None of the signup methods require a password. It only takes email and birthday. Minimizing time on the signin or signup screen makes it harder for people quitting to avoid relapse.

"Characters" on the website will send messages "on their own" (prompted by the site) to try to invite inactive users back after as soon as 1 day of inactivity. This is likely to force FOMO, or make users feel more like they owe the bots a response. Unhealthy attachment stuff.

Account deletion is an essential part of every service that should go smoothly, right? Right? Wrong. It takes 1-2 weeks for a Character AI account deletion to be finalized, and account deletion requests have a high chance to not go through if you're not using the app.

Rephrasing: People leaving Character.AI are pushed to download the app in order to delete their accounts, if they haven't already. This makes it harder for people to quit and stay gone. Failing to quit an addiction makes it harder to quit successfully in the future, so this feels like a feature, not a bug. On top of that, the delete account menu reads like this:

The fursona vent art didn’t help either :(

1. borrowing misery from future

2. carrying grief of the past

Boquila feels more like a cuttlefish or an octopus; it can morph into at least eight basic shapes. When it glides up a bush or tree that it’s never encountered before, it can still mimic what’s near. And that’s the wildest part: It doesn’t have to touch what it copies. It only has to be nearby. Most mimicry in the animal kingdom involves physical contact. But this plant can hang—literally hang—alongside a host tree, with empty space between it and its model, and, with no eyes, nose, mouth, or brain, it can “see” its neighbor and copy what it has “seen.”

(Photo cred: Assafn, Wikipedia)

These ocelli don’t form sharp images, but instead probably detect light and shadow for sleep patterns, directionality, flight stability, etc.

Some reptiles and amphibians also have a light-sensitive third eye called a parietal or pineal eye! It’s similarly right on top of their heads. Again, they’re not forming complex images, but instead use general light information to regulate other things. It’s also why even tame reptiles may bolt if you reach at them from directly overhead, out of range of their normal eyes—that third eye sees an incoming shadow and goes HAWK, RUN.

So with that in mind, plant ocelli…Basically they think the upper epidermal cells have evolved to have a particular convex dome shape that focuses light. I don’t know what proportion of cells are ocelli, if it’s just some or all, but basically the leaf itself IS the “eye”.

Plant ocelli were first proposed over a century ago but they haven’t been well studied since then. Cyanobacteria (a photosynthetic bacteria) focus light. Arabidopsis thaliana has been documented to recognize other Arabidopsis plants…basically when competing for resources, if the Arabidopsis recognizes it’s competing with other Arabidopsis plants, they’ll cooperate and move leaves so that they don’t shade each other, ensuring each plant has access to nutrients. But if the competing plant isn’t Arabidopsis, screw ‘em, they’ll shade it. Crepy & Casal narrowed this down to a light-based response, not just chemical identification, so it’s possible Arabidopsis is visually identifying friend from foe. At any rate, that’s about the extent of plant ocelli research that I was able to find. So this Boquila thing is cool and weird.

What we don’t yet know is how precisely Boquila is seeing the world. Boquila is clearly getting some level of resolution in order to be able to copy shape, size, AND color. Unlike an insect’s 2-3 ocelli, it has tons, so even crude data over a lot of inputs might lead to a pretty good picture. The paper also says the mimicry gets more accurate over time, so there appears to be some learning involved. I would also love to know if it has some equivalent of depth perception! If the target plant is near vs. far, does Boquila produce the same appropriately sized mimic leaf? Does it adjust? They’re going to keep studying it so hopefully we have some answers in a few years!

Anyway here’s a picture of the variation of Boquila mimic leaves.

(Photo cred: Gianoli figure)

with such great hits as 

mabel (upon seeing steven’s gem): you’re PERMANENTLY BEDAZZLED?????

dipper: ugh gideon’s the worst

steven: oh yeah I hate it when your friends try to kill you, but you just gotta wait it out and be patient with them and they’ll come around to you eventually

dipper: what. the fuck.

the kids repainting the sign when mabel drops her paintbrush to the ground by accident, cue steven being like ‘np i’ll get it’ and walking straight off the edge of the roof 

mabel: i hate that picture of me, 4th grade’s the worst

steven: haha yeah…grades…those exist… i definitely didn’t look exactly the same from ages 8 to 14 for complicated shapeshifting reasons

“our grunkle stan is kind of a sketchy guy” “oh no way most of my family are war criminals”

steven: *breaks a cup* aw shit *licks it and it seals back together* 

dipper: *furiously taking notes*

theres no possible way that steven “haven’t you noticed I’m a star” universe doesn’t come over to mabel’s slumber parties w/ candy and grenda and casually mention his girlfriend who a. is literally a knight in shining armor, b. has taken down multiple genocidal dictators thousands of times her size, not to mention c. mastering the art of swordfighting when she was twelve and d. saving his life and the lives of all the beach city residents on a regular basis

dipper: *trying to reach something on a high shelf*

steven: oh here you go *shapeshifts his arm to grab it and bring it down*

dipper: ??????thanks??

playing w/ waddles and nonchalantly saying something about missing his own large, pink pet, a magical lion that can teleport and that he has ridden into battle multiple times

(at suzy’s diner) steven: don’t worry, i’ll get the bill 

various pines: thanks man

steven: it’s cool, my dad’s a millionaire

dipper:

mabel: “dipper, stop being such a dummy-dumb, he literally TOLD us that he’s half gem on his mother’s side!”

Space Dragon