Fellow German here. As a child I always thought that the black man must be Death himself, wearing a black robe, his face on eternal shadow, bringing darkness to all who meet him. And of you get hit by the ball, death will come and “reap” you from the game. THAT’S someone to be afraid of.
It was only much later I learned that it could also be interpreted as a hurtful stereotype that should be avoided.
Oh man, I totally forgot. In the 90s we had a schoolyard ballgame called Nger. One person in every square. 4 Total. You bounced the ball in another square and if you couldn’t catch it, you were the Ngger. It was 3rd to 6th grade.
I don’t know if this is actually true, but I’ve heard the stripes make it difficult to track an individual zebra in the herd. They blend in with the other zebra making it harder to stay on the one that is being hunted.
From what I understand, there are multiple theories. One is that it confuses horseflies to make them less likely to bite. There’s been some experimentation on that and it does seem to have that effect on them, but we don’t know if that is why they evolved the stripes or if it’s just an added benefit.
Oh man, this game! No problems getting through the story line and defeating the final boss, but I never could kill those horsemen dudes you may meet in a random encounter on the map. The lack of autosave led to many rage quits.
Sticking his hand into a fire thinking it was the way and having it burned off… ok, he was tricked by a greatly trusted person in his life.
Then later accepting that the problem was not that it burned off his hand, but he should have put his entire body in…
Our conclusion was that the ending where you jump in are his friends making a cover story of how stupid he was to just jump in the fire and claiming he in fact did become some invisible divine being, and that’s why you can’t see him, not because he was a gullible idiot.
I think the point is that while this photograph kind of works (from above, at a distance), generally from ground level it doesn’t. So if it only works from above, then is it really useful as a camouflage?
The image of Jemima isn’t bad because it depicts a racial stereotype. Or not just that. The image of the Black domestic is a symbol of wealth and power. It’s meant to inspire a sense of nostalgia for the times when children were raised and food was served with black hands.
The image of the black domestic was as wide-spread, public domain, and as common as images of Uncle Sam or George Washington. It’s a cultural touchstone, and just like the Rebel Flag, that it might make people uncomfortable is half the point.
Aunt Jemima gets at the heart of race relations in the United States. She’s a caricature of blackness, created by white people, for other white people, that somehow every black American has to confront, even if only to rebel against it. Because once something has become a powerful cultural image of what you are, to most people, and maybe to yourself, you’re defined by the stereotype, even if it’s only in how far you deviate from it.
There’s a post on that other website about six months ago where someone a PhD candidate gives an explanation. The formation is a bit complex, but when the harder rock forms in a funny shape, and the softer material around it is preferential weathered away, the sphere or disc shaped mineral is all that remains.
The author seems a bit confused (or is AI?)- the living stones (trovants) are a totally separate thing, and are pretty much only found in Romania. That picture with the stones with grass around them is of trovants in Romania: science.howstuffworks.com/…/trovants.htm They are “living” in that they have a chemical composition that is effected by rain water and makes them do strange, but scientifically explainable things.
The picture of the orange spherical rock on a gray cement looking pedestal is in Bolivia and seems to have been scraped from twitter: x.com/ottavaldez/status/1374235419013959681
Quite a few minerals stick to themselves, so water seeping into a cavity that was eroded out might fill with one type of material over time. Basically the same process as fossilization.
Being round or saucer shaped would be consistent with a pool of water that lets the material bits group together over time, and as the surrounding materials start to cover the area it would curve on top as the exposed area is reduced.
That is one way, but there are a lot of other similar ones to. But in general some process that involves liquids moving materials into cavities or exposed puddles drying lets materials stick to themselves and form rocks.
Flowing water after they formed could wear off the rough edges as well over time.
Geomorphologist working on a PhD near a place with these. Here is my take.
These are cannonball concretions:
You have water flowing through sedimentary rock. The water will alter the rock by precipitating additional minerals making the altered rock more resistant to weathering and erosion. Eventually this weathering/erosion resistant rock is exposed at the surface when the surrounding less resistant rock weathers and erodes away.
The spherical form comes from the way the minerals precipitate and spheroidal weathering. The minerals precipitate outward from a single point forming a rough sphere shape in-situ. When exposed at the surface, nature doesn’t like anything with points. The pointed ends of objects tend to weather and erode away faster than the spherical sections of the rock.
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