I dunno, this pic seems to capture them pretty well.
AI Sucks at Making Cat Photos, Misses Entire Point of Internet
Live Science, via Elizabeth G.
(Sheesh, this nametag weighs a ton!)
17 Hardworking Dogs Who Are Just Trying To Make An Honest Living
BuzzFeed, via Andrew Y.
Followed by a spike in sales of pregnancy tests.
Harbinger of spring: First stork lands in Denmark
CPH Post, via Sylvia C.
You're staring at it, aren't you?
These 13 Amazing Kitties Have The Longest Tails On The Entire Planet
Cuteness, via Elaine W.
And finally: Time Peace
Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our nine lives.
More of Nocoa Cat on Instagram
“Your one life is OVER if you think you can hold up my breakfast until that timer runs out!”
“Are you looking at my bum?”
I was looking at the first story wondering who “AL” is and thinking, “Yeah, his cat pics do suck.”
You are not alone.
I also plead guilty. š
The computer-generated cats are hilarious, but the human version is worryingly effective, especially if you scale the images down. One of the ways you can detect bots in comment sections of websites and on twitter is because they have to steal photos from elsewhere to use for their profile/avatar. If photos can be generated from whole cloth that opens up the possibility of fabricating entire identities, especially when you combine it with similar tech for voices and video “deepfakes.” There’s real potential for chaos in the not-to-distant future.
It see it much like the evolutionary arms race. Where one animal will develop an advantage and another animal will develop an advantage to counter the other animals advantage.
It’ll be the same way with the internet. Someone will develop a new way to fake some thing and someone will develop a way to detect that fake. It’ll just keep going back and forth.
In the meanwhile, however…..
The problem is that the fakes don’t need to be good enough to fool experts with the best tools; they just need to fool regular folks with standard issue ears and eyes. And retractions never go as viral as the original.
As it is, I’ve had to explain to family members how I was able to adjust contrast sliders to figure out a picture was photoshopped. I came really close to just waving my hands around and saying “It’s magic. I’m a wizard.”
We live in the dumbest possible cyberpunk dystopia. The future is going to be *hilarious.*
OMG I LOVE DOGGOLINGO. I use it all the time!
That article was a related item on another link last week. I thought about just posting it in the weekend open thread but decided to send it to Mike instead because I figured more people would see it if he shared it. (I wondered if DoggoLinguo is an option on DuoLinguo.)
I have the We Rate Dogs daily calendar and I love it! They use “pup” in place of certain syllables wherever it makes sense (like “pupportions” instead of “proportions”…though I think my favorite word I’ve learned so far is “snoozles” (example: sleepy Pippa, who “has the best dreams during car snoozles”). As much as I love Grumpy Cat (which it replaced after three or four years), I think the WRD positivity is much better for my mental health at work. I save the ones I really like (so far, most of them) for future reference. (And why does Chrome think positivity is not a word?)
Ok. Signed up for Dogspotting! Iām a goner now.
I luff the long-tailed cats, partly for themselves and partly for the old joke about “more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”