Fang actually is a cat riding a bike.
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Time to go to sleepā¦ night night people!
Also: just one second more, pleaseā¦
Early daguerreotipe of a proud grandmother and her grandchildren, 1870s(?)
You might notice that the baby moved, and that grandma is about to burst out in laughterā¦
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Eduard-Michael Grosu. I can find the latest pic of him on my tablet but not on my pc?
Tell me Iām wrong.
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Hot dang they are doing post 1985, pre-2007 Star Wars book illustrations now?!
Straight up Timothy Zahn.
Part 2: Out of the Sansha Ice Storm we come for our people.
yes Hoth reference.
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Time to go to sleep, but first I will share an old photograph. Night night lovelies!
Also: yes.
Photograph: Ottoman bashi-bazouks, ca. 1890
The bashi-bazouks, which means something like ābroken headsā as in ābat crazyā, were irregular units of mercenaries warring for fun and loot, known to be tough but hopelessly indisciplinate; they often were sent in as punishment. Which means that any of these three funny looking guys would probably rip you arm off and beat you dead with it, just because.
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Retired.
Iām Free
Turns out the hardest part about retiring is surviving the retirement parties! 
Still have to work part time until they find a replacement. (Good luck! 
) Then there will be a final one with the community. Boss gave me a nice compliment saying, āYou set the bar too high.ā
That said and the Takillya with 
now talking.
And do not ask me why, but I feel more of an accomplishment at tracking down Zaeraās boyfriend! 
Most people can retire. Not all can make the effort to make Zaera speechless! Actually, I did not think that was possible, but I surprise even myself sometimes! it reminds me of when effort made a difference in the gameā¦
MB The Photographer does not worship anyone. But does not mind servicing 1 or 2 sometimes!
I told you, you would regret posting that pic! 
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Congratulations on your retirement. Ive got a few more good years myself before i can take that step.
My Dad told me years ago after he retired from Delta Airlines that he never had any time to do any thing. He even said that retirement was a drag so he became a mail carrier for another 10 yearsā¦then retired from that as well.
Good luck in your freedom and keep busy. 
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Oh, but his team hasnāt been to Scotland recently, and thereās no logged activity of him over there?
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ć ¤ć ¤ć ¤ć ¤ć ¤
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As the Goddess of Mischief, there is no bar higher than mineā¦ but I have to admit, youāre getting pretty close.
However making me speechless is an accomplishment. I might just have to reward you .
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A.I. is starting fighting back against the entities who are anti A.I.
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Just a few days ago Rixxjavix explained that an artist who does carefully hand-drawn images got his original artwork tagged as suspect AI because of how much the AI has been stealing itā¦
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To be fair all this really tells me is that Kurzgesagt videos are indistinguishable from AI slopā¦
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ā¦and you are wrong by a million miles. Kurzgesagtās art style might be copied by AI (frankly I havenāt seen this happen, but could happen) but the quality of the content is top notch. Their video about Covid 19 was an absolute must and I shared it (along with instructions on how to add subtitles) with family, friends and everyone I could think of. Itās positively horrible that YT mistook it for AI based onā¦ what? How does it looks?
I donāt like some little things going on with Kurzgesagt but theyāre a top quality channel for popularization. Seriously. Here, just watch their videos about trees:
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And now itās time to go to bedā¦ night night people!
Also: ooh, naughty wind!
Photograph: Two young women on a windy day at the Caterpillar ride in Southend Fair, Essex, by Kurt Hutton (1938)
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One of the muckety mucks would retire for yr, come back for a yr only to retire again and as another one said, just to have another retirement party!
Heās over the hill now, a perfect companion for Zaera now!
I love you like the little sister I never had! 
Otherwise, I would not have made the effort! And thereās more! Both from Transylvania? Canāt be sure on that one but it would explain your tendency to bite!
Youāre a very tough woman to best. I surprised you even took a backseat to him. I would have pictured you riding alongside him as an equal. 
And the only reason I posted about was it reminded me of the effort it took to figure out the Goon scout in our sys way back when. He got mine by a day but caught his so soon after, we had a good chat and chuckle over it.
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Lucky you!
Painting can be copied, I would say art style is imitated, that means the thing created is not the thing that someone else made, but its styled after it. There were periods where certain styles were imitated, it was completely natural, only that people did it, not computers. Now people fear they will be replaced by machines, or by other things, and it is the fear that was with humans from beginning, fear of the future and their status in the group lowering. More even, fear of complete replacement.
If we come to the point where top notch A.I. will make art indistinguishable from top notch art of human origin, both A.I. and people will be useless in recognizing which is which. It is only ONE of aspects of great advances in A.I. honestly.
Like in Turing test, when you will not be able to distinguish if you are talking with human or A.I., then ask yourself, would A.I. of human level would be better in recognizing A.I.?
Where would that A.I. end, when what we could call a human mind or aspect of human mind would be created in something else than biological matter, miniaturized, implanted into human head, and then running inside human body?
I have been testing some of the A.I. tools, and they do not recognize some of the A.I. made things like textures anymore where I manipulate it in 3D.
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Here is a brief animated video-essay script with vivid visuals, brisk pacing, and clear scientific explanations.
Why Donāt Trees Leave Holes in the Ground?
[Opening: A large tree stands in a park. Underground, its roots glow and begin āvacuuming upā the surrounding soil. A huge crater suddenly opens.]
NARRATOR:
A tree can live for centuries, pulling water and nutrients from the ground every day.So why doesnāt the soil around it slowly disappear?
Why isnāt every old forest full of enormous tree-shaped holes?
[Title card: āWHY DONāT TREES EAT THE GROUND?ā]
[Animation: A root tip approaches individual soil particles.]
NARRATOR:
The first misconception is that roots consume soil itself.They do not.
Soil is mostly mineral particlesātiny fragments of rockāmixed with organic matter, air, water, fungi, bacteria, and small animals.
Roots leave almost all of those solid particles where they are.
[Water appears between soil grains. Colored ions float in it.]
Instead, plants absorb nutrients such as nitrate, phosphate, potassium, and magnesium as dissolved ions in the water between the particles.
Imagine drinking a glass of lightly salted water. You take in the dissolved salt, but you do not consume the glass.
For roots, the soil is more like the container than the meal.
[Animation: A giant tree is placed on one side of a scale. A tiny pile of mineral nutrients appears on the other.]
NARRATOR:
There is another important detail: most of a treeās dry mass did not come from the ground.The carbon in its wood, bark, and leaves came mostly from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Through photosynthesis, the tree combines that carbon dioxide with water, using sunlight as an energy source, to manufacture sugars and other carbon-based molecules.
So although a tree may weigh several tonnes, only a relatively small fraction of that mass consists of mineral nutrients extracted from the soil.
A tree is built largely from air.
[The tree inflates from streams of carbon dioxide entering its leaves.]
Yes. Air.
[Underground cross-section: Water flows through pores toward the roots.]
NARRATOR:
But trees also absorb enormous amounts of water. Why doesnāt that leave empty spaces?Because soil is not a sealed tank.
It is a porous, constantly changing system. When roots remove water, more water can move in from nearby soil through capillary action. Rain replenishes it from above, and groundwater may supply it from below.
The spaces previously occupied by water simply contain more air until water returns.
Removing liquid from a sponge does not make the sponge vanish.
[Root thickens and gently pushes soil grains aside.]
NARRATOR:
Roots themselves also occupy space.As they grow thicker, they push soil particles aside and compress some of the surrounding ground. Fine roots die and decompose, leaving narrow channels that may later be filled by new roots, loose particles, fungal threads, or small animals.
Earthworms dig. Fungi spread. Microbes decompose matter. Rain carries particles downward. Burrowing animals mix entire soil layers.
The ground is continually being rearranged.
[Animation: A dry clay soil shrinks and cracks beside a thirsty tree.]
NARRATOR:
Trees can still change the ground.In clay-rich soils, heavy water uptake during dry weather can cause the soil to shrink. This may produce cracks, settling, or even damage to nearby foundations.
But that is not a cavity created by nutrients being removed. It is a change in the spacing and volume of the soil as it dries.
[Return to the imagined crater. It reverses and closes.]
NARRATOR:
So trees do not excavate invisible craters beneath themselves because they are not eating bulk soil.They take small quantities of dissolved minerals, move water through an open system, and build most of their mass from atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Meanwhile, roots, organisms, rain, gravity, and flowing water continually reshape and refill the microscopic spaces underground.
[Final shot: The camera rises from the roots, through the trunk, and into the canopy.]
A forest may look still.
But beneath every tree is a crowded, moving ecosystemāone that behaves less like an emptying container and more like a living, constantly recycled city.
[End card.]
I had ChatGPT write me a script for a brief video essay on the topic of why trees donāt make holes in the ground. Iāve only watched like two Kurzgesagt videos ever, so Iām hardly an expert, but it seems pretty damn similar. Spend half an hour tinkering with a text to speech model and another hour making and animating some visuals and imo youād have content that could fit into his repertoire seamlessly.
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ā¦what youāre doing here is copying Kurzgesagtās research and decision making on what to explain and how to do it.
This is something I live with in my job: once youāve made the decisions and produced a list of choices āeveryone can book flights and hotels online, hur hur hur, we donāt need travel agentā.
Robbing us of our work is easy, specially since in my country it is unthinkable to charge upfront for quotations, but so far thereās still enough honest people who appreciate the value in someone whose job is to know what āeveryone uses internetā does not know.
In that script you just stole Kurzgesagtās decisions and proved that an AI probably could imitate themā¦ which is how the whole āyouāre imitating the AI imitating youā shitball started.
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