You can see a good portion of the back of many owls’ eyes if you look in their ears.

And one arm is used especially for octopus sexy time. (hectocotylus)

I was just working on a post sharing some pics by one of my favorite photographers and wrote a little something along these lines.

They praised God for the opportunity to get these very unique photos. While I’m not religious, and to me, the photographer did all the work following this bird forever, through long hours of darkness and cold, waiting patiently day after day, honing his craft.

And that is a good enough reason for praise from me. But he felt a blessing from outside, and I can appreciate that for him. Did he think providence put him and this bird together? I don’t know if it went that deep. Maybe he was just glad this animal existed, and he is here to experience it, and this moment could have randomly happened for anyone, but instead it happened to him.

Whatever the reason, his beliefs led him to experiencing something amazing. I could just call that inspiration, while he attributes it to his beliefs. Does it make a difference to either of us what the other believes? Nah.

If people aren’t proselytizing at me, they can believe in what they please. When most people say they were glad God gave you the strength to do something, they’re just being happy for you from their perspective. They probably have no idea what your beliefs are, that’s just their default and the words that come to their mind to congratulate you. You should kindly take their words with the intention they were spoken with, not necessarily a literal meaning. Jumping to being offended just makes conflict where there wasn’t any, and that would make you the disrespectful one most likely.

Yeah, I’m hoping this is something that just got tossed to some volunteers or something. The National Wildlife Federation is huge and should have some of the best people available if anyone had questioned the photo.

Oh, that is cool that it is at least being attempted. The only kind of downside is it looks like it requires you to use Google’s AI to avoid AI! 😆

I’m realistic enough that I would never assume all AI would self identify, but if it were in the mainstream ones, that would solve a large share of the issue by people not concerned with the problem and others with non-malicious intent. People like the news media or anything regarding the law should have a much higher bar than a watermark.

Thank you for showing me it’s at least being attempted though! I’ve been left in the dust by tech for a long time now, so it’s hard to keep up with all that’s going on.

I’ve tried some of those AI image detector sites with pics I knew were AI and some got a better “real image” probability score than some images that I took myself!

I just replied in another comment that I wish there could be a hidden marker in AI content. Something that wouldn’t affect anything for those that wish to enjoy it, but something another device can see and show us a notation or to filter it completely.

It wouldn’t cost anything. It wouldn’t hurt people that want AI content. But anyone wanting to know or to exclude it could do so. Seems like a simple win for all sides to me.

The example I gave was printers having that hidden anti-counterfitting code that it prints on everything.

I feel I am pretty bad at spotting this stuff, and while I couldn’t put into technical terms how it looks off (other than the foot anatomy I mentioned), it just doesn’t feel right to me still. I would have hoped a group put in charge of a photo contest would have the experience to judge it better. Even placed next to any of the other photos they shared from the contest, this one stands out as unnatural to me.

I try to stay positive, but damn does it feel like the bar has been lowered to the ground for just about everything these days…

Why is it only the long-legged birds can find employment? 😄

“Cease and desist with this unauthorized usage of my client’s likeness immediately.”

Black-necked Stilt, aka. The Lawyer Bird

In addition to the winners at the link above, there are 60 more Honorable Mentions which does include some real owls!

As someone who wants to educate people on wildlife, it’s important to have sources I can rely on. If people want to create and share manufactured images for fun, that is one thing, but in cases like this where falsehood infiltrates an otherwise trusted source, it really hurts anyone looking for factual photos and information.

I’m pretty bad at picking out photograph details, but the light and shadows look strange in this image, and the owl looks to have a couple extra toes. I’d have expected a bit better from a nature photography mag.

With me relying on Facebook due to that being the main avenue for wildlife rescues to share photos and stories with the most amount of people, a ton of crap gets put in my feed, and some of it is getting very convincing at times. Even some of the video clips make me look twice. As photo processing software makes even real images start to look sometimes too perfect and AI image generation improves, things are going to get trickier.

There are a lot of true moments in nature of things that feel unbelievable, and diluting that with fraud is a real shame.

Voted in my primary this week.

I rarely see any third party in the ballot, and most seem to be some form of Republican but worse.

I don’t know if I could vote for an anti-capitalist in the near future in the system we have now. We aren’t really set up to give a third party capitalist a fair shot, let alone an anti-capitalist. It is near impossible to even form a union and has so far been impossible to gain universal healthcare, so electing an anti-capitalist is going to be harder than that.

If it were a primary and I was fine with the leading Democratic candidate, then I’d be fine showing support for a more radical party if I shared their beliefs.