Oddity Central

Jobseeker Becomes Robot to Increase Chances of Landing Tech Job
Turkish Artist Recreates Famous Van Gogh Paintings on Water
You Might Not Want to Go There, but North Korea Is One of the World’s Last Havens for Birds

Jobseeker Becomes Robot to Increase Chances of Landing Tech Job

Posted: 22 Jun 2016 12:34 AM PDT

With the imminent rise of the machines and everyone anticipating that robots will be taking all our jobs, a proactive human jobseeker has decided to become a robot in order to improve his odd sof landing a tech job. If you can’t beat’em, join’em, right?

Meet Canu, a man trying to stay ahead of the times. Inspired by grim predictions that robots will be taking over our jobs in the next 30 years, he has set up a tongue-in-cheek website where he advertises himself as a human-turned robot, with 4 years of experience in marketing under his belt, but also the ability to “program and download any other skills as needed”. Just one of the perks of being a machine, I guess. His human side presents some advantages as well, like being “already assembled” and not requiring batteries. So there you go, tech companies, the perfect employee.

canu-robot

Posted: 21 Jun 2016 11:50 PM PDT

Turkish artist Garip Ay’s masterpieces sometimes only last a few moments, but they definitely make a lasting impression. He uses the ancient Ebru technique to recreate famous Van Gogh painting on the surface of water.

A video recently gone viral shows Garip Ay starting his creative process by mixing black dye and carrageenan, a thickening agent, into a bowl of water. He then drops various oil colors and uses a metal rod to manipulate the paint into Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Once the piece is completed, he just swirls it away with the rod and starts from scratch on one of the Dutch artist’s best-known self-portrait. It turns out just as detailed as his first endeavor, only this time the Turkish artist decides to keep a permanent copy of the artwork, so he just places a piece of paper on the water, and the painting magically transfers to it. The impressive video has so far been viewed over 26 million times.

Garip-Ay-Ebru

Posted: 21 Jun 2016 11:01 PM PDT

North Korea may be one of the world’s least tourist-friendly countries on Earth, but its strategic location along the avian East Asian Australasian Flyway and complete lack of development is preventing the extinction of several once plentiful species of migratory birds.

Around fifty million birds, from tiny song birds to cranes, journey across the East Asian Australasian Flyway every year, and eight million of them are shorebirds or waders. For many of these, North Korea’s west coast is the only stop for tens of thousands of miles, which means that without it, they would probably couldn’t finish their epic trip. But what makes this otherwise inhospitable place so important to birds?

A group of New Zealand bird watchers asked permission from the North Korean government to enter the country and observe the migratory birds. Armed with binoculars, powerful telescopes and cameras they counted the birds making their stop from the southern hemisphere all the way to the top of the northern one. “As we lose habitat elsewhere, the birds are going to get more and more pushed into remaining habitat, which by default means North Korea,” birder David Melville told the BBC. Because the shorelines of neighboring countries China and South Korea have witnessed rapid developments, with most of the mudflats having been converted to dry land for agriculture and industrial projects, the birds have virtually no place to stop and refuel.

migratory-birds