Ink Dragon

Okay I'm too dang excited at this point. I want to share a little sneak peek, even though we're NOT ready for a big reveal.

So a long while back, someone asked me to make a peafowl genetics calculator, and I explained that I desperately did want to, and had tried to learn to code in order to create one, but that coding was not at all my forte and that all my attempts had crashed out early and I resorted to teaching people by making a website with all the info instead.

and several people told me well, it wouldn't even be that hard to do, the coding was really simple. Maybe that's true, but I feel it's a very "XKCD comic about experts overestimating knowledge" situation.

But one person definitely stepped forward and put their money where everyone's mouths were, and has been working the last I don't even KNOW how long to code a really beautiful, easy-to-use calculator in precious spare time. Three artists also stepped forward and volunteered their efforts in the name of education. I supplied as much knowledge as I had about the genetics and relationships, and located art references (there are NOT references for all the colors/patterns, as it turns out, some of these are so obscure that finding references images is nigh impossible and shame tactics were heavily employed in the location of several of the references), but tbh this was NOT the brunt of the workload at all.

We're NOT finished yet, but the artwork has basically all been finished (I think I still need to gather a few of the warning pics to upload, and check if we need any more of them) unless I can located the last 3 hens (shaming keepers is in progress), it's been uploaded and named, and the coding framework is also nearing completion. There are a few minor kinks to work out (the genetics does x, but the calculator does Y, some language tweaks, some ease-of-use/quality of life tweaks), and I've got to develop the homepage stuff this week/weekend.

But I get to look at the prototype and play with it and I have got to say, this thing is a work of art containing so many little works of art. I am utterly in love. I cannot believe we have gotten this far. I cannot believe this dream is coming true. I cannot wait to share it *vibrating*

This dinosaur skeleton is incomplete. But, it doesn't look that way to us, because the parts it's missing are parts we don't have.

See how there are ribs on the bottom? Those are called gastralia. That's right, dinosaurs had ribs on their stomachs as well, and modern crocodiles and alligators still have them! (Also, notice that the ribs keep going to the hips instead of stopping above the waist. This is also true of modern birds, and why a bird can't have a concave stomach!)

Next, notice that ring floating in the center of the eye socket? That's called a sclerotic ring! Fish, reptiles, birds--with the exception of mammals (and, oddly enough, crocodilians), pretty much all modern vertebrates still have them! It's literally an eyeball bone. Afaik we haven't found a T-rex specimen with any intact, but since we've found them in other dinosaurs, it's very likely they had them too.

On the contrary, T. rex had such big eyes that a significant portion of its brain was devoted to visual processing!

See, these aren't eye socket bones.

i am scouring the internet like the victorians scoured and destroyed all trace of joy and color from stolen relics for the LOST NAME OF THE ANCIENT PROCESS of textile-creation akin to knitting/crocheting/nålebinding that at least one academic/crafter used to recreate the leggings on this Glorious Motherfucker:

Archer statue from the Temple of Aphaia (ca. 480 BC) next to a reconstruction of its original paint job:

The leggings and sleeves would have created using a method called SPRANG which predates knitting and is over 3,000 years old. What's even sexier is modern artisans managed to recreate the entire outfit using the original method!

Mmm-HMM, love me a shapely thigh in harlequin hosiery. Put👏men👏in👏clingy-ass👏clothing👏again👏👏👏

Unfortunately english sources are hard to find, partly because Google's a shithole, but also because this textile project comes from a German museum, in Germany, where people tend to speak (and publish) in German. That said, the original link is to a short-but-sweet article I would have had no problem finding in 30 seconds a mere few years ago. fortunately i have clever beautiful insane people following me, but alas not everyone has such luxury. thanks to everyone in the notes who shoved themselves down this rabbithole with me!

"Put👏men👏in👏clingy-ass👏clothing👏again👏👏👏"

Or

if you're a rabbit, the boss rabbit is the one who gets groomed by its subordinate rabbits.

but if you're a cat... the boss cat is the one that grooms the other cats.

It went well! At least 100 people attended, families dogs a solid portion of Glasgow's trans community. There was a really lovely atmosphere, nice weather and a very cheerful celebratory vibe.

Arrived early to find the crowd already gathering, so the kick got off to a prompt start. Following some introductions from everybody and some cheery folk music from our flautist (my wife!) we got on with the kick.

I think we got good contact, the top of my boot making a good solid noise on impact. Very good atmosphere all round, people stayed to chat for a while. Were it not January it would have been an excellent opportunity for a picnic.

7am: the pressure is getting to me; I wake up and drink half a bottle of diet iron bru from my bedside table; roll out of bed, and psych myself up in the mirror - "you can do this my little pogchamp" I say to myself over and over until I decend into a stupor.

8am: I play an hour of Okami on steam to replenish my chi levels

9am: I look at my balls for a while

10am: I spend 20 or so minutes trying to decide what to wear before realising it's the subartic in midwinter and I'm going to have to dress for -2C° regardless of what I choose and opt of my trusty black Schott thermal padded winter flight jacket and a pair of loose, warm Uniqlo trousers to give my testicles room to breathe.

11am: crashing out, texting my friends to arange a substitute kickee, an understudy, anybody so I can just become one with the crowd and not go through with it

12am: the homies have arrived, I'm drinking redbush tea in a small cafe by the park; god is in his heaven and all is right with the world

12.15: "you must be here to watch me get kicked in the balls?"

12.40: a circle emerges, from within the circle a palpable energy focuses like a lens down unto me and I feel like I'm gonna pee my pants a little

12.50: cheers begin, several complete families with dogs arrive - more friends appear and assort themselves into a gathering of 'real heads' ready to watch my groin be dessicated by the firm lace of a women for woman woman with a foot loosed through the gates of war as Augustus saw fit the dispatch and return of his troops from far corners through the blessings of Janus.

12.55: I think I left the stove on

1pm: Short introductions are made, grace is shown, beautiful flute music accompanies the gathering

Finished these on my bday ^^

Indian Peafowl #birbfest day 31.

Watercolor and colored pencils.

Challenge Completed! Yeah!

Alien goo

https://shorturl.at/8VD8B

The articles below are free to access, they cite their sources if you wanna check out the studies themselves.

140 MILLION YEARS BACK.

If you don't know how far that is, that's basically the start of the cretaceous. Let me simplify that for you even further. Chimpanzees and humans seperated, what, 5 or 6 million years ago?

This is basically like if humans could hybridise with THESE THINGS.

This is the sort of thing that should be impossible. They used those eggs to be ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN.

And then THEY GOT FISH OUT OF IT.

Like. You can quite clearly understand why they didn't think anything would happen. WE ARE MORE RELATED TO BLUE WHALES THAN THESE THINGS.

THE AMERICAN PADDLEFISH AND THE STURGEON ARE SO COMPLETELY UNRELATED THAT THIS IS NOT PLAYING GOD. IF ANYTHING THIS IS AN ACT OF GOD.

THE SCIENTISTS HAD NO BLAME IN THIS BECAUSE NOTHING LIKE THIS HAD EVER HAPPENED BEFORE

THESE THINGS, FOR HYBRIDS, HAD A REALLY HIGH SURVIVAL RATING. LIKE 70% OF THEM SURVIVED.

To put that into perspective, getting a blue whale and a squirrel and trying to hybridise them is more sensible, and that wouldn't produce anything but getting you banned from science. Most animals that aren't plants can barely hybridise two degrees away from each other.

BUT THESE TWO ENTIRELY UNRELATED FISH create PERFECTLY HEALTHY HYBRIDS.

And this is a Russian Sturgeon:

(glances at fish)

before the sturddlefish, a purple squale would have seemed more likely- and since that's ridiculous and obviously no one would think that's possible except as a joke, that should speak to HOW impossible this situation seemed, and why they thought obviously this will be perfectly fine. If you took squirrel eggs (the gamete) and tried to use whale sperm to fertilize them, you could reasonably expect that to not work. That should be a good control. The eggs would definitely not actually be fertilized, and even if sperm somehow made it into the egg and some kind of development started, you would expect them to not make it to term and definitely not make a whole ass new animal that's perfectly fine actually.