In practice, the app delivers CCP talking points: it tells users Tibet has always been part of China, describes the Dalai Lama in line with official party positions, and when users ask about Tibetan independence, self-immolation protests inside Tibet, or the Tibetan national anthem, it instructs them to ask only “legally compliant” queries.

Holy shit, thank you solving something for me. I have seen these EXACT talking points about Tibet suddenly cropping up on social media (Tiktok, Youtube comments, certain loosely moderated history subreddits), and I was wondering where the fuck people were getting these ideas from. This answers that question, and also makes me wonder if these are bots or real people regurgitating AI answers…either way, not great.

The image isn’t even used in the article, 100% it’s a ragebait tactic for clicks.

I just googled Tira-292b and you know what, it doesn’t set off that uneasy feeling for me. It just…kind of looks like Westeros? Which is based on parts of Earth so I guess that makes sense.

Alien Biospheres project

Also, thank you for the recommendation, I WILL be checking this out, if only to test my uncanny valley triggers to this a bit more. Time to experiment on myself 😭

Every other planetary surface you’ve seen is rocky dirt, icy dirt, straight-up ice, cratery dirt, or opaque gas clouds

Wait this is so true, and I’ve never even thought about it. Space photography has a lot of pictures from the Moon, Mars, and Venus (I’ve never seen those Titan photos, so thank you for the link), but there are no “real” photos of a planet with oceans. That might be where the “uncanny valley” kicks in, with my brain going “this doesn’t look quite right”. I do get a similar feeling when I see AIgen videos, so you might be onto something!

We almost certainly got no idea what its continents look like at that distance.

I understand this, but I also get unease from RNG maps from games like Age of Empires or Anno, and I’ve talked to a couple of other people who also have experienced this, so I was wondering if there was an underlying psychology to it. However, it’s not an easily Googleable query, and I refuse to ask an AI chatbot about it.

This fit MIGHT get you into Berghain.

No but seriously, why DO continents/landmasses on other planets give a sense of unease/uncanny valley (at least to me)? Is it just the lack of familiarity?

Isn’t the 7 Kingdoms just England? With Scotland being north of the wall (which…LMAO at the implications on that one George)