To prevent deer from being hit by cars Finland has tried using reflective paint.

myrmepropagandist

To prevent deer from being hit by cars Finland has tried using reflective paint. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/avoid-deer-strikes-finland-painting-deer-antlers-reflective-paint-180949792/)

File this under "solutions to modern problems that summon the old gods."

(It seems the image on the right is a rendering to show how this "would" work. Not a real photo. Updating again to correct image description to reflect, heh, this.)

? Offline

@futurebird@sauropods.win That looks pretty cool!

myrmepropagandist

@trinsec

They were doing it in 2014 but I'd love to see some follow up on if it was really practical and if the paint was safe etc. etc.

Still I just like the photo... it's eerie isn't it!

Voracious Reader

@futurebird

When I searched for "reflective reindeer", I got pictures of reindeer holding their chin in their hoof, looking pensively upwards.

Riley S. Faelan

@futurebird One should wear a proper mask while mass-spraying reindeer horns, though, or their lungs will get all reflective.

Riley S. Faelan

@futurebird Sadly, the follow-up:

Anne Ollila, director of the Finnish Reindeer Herders' Association, said Wednesday the other methods simply didn't work.
"Drivers often mistook reindeer with reflectors for people in the dark, thinking they wouldn't run into the middle of the road when they saw car headlights approaching," she told The Associated Press. "And the deer would tear the reflectors off."
In this picture taken July 13, 2009, reindeers walk across the road in Suomussalmi, Finland. Finnish reindeer herders launch app to cut road kills in northern Arctic where 300,000 reindeer regularly roam freely. ( Vesa Moilanen/ Lehtikuva via AP)
Reindeer traffic warning signs were pinched by tourists for souvenirs, and reindeer would scrape off the fluorescent paint from their antlers. "Somehow the reindeer know they had paint on their antlers—maybe their friends laughed at them," Ollila said.

(Source: https://phys.org/news/2016-06-reindeer-herders-finland-app-road.html.)

myrmepropagandist

@lnlyisol

I'm so disgusted with the state of search these days. It's not just the AI it's the AI slop combined with the mushy "let us tell you what you really meant" search results.

Obscure band names, artists, concepts are "corrected" to more popular words. "ant" is swapped for "art" if I'm looking for anything cute or amusing ("cute art stickers" NO I want "cute ANT stickers")

It's like modern search is trying to make everyone hopelessly basic. Only popular things exist.

myrmepropagandist

@riley

Again? ... did the reindeer not let the ones with the paint "join in their reindeer games"?

Why are reindeer such relentless conformists??

myrmepropagandist

@lnlyisol

Am I just getting old? One of the things that made me fall in love with the internet is how if you looked for something, no matter how obscure, no matter how unlikely if someone had gone to the trouble of making it you could find it.

That just isn't true in the same way anymore. It's more likely you will be redirected to a more "normal search query"

It "works better" for many people most of the time. But, that's at the expense of making everything strange hidden.

myrmepropagandist

@lnlyisol

What I find hard to imagine is that there must have been people who were annoyed, frustrated that they typed "cute ant stickers" and obviously "ant" was a typo! who would want "ant stickers" gross, right?

The computer ought to "know" that no one would want to see that and show them what they meant.

The needs of that person are more important than whatever I'm trying to do.

But I also wonder if that person really exists. Are people happy this happens?

Peter Bloem

@futurebird @lnlyisol In the early days, there was a lot to do about "the long tail". How the internet made it worthwhile to cater to niche subjects because you could cast such a wide net.

I felt this died when companies like Netflix became big. They started focusing on things with mass appeal. They could have broadened their catalog with lots of cheap, niche movies that a few people would like but they never bothered.

I think it would still make them money. It just doesn't generate prestige.

Digital LoFI

@futurebird I have an entire concept for a federated, decentralized search platform. I have a long spec written out and everyone I’ve spoken to about it seems to think it has merit. I just have no idea how to code it behind the front end. I’d be happy to share my rough tech spec if you’d be interested.

llewelly

@futurebird I was going to say, I hope the glow in the eyes is just the natural reflectivity of the tapetum lucidium*, rather than from paint, but since it's a shooped photo, ehh ...

(* I'm nearly certain reindeer have this, since I know from experience mule deer, moose, and wapiti have it, and deer generally and most mammals, etc ).

Voracious Reader

@lnlyisol @futurebird I can't positively vouch for its authenticity, but I've long used this photo of a reflectorized reindeer as the cover image for my "Grotesqueries" gallery album!

Voracious Reader

@dedicto @futurebird

From my quick search, it seems that pics with that white light are from the actual experiment, and the image with bright orange reflectivity is an artistic (human) creation

Hak Foo :verified_blobcat:

@futurebird @lnlyisol
Normal people should never have been given access to computers.

When the audience was technical people, they understood there was a sausage being made and could collaborate for the best sausage.

Now that the market is "everybody", there's a lot of selling "magic". "We'll fix your mistakes" and "here's a bunch of LLM garbage" both dazzle low-skill users, and steer towards profitable choices. It just comes at the expense of competent users whose queries get clobbered.

llewelly

@futurebird @lnlyisol
I think the "corrections" are all geared to "correct" things to "what our best-paying advertisers are trying to sell". They don't care whether or not actual human beings want cute ant stickers, they only care that their machine learning crap tells them their best paying advertisers will make them more money if it's "corrected" to "cute art stickers".

? Offline

AI is a predictability machine. It is inherently conservative and populist.

@futurebird @lnlyisol

Urban Hermit

@futurebird @lnlyisol agreed with this 100%.

Another effect, due to search trying to find you the most commonly accepted information, and publishers trying to meet that demand, the internet these days is a vast, shallow sea of entry level introductory information, repeated thousands of times over, with mid level and higher understandings frustratingly out of reach.

Like everything is the first month and a half of an introductory course. Sometimes YouTube can get you another month and a half.

S Bodzin, Real American 🇺🇸

@futurebird @lnlyisol it's the way I feel about automatic spell check and grammar check in everything. No, really, i want the word "i" in lower case. I live in Kwins and go to the Atlantick ocean. It's an intentional joke to say "too" rather than "to". The monoculturalization of language by machines always feels condescending in a very DunkinRuger (yes also a joke) way. The machine is just stupid enough to think it's smarter than you. So irritating.

Chebucto Regional Softball Club

To prevent deer from being hit by cars Finland has tried using reflective paint.