Man, I wouldn't want to be the insurance agent on this one...

(You've gotten them conflated with Kel-lights; Maglites were a knockoff improvement of the kel lights, and were widely available to non-LEO buyers. They were also a good deal less effective as a bludgeon, but far superior flashlights, which is why they became popular. Plausible deniability isn't worth squat if you can't find what you want to hit)

I really suggest pulling the batteries, if they leak and corrode the housing they are nearly impossible to remove.

Large maglight-style flashlights like that were often carried by people who weren't permitted to carry a truncheon/nightstick, as a big stick full of D cell batteries is an extremely effective club (until it bends). While the idea that mostly people who owned them used them to beat black people is a bit hyperbolic (for a long time they were just the most reliable flashlight you could get) they definitely were also used as a bludgeon. Mostly that role has now been filled by telescoping batons though, just as effective but much less weight to carry around.

Ahh, I see. Yeah, there's tons of other types of aberrations - radial is just by far the most common kind you'll encounter. Perhaps I should update the statement to include "and if messing with light field photography then you should for sure DM me", its such cool tech and I'd love to learn more about it!"

Oh, idk if you needed to do that, it's a pretty reasonable misunderstanding! Look at the number of people in this thread alone that are unaware of the shift in nomenclature.

No, it's 100% an AI image. I did a breakdown of a manual analysis of this image elsewhere in the comments, and there's really no question this is fake.

::: spoiler Zach Weinersmith, as usual, says it far better than I can:

:::

This is an exhausting sentiment. Yes, there is a culture of tipping that desperately needs to be abolished. No, AI ragebait images are not a productive way to foster that discussion. This image is just an excuse to justify pre-existing biases, based on a completely fabricated example. It's no different from the fake "Bluehair Tumblr SJW Feminist destroyed with facts and logic, melts down!!1!" images/videos conservatives assume accurately represents all leftists. Yes, it's a real topic and real people share some of the sentiments expressed in the image. No, presenting the argument in such an exaggerated way does nothing to actually resolve the issue - it's just circle jerking about "how dumb" the opposition is, and stubborn refusal to accept that they were fooled.

"It's over kid, for I have already drawn you as the Soy Wojack" is not a way to bring about social revolution - it's just a way to let AI slop divide us further by making a ridiculously over the top caricature of our opponents into what we think they're really like.

For sure, that's the thing that made me suspect it's fake. But unfortunately, "guys nobody did this it's stupid" is an extremely tough argument to sell on the internet, even if (as in this case) you turn out to be absolutely correct.

Ahh, thank you! Yeah, I agree that there's plenty of indications that the text is AI. But people in general like to be certain before they believe something that contradicts their worldview, and this is an opportunity to showcase a fairly quick and fairly easy way to check for AI generated text. You've raised an excellent point about the f stop / focus too - I'm not quite such a good photographer as to be able to confidently identify issues like that, but it's for sure something I'll be paying attention to in the future. Thabk you!

Yeah - The image gen models have gotten scarily good in the past 6 months, and as shown here it can take a great deal of work to confirm an image is AI.

That is a great point! One moment and I'll break it down.

(Okay! a little bit of a comedy of errors trying to get these marked up, but here we go.)

You're absolutely correct that the top line isn't fully aligned - this is because it's impossible for it to be aligned, as the top edge is distorted. You can see in the image below that that distortion is another indication this was generated - there's a fairly pronounced distortion of the top edge, but the row of text just below it has no equivalent warping like you'd get if this were a piece of paper that was slightly bowed. This is why the top line is misaligned - it's impossible to line it up, and when that happens it's better to align from the center out, as radial distortion becomes more severe the further you get from the center. The original poster lined it up with the center to the right corner and continued it along the edge to the left until the edge "bends", rather than aligning the corners and ignoring all of the warping of the edge as I've done in green below. (I also want to point out that the image in the OP has cropped the sign specifically to remove this dead obvious giveaway that the image was AI generated)

And you're again absolutely correct that this amplifies the errors - in fact that's rather the whole point. In the interest of completeness I've extended the green line out to intersect with the lower paper edge line - you can see that even corrected, the intersection does not form a regular pattern with the rest of the lines.

^(edit:^ ^clarity)^
^(edit:^ ^even^ ^more^ ^clarity)^

Everything after the Gutenberg Bible is modern.

Only ever seen that called the early modern period,

X is red.

No, X is dark red.

Me: Just because X is dark red, does not mean that X is not still red.

It's more like the introduction of the name for the color we now call "orange" - The term "red" used to describe both groups (red and orange), but now "red" and "orange" describe two very different groups, and using "red" to describe both is simply no longer considered correct by the majority of people (ignoring some holdover terms, like "red hair")

Since the 1990s, it has been more common among historians to refer to the period after the Middle Ages and up to the 19th century as the early modern period. The modern period is today more often used for events from the 19th century until today.

::: spoiler Ok boomer.

The phrase has developed into a retort for resistance to technological change, climate change denial, marginalization of members of minority groups, or opposition to younger generations' values more generally. Critics of the term perceive it as ageist, though that view has been publicly ridiculed.

"How dare the youth not be overly polite to a generation that has burned down the world and stolen their future. My god, the lack of solidarity. #NotAllBoomers."

Sincerely, if that's what you consider a slur you might want to consider reducing your consumption of the internet. This is a shitpost community, and my use above is a reference to a real and incredibly important problem with older generations and the internet. Facebook is rife with misinformation, and their user demographics skew heavily towards older adults. I'm not about to treat this issue with large padded kidskin gloves just because it could possibly offend some sensibilities.

Dude, look - it's rough to be a decent person and be lumped in with a crowd of vile people just because of some demographic quirk. I'm an american on lemmy, believe me, I get it. But, much as the rhetoric against the US is largely based in very understandable reality, so are the complaints of the youth about the boomer generation.

The only way to avoid that association is to establish yourself as a decent person, and try to change things for the better. Preaching at me about my use of a term in a mildly negative way is not the way to do that. If you want advice, perhaps reference ageism instead of trying to present an incredibly common term as being a slur.

:::

Thermally laminated vinyl signs? I mean I suppose, but I see no indication of lifting or bubbling at the edges like you get from thermally laminating objects that are thick or with uneven thicknesses, and no signs of it on the fine inner details like the interiors of the text. It's also got far finer details than I've seen cut with a drag knife for a small sign, and there's enough variations in the text that I doubt it's been assembled from die-cut lettering sheets (not that I've ever seen a sign shop that used those). If we had a firm idea of the size this would be an easier argument to make, but even without that the cleanliness of the lamination alone makes this suspect. But perhaps they are a supremely talented laminator, one that enjoys leaving large strips around the edges like it was a laminated paper sign hung in a primary school building, and who puts vinyl cutouts on an unevenly cut plastic backing.

No, with all the additional AI-indicating details in the image, I'm sorry, I just don't see this being a credible explanation. This is absolutely, demonstrably an AI generated image.

^edit:^ ^formatting^ ^ate^ ^my^ ^spoiler^ ^text^

I'm not quite sure what you mean, I'm sorry! As far as I'm aware, extra-radial and non-radial are both generic terms for all the optical aberrations, prisms, distortions and what-have-yous that aren't radial distortion. Though, I'm not terribly familiar with light field optics (beyond what can be gleaned from osmosis while working with optics nerds) so that may well be a term that's relevant there and I just don't know it. Do say more tho, it sounds potentially quite interesting!

Yeah, lot of people here are falling hard for this AI rage-slop. Besides the customer on the right having no legs (or the world's weirdest chair), there's no visible way this printout is attached to the window, the reflection in the top left cuts off at what presumably is the bar top and then the reflection below it is inexplicably of a perpendicular street, the lack of a ceiling where a ceiling is implied to be and all that similar stuff, the type justification doesn't actually line up. (begrudging credit to r/isthisAI)

It's a good fake but still pretty conclusively fake. And... honestly, it's worrying that people here are falling over themselves to comment as if this is real. Ya'll, we need to try and be a little bit less credulous with boomer memes, especially ones that perpetuate negative BS like this, otherwise we're basically no better than Facebook users.

::: spoiler If you would like yet more proof, this hanging light becomes a window frame.

:::

I agree - and I find it deeply worrying when social issues I consider very important are being exploited for this kind of sloppy ragebait.

Yes, but also this image is fake.

That will still show as a regular distortion of the alignment. If it's crumpled or heavily creased though, this isn't a useful technique.

Should... Should we call you a bondulance?