My doctors are nice for the most part, but do seem much more rushed than years ago. All our medical facilities have been consolidated under 2 huge regional hospitals, so we have a duopoly at this point, so we get what we get.

My wife started working at one a year before they got bought out (they were our last independent provider) and there were many immediate changes to do more with less.

It’s somewhat efficient, as my visits now seem to go, “how are you feeling and what do you want from me?”, which if I know is ok, but if I just know I’m sick, I feel I either get a blanket of tests to do a shotgun approach on diagnosis, or I get given a medicine with not always as much time to go over pros, cons, or basic questions as I’d like. It feels much less personal and closer and closer to just doing telehealth, which again is fine for when I know what is wrong and what I need, but losing that difference is disappointing to me.

Many of my docs seem disappointed as well, since the turnover is huge, especially back a few decades. I used to have the same doctors my whole life until maybe the last decade, and now I’m lucky to see the same person for a second year.

I wonder how much of that 1.8 billion weaponized legal persecution fund they’re gonna give him!

*Crickets *

I was just reading about this earlier this week in writing a post on how rat poison kills animals beyond the intended rodents and how/why it is treated with vitamin K. Rat poisons block the liver from metabolizing the Vitamin K into blood clotting agents. So it sounds like these babies are going through the same experience as something that’s gotten a fatal dose of rat poison. We at least should have the intelligence to get the readily available cure. Such as shame…

That’s their loss. I’d laugh. 😄

I assume most folks using that expression are not using it in a deep spiritual manner, so it probably does. Saying it also usually makes people feel at least a smidge better after venting those feelings, so you may inadvertently also be a little more blessed. 😇

Bless you is a great example. I don’t think most people say things like bless you or God gave you the strength to be literally religious, they’re just a spiritual person’s way of being polite.

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.

I mean, yeah, the slush fund is bad, and his name came up a few times in the Epstein files, and he’s needlessly killing tons of people around the world extrajudicially, and if it stopped there, a regular look would suffice. But have you seen these gas prices?! If I was a less gracious person, I’d be tempted to say he is on his way to a full brow furrowing at this rate!

I demand Schumer give a stern look over his glasses!

Anyone got info on the Jan 31 incident that is the origin of this? I couldn’t find anything, just an earlier shouting match between the cops and Lions.

Typically, open carry is legal in all of Pennsylvania except Philadelphia, where you need a carry license to open carry. Usually the Philly-only gun laws get overturned rather quickly, but this seems to have remained in place for 20 years with few legal challenges.

Dunno why the ATF was brought into the original comments, as this seems to be a city and/or state issue. Feds don’t look to be involved here.

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 don’t know if a machine can be considered to create something beautiful. I was taught art is something that can give the viewer some form of emotional response.

While it seems it can do that to some level, some people keep knowingly viewing its output and get some enjoyment out of it, it feels deceptive or inauthentic, even if the one displaying the output is open about it being generated by a machine. It comes from nowhere. It is souless, created by something with no sense of beauty, no understanding of love or anger, or any other emotion. There’s no thought put into it, just a cobbling together of things that fit inputted parameters.

I hear printers make some kind of secret set of dots to ID the printer if someone were to counterfeit money or whatever. I’d be cool with something like that for generated images or music. Something we could check and filter out if we wanted to while not ruining anything for people that do want it. I think I really just hate having it used to try to lie to me. If you think your work is truly good, what do you have to lose by hiding who, or what, made it?

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.

Do you understand if you’re nicer people will put more effort in and if not they’ll probably just not bother helping you understand something?

You’re acting like I need to argue with you about this, I don’t.

If you want to be wrong, I’m 100% ok just never trying to help you understand something

I had something much longer written after I saw this post, but I don’t think that approach will work with you. I delete so many comments before posting because I see you in a thread and decide it isn’t worth it. I agree with you on a ton of stuff, but you make me want to avoid so many interactions here. I must not understand what type of help you think you are giving people, but you are one of the few people I actively avoid because you come off so confrontational no matter what other people say. I don’t block you because I don’t think you are stupid or that your takes are necessarily bad, but hell, do you ever say them in the worst way possible so often.

This is solely meant to be constructive, I want so badly to like seeing your comments, but you make it such a challenge. After what feels like months of feeling this way, I just had to say it. If you approached your comments in a different way, you could be someone that I could really learn from due to the amount you share and the importance of a lot of it, but you make someone even as calm as I am just clench up and expect confrontation, so I go out of my way to avoid you. Take that how you will, but again, just an honest opinion and something intended to be helpful.