science, art, and science art

Jenn // Scientific illustrator + pro-rain propagandist // alithographica.com

[yorgen-sh]

[alithographica]

‘Sound always muted’ community member here urging you to unmute

[alithographica]

i asked my bird understander friend about the kansas avoiders and she thinks they may just dislike prairie; they're not the only birds that tend to avoid that area so it seems like it must be just not that romantic a destination for em (sorry if you did not actually want to know a possible answer)

no I very much did want to know the answer, many thanks to you and the bird understander 🫶

[great-and-small]

Don’t mind me just thinking about the hole in the middle of the United States where Chipping sparrows refuse to fuck

[great-and-small]

[alithographica]

I’ve been drawing this statue for an hour and all I have is one rendered ass

[alithographica]

Thank you Rome, you were so dramatic about everything and it makes for a great statue

[alithographica]

Being an artist is funny because it leads you to weird fixations. I picked this statue out of the whole museum because it was caked up, I won't deny that. And I started shading with the ass because I like to start with the darkest, least ambiguous values, but also because butts are funny and I was entertaining myself.

People who walked by me, especially in the early stages where I was 100% focused on the ass, might conclude I was really into the ass. False. The figure was simply the table I needed to set for the main course. The sexiest part is the little chips in the marble. That little scratch on the torso? Delicious, I was way less normal about drawing the two lines there than anything around the butt.

[alithographica]

I’ve been drawing this statue for an hour and all I have is one rendered ass

[alithographica]

Thank you Rome, you were so dramatic about everything and it makes for a great statue

[alithographica]

I’ve been drawing this statue for an hour and all I have is one rendered ass

[alithographica]

Smh leave the overhead lights on 5 minutes after the tank light goes dark and you get the biggest stink eye for it

[alithographica]

ouuuugh darkness time

[alithographica]

Smh leave the overhead lights on 5 minutes after the tank light goes dark and you get the biggest stink eye for it

[alithographica]

Drawing everyone’s favorite staple remover tonight

[alithographica]

Awkward teenage phase

[alithographica]

Hit it with a hammer to get that nice antique effect

[alithographica]

Fin 🐟

I might go mess with the shading again in the future—it still feels a little incomplete. I was trying to figure it all out while in combat with a display case that was designed to mess with me specifically (best viewing angle has the display’s corner seam running through it, and both faces of the display somehow manage to have a ton of glare and reflection)

[alithographica]

For some reason a few people have found this post recently, but they keep reblogging the first image. And that's nice, I'm glad people like it, but it was just the sketch. I did finish it, and the finished one looks cooler. 🥺

[alithographica]

Just clicked the "share" link on a job posting thinking that it would give me a tidy little link to share and instead I received the endgame boss of internet "share this with your network!" options. I am having the same visceral reaction to this that I think a medium predator has to a frilled lizard, I want to jump back and retreat

At least one of these companies doesn't exist anymore. A quarter are basically only used abroad (this job is US-specific). Clicking BLM just leads you to a now-closed ActBlue fundraiser. Why would one EVER want to post it on Nextdoor. What is happening

[alithographica]

okay now I’m curious

How many of these options have you heard of before? (Copy and email are what you expect, so with tumblr you get 3 for free. BLM is ActBlue. The rest are what they say on the tin.)

Fewer than 10

11-20

21-30

31-40

41-50

51-60

I’ve heard of all 61

What is email (show results)

Voting ended onApr 13

(I forgot to mention Print but Print is also just print, so 4 for free.)

[inaturalist-unofficial]

[alithographica]

This is tangential to our top diva here but usernames on iNaturalist are such a delight. It's like 20% normal internet usernames, 40% academics using some derivation of their real name, and 40% sedgequeens.

I upload something aquatic and get an ID from a username like crabgrabbing. Bracketfunguy stops by my mushroom. Annelida19 kindly comments to explain why the computer model sucks at earthworms, with citations. Gallussssss goes through every Northeast region bird I have. I love all of them and their pride in their niche knowledge. Every single time it feels like this:

[alithographica]

He is aura farming (the aura is cutie patootie)

[bbfroglove]

Ooouh his name is Combo Meal

[alithographica]

Actually his name is Sandwich. I have another one named Soup. Their collective tag is combo meal 🥪

Here’s Soup and the full combo meal sharing a leaf sleep:

[alithographica]

Soup & Sandwich served on a single plate again

[alithographica]

We sit on leaves in this house

[alithographica]

He is aura farming (the aura is cutie patootie)

[bbfroglove]

Ooouh his name is Combo Meal

[alithographica]

Actually his name is Sandwich. I have another one named Soup. Their collective tag is combo meal 🥪

Here’s Soup and the full combo meal sharing a leaf sleep:

[alithographica]

Soup & Sandwich served on a single plate again

[crab-justice]

[fullfrontalfish]

Watching this forever goodbye

[fullfrontalfish]

WHOS SEXY IM SEXY WHOS SEXY IM SEXY

[monochrome-merchant]

Thats a ShrimplyBeautiful video! And that's a critically endangered cardinal sulawesi shrimp!

The accounts are run by a person named Timothy Utterback, he's a conservationist who posts videos of his shrimp "dancing" (this is how they eat!) to rave music and uses the revenue to fund their maintenance. There's typically a couple of shrimp rave livestreams a week over on tiktok, so check it out!

[alithographica]

(describing a new bird to my overly poetic research assistant) he's at the riverbank just being a bully. kind of ugly too

[alithographica]

(same scientist, having only previously studied birds, looking at a brownish butterfly) you know what this kinda reminds me of?

[alithographica]

(seeing three larger brown butterflies) man this butterfly shit is easy

[alithographica]

"yeah nobody's gonna stop us, are they?"

[alithographica]

who cares. go apeshit. go wild

[alithographica]

(thinking back fondly on the birds they used to work with) a few more nearly identical white things? I used to love nearly identical white things... :(

[asthedeathoflight]

Resisting the urge to Um Actually this dragon novel because it has the dragon eggs be like three or four feet wide but there is simply a limit to how large hard-shelled terrestrial eggs can be. No matter how large the animal is, the embryo needs oxygen, and oxygen needs surface area. The larger an object is, the lower its surface area relative to volume, and the less oxygen the embryo can receive. We think of large animals as having porportionately large young because mammalian pregnancy has the unique benefit of allowing for the size of the young to scale with the adult because their oxygen is provided directly through the placenta, and almost all the megafauna remaining on Earth are mammals. But this is not the case for species which lay eggs! For fuck's sake even the sauropods hatched out of eggs barely larger than basketballs! Your hatchling dragon would be impressively enormous if it were the size of a house cat. Stop trying to make me believe that this (ROUND!) dragon egg somehow supplied enough oxygen to develop an infant the size of a large dog or even bigger. If it were possible the dinosaurs woulda been doing it!!!!

[achillbeing]

I love you /lh. Experts going off on their particular fascinating cool topics and adding unexpected context to things we take for granted is like my favorite thing this was delightful. Talk to me more about eggs and geometry and biology all you want :D

[achillbeing]

Amazing concept

[alithographica]

idk how to explain to you that measurements of cloth on someone's genitals is not science

There was sail physics, math, and a dinosaur reference, what more do you want