iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 23/10/2026

Keeping a copy of this for next time imposter syndrome hits.

A screenshot of Joe Tidy speaking in a BBC studio, wearing a pink shirt. The text says "How significant is the PHP flaw?
Cyber correspondent Joe Tidy says he didn't know PHP existed until yesterday morning - it's "one of these things we take for granted", he says."

Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 23/09/2026

There is a slight irony to this being the 52nd slide in a start of year presentation emailed to all academics in the faculty. ⚒️🧪

A slide advertising a course to deal with digital noise

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 17/09/2026

39,000 -May (1988) 75,000 -Meglitsch and Schram (1991) 55,364 -Minelli (1993) 38,000 -Ruppert and Barnes (1994) They estimated 94,621 themselves along with this fantastic note at the bottom:

*No one should waste time challenging these figures; we certainly will not do so defending them. They represent the best estimates from our survey of checklists, monographic revisions, and other compilations, which our experience struck us as reasonable to include. The larger the number of species listed for a group, the greater the statistical error that should be assigned to it. Groups with very low numbers probably indicate nothing more than that those groups live in a habitat difficult to sample. All population genetic studies conducted to date indicate that cryptic speciation is rampant in the pancrustaceans-especially within the crustaceomorphs. Note that we have made no serious effort to verify the number of fossil, let alone extinct, species.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/09/2026

I would say the error bars on the vast majority of the inverts estimates here are.. formidable. If that helps at all? We know we know nothing, perhaps?

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/09/2026

That led me down a rabbit hole, resulting in this glorious discovery (source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_and... )

Screengrab from Wikipedia saying: In December 1993, a witness in a court in Stirlingshire, Scotland, answered "aye" to confirm he was the person summoned, but was told by a sheriff judge that he must answer either yes or no, or else be held in contempt of court. When asked if he understood, he replied "aye" again, and was imprisoned for 90 minutes for contempt of court. On his release he said, "I genuinely thought I was answering him."

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/09/2026

Fun fact I have just learned, there was a relatively infromal system, in early middle English where there were two ways of saying yes and no, depending on whether it was in answer to a negatively formulated question or a positively formulated one. 🤔

Will they not go? — Yes, they will.
Will they not go? — No, they will not.
Will they go? — Yea, they will.
Will they go? — Nay, they will not.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/09/2026

Now with added flatworms 👌 (Below by Jens Petersen)

Marine flatworm Pseudobiceros gloriosus. Lembeh straits, North Sulawesi, Indonesia.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/09/2026

An update following feedback from several kind people. As before, reuse as you see fit..

An infographic showing the number of described and estimated species for major animal groups. There are more insects than anything else. Of the remaining groups, arachnids and nematodes are the most diverse.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/09/2026

Here with the flatworms! I kept the label Platyhelminthes for consistency with Nematodes, and ended up using estimates from Brusca, Giribet and Moore, as they actually took a punt at the estimated diversity. Thanks for all the references and pointers 😎

A diagram showing the species diversity of various animal groups. There are lots of insects

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/09/2026

Updated 🫡 Thanks again for the heads up!

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 15/09/2026

I was inspired to put my big boy pants on and do this properly (having used a hand drawn version for a long time) for a talk on terrestrialisation at this years @thepalass.bsky.social meeting - #PalAss26. In that light, here is the same, but with scatterpies showing proportion of terrestrial taxa.

The same infographic as before, but with scatterpies showing that the majority of described species are terrestrial (live on land)

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 15/09/2026

Interested in how species diversity is split between major animal groups? Here is the infographic for you! 🧪⚒️🦀🦑 #evosky

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 14/09/2026

Courtesy of my very talented coauthor Jason Dunlop @mfnberlin.bsky.social I have new art for my office wall! Paper coming soon, review dieties / reviewers allowing. 🧪⚒️

A canvas print of a stippled black and white drawing of ten correctly scaled Carboniferous arachnids

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 08/09/2026

Came for a 12th century monastery. Stayed for the gorgeous fungi! 🧪

A dilapidated stone building with no roof, made of flags of a dark grey stone

A super cool baby fungus growing out of grass. It looks like baby brown tentacles

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 21/08/2026

Dear Germany, please never change. After all, why would you *not* have a legal framework to cover pocket money?

The AI overview (sorry, next image is the actual text, in German) showing the legal framework surrounding pocketmoney in Germany)

Text from:

https://www.dji.de/themen/jugend/taschengeld.html

Regarding the legal framework for pocket money in Germany

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/06/2026

I am, however, here for a noun class that encompassess all insects 🧪

Noun classes
The four noun classes of Archi are only evident from verbal inflection. This table summarizes the noun classes and their associated verbal morphology:

Class Description Singular Plural
Prefix Infix Prefix
I Male human w- ⟨w⟩ b-
II Female human d- ⟨r⟩
III All insects, some animates,
some inanimates b- ⟨b⟩ ∅-
IV Abstracts, some animates,
some inanimates ∅ ∅

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/06/2026

Brushing up on German conjugations, and I find myself very happy I'm not learning Archi. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archi_l... 😱

A screenshot of the wikipedia article for Archi, which says it "is an ergative–absolutive language with four noun classes[5] and has a morphological system with irregularities on all levels.[6] Mathematically, there are 1,502,839 possible forms that can be derived from a single verb root.[7]"

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 17/04/2026

An anthropogenic fossil of the future? 🤔

A purple croc with Disney characters on it

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 17/04/2026

For #FossilFriday, since I'm in the field with second year undergrads in Scotland, here is a lovely fossil plant root we found in Upper Carboniferous sediments. Plus a coral, and some amazing bioturbation on the underside of a bed! ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

A fossil root - a black elongate structure in the middle of a yellowish, ~20 cm scale sandstone bed. It looks like the cross section through a tube, with smaller black protrusions (which were rootlets in life)

Fossil corals - small circles in a light coloured rock that look about the size of a pea, and are actually the tops of individual corals that are living in a colony. In the middle is a larger coral, which is a circle, and has radial lines, a bit like a bike wheel

The underside of a yellow, coarse sandstone bed, which is criss crossed with ~5cm scale intersecting lines

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 20/02/2026

We just don't end papers like this any more. Maybe the world would be better if we did? ⚒️🧪

The few observations that I have made are necessarily
imperfect, but I send them, as they afford a method which
might lead a naturalist to notice habits otherwise difficult
to observe, and so to arrive at conclusions which I in my
ignorance of natural history must leave to others.
C. V. Bovs

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 03/02/2026

Excellent error handling here 🤨 🧪⚒️

Some code that reports to screen "Error from generate groups - this is likely fatal - but continuing anyway for shits and giggles"

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 27/01/2026

www.theguardian.com/money/2026/j... "A spokesperson for the RFA said: 'The inclusion of a ground rent cap in the draft bill represents a wholly unjustified interference with existing property rights which if enacted, would seriously damage investor confidence in the UK housing market'"

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 09/01/2026

An excellent portent for the new year 😬

An error message in google keep: "You've reached the item limit for this list. Remove some items in order to add more."

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 06/01/2026

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty pleased with my impromptu microphone stand for my office. 🧪⚒️

An image of a desk with a keyboard foreground, screen background, and between them a microphone standing on a glass jar with a horseshoe crab in it.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 30/12/2025

The existence of the verb problematicize brings me joy. (Courtesy of Curzan, A., 2003. Gender shifts in the history of English. Cambridge University Press. 🫡 )

An extract from a book: "(the nouns that clearly retain semantic gender in Modern English). In a broad linguistic context, Chapters Three and Four are devoted to historical syntax, specifically the transition from grammatical to "natural" gender in the history of English ("natural" being a term that will be problematized in Chapter One) and its repercussions in Modern English. The corpus-based study presented in"

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/09/2025

Me reading any statement about chelicerate phylogeny not couched in uncertainty: 🧪⚒️

Samuel Johnson meme - top panel, johnson reading a book avidly, lower, him looking disconcerted

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 15/09/2025

Well done Manchester. Don't change 🫡

An EU flag in Manchester city centre that has been put up in response to all the St George's cross flags appearing across the UK.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 01/09/2025

At the end of my fellowship in Berlin - me completing the character coding for my arachnid phylogeny v.s. me actually looking at the tree 🕷️🧪⚒️

A two panel meme - the first "I am a genius" with a happy anime face, the second, "Oh no"

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 22/08/2025

Also, I think it's worth highlighting just how much love went into these figures: all are stippled. As is clearer in the close up of a claw below, all the shading you see is the result of ?tens of thousands of individual, 0.1 mm points hand drawn with a Rotring pen 🤯

A close up of a scorpion claw from the image I posted before showing that the thing is shaded with hundreds of individual points

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 22/08/2025

For #FossilFriday here's some gorgeous fossil scorpions - four reconstructions of species spanning 200 million years by my very talented colleague Jason Dunlop at @mfnberlin.bsky.social. Far left of these four is Palaeophonus, also shown in the photo and an interprative drawing below. ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

Reconstructions of four fossil scorpions - black and white stippled drawings of scorpions becoming increasingly moderm looking towards the right. Original caption: From left to right are shown: the Silurian Palaeophonus, of note are leg proportions and digitigrade stance; Silurian Proscorpius, the carapace of which bore both median and compound lateral eyes; Lower Carboniferous Pulmonoscorpius, which for which there is unequivocal evidence of book lungs; and Upper Carboniferous Compsosorpius, which is an early representative of the orthosternous scorpions.

A photo of Palaeophonus - a dark brown smudge on a rock. It's quite underwhelming really. On the right is an interprative drawing which makes it a little clearer. Original caption: Palaeophonus caledonicus Hunter, 1886 (Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, UK) from the mid-Silurian (Llandovery to Wenlock) of Lesmahagow, Scotland, UK, image courtesy of Lyndsay C. Jess, and by permission of East Ayrshire Council/East Ayrshire Leisure Trust, and a reconstruction from Pocock (1901).

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 16/08/2025

Thanks both - a slight delay while I figured out rwty (which is a great package!). But traces seem to look OK to my, admittedly poorly trained, eye (small burnin removed, traces up to point of crash):

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 15/08/2025

Phylo chums: I am doing a morphological clock analysis, and am getting this error after a few hours run time. Obviously something to do with the tree prior. Anyone have any guidance on how to find out what? .con.tre at this point looks fine. 🧪⚒️

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 10/08/2025

Rosa/Röschen and Salomon Paskusz last lived by choice on what is now Erich-Weinert-Straße, Prenzlauerberg. Rosa was born 1867 in East Frisia (Saxony). By 1906 she was living in Berlin: we know because she married there a man called Adolf Michaelis. They had a daughter, Irma, that year.

Two stolperstein, memorialising Salomon annd Roschen Paskusz - small brass squares in a paved street

An image of a tall, white building, on a tree lined street. It has a grey door, balconies and tall windows

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 01/08/2025

This is handily depicted in this tree - it could go in the red shaded areas - and Metacoleoptera includes all living beetles.

A phylogenetic tree showing a bunch of different taxa, and where this fossil might sit. Original caption: Phylogenetic position of †Coleopsis archaica (red) based on apomorphies visible in the fossil re-described here. †Tshekardocoleidae is designated as potentially non-monophyletic, due to the absence of apomorphic characters. The clade Metacoleoptera (Boudinot et al. 2022) includes all extant beetles and the stem group taxa except for †Tshekardocoleidae, †Permocupedidae and †Coleopsis archaica.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 01/08/2025

Beetles are the most speciose animal order: 25% of described animal species are beetles. Everything has to start somewhere, though, and for #FossilFriday, here is the earliest known 'beetle' - the 297 million year old Coleopsis, found in Freisen (Saarland, Germany). ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

A photograph of a fossil insect in a rock. The rock is beige fossil black, and kinda patchy in colour. It has a head towaerds the top, and the majority of the fossil is two easy to spot wing cases, which is how we know this little dude(tte) is a beetle.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 28/07/2025

Our AWS servers are dead, domains cleaned, and our GitHub repository has been archived. Le site est mort, vive le site!

A screenshot of the "archive repository" screen on GitHub, showing the archive screen for the repo ThePalaeontologicalAssociation/palass

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 25/07/2025

It's #FossilFriday, so meet an absolutely stunning ~310 million year old fossil millipede - Pleurojulus. This fossil was discovered in the Czech Republic in the 19th century. Exactly how these animals are related to living millipedes remains debated, but they presumably.. ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

A black and white photo of a really beautiful fossil millipede. The main part of the picture shows the millipede curled up, you can see tens to undreds of legs on the inside surface, and clear segmentation on the outside surface. TBH it looks a lot like living millipedes. It has a 2cm scale bar. Inset are picture of its legs, and what you can see of the ornament on its dorsal surface.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 18/07/2025

For #FossilFriday meet an ancestor of today's cockroaches, mantises and termites. This lovely animal is Sysciophlebia, and lived ~295 million years ago, in what is today Germany 🇩🇪 . It was 3.6cm long, and was a female. How do we know? ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

A brown rock, with a lighter fossil insect in it. The fossil has a head with antennae (left), then a pronotum (~shiled shape plate), and then long wings with prominent veins. Under these you can make out some of the walking legs. Inset is a close up of a long structure towards the back of the animal, which it used to lay eggs in life.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 15/07/2025

In this light, sticking with senior lecturer seems preferable. ⚒️🧪

A tombstone that says "Reader, prepare to meet thy god" (in the UK system, many universities promote senior leccturers to readers, before professor, if you were wondering...)

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 27/06/2025

Let's continue this #FossilFriday. Fast forward to 2018, and two teams published a neat new discovery in ~100 million year old amber. This little guy (we know it's a guy as he has modified palps for mating) had spinnerets with which he could spin silk... and that tail. ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

An image of a spider like arachnid in amber. It is dark yellow in colour, and looks lots like a spider, except it has a long, segmented tail sticking out of the back.

A reconstruction of the animal in life - it shows an individual exiting a silk lined burrow in the ground, with a twig in the background with insects and other arachnids marching along it.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 25/06/2025

Please join me in judging the decisions of past Russell in formulating this character. 🫠🧪

A discrete phylogenetic character that reads: Median eyes (0 = four; 1 = two; 2 = three; 3 = absent; 4 = one).

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 20/06/2025

That flagellum looks a lot like a structure that had been found with those other scraps in the '80s, shown below - which was not idefnitifed as belonging to an spider-like fossil because no fagellum had ever been found on such an animal at that time.

A scrap of cuticle that is bent around, has hairs, and is made of of a series of segments that were circular in cross section in life, and all slot together. Scale bare 0.5mm.

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 20/06/2025

In spiders spigots are found on speciealised structures called spinnerets. Here are some in action:

The back end of a spider, exuding silk with a bunch of structures associated with that silk - these are the spinnerets

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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 20/06/2025

Hey! Let's learn about the origins of silk and spiders for #FossilFriday Below are fossil representatives of a group called the uraraneids. Left and middle are scraps of exoskeleton left after dissolving their host rock in acid. Shown left is a fang, and middle is a scrap with silk. ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

A scrap of cutcile showing the fang of an ancient arachnid. The picture is black and white, towards the top y ou have the fang, and at the bottom of the picture is a toothed segment against which it artculated in life. Scale bar 0.25mm

A crappy looking bit of exoskeleton - its irregular in outline, has hairs, and has darked cone like projections that made silk. There is even a small piece of silk at the end.

A B&W photo of a fossil arachnid in a rock. It is darker than the surrounding rock, and you can see four legs on the left, a body in the middle with a long tail like structure coming out of the back, and then a couple of legs on the right.

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