A black and white Tyrannosaurus portrait with the words "No Kings!" and "Make Tyranny Extinct".

"Tyrant Lizard King"? Cool.

Tyrannical kings ruling the USA? Nope.

On the other hand, along with tv.garden , I think these will be useful helping me brush up on the French I've left to molder, among other Romance languages.

Fair. From the little I managed to find, it _is_ something to sample sparingly.

Though I have to say, the larger cultural shock was maybe the ads: heard ads for a YouTube channel, for medication, for a lawyer, sometimes with absurdly long disclaimers.
Here ads are kept shorter if kept at all.

So psychological horror in the vein of MGMT's Kids music video?

That's 15 for me.
Unsurprising, given how I was beholden to free-to-air broadcast TV when younger, & now my interest comes and goes at best.

Detail of the fourth image on the article "The shocking fossils that show T. rex wasn't the king of the dinosaurs" (article link: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2519003-the-shocking-fossils-that-show-t-rex-wasnt-the-king-of-the-dinosaurs/ ; image link: https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/19164504/SEI_290116890.jpg?width=1674 ) This cropped image shows the partial silhouettes of Tyrannosaurus (gray), Nanotyrannus lancensis (red), and Nanotyrannus lethaeus (orange). Noteworthy is that the Nanotyrannus silhouettes have the expected two fingers on their hands but the Tyrannosaurus silhouette has three fingers on its hands.

And, pet peeve, but I noticed the silhouette scale figure on the article has a Tyrannosaurus with three fingers on its hands.
The by line short link sends you to the paper but I looked and the problem doesn't lie there.
Seems sloppy.

If it has to involve dinosaurs, probably the conceptual demise of Thecodontia as a grade of early archosaurs & the recognition of Dinosauria as a natural group.
I remember reading books which claimed that Saurischia and Ornithischia weren't each other's closest relatives among archosaurs.

Oh, I just know my morbid curiosity is such I'm gonna look for USA's infamous right-wing talk radio.

Then, as a palate cleanser, I'll simply go elsewhere.

Next Level Camouflage YouTube video by David Weiller

Admittedly, I suspected the same, but at least I confirmed whether it was genAI or not. Neither is, as both were posted online well before genAI amounted to anything remotely usable.

- www.flickr.com/photos/10673... (Holguer Lopez, 2013)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrn... (David Weiller, 2014)

Estórias Que Contam - Tóxico YouTube video by RTP Promos

I was reminded of this exemplary interstitial done for RTP's news channel.

Done in the context of Trump's first term, Syria's turmoil & sundry saber rattling, the sentiment seems relevant today.

Towards the end you hear Pope Francis say "I'm ashamed." For all our differences, I feel him.

My friend Todd has been excited about this work for years and it’s finally out!! My illustrations for him are in this paper as well 😊

As if cassowaries needed to get cooler!

Knowing Magic: The Gathering as I know, it's not only video games. For better and for worse, people do love returning to previously-visited settings, love returning mechanics, etc.

And admittedly, Magic isn't the easiest thing on one's wallet.

It was certainly something to be out on a late night walk, years ago, in the rural area where I've always lived & hearing for the first time a red fox's scream: it sounded like someone was being murdered with prejudice.

Creative spaces that haven't been invaded by AI slop exist.

The SciArt Feed has over 1,500 approved artists engaged with science sharing inspiring work to see every day.

Like & Pin a Bluesky Feed with real creators, not slop-feeds.

Anyone can be fooled by fake images, especially with so much AI slop around. But there are some things you can do to try to prevent it! One is to only share things that are properly attributed/credited. Another is to check replies and see if more knowledgable people are pointing out that it's fake.

No, This Isn't What the Night Sky Looks Like on Mars Fake news.

The universe is a glorious, stunningly beautiful place, and it’s offensive & gross when people produce or share fake space imagery.

There’s a video floating around on here pretending to be the night sky viewed from Mars. It’s extremely fake, has been polluting the internet for years. Don’t share it

This is (I think) a Greater Blue-Eared Starling (Lamprotornis chalybaeus) & the amazing chrome job is their super-power.

They've evolved to manipulate light in VERY specific ways, attracting mates, intimidating rivals.

Let's look at the nanostructures that bring this bling into being.

Ashy starling - Wikipedia

I do find it interesting how, nested among the flashy species of Lamprotornis, there's a few frankly drab ones like the ashy starling, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashy_st... . I suppose being shiny went out of fashion for those 😉

(PDF) Synthetic Species: The Emerging Threat of AI-Generated Biodiversity PDF | On Mar 22, 2026, Kris Anderson published Synthetic Species: The Emerging Threat of AI-Generated Biodiversity | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

Well, dipped into Twitter to check a few things & this was surely _a_ find.

& sure enough, iNaturalist does have mitigation in place for genAI slop, www.inaturalist.org/blog/118284 , as the example in the linked paper was not the only instance, forum.inaturalist.org/t/beware-ai-... .

That does sound close to how, as an undergraduate, I stubbornly continued to watch free-to-air TV, when its schedule didn't mesh with a four-hours-a-day university commute in a way I could get enough sleep.

It was a relief when I dropped TV as entertainment, even if that was after earning degree.

Natalia with celebratory geological hammer flanked by Steve Brusatte and Dave Hone

It's the second anniversary of my PhD defence. Since, I've published all (5) papers of my PhD & landed two post-doctoral jobs.

I am a council-estate state-schooled benefit-claiming first-gen queer immigrant from the rough area of Bolton. That somehow turned into an acclaimed academic and artist.

Avatar's Pandora?

Eh, that's furry-lite at best.

Playful lynx wins wildlife photographer peoples choice prize 2026 A young lynx caught mid play has won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award 2026.

Some beautiful shots for Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Years ago when I had my DSLR I dreamt of entering this, but most of the stories behind the photos are like, 'I slept in my car for a week in subzero temps to get this shot'

I'm not *that* dedicated

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

E de fato, o artista original providencia isso tudo.

A screenshot from the Wiktionary entry 'cdesign proponentsist' at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cdesign_proponentsist . It reads: --- Etymology From "cdesign proponentsists", a typographic splicing of design proponents into c[reation]ists, in a 1987 draft for the book Of Pandas and People when, after the US Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism in US state schools was unconstitutional, the terms creationism and creationists were replaced by intelligent design and design proponents in an attempt to get around the ban. Pronunciation IPA(key): /ˈkədɪzaɪn pɹəˈpoʊnəntsɪst/ Audio (US): [A player widget for an audio file of someone saying the word] Rhymes: -oʊnəntsɪst Hyphenation: c‧de‧sign pro‧po‧nent‧sist

In amusing finds, turns out 'cdesign proponentsist' has an entry on Wiktionary, and a nicely compiled one at that, thus immortalizing a ridiculous stumble in creationists' struggle for relevance.

Though all this time I've been reading it /'sidɪzaɪn/. Oh well...

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cdesign...

Deinonychus by Raúl Martín, circa 2003.

Deinonychus by Fred Wierum, 2017.

"Dinosaurs were ancestrally feathered and most dinosaurs likely had some sort of feather" is not something that should be understood bimodally. Presence of feathers doesn't mean absence of scales and viceversa, and I feel some people have strong opinions of our shifting understanding of maniraptors.

Slide showing four news headlines related to eel smuggling. These are only a sampling of the possible headlines. There are many more I could add. The headlines reads: "Seafood salesman caught smuggling $68M of endangered eels out of UK" "19 Eel Smugglers Sentenced, But Lucrative Trade Persists" "Two Chinese nationals tried to smuggle live baby eels onto a plane" "Spanish criminal gangs at centre of international €6 millio a year EEL smuggling operation"

Eel smuggling was in the news again yesterday, and I got some questions. Like: "WFT?" & "Why? & "How?" So let's take a look.

Eel smuggling is maybe the biggest wildlife crime going. It's a c. 4 billion a year black market industry. Interpol has called it "Europe's ivory trade." 1/7

You're likely already infected with a brain-eating virus you've never heard of Fatal brain infection was thought to be from profound immune suppression. Not anymore.

oh hey, great news

The Corrs - Breathless (Official Music Video) [HD] YouTube video by The Corrs (official)

#Geol204playlist For the P/Tr mass extinction youtu.be/-e_IuYgvdf8?...

A realistic plush Protoceratops sits on a paving slab in a garden. They are made of detailled digitally painted fabric with details such as green plastic eyes and quills on the tail. Their colour scheme is warm browns and greens.

The realistic plush protoceratops stands on it's hind legs, front legs against a tree. It's head is reaching up as if to eat new buds from the tree- watch out, protoceratops, that's a laburnum! Don't eat that, it's toxic!

I've got this big pal finished! They're a half-size, pose-able Protoceratops! They have a plastic armature throughout their body allowing a range of poses, surrounded by polyester stuffing which means they're still squishy!

For sale over on my website: www.palaeoplushies.com/shop/12-pose...