Are We Accidentially Terraforming Venus?

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Yes.

Putin should be allowed to have Alaska back from the US, and have your entire country of Poland back, and ...why not? let him have an entire planet equal in size to the whole Earth as well.

i would not be upset if poot-in decided to [try to] live on venus year-round.

Earth year or Venus year?

...probably doesn't matter.

I'm hoping the phosphine discovery will lead to more Venus missions. It's been a bit neglected the past 30 years, especially compared to Mars- there's only been 3 dedicated Venus probes in all that time. Mars may be the easier target, but Venus is closer to Earth in size, has a far more complex atmosphere, and may even be geologically active still. IIRC, the longest a lander has functioned on the surface of Venus is 90 minutes, way back in the '80s. That's the time to beat, people!

what would a lander have to be made from in order to not be destroyed on the venusian surface?

Something that can withstand 900 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures, 92 times earth's sea level air pressure (about equal to the water pressure at the depth of 3000 feet), and it has to be able fly through clouds of sulfuric acid while it descends down to the planet's surface.

IOW we don't know how to construct an indestructible probe.

The U.S. Space Agency (NASA) asked scientists recently to sketch the design for a potential flagship mission in the 2030s. Flagships are the most capable - and most expensive - ventures undertaken by NASA. This particular concept proposed an aerobot, or instrumented balloon, to travel through the clouds of Venus.

the clouds are as close as we can reliably get to the surface for any extended visitations.

Baloon probes have been proposed for Venus for some time.
They would need to survive acidic conditions - teflon coating or something like that would be required - but at an altitude of about 50km, the temperature and pressure are comfortably earth-like.

I don't think anyone's had a serious go at it since the Soviet Venera program. I saw a documentary once that described the pressure chamber they stress-tested their probe lander designs in. Apparantly, one day they opened the door to find that the lander had vanished. It had been reduced to a smear of metal running down one wall with a couple of camera lenses at the bottom.

Apparently both the hunter (our space probes) and the quarry (ie life...if it exists on Venus) would fare better on top of the atmosphere than on the surface of the planet because of the more earthlike conditions on high.

And the atmosphere is so darn thick and heavy it would be easier to float craft upon it than to float things upon Earth's atmosphere (and they used to float airships as big as the Chrysler Building in the Earth's atmosphere that could cruise at a 100 mph, and could carry 80 tons of cargo).

But it makes me wonder: if Venus's atmosphere is so dense that its more like our sea than like our air, then why is it called "an atmosphere", and not "an ocean"?

Because there is no liquid-gas phase shift between ocean-like lower atmosphere and air-like upper atmosphere. The change is gradual (like the air getting thinner with altitude), not abrupt (like between water and air).

Makes sense.

I gather things get a lot wierder inside the gas giant planets- some descriptions seem to imply there are no "surfaces" in there, just gas melding into liquid and liquid into solid. (Could be my understanding's wrong, though.)

i would so love to be able to be an immense giant that would float through space and claw at jupiter until i could see what it looked like at its core.