easier than ever to produce your own deepfake (yay) with an app called Zao, created by Chinese developer MoMo.
According to Insider, the app topped Chinese iOS download charts after its recent unleashing.
If you didn’t know, deepfakes are bizarrely realistic CGI videos created by an algorithm. Deepfakes can be silly, like putting Nick Offerman’s face on every character in the Full House opening credits. But the scary thing about deepfakes is that they could also be used to falsify the words or deeds of an innocent person.
Now, with the touch of a button.
On your phone…
In case you haven't heard, #ZAO is a Chinese app which completely blew up since Friday. Best application of 'Deepfake'-style AI facial replacement I've ever seen.
Here's an example of me as DiCaprio (generated in under 8 secs from that one photo in the thumbnail)
pic.twitter.com/1RpnJJ3wgT
— Allan Xia (@AllanXia) September 1, 2019
Indie game developer, Allan Xia, created a video of a deepfake of himself as Leonardo DiCaprio in some of his movies. He shared the video to Twitter, where it quickly went viral because of how realistic it was. The program read one photo of Xia and paired it with DiCaprio’s facial expressions and mouth movements. Xia noted he only needed one image of himself and about eight seconds to create the deepfake.
Despite Xia’s achievement with the app, he also noted its potential dangers.
It’s clear that #ZAO isn’t really going for "accuracy" per se, but rather a "subjective" good looking result. Similar to a beauty cam, it retains facial structure of the original actors, so the cherry picked results more or less always looks good and encourages users to share.
— Allan Xia (@AllanXia) September 1, 2019
Is the intent purely to entertain?
I can totally see this being applied in Films/ TV, imagine logging into your Netflix or Disney+ account – watching the latest TV show/ Marvel movie, where a stand-in actor's would be auto-replaced with your own.
The newest member of the Avengers is….YOU.
— Allan Xia (@AllanXia) September 1, 2019
Will it be used to bombard us with images of ourselves for marketing purposes?
Pretty soon corporations will start advertising to you using your own face.
— Allan Xia (@AllanXia) September 1, 2019
Others on Twitter posted deepfakes of themselves as cast members of TV shows and movies.
Chinese viral deepfakes app #ZAO Clip of myself as Sheldon generated in a few seconds from a single picture. pic.twitter.com/JI7MqWUDu6
— Matthew Brennan (@mbrennanchina) September 1, 2019
Me risking my face rights to test out #ZAO so ya'll don't have to. The image I used is one single normal selfie that you can see in the bottom left of the image.#thefuturescaresme pic.twitter.com/RjtK8ZWPq9
— Nikk Mitchell
(@nikkmitchell) September 2, 2019
The app’s developer, MoMo, is also a large social media platform in China. They have already been banned on WeChat due to a line buried in their usage terms that retains “free, irrevocable, permanent, transferable, and relicense-able” access to all content it is used to generate.
So, they can own your face.
China’s expansive surveillance network already uses manipulated images of people, for which it has received criticism from both inside and outside the country.
Thankfully, you must have a Chinese phone number to download Zao, and if you don’t live in China, Zao having ownership of your face is not necessarily going to mean anything practical to you. After all, Facebook can use any of the content you’ve uploaded for whatever they want, too.
Xia has been microblogging about the app and disturbing impacts, both real and imagined on Twitter.
The future, it turns out, is creepy.
The post Zao Is a Deepfake App That Snaps Your Photo and Makes You a Celebrity appeared first on UberFacts.