iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 20h

By Jove, the way I stumbled over myself to correct the sentence midway. Whoever came up with it first: well played even if it seems you want to watch the world burn.

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franz @franzanth.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Hello, @animalphotorefs.bsky.social lost their job midway through the trip that's supposed to pay for the trip and is now stranded so far away. If you could benefit from animal photos for art references, please consider supporting.

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Dr Susannah Lydon @susieoftraken.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

A big thumbs-up for Iguanodon this #FossilFriday 👍 The hand of Iguanodon bernissartensis, complete with thumb spike, on display in the Institut royal des Sciences naturelles de Belgique, Brussels. 🌏⚒🦕🌲🦖

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I think I've come across the behavior here in Portugal. Of course, as mild annoyances go, now I can't think of any search string that would trigger it.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Closest things I have: - Knowing I probably made the right choice in moving on from Dexter at the end of the 4th season. - Realizing I'm no longer the audience for, at least, the wildlife documentaries broadcast on free-to-air TV here in Portugal.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Salient to me among the observations was a Montpellier snake as a scavenger. Not being particularly aware of snakes indulging carrion in the wild, a quick Scholar search shows it's indeed fairly widespread, if oft-discounted behavior.

researchgate.net

(PDF) Scavenging by snakes: An examination of the literature

PDF | Although it is widely known that most species of snakes readily accept carrion in Captivity, the notion of scavenging by wild snakes historically... | Find, read and cite all the research you ne...

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

It's been a long while since I've willingly watched a wildlife documentary on lions: at some point it was always a story I'd seen before (sometimes quite literally). I do on occasion sample rawer material on YouTube. Thus I became aware that sometimes sons join their fathers' coalitions.

youtube.com

Male lion has an unusual partnership with his sons

YouTube video by Maasai Sightings

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Among the ads I saw in latest 1990s' free-to-air TV here in Portugal, this was certainly one of them.

youtube.com

Gerapa Clio MTV

YouTube video by Marketing | Expertos en Marca ®

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

There was one? www.imdb.com/title/tt0638... Sure enough... And it sure has been a long while since I last watched the show.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It sure didn't give me the best sleep either. Fortunately, it was easy to take the xenomorph for an animal going through its paces. Which is probably why I enjoyed that sort of "natural" horror, steering clear of supernatural fare, until it was routine for visceral violence to turn me off fiction.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I mean, I did do my time with Magic: The Gathering and like opening packs, my experience giving LLMs the college try is not a whole lot of hits to outweigh what's spent on the misses.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I probably got into Alien way too early. Maybe 8 at the earliest & I didn't get past John Hurt getting a face full of sheep entrails. Managed to watch it in full a few years later. Incidentally, I only really got the Giger's sexual subtext once I actually had a good look at his art in college.

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Biology student Roberto León found a spider while hiking a nature reserve in the Andes. As he maneuvered it out of cover, it jumped straight at his friend's chest. So he named it 'Satanas'. Spanish for "Satan".👹🕷️ Not because it was EVIL, just wily & unpredictable. (📷: Pedro Peñaherrera-R.)

A fully grown, blond, and “particularly hairy” Satanas, the holotype, or type specimen, of the new tarantula species that now bears his name, Psalmopoeus satanas. Pedro Peñaherrera

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Arden Powell @ardenpowell.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If you think an artist's style looks like AI but you can scroll back through their portfolio and see them doing the same work before 2020, congrats, you're not looking at an AI grifter. You're looking at one of the original victims whose entire style AI stole.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I learned a while ago the pools of CO2 shown in wildlife docs set in Africa's Great Rift, have a name: mazuku. Reading now on Siberian Traps & how magma interacted with coal, oil & gas-laden host rock, releasing greenhouse gases at depth, it's clear Siberia 252 mya had more hazards than lava flows.

en.wikipedia.org

Mazuku - Wikipedia

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Chipping away at hundreds of open tabs on my web browsers, I came across a search for software that uses procedural algorithms. Here's a neat puzzle game I found that way. Hat tip to @mattstark256.bsky.social

mattstark.itch.io

landflip by mattstark

Play in your browser

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shauna @goldengateblond.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

thank you to @mgiraldi.bsky.social, who pointed me to the insta acct for the photographer (www.instagram.com/kevinlohmanp...). the story and the other two photos are 24k gold.

kevinlohmanphotography
Santa Cruz, California
Are You Kidding Me?
Can this Great Horned Owl's eyes get any bigger?
I'm excited that my photo "Are You Kidding Me?" was selected as one of just 43 finalists in the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, from more than 10,000 entries representing 112 countries!
The story behind it is just as crazy. I was photographing this seven-week-old owlet when a squirrel suddenly launched from a nearby branch and landed directly on its head, knocking both of them out of the tree.
And believe it or not, a squirrel knocked this same owlet out of the tree THREE TIMES that morning! Fortunately, the owlet was fine and eventually settled down next to its mother.

(photo depicts a squirrel in mid-flight from a tree branch, apparently about to attack an owl who has the most "are you fucking KIDDING me" look in history)

second photo showing the squirrel in question making contact with the owl like the lil furry-tailed (if short-sighted) badass he is

third photo showing the squirrel in question making contact with the owl like the lil furry-tailed (if short-sighted) badass he is

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jess m. ☕🍂 @jametc.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Something AI is responsible for that doesn't get enough talk: How, when it scrapes a website to illegally steal everything on it, it uses up a ton of its bandwidth allotment, crashing it or racking up massive fees for site owners.

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Kieran @toadally.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

When I say “this is all we have” I am hardly joking. Please consider donating or sharing. We are in a fight against censorship and queerphobia. Even if you aren’t a furry, if you care about art and creative expression, this deserves your attention.

gofund.me

Donate to Support Fur Affinity’s Community Funding, organized by Susan Hess

Hey there Fuzzies! Recently, there has been a lot of conversation about censor… Susan Hess needs your support for Support Fur Affinity’s Community Funding

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The videographer has to respect their customers' legal rights. What's difficult with the concept? I did experiment with LLMs: it's not worth the trouble of fixing the mistakes. I've used Photoshop pre-SaaS. I don't recall a billion-parameter black box that amounts to a roll of the die.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"Researchers of human behavior are substituting AI-generated data for human responses in experimental studies." I mean, my faith in humanity isn't at an all-time high. More like hoping against hope at this point but, good lord... Surely this is the chickens coming to roost on "publish or perish".

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

So no, I don't think hiring a wedding photographer means that person can go ham on whatever imagery they capture. Also isn't the idea of splurging on a marriage ceremony to get an actual memorable experience? Why would you deep fake it?

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

There's such a thing as personality rights. It's why you see disclaimers reminding us of that on Wikimedia for photos of living people. It's why stock photography includes model release forms so there's explicit consent for wider usage of a person's likeness. - commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yo...

en.wikipedia.org

Personality rights - Wikipedia

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

By Jove, they're surely scraping the bottom of the barrel on a number of fronts.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I'd think that would be a bad time for most dogs. Shades of that MGMT music video.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"h/t [BES Macro]" A bit on the nose there.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I only discovered Internet Historian was a person of ill repute when it came up that he'd plagiarized a story for his channel. Looking at the start of the segment on hbomberguy's video now, he also punched down with his humor. I don't suppose... Yep, there's the usual gawking at furries.

youtu.be

Plagiarism and You(Tube)

YouTube video by hbomberguy

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Like I don't fit? Routinely. But I reckoned I either revel in it as best I can given the circumstances or... Stopping being myself for others' "sake" never did appeal to me.

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Michael Hickerson @hickerlab.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

How much of the tree of life did you eat? Phylodiet scores a meal by phylogenetic diversity: type what you ate and it builds the dated tree of the organisms in it, from ~3,300 edible eukaryotes, back 2 billion years. Last night's dinner, below. 🧵 mjhickerson.github.io/phylodiet/app/phylodiet.html

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

"The thief who steals from a thief gets a hundred years' pardon." My best off-the cuff translation of a relevant Portuguese expression. ( ciberduvidas.iscte-iul.pt/artigos/rubr... [in Portuguese])

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

QRP with your profile art! A fairly old pic(k): An anatomical drawing of a speculative theropod dinosaur skull I did in 2007. Became a mainstay for most of my online profiles a few years later. Originally posted to my DA gallery: www.deviantart.com/dracontes/ar... #SciArt #paleoart #dinosaurs

An anatomical drawing of a speculative theropod dinosaur skull. The white skull is highlighted by black lines and surrounded by a dark gray flayed silhouette against a light gray background. Midline bones are shaded in plain gray.
Originally posted online on 2007/08/14 to my DeviantArt gallery, https://www.deviantart.com/dracontes/art/Short-faced-Tetanuran-Skull-62273934

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Bert Spaan @bertspaan.nl · 24/09/2026

I've made an interactive map for exploring the terrain of the world! It uses @mapterhorn.com data and tiles, and WebGL for dynamic colors and animations. relief.bertspaan.nl/world?lang=en

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 30/09/2026

One of the most harrowing things about academia, when you're a grad student, is how vulnerable you are to how you're perceived by more senior researchers. Your career advancement depends on confidential letters of reference & private discussions amongst faculty. You have no information or control.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Here's one from ~9 years ago. Basically the same, just a good number of white hairs threaded through my beard now.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The werewolf. What else? I'm sure I'm scruffy enough to look like one pictured in bad enough lighting 😜

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EVILy Thomas 🦤🏳️‍🌈 @zhejiang0pterus.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Sod it. Here’s a quick explainer on why using generative AI as a science communicator is a bad idea and will destroy your credibility! In short: It makes stuff up and lies, and that makes you untrustworthy by proxy. In long: 1/6

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

On the one hand, creature feature type that I am, I do favor wild-type patterning. On the other, if people really want their sparkle-[insert animal], who am I to protest? 😉

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Loved catching that detail for one of the ceratopsians (Pachyrhinosaurus?) in the first season of Prehistoric Planet.

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CommanderApaul @commanderapaul.com · 30/09/2026

Oh man do I have a song for you. Unless this is more about geese than palindromes, in which case go watch it anyways bc palindromes are awesome.

youtu.be

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Bob (HD Version)

YouTube video by alyankovicVEVO

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Why is the headband behind the external ear when its arc doesn't look particularly slanted to the viewer? Why are the eyeglasses' temple arms heading right into the ear canal? Not a whole lot of thought was put into it, which in this day and age...

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Please. If you see evidence of workplace harassment. Badmouthing of own junior staff, unreasonable expectations, removal or omission from authorship, hostile language, evidence of overworking or distress. Don't walk by. Academic safety nets can't rely on whisper networks set by marginalised people.

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I certainly 'loved' having a high school teacher I held in some consideration tell me to go with the flow in regards to the hazing we had here in Portugal. I definitely 'enjoyed' having a senior come up to me in Uni and boldly claim that the objective of hazing wasn't to humiliate. And then...

english.elpais.com

Student hazing under spotlight in Portugal after six swept out to sea

Only leader of club avoided death when giant wave hit beach in small hours

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Scifi Art @scifiart.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Chris Moore was a giant of book cover art. Perhaps a bit less well known than the other Chris (Foss), Moore’s covers dominated the sci-fi section of bookshops while I was growing up in the 70s and 80’s

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Renato Santos @dracontes.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Certainly a show of their maturity: preferring to be petulant over being considerate.

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