Overzeetop

You know what’s funny - before I clicked through to see the context, I thought you were replying to a comment I made about the Houthis attacking it ships in the Middle East. We get attacked by terrorists all the time. Lots of people around the world hate Americans because, like most of the colonial powers, we’ve been reading assholes to lot of people. They also hate us because the rules of life that were made up in the name of our imaginary deity conflicts with the version of rules that they made up in the name of their imaginary deity. And we hate them back.

People are kidnapped and/or killed on a regular basis by “terrorists”. That’s a tragedy to everyone who hold them close. The lack of perspective is thinking that one particular tragedy is somehow larger because of the news coverage afforded.

Americans have no sense of perspective. I have friends who were affected by the tower collapse in NY. We sent more service members to die looking for Bin Laden than were killed that day. And more than 10 times a many people die from gun violence in the US every God damned year than died in all four plane strikes. And every one of those other tragedies destroys families and communities.

It’s so overblown it’s practically a meme to everyone but the boomers and Christian “patriots” who need a way to make people angry about foreigners so they can ignore our home grown violent tendencies.

I wouldn’t mind the various levels of there were a simple, consistent marking standard for speed and power rating.

My takeaway from the article was that Your photos are no longer real because the AI portions have altered the image captured. Your face has been cleared of wrinkles and blemishes, your eyes made larger and rounder, your aging features reduced without your knowledge or input. Of course, with your input your proportions could be manually or automatically enhanced, but also the sky replaced with a more interesting one, or people or objects “in the way” of your desired composition removed and replaced with mimicry in the background.

The adjustments available - both automatic and manual - for balance, clarity, and color temperature have always been available in analog film, even if only to a limited extent in either film selection or in developing. The AI enhancements available in modern software, especially those baked into the Camera apps which are automatic, can be far more manipulative.

The phone number gatekeeping is annoying. I think ChatGPT requires it. I can’t use it because it won’t accept my phone number as I only use VoIP numbers. Never mind they used to be land and cell numbers I posted there. Same with some banking sites. No sms 2FA allowed because the gateway they use can’t jump to voip - the codes just never arrive.