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.)
When I searched for "reflective reindeer", I got pictures of reindeer holding their chin in their hoof, looking pensively upwards.
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.
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.
@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.
@futurebird @lnlyisol The big problem is that indie creators get started in the long tail. You can be a webcomic artists or a writer or a musician and so long as you put the work in, you can build up a small audience for your weird ideas.
But centralized social media and streaming giants have brought back the old way of doing things: you're either massively famous or you're nobody, with no options in between. And they're they gatekeepers. They set the taste.