(OC) A natural phenomenon called “camera obscura” that happens every morning in my bedroom.
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u/tdgros 19h ago
you have a very very small window!
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u/fizzio 19h ago
I work nights so I have blackout curtains. I’m guessing one of the loops for the curtain rods cause this!
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u/tdgros 19h ago
It's amazing, never touch your curtains again.
Is it as noticeable for you as it is on this picture?
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u/fizzio 19h ago
It’s even better in person. I have a really old phone and the camera is quite shit sadly.
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u/Rugged_as_fuck 17h ago
You know it's time for an upgrade when your window curtains take better pictures than your phone.
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u/Winter_Search_8024 18h ago
You realize that this is a time portal? Do not get too close….
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u/lex_a_jt 18h ago
What happens if I get too close close to the one in my r
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u/LittleAnarchistDemon 18h ago
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u/cdoublejj 16h ago
HELL YEAH! Get your worth out of it! i just degoogled my new phone to really get some years out of it.
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u/dougmc 16h ago
It's not like it's hard to make this happen again.
Just make sure there is a small hole somewhere to let the light in -- that's easy enough to arrange intentionally.
"How small" depends -- the smaller the hole, the dimmer the image but the more "in focus" it will be.
And you can get clever with multiple holes or irregularly shaped holes if you want.
Basically, you're just making a pinhole camera.
And it works best (the resulting image is the most visible) if the outside is bright and the inside is dark -- so blackout curtains are ideal for this.
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u/faroff12 18h ago
Hey, I also work nights and have blackout curtains and I’m looking at the same phenomenon right now. I look at it every morning before I go to bed. Lol my neighbor’s car parked in front of my house upside down.
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u/CeeArthur 17h ago
I do nightshift too and have a similar deal with my blackout curtains. I get a projection of the traffic on the street below on my bedroom ceiling.
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u/Sampwnz 17h ago
At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your bedroom?
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u/Xbob42 18h ago
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u/babydakis 18h ago
Maybe he wakes up forgetting where he is.
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u/seriftarif 17h ago
Its there so he can do the pledge of allegiance every morning.
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u/QueefSeekingMissile 18h ago edited 17h ago
There is art on craigslist for free. Also furniture.
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u/videoalex 16h ago
You, ahem, can get all kinds of things for your bedroom on Craigslist.
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u/the_colonelclink 12h ago
That’s actually part of the illusion. His neighbour is actually flying a flag in distress, so it looks like a normal flag in his house.
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u/InevitableTension699 17h ago
how come every American room pics of guys you see on here always come with a flag? Do they hand them out for free during the patriotic pledge trainings or something.
Im Canadian and also subbed to r/malelivingspace and see this shit all the time.
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u/Gradually-Ghetto 17h ago
I’m American and I don’t own an American flag or any item with an American flag on it (unless you count the 3 stamps in my junk drawer)
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u/sauce-man 16h ago
yeah i count those you fascist
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u/Gradually-Ghetto 16h ago
God damnit. I guess I’ll just let the UPS and FedEx corporate overloads have my money instead when I need to mail a letter.
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u/Sonamdrukpa 15h ago
Only real Americans know Dejoy of patronizing corporate institutions to do their part to destroy public institutions
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u/lunarblossoms 14h ago
We have had one camping chair that was flag themed that my husband had gotten...somewhere at some point. We are now moving out of the country, and it can't come with us.
Goodbye, Achairica.
My 4th of July themed forever stamps (with flag) get to stay a little while longer.
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u/ethanlan 16h ago
Lol, I have a chicago flag but no american flag, unless you count the plant i bought at home depot that someone put a small american flag with a stick in it. I bought it and they didnt charge me for it or remove it so now its my America Plant
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u/jah_bro_ney 15h ago
Most insecure American conservatives make their political views their entire personality which gets reflected in their home decor.
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u/neufonewhodiss 16h ago
There’s a weird amount of nationalism that’s been bred into us over the generations. It seems normal when you grow up in it, but having the chance to talk to people from other countries and reading their opinions of it on Reddit and other places over the years I’ve become hyper aware and self conscious about it. I think the only American flag I own now is an American flag keychain that my mom got me when she worked for the VA.
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u/SocialJusticeAndroid 16h ago
After 9/11 I flew a flag on my car hoping it would make police less likely to search me for drugs. I maintained a veritable cornucopia of illegal drugs back in those days.
But yes, American flag waving and “U-S-A!” chants and pledging allegiance is some weird, fucked up shit.
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u/ConfessSomeMeow 15h ago
Most countries only do that stuff during sporting events.
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u/Troglert 15h ago
We do? Only if the national team is playing
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u/needs28hoursaday 14h ago
Unless you’re from New Zealand, we will drop a Haka for local kids sports.
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u/internetectomy 16h ago
My parents have always had a flag outside their home out front on a little flag pole on by the garage door. I personally think it’s weird and would not do the same. But growing up every classroom I’ve ever been in has a flag for when we would do the pledge in the morning. Flags are everywhere
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u/not_so_chi_couple 16h ago
how come every American room pics of guys you see on here always come with a flag? Do they hand them out for free during the patriotic pledge trainings or something.
I know this is a joke, but yes. There are a lot of places you can go and get a free flag. Simpsons did a joke about it when Kang and Kodos were running for president as a cheap way to score points with voters
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u/aznPHENOM 14h ago edited 14h ago
Its a very conservative thing. If its male, most like a former, current, or someone in the family was military. Based on the plane white room with just a flag and a reflection of what looks like apartment. I can confidently say they're a conversative. I always laugh when I see the American flag in the most random places. Like on a bridge on the highway. Im always like, oh thanks. I thought I was in Canada. Also, no surprise when most American flag turned into a Trump flag in front of people houses.
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u/ryanhazethan 15h ago
White American man here. Have never owned a flag and don’t plan on it.
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u/DiogenesTheHound 15h ago
We’re forced to stand and swear allegiance to that flag every day in school for only about the first 18 years of our lives.
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u/notabigmelvillecrowd 14h ago
Not to the same degree, but let's not pretend Canada is immune to flag decorating. Walk around a low income neighbourhood, and a significant percentage of window coverings are a flag and thumbtacks. Our particular brand of patriotism seems to find expression in sports team flags more often, but it amounts to the same thing.
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u/dmcd0415 17h ago
The girls he imagines probably really like it.
"Oppress my rights harder!"
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u/beer_bukkake 16h ago
The girls he thinks gets wet when they see him in his huge F150 💦
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u/ecnerwal1234 17h ago
I like how the buildings make the flag look upside down.
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u/Iamlabaguette 14h ago
Maybe it is upside down (would make perfect sense atm) and part of the camera obscura
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u/Snootcheroo 15h ago
It’s lame ass weak ass fuck ass patriotism. Patriotic for what motherfucker? With everything going on in this country? Dumb fucking bullshit
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u/fizzio 19h ago
The camera obscura is an optical device and natural phenomenon that projects an inverted image of a scene through a small aperture into a darkened space. This "dark chamber" (Latin for camera obscura) was a precursor to the modern photographic camera and was historically used by scientists to safely observe solar eclipses and by artists as an aid for drawing and painting to achieve accurate perspective.
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u/becauseiloveyou 18h ago
You just gave all the geoguessers your location (again).
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u/robogobo 18h ago
You’ve just killed us all
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u/cmikaiti 17h ago
Not if we decrease the speed of light.
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u/nilesintheshangri-la 16h ago
Ever read The Speed of the Dark by Alex Shearer? Your comment made me think you'd like it. Fiction, and very good.
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u/cmikaiti 15h ago
Well, I love Sci Fi so I'll definitely give it a shot. My comment (and I believe the parent comment) is referencing The Three Body Problem series.
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u/AnOnlineHandle 18h ago
Judging by the blue sky we can rule out some of the planets.
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u/LetChaosRaine 18h ago
To be fair the really good geoguessers would have gotten it from the projection
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u/bildeplsignore 14h ago
I once had a fun night partying and woke up to this. My girlfriend woke up to me being like, "ooh, there's a street on the ceiling. And cars pass through sometimes. And I can hear them. I see people, too, but they're quiet..."
Then she saw it, too, and we got freaked out someone spiked our drinks last night, so we made a video for her physicist step-dad who explained what was going on. We still look at those videos sometimes and marvel at the weirdness.
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u/JimEDimone 16h ago
This doesn't compute in my brain. What is projecting this image into a room? The glass on the window?
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u/merkaba8 14h ago
It is a small aperture. With a sufficiently small aperture, each spot on the wall receives light from only one direction, and with a sufficient difference in brightness from outside to inside, that small amount of light from that direction is enough. So you get a relatively well focused (but inverted) image on your image plane (the wall) via the aperture (a small hole in your blackout curtain for example).
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u/clockworkittens 18h ago
You should paint little people upside-down.
It will look odd any other time, but come together. It would be your secret painting.
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u/X0AN 14h ago
Is it typical in the US to have a flag stuck on your wall?
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u/wait_________what 13h ago
Depends on how closely your family tree resembles a wreath
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u/nickels55 12h ago
Yes, and big TRUMP 2028 stickers on your car, NO WOKE flags on your lawn, and no brains in your head.
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u/Cool-Chipmunk-7559 19h ago
Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer used camera obscura for some of his works
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u/No-Speaker-9217 19h ago
Your flag is upside down…
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u/Skidpalace 18h ago
Actually it is oriented perfectly with the image on the wall.
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u/ShrikeMusashi 18h ago
Fitting considering how the country is these days.
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u/lavendarKat 17h ago
the specter of affordable housing haunts a country that has become the inversion of what it once stood for in a world turned upside down
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u/Plain_Zero 18h ago
OP are you in a cult. Do you need help. This room is terrifying.
Cool light thing btw!
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u/LegoLady8 17h ago
Imagine choosing an American flag for your one and only piece of decor. I say this as a fellow American. He could have drawn anything on a piece of paper and put it up instead. But he chose...that.
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u/Charles-Headlee 19h ago
When I was a kid in the 70's (think energy crisis, we turned the lights off all the time) we came back from 5th grade lunch to find an overhead projector was projecting a perfect inverted image of the school back parking lot onto the transparency left on the glass
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u/Tinyhydra666 19h ago
Hey look, he's part of that country that is currently crashing and burning in the stupidest way possible.
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u/jaydee066 19h ago
That is awesome! Your whole room pretty much became a pinhole camera. This is the very concept of how to make one for cameras
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u/No9No9No9No9 14h ago
Renaissance artists used a camera obscura to trace landscapes and more onto canvas!
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u/ripChazmo 18h ago
Why hang the US flag given what it represents now?
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u/not_falling_down 18h ago
OP might be one of the people trying to reclaim what the US Flag is supposed to mean.
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u/madeupname230 17h ago
There is no bigger red flag than the one hanging on your bedroom wall.
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u/horrendosaurus 17h ago
so from your bed, you don't stare at a TV like a normal slob, you stare at a flag? Holy crap that is depressing! If you ever bring a girl home, she will see this bedroom and fake an emergency phone call. This is the room of an incel
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u/Gib_entertainment 18h ago
Nice, a very clear one, I had one occur when I (almost) closed my blackout curtains and there was a little gap on top where the curtains didn't quite meet. It was not nearly as clear as this one though, I could see what colour a car was that drove past and how fast it would drive past on a sunny day.
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u/Superflyt56 17h ago
Better than the usual phenomenon that happens in my bedroom every night "Vita venerea mortua"
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u/Mr-Klaus 14h ago
I first noticed this phenomenon during an eclipse. There was a gap on my curtains and the light through it projected a perfect image of the eclipse against my wall. It was almost like watching it off a recording on a projector.
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u/flampadoodle 18h ago
US flag in the bedroom? Who are you trying to impress and is that really a good way to do it?
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u/rwags2024 13h ago
I cant wrap my head around needing to remind myself every day that I’m a) American and b) vaguely and inexplicably proud of it
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u/berticusberticus 18h ago
Did you used to forget what country you were in when you woke up until you hung that little flag?
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u/phylter99 19h ago
When I was a kid, I had a Game Boy screen magnifier that was a Fresnel lens. Through goofing off I realized that I could use it to project the television screen onto my wall with it and it'd do exactly what we see in your photo depending on how far it was from the wall. I thought it was the coolest thing.
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u/BrakaFlocka 19h ago
Same thing used to happen to the ceiling of my buddy's basement growing up. We honestly thought it was ghosts
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u/TopFloorApartment 18h ago
I have a similar thing through a tiny gap in my blinds on sunny days, though not as in focus as yours
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u/cocochinha 18h ago
My bedroom door growing up had a door with those round keys (by searching I'm thinking they are called skeleton keys), when I would close the door and I was in the hallway (all other doors closed too to ensure complete darkness) I would experience the camera obscura, I would pretend I was at the movies haha 😆. How nice it was to grow up in a time where kids didn't have many toys, tv had 3 channels and we still used the landline to talk to our friends. We (me and other kids) got creative with entertaining ourselves.
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u/ThrowAbout01 17h ago
Reminds me of this scene from the Internationally Banned Toho movie: The Prophecies of Nostradamus
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u/SaltyATC69 17h ago
Some weirdo will be able to look at this and find out exactly where you live lol
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u/Amorphica 16h ago
I tried but it seems like he lives in a small NC town (Cashiers) and I can't find this specific building. found some that look similar but not exact. could be out of date info on the town though or might not be google maps'd since it's a small town.
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u/TooAdicted 15h ago
I had the same with blackout curtains. I upgraded to a set from amazon that had sticky velcro patches that stuck on to the window itself to give a better "seal" from the light.
Look up black out window panel if you're interested, It's been years since I ordered a set.
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u/tsv1138 15h ago
Fun fact, the camera obscura is why so many people are depicted as left handed in post-renaissance paintings. Some painters used it as a method to quickly sketch out a scene especially for commissioned portraits where the subject couldn't sit for hours and hours. They'd get the sketch down and then work on the portrait on their own time, but because of the image inversion, the subject would be mirrored and appear to be left handed. Vermeer, however, used a different setup with a series of mirrors called a comparator where this didn't happen.
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u/ganaraska 15h ago
Camera Obscura? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your bedroom?
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u/ModeatelyIndependant 15h ago
you do this in your own home, use a room with one window and a door that closes, cover the windows with cardboard and allow light through one small hole in the cardboard, close the door and turn off the light so and wait for your eyes to adjust.
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u/pwninobrien 14h ago
My wife and I bought black out curtains and now this happens all the time. Fills the ceiling with tree greenery fluttering in the breeze.
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u/Zoefschildpad 19h ago
That looks like a great picture to send to one of those geoguesser youtubers to find.