On DeviantArt and YouTube as Concavenator: sometimes I draw and write about speculative biology, life on other worlds and in the far future, and the history of life on Earth.
o-craven-canto here, on DeviantArt as Concavenator. I have a Neocities website that is only just sketched.
I'm a working biologist, specialized in systematic and evolutionary zoology, which I think is the most beautiful thing in the world. I find the timescales and strange mechanisms of evolution especially fascinating. I also enjoy reading about history and language, but those are very much not my field.
Related, I like to make excessively detailed infographics on (mostly) biology and history, which I'm told people like. I'll probably sell printed copies of them at some point.
Lifelong devotee of speculative biology, a hobby focused on the design of imaginary but scientifically plausible creatures, both for fun and as a teaching tool for actual biology. If you'd like to learn more, I have lists of links and resources here and here.
I've written A Matter of Time, a book detailing a fictional history of humankind from the near future to the end of the universe (previews here).
Other speculative projects of mine include Settlers from the Deep (Earth resettled by aquatic and cave-dwelling species after a severe mass extinction); Tagra (a civilization of sapient dinosaurs inhabiting Antarctica just before it’s covered in ice); Gods of Salt (the “““real”““ history of human origins); Ea: Our Second Chance (life on an Earth-like planet colonized by ideologically fractious humans).
I also write and draw various shorter-form stuff, mostly set in distant futures or alternate worlds.
If for some reason you want to know my tastes and opinions: #aesthetics, #asks, #discourse, #plato on the road, #sorry, #stuff I like, #my work
Born and living in Italy, he/him, arguably rat-adjacent (iykyk), got a PhD in 2025. Wouldn't mind hanging out with people IRL.
Setting a major motion picture in the Neolithic among one of the extinct ethnic groups who by our best guess had a mix of traits basically no modern population does exclusively to piss people off.
Make the hero/ine a Western European Hunter-Gatherer
According to David Reich, DNA analysis has shown that Western Hunter Gatherers were typically dark skinned, dark haired, and blue eyed. The dark skin was due to their Out-of-Africa origin (all Homo sapiens populations having had initially dark skin), while the blue eyes were the result of a variation in their OCA2 gene, which caused iris depigmentation.
Also, you're more likely to call during a time in which the number of calls is higher than average. That's why the number of calls is being higher than average.
A map of words borrowed by English from other languages, according to their location and language family of origin. Derived from this older post of mine!
"gung-ho" and "typhoon" are there with Mandarin and Yue (Cantonese) Chinese, respectively. In the larger list I had placed "syrup" and "curry" with Arabic and Tamil (southeast India), respectively.
One of the stranger tropes of tumblr (and like, to a lesser extent general) discourse is like - anger or disbelief or outright contempt/mockery for someone whose suffered a traumatic experience or serious misfortune that was not the most statistically likely course of events to occur and/or that is counter to the narrative they find politically convenient? Well mostly that last bit, I'm sure.
On the most zoomed out and least loaded level I can think of, it is basically axiomatic that large military operation by any organized and armed force will commit some atrocities. It's one of the reasons people say (but mostly don't believe) that crimes of aggression are the most serious and foundational war crimes of all. Despite this, basically no one on here who has ever picked a side in a conflict as 'the good ones' seems capable of accepting their guys might have done a massacre or tortured prisoners or abused civilian populations.
Certainly people seem incredibly resistant to accepting that states or administrations (or even specific policies and projects) that they consider praiseworthy has some price in blood and tears. The reaction to first-hand accounts of said price are usually reacted to as entirely bad-faith propaganda.
To instead use as personal and loaded an example as possible, see the intense emotional investment a certain number of people have in women being Safe and incapable of being abusive in relationships.
i've seen a couple reactions to this type of thing.
there's the denialist, as you say, they think any personal experience with an army or state project or political group or what have you that's bad is fake or exaggerated.
then you get moral scrupulosity. So, if you find something distasteful or vile in something like the operation of national parks, that means burn the thing down. Zealotry of the convert, second opinion bias, no one anywhere is allowed to have a bad or subpar time and anything that has ever caused harm must be damned in the strongest terms.
then you get the patriot. If your confronted with the idea that your chosen "side" in a war or gender war or any kind of thing has done wrong, you openly embrace the cruelty as being a good and even necessary thing. This is the type where they post a meme of stalin with a big spoon any time someone says their family starved under the soviets.
I do think these things can apply both to big geopolitical things, and then on down the line to personal relationships. All women are victims and all men are perpetrators. things of this nature.
It is done, and it went pretty well! (There's an awesome little local 15 minutes on foot from my apartment specifically dedicated to board games, including the ones you bring from home.) Played Bios: Genesis with friends from the lab. I should remember more often that people actually like doing things with me.
Theſe Truths need no Proof to ſuch as are acquainted with the MICROSCOPE, however incredible they may ſeem to others: that valuable Inſtrument will fully convince us, that All the Works of the CREATOR well deſerve our moſt diligent Attention; that Perfection appears every where; that Minuteneſs is no Mark of Meanneſs; and that nothing is ſo little or ſo low but that it can richly repay our Enquiries. Hereby we are likewiſe taught, that an Atom to Omnipotence is as a World, and a World but as an Atom; in the ſame Manner as to Eternity one Day is as a thouſand Years, and a thouſand Years but as one Day. Every Species of theſe Animalcules may alſo uſefully ferve to correct our Pride, and prove how inadequate our Notions are to the real Nature of Things; by making us ſenſible how little of the larger or ſmaller Part of the Creation could poſſibly be made for us; who are furniſhed with
Organs capable of diſcerning to a certain Degree only of the great or little, all beyond which is as much unknown, as far beyond the Reach of our Conception, as if it had never been.
-- Henry Baker, Employment for the Microscope: In Two Parts, 1753
“This shows us how vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit Consideration, and Matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful Corner of this small Spot.”
My one boring tip to anyone in their 20s is to resist the temptation to rot in your room every time you get a free moment. Dismiss any neuroses you have about going outside and "being perceived". Be a dictator about it, plan your hangouts like they are binding commitments. No excuses! Go to the bar with your friends. Be kinda hungover at work. Socializing is like exercise; even if you don't feel like you want to, you should still do it because it's good for you.
So as it turns out your sense of self doesnt exist in a vacuum. You gotta actually use it and bounce it off of other people like echolocation to see where you are as a person and shit. So if you dont regularly interact with other people the echoes just get weaker and weaker and before you know it your personality is a blurry fucked up fog clone of its former self. which it sucks because this makes it really hard to interact with people again but yknow
It had always hurt the Old Man to live alone; his kind were intensely social. But he had suffered more than just loneliness. His mind was of the old compartmented design. Much of what went on inside his cavernous skull was all but unconscious; it was as if his hands made his flint tools, not him. It was only when he was with people that he became truly alive, fully, intensely aware; it was as if without others he was in a dream, only half-conscious.
-- Stephen Baxter (2003), Evolution, ch. 13 "Last Contact"
Sometimes I think again about a setting I built when I was in high school. Inspired to various degrees and in various ways by Portal's Aperture Science, the Court of Gunnerkrigg Court, and later Alpha Centauri's University of Planet and Human Hive, it was a mad-scientist rogue micronation that existed as a sprawling underground complex, running increasingly bizarre and elaborate experiments on a vast mass of Subjects bred for whole generations as lab rats.
Its official name was TESMI, short for Theoretical and Experimental Science Metanational Institute (the order of words is wonky, but my grasp of English was looser back then). I gave it a flag (a light blue flask on a deep blue field, surrounded by a golden laurel wreath), an organization (a hierarchy flaring at the base into 2000+ Departments and thinning at the top into a council of ten Deans), an internal culture and aesthetics (an ungodly mix of Enlightenment Neoclassicism and 1950s Soviet futurism), and a rather detailed history. It went about like this:
17th century: In the aftermath of Giordano Bruno's burning at the stake, an Italian erudite named Valerio Mora wrote a treatise urging scholars from all Europe to gather into a society beyond the reach of national and religious authorities and prosecute their studies in the freedom of secrecy, if necessary. The Saint Thomas Society of Natural Philosophy is founded in 1604, with its headquarters in an unspecified corner of Europe, in an unassuming old mill.
Later, the Thirty Years War ravages the continent. The Society digs catacombs in the soft rock where they can hide their books, their metals, and their precious instruments from pillage. Down there begins the Society's self-conception as a haven of sanity and wisdom in a world of madness and pointless destruction.
18th century: In the Age of Enlightenment, Academicians from the Society make good money hiring themselves as teachers for the offspring of enlightened despots. Those who die without heirs leave extremely generous donations. Over the decades, the Society acquires land all over the continent; the Old Building, now a massive compound, gets its printing press, its paper mill, its glassworks, its farmlands.
But this stuff is expensive. With the fall of Napoleon, and the dreams of Enlightenment discredited, the Society loses its last major patron. The academics are forced to sell off most of the art collection -- keeping only the books -- while living on old glories.
19th century: In 1838 the bankrupt Society is outright bought by an English industrialist, Sebastian Miller, firm believer in the value of automation, which he expects to be helped by their studies in physics and engineering. He transfers there the HQ of his industries, partly as a tax evasion scheme. At first the academicians are disgusted by the inflow of filthy laborers and by the use of their knowledge for profit, but they soon come to appreciate the resources and manpower now available for their experiments.
In the four decades of the Millerian Age the Society grows immensely in numbers, wealth, and ruthlessness. The old catacombs become mines, and the mines grow into massive underground facilities. When Miller dies, handing power back to the Deans, the Society has a whole industrial base, thousands of workers and potential lab-rats, and an extremely confident and self-satisfied outlook.
20th century: The First World War is a dreamtime for the Society, which gets to design and sell various horrific weapons to every fighting power; until one of them decides to use one such weapon against the Society itself before they can design something even deadlier.
The disaster of 1917 is a moment of great self-examination for the Society. They largely withdraw from the world to look inward and, swallowing their pride, restructure their society from ground up over twenty years to be a respectable member of the community of nations. The name TESMI and all the state-like trappings come from this time. Eventually they feel comfortable to announce their reopening to take part in a kinder, saner world. Two days later, the Third Reich invades Poland.
TESMI's reaction is "a pox on all of you". All personnel abroad is recalled, all facilities outside the Old Building are dismantled and rebuilt underground, all communications with the outside world are cut. For six years TESMI survives entirely on its own internal greenhouses and power plants. After the war, they run their own little Operation Paperclip, and cautiously restart cooperation with the rest of the world (mostly countries that can quietly supply TESMI with fuel for their nuclear plants), but overall they remain secretive and mistrustful to this day.
The "present" of the project was fixed somewhere around 2010, soon after TESMI's Quadricentenary. There were actually three alternative storylines: 1) TESMI peacefully opening up and integrating with the world, 2) taking over the world by force and trying to run it as one if its internal biospheres to increasingly disastrous results, and 3) fighting a cartoonishly apocalyptic war against a rival organization (possibly from a parallel universe) designed along similar lines by a friend of mine.
This is grand and interesting.
Have you ever come across a role-playing game called 'Seventh Sea'? There is an "Invisible College" in its setting which is not unlike your TESMI, though with fewer resources to command, and I imagine you could invent some good plotlines for them.
Weirdly enough, I had never intended for TESMI to be a secret in its setting; more like obscure micronation trivia that most people simply don't bother to learn:
did you know that Andorra is jointly ruled by a Spanish bishop and the French president?
did you know that there is a Medieval chivalric order that is legally a sovereign country despite having no territory?
did you know there's a microcountry in centralish Europe where most of the population never saw the Sun and 90% of exports are medical patents?
It would show up on maps; it had recruiters in major universities, although very few students would take the deal. I think somewhere I had an in-universe article written by a philosopher explaining their ethical system (they rejected both deontology and consequentialism and insisted that an action can only be ethical if one has the full foreknowledge of the consequences it will bring; therefore you can only behave ethically if you have complete understanding of the universe)
