Sign in

Austin Witherspoon

@austinwitherspoon.com
2.1K followers 113 following 952 posts

Ask me about dinosaurs I write code and make music and one day will make a movie

PostsRepliesMedia
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 02/10/2026
Is there a word for the beans you find in your pockets after accidentally leaving paper in them and putting them in the washing machine They're like good luck charms, I find them all the time
Me holding in my hand a ball of paper wadded up into the shape of a bean
1160
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 09/09/2026
Here's a video of a raccoon I saw a few weeks ago that surely learned how to walk from a cat
170
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 07/08/2026
Gang, did I just find the pangram?!?
180
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 25/07/2026
I only found out because one day I looked on my phone and it was waaay pinker
Screenshot from an android phone of the reactions on a slack message, including get well soon, and love hotel, which is a very very pink representation of the symbol
2120
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 25/07/2026
There were a few years at work where any time somebody was sick I reacted in Slack with a hospital emoji. Slack even kept it in the recently used box It turns out it wasn't a hospital- it was a "love hotel". I never noticed because it's so tiny And none of my coworkers told me!
Screenshot of slack message from Coworker Margaret, saying "I can't make it into work today, I am dying of illness"

Underneath are two reactions, a get well soon emoji and what appears to be a hospital
6190
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 13/07/2026
Birds are technically dinosaurs, so dino chicken nuggets are legally 100% real dinosaur
070
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 13/07/2026
For a long time Oviraptor (meaning x "Egg thief") was believed to steal and eat the eggs of other dinosaurs because of a fossil that was found with it in a nest of eggs They later realized that the eggs likely belonged to it, and it was actually protecting them. But we still call it the egg thief
150
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 13/07/2026
Pterodactyls weren't as huge as movies make them look, they were about the size of a raven The broader family, pterosaurs, got a absolutely massive though Quetzalcoatlus was the size of an f-16
150
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 13/07/2026
Stegosaurus was the size of a bus but had a brain the size of a kitten's brain. But you don't need a big brain to know how to stab enemies with your thagomizer
280
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 13/07/2026
nnoooooooo What horrible news to wake up to
A screenshot of many notifications on my phone telling me that sam neil died
260
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 27/06/2026
Once decoded we can see it's JSON data (how websites usually send around information) and it's mostly human readable. We can see the hub word, and all 4 of the categories and their words.
140
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 27/06/2026
Base64 is used EVERYWHERE and when you know to look for it, you'll start seeing it in lots of URLs. You can go to websites like base64decode.org to quickly decode it. And that includes 4x3 custom puzzles! Just copy the bit after the = in the URL.
140
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 26/06/2026
I love this 1912 newspaper report on stegosaurus They had no idea how rad they made it sound
From Wikipedia:
A reproduction of a stegosaurus from a 1912 edition of Popular Mechanics reprinted in The Cincinnati Enquirer with the headline "Was Most Grotesque Animal" and caption "Stegosaur, who lived in Utah ages ago, is a freak of nature."
2121
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 14/06/2026
Years of connections have trained me
1220
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 13/06/2026
Idk if anybody else will find this wild but we went to an alpaca farm today and I learned that alpacas and llamas are in the camel family. After you learn that and then look at one, it's crazy how quickly your brain goes "oh shit that looks like a camel in a fur coat"
Alpacas with freshly shaved fur, with fluffy little hairdos on the tops of their heads where they weren't shaved
1110
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 10/06/2026
On the other hand, I built a fancy control panel just for this, and wouldn't it be a shame to not feel how satisfying the buttons are to press??
150
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 08/05/2026
My flight was delayed so I made some improvements to the Artemis earth timelapse
1122
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 07/05/2026
Here's some lightning + satellites
1110
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 07/05/2026
Here's another
1100
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 07/05/2026
Here's a close up the aurora
1120
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 07/05/2026
After hank's video I wanted to see if I could stabilize the Artemis earth timelapse better I've completely stabilized the earth and stars, but you can still see the satellites, auroras, and lightning
63212
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 08/04/2026
Look at this absolutely gorgeous picture of the moon eclipsing the sun from Artemis images.nasa.gov/details/art0...
A photograph of the dark side of the moon eclipsing the sun. A large soft halo is formed around the moon from the light of the sun behind it. Stars are visible around the moon.
0200
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 23/03/2026
Apollo 15 did a demonstration on the moon where they dropped a hammer and a feather at the same time to show that without air resistance they both fall at the same speed They didn't pick up the feather afterwards Now for the rest of time there will be a piece of a dinosaur sitting on the moon
A photo of the landing site on the moon of Apollo 15, featuring moon dirt, lots of aluminum foil looking debris, some astronaut footprints, and a small white feather
0140
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 20/03/2026
I thought it would be really funny to use comic sans as the font that I programmed in but the joke is on me it's actually pretty readable and you immediately forget it's comic sans
a screenshot of generic python code, using comic sans as the font
3190
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 15/03/2026
What the fuck
My smart watch, showing a notification with hank's post
42435
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 14/03/2026
I think the market for modern day dinosaur movies may be somewhat saturated
180
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 12/03/2026
This makes me happy because I literally have a graph of average time between the post being made and when the notification gets sent just to make sure it's as fast as possible I get emails if the delay ever gets too big so I can look into it I'm glad somebody notices the work
1140
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 11/03/2026
Why is the back of this kids book written like a clickbait BuzzFeed headline
The back cover of the book There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, with description:

You won't believe why this old lady swallowed

a fly.

a spider,

a bird,

a cat,

a dog,

a goat,

and a cow!

Read this book to find out.
2160
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 05/03/2026
Crazy, today Wikipedia briefly had to go read-only because of a cross site scripting worm (like a virus but it spreads through a web browser between web pages) It spread itself secretly until it infected admin accounts and then deleted random pages as that admin Seems like they fixed it but jeez
1140
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 02/03/2026
TIL that dilophosaurus ( the dog sized venom spitting dinosaur in Jurassic Park) was actually 20 feet long They made the raptors way too big, and the dilophosaurus way too small This fella was probably freaking scary
A screenshot from Jurassic Park, showing Dennis nedry in a jeep with a small dog sized dilophosaurus next to him, with a large neck display stretched out for intimidationAn artistic depiction of an adult dilophosaurus next to an adult man for scale. The dilophosaurus has a length of 6 meters
1140
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 20/02/2026
🚨 NEW SPECIES OF SPINOSAURUS 🚨 IT HAS A UNICORN HORN EVERYBODY
Google images search for spinosaurus mirabilis, a large two legged dinosaur with a big sail on its back, and an unusual horn on its forehead
8417
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 20/02/2026
The word came from a Far Side comic as a joke but paleontologists loved it so much they officially named it that
280
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 20/02/2026
Concavenator is one of the coolest dinosaur names
Screenshot of the Google search results for concavenator, showing a two legged dinosaur with a weird spike on its back
1120
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 12/02/2026
Comic sans can save us
A screenshot of the original post text using comic sans, where you can clearly see the distinction between a capital I and a lower case L
0141
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 07/02/2026
Wake up babe new dinosaur just dropped It's like an iguanodon but with spiky hair Say hello to haolong dongi everybody
Screenshot of a phys.org article titled "A dinosaur with spikes exhibiting unprecedented properties discovered in China" and an artistic reconstruction of haolong dongi. A large dinosaur that stands on two hind legs, with a long beaked snout and covered in porcupine-like spikes all over it's bodyA collage of images of haolong dongi fossils and reconstruction illustrations
3383
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 27/01/2026
Incredible Wikipedia find
Screenshot of the Dublin whiskey fire Wikipedia article:

On the night of 18 June 1875 a fire broke out in a whiskey storehouse in the Liberties area of Dublin. The escaped whiskey formed a burning river six inches (15 cm) deep that is said to have flowed as far as the Coombe, destroying 35 houses and killing several pigs. While there were no human fatalities as a direct result of the fire or flood, 13 people died of alcohol poisoning after drinking from the stream of whiskey, which was of undiluted cask strength. Total property damage was estimated at over £100,000, of which the lost whiskey constituted £54,000.
1100
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 01/01/2026
Also seeing so many people from around the world doing it is exciting! (These numbers are total requests, each person's browser makes multiple requests)
Countrie
 🇺🇸 United States 148.8K
 🇬🇧 United Kingdom 3.8K
 🇨🇦 Canada 2.9K
 🇩🇪 Germany 1.7K
 🇫🇷 France 999
 🇦🇺 Australia 762
 🇳🇱 Netherlands 598
 🇪🇸 Spain 417
 🇳🇿 New Zealand 392
 🇯🇵 Japan 305
 🇮🇳 India 302
 🇧🇷 Brazil 288
 🇲🇽 Mexico 285
 🇨🇭 Switzerland 280
 🇳🇴 Norway 275
 🇸🇪 Sweden 238
 🇮🇪 Ireland 215
 🇬🇷 Greece 212
 🇮🇹 Italy 196
 🇫🇮 Finland 151
 🇩🇰 Denmark 151
 🇦🇹 Austria 146
 🇹🇭 Thailand 109
 🇧🇪 Belgium 106
 🇵🇱 Poland 74
 🇧🇸 Bahamas 71
 🇰🇷 South Korea 68
 🇸🇬 Singapore 50
 🇦🇷 Argentina 45
 🇲🇶 Martinique 44
 🇵🇹 Portugal 43
 🇷🇸 Serbia 42
 🇷🇴 Romania 42
 🇨🇿 Czechia 39
 🇮🇱 Israel 37
 🇸🇮 Slovenia 34
 🇿🇦 South Africa 30
 🇲🇾 Malaysia 30
 🇱🇻 Latvia 30
 🇮🇩 Indonesia 27
 🇸🇻 El Salvador 26
 🇵🇷 Puerto Rico 26
 🇭🇷 Croatia 19
 🇭🇰 Hong Kong SAR China 19
 🇱🇺 Luxembourg 18
 🇨🇴 Colombia 17
 🇻🇳 Vietnam 16
 🇨🇱 Chile 16
 🇪🇬 Egypt 15
 🇷🇺 Russia 14
 🇩🇴 Dominican Republic 14
 🇭🇺 Hungary 13
 🇸🇷 Suriname 12
 🇹🇹 Trinidad & Tobago 11
 🇵🇾 Paraguay 9
 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia 7
 🇵🇭 Philippines 7
 🇮🇸 Iceland 7
 🇸🇰 Slovakia 6
 🇧🇿 Belize 6
 🇺🇾 Uruguay 5
 🇺🇦 Ukraine 5
 🇪🇪 Estonia 5
 🇨🇷 Costa Rica 5
 🇹🇷 T ürkiye4
 🇳🇮 Nicaragua 4
 🇳🇬 Nigeria 4
 🇬🇪 Georgia 4
 🇮🇷 Iran 3
 🇩🇿 Algeria 3
0120
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 30/12/2025
Bluesky Nerdfighteria Wrapped 2025 is here! bluesky-nerdfighteria-wrapped.austinwitherspoon.com (I crammed this in the last few days, let me know if you have any issues or questions!)
A screenshot of Nerdfighteria Wrapped, featuring Austin's #2 post "THE PIZZA HAS BEEN DELIVERED"A screenshot from Austin's Nerdfighteria Wrapped, saying "You posted 522 times on bluesky in 2025 and 295 were overwhelmingly liked by other nerdfighters."
4118727
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 30/12/2025
Bluesky Nerdfighteria Wrapped coming soon. I had to sift through a LOT of data for this
Screenshot from a database showcasing a large amount of data, around 53 Gigabytes in total.

The follows table has over 24 million rows in it, at 5.8 gigabytes.
The likes table has over 44 million rows at 17 gigabytes.
The posts table has over 42 million rows at 30 gigabytes.
The users table has over 163 thousand rows, at 116 megabytes.
3220
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 24/12/2025
TikTok is literally trying to sell me a swastika necklace what the fuck is happening
580
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 03/12/2025
Yeah this one feels suspicious because while I listen to oldies, the majority of my music is from the last 10 years this year Maybe they didn't want to say "your listening age is 6" so they found the second biggest cluster after that
120
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 30/11/2025
Last night I discovered that in Letterboxd if you shake your phone after midnight, gremlins appear It was much more alarming as I was falling asleep
2191
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 28/11/2025
We walked into a restaurant that has this horse lamp and it immediately had me bewitched, body and soul
A life sized statue of a horse made of black plastic, with a lamp and lamp shade coming out of the top of its head, reminiscent of an angelic halo above this beautiful horse
1230
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 18/11/2025
These are some of the coolest pictures I've ever seen The photographer had to coordinate with somebody to skydive at the exact right time and place to photograph them in front of the sun
An astrophotography photo of the sun, with the silhouette of a skydiver in the centerThe black silhouette of a skydiver in front of a very turbulent zoomed in shot of the sun
2361
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 13/11/2025
I gotta know what hank blurred out from the auto complete results
a screenshot from hank's video "Jesus Didn't Have Long Hair....So Why does Jesus Have Long Hair?" where he's searching google for "did men have long" and he has clearly blurred out google's auto-complete suggestions
0190
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 01/11/2025
Just thought y'all should know that the paleontology world has been shaken up by evidence that came out that what people thought were juvenile t-rexes are actually a genus of smaller t-rex called Nanotyrannus This doesn't affect the general public but just know some people are freaking out rn
A screenshot from reddit of a user names 1_bigpapi saying "I've been a mess since the nano news dropped. I legit threw up on myself when I read the news and threw my phone so hard it punched a hole in the wall during my kid’s birthday party. Didn’t mean to but rewriting all that history ..its too much. I’m at a hotel tonight trying to drink it away"A screenshot of a reddit post with a picture of two T-Rex-like theropods fighting and the title "Since Nano is back, do we have ANY juvenile T.rex fossils?"
2151
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 30/10/2025
@hankgreen.bsky.social ???
5370
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 05/09/2025
Why does brown look so weird? If you take the dark desaturated version of any other color, I feel like it makes sense. Like If you showed me dark grey blue, I can tell it's blue. But if you show me brown, my brain never wants to say "that's a shade of orange"
A grid of colors, starting with purple and dark de-saturated purple side-by-side. Below that, a similar pair but blue. Then green, orange, and red, all with dark grey versions of the same hue.
390
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 01/09/2025
These are the reactions I wanted
THIS IS HORRIFYING AND IM NOT EVEN 2 MINUTES INNOT THE BUTTON
060
Austin Witherspoon @austinwitherspoon.com · 24/08/2025
why does youtube keep trying to push these games so hard, and why do none of the people have faces
a screenshot of the "youtube playables" section on the youtube home screen, featuring the following games:

Aquapark.io, with a screenshot of two faceless yellow people standing in waves in the ocean

Tall man run, featuring a faceless orange man running on a white and blue road in the sky (?)

City Smash, with a nuclear mushroom cloud rising above a city

mob control, featuring a bunch of faceless red and blue people running on a white path

prison life, featuring a faceless prison guard next to a faceless prisoner behind bars
250