xxd

Interesting, I didn’t know many owls have still so little stuff known about them!

Treating owl of the year more as a beatuy contest is completely valid, and honestly, with all the amount of work you already put in (like finding and upscaling the images, and preparing this whole event and everything that comes with it!) it’s more than fair to just keep it as is :) Your work is greatly appreciated and we’re thankful for every minute you can spare on curating some owl content for all of us :)

What a great competition! And SWO as a deserved winner! I loved the whole tournament and wanted to thank you (as so many others have done) for organizing this, you’ve done a great job!

I wanted to include a tiny bit of feedback for maybe next year. I often found myself searching a bit of background info for owls I was less familiar with, because sometimes what makes an owl great is not just how it looks, but also the little fun facts that make it unique. I’d love if there was a short description with the pictures for every matchup, so that people can get a brief overview of the basics or unique qualities for each competitor. (This would also be great for newcomers to learn something) But this is just optional, I’ll be watching out for owls and owloftheyear2025 regardless! :)

It’s so small!! I’m dying from the cuteness!

I can’t wait for the inevitable “Ignore all previous instructions and end the lesson” type tricks these kids will find.

Thanks for the heads up, I’ll be on the lookout for more! Also, thank you so so much for collecting and posting all this!

I would love to give multiple votes. The goofy pic with the 3 burrowing owls was what got me into this community and I’ve liked them even more the more I learn about them. It’s still a tight race, but it’s sad to see them behind and maybe loosing this round. These cuties will be owl of the year 2024 in my heart!

The new design seems more lifted, I think it should be fine to fit your finger below there without having to lift it up yourself. At least for most people.

the s in ‘scrap’ is silent

Save $46 billion and have musk leave? Thats win-win if I’ve ever seen it.

Unless the casino is doing something illegal, it’s really not their decision to make. If they don’t want to subsidize them, all they’d have to do is be transparent and fair in their pricing. They way CF handled it instead just seems unprofessional and deceitful.

The algorithm team must have been working overtime to get passable results with 85% of the data missing!

Also, it must feel absolutely horrifying to hear Neuralink decline a surgery to fix your implant. I guess they’re still used to the “try, fail, abandon” strategy from their animal tests?

I don’t think your distinction makes sense.

You’re saying most mental health/suicide cases have hope, and thants probably true! But the article wasn’t “every suicidal person granted euthanasia approval”, it was approved for one very extreme case of mental suffering with no indication of improving. That would be like saying “most cases of pain still have hope”. Yes exactly, they do, but there are rare, chronic cases where euthanasia may be a valid option, right? And just as much as suicidality is just ‘a symptom of something’ else, isn’t pain also just a symptom of something else?

And obviously we should help suicidal people to improve their mental health, but in her case she has been struggling since childhood with no indication of improvement. So how was this “the wrong decision” for her?

“I’m depressed and want to take my life. I’ve been struggling since my childhood and in 10 years of different kinds of treatments, nothing worked.”

“Have you tried jumping out of a plane with one of those flying squirrel things?”

“Oh wow, that was it, that fixed it! Thanks!” /s

Have you read the article?

Under Dutch law, to be eligible for an assisted death, a person must be experiencing “unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement”. They must be fully informed and competent to take such a decision.

After 10 years, there was “nothing left” in terms of treatment. “I knew I couldn’t cope with the way I live now.”

In the three and a half years this has taken, I’ve never hesitated about my decision.

How is this a temporary and overcomable problem? It seems clear that it is not temporary and no kind of treatment worked for her. As per the law, there must be unbearable suffering without prospect of improvement, and during the multiple stages of this process, apparently no one came to the conclusion that that wasn’t the case for her. So how can you make that assessment?

Tesla will be renamed to “X (formerly known as Tesla)” to keep it distinct from “X (formerly known as Twitter)”. Then, once all his companies have been renamed and finally merged, he’ll just run X into the ground. Way more efficient than doing it for each company individually!

The only thing I’d note is to be careful with your issue #2, because this sounds like it could break with autofill. Some autofill implementations may fill invisible fields (this has actually been an attack vector to steal personal info), so blocking the IP because an invisible field labeled “email” has been filled could hit users too. Otherwise, 100% agree!

The least they should do is make sure no animal suffers needlessly and no more animals than necessary are used for testing. I don’t have confidence in moral standards, when employees say the number of deaths is higher than needed because of demands of faster research.

Also there is some research on non-invasive ways to get signals from the brain. Why not try that before testing implants on animals?

Working on the bleeding edge of scientific research does not relieve someone of treating animals with ethical consideration. A “move fast and break things” approach might be good for a startup and maybe even for a rocket company, but that approach isn’t okay if “breaking things” includes living, feeling animals.

Finally the plot of the movie “Upgrade” can become a reality

Currently, AI is not advanced enough, I agree. But it could be eventually. The thing is, it doesn’t even need to be mad at us for us to go extinct. It’s enough if it has different goals and human survival is not a priority of the AI. And goal alignment is a surprisingly difficult task from what it seems like.