Lena

Fabulous short story, Lena by qntm, riffs on SCP's idea of a work of fiction as a wiki entry. But this is entirely standalone, not part of the SCP universe, and more resembles a Wikipedia entry. Seems both genuinely scary and almost inevitable.

The title stems from the image above, head-and-shoulders hurriedly torn from the centerfold of a colleague's issue of Playboy in 1972, while searching for an image to use in an image processing conference paper. From this, we can infer the proper pronunciation is Lenna, as in the name of the model.

This image has been widely re-used in scientific journals for decades. It has some objectively useful properties - good dynamic range, details and flat regions, shading and texture. However, its viral popularity most probably stems overwhelmingly from its racy nature, featuring an attractive woman, used in male-dominated fields. This was in contrast to other common test images of the time, derived from dull 1960s television standards work.

The common long term use of the image was done without the knowledge or permission of Playboy magazine - the copyright holder - or Lena herself. Over the years they each became aware of it, and made their peace with it. By 2019, though, Lena stated that the image, like her, ought to be retired.