Simone SciArt

Yes, yes, I normally do art and stuff but an iguanadon with hedgehog spikes and tail plates? Too cool not to share.

If you're in Cardiff this month, maybe head over to Tiny Rebel brewery in town. Not only are their own very decent beers on tap, but there is some stonking art on the walls. Some of mine is hiding amongst it, wondering how it got into such good company & gleefully lowering the tone. #art

I wrote 3 pieces & sent them out to beta readers with the words "it's ok, tell me what you think. I can take it. " For one of them they absolutely did, so I'll be rewriting it. But the other two they loved! If you look out the window & see a small shape swooping through the clouds today, that's me.

Calling all science teachers in Wales!
Sign up today to take part in the Life Science Challenge/Her Gwyddorau Bywyd 2026 quiz and challenge your year 10 pupils to show off their skills. Guaranteed to be a challenging and fun experience for all involved.
Contact medicengagement@cardiff.ac.uk

GenAI has polluted image search results, especially for animal pics. It’s now basically impossible to find accurate art references.

Enter this: a repository of open-access, AI-free images of wild & exotic taxa. Artists creating *without AI* have blanket permission for derivative/transformative use.

What I have learned from YouTube: apparently when other people stretch large pieces of watercolour paper, it's accompanied by soothing classical music & not by the sounds of "Where did that air bubble come from?" "Nooo" as the tape flips into the water, " Arsebiscuits!" & "NO CAT NO". #arr

So I wanted Copper drawing ink for a project & into the internet I go. Oo look! Ah yes, says the internet, but you can also use gouache. Yay, I already have gouache, but I don't want to waste it, I wish I still had 1.5ml spin tubes... Long story short I now own a centrifuge.

Apparently Bluesky is seeing an influx of new users. Welcome!

If you're interested in science, journalism, and/or science writing, here are a bunch of folks worth following.
go.bsky.app/7Z8u31b

Zombies, they're making themselves zombies

This is definitely a scraggy orange tom cat trying to not lose his gold crown while washing his nether regions and not a comment on current US politics. I just want to make that clear.

#Inktober day 3. Crown.

A Scottish thistle and a daffodil grown into a Celtic knot. Also shows the root systems of each which are quite different.

#Inktober day 2. Weave.

Yes, but did you swatch it by drawing a moustache?

Looking forward to #inktober this year and have already completed #1, "Moustache". It will not be shared because your eyes are (to my knowledge) blameless and so do not deserve to be tortured with it, but I am going to think of it as a baseline from which to launch. Tomorrow's prompt is Weave.

This is one of my very favorite images, as it features characters performed by Jim Henson throughout his life holding photos (or, in the case of Ernie, drawings) of him at about the period he was performing the character. Among the Muppets shown: Cantus, Dr. Teeth, the Swedish Chef, Sam, Link Hogthrob, Ernie, Kermit (two iterations), and Guy Smiley.

Jim Henson would've been 89 years old today. Commemorate his life and legacy by celebrating creativity, diversity, imagination, peace, and just plain silliness.

Walk with me a bit while I talk about Jim and his work--and leave your comments about what he means to you.

Right this way. /1

Five tiny glass bottles

Yes, my elderly drawing inks curdled and I was sad. But on the other hand my fountain pen inks were crying out for something to decant them into for travel and with a bit of cleaning I now have beautiful little jewel-like glass bottles to indulge them with.

Went to a work meeting. Saw that someone at the end of the table had pulled out a Lamy Safari to take notes on ivory paper. He looked at my Kaweco Sport. We locked eyes and gave almost imperceptible nods of approval. Secret membership of the Fountain Pen club achieved and acknowledged.

Vote here for the Lamy Vista, a Safari but completely see through so you can always see how your ink's doing.

Dave the cat has died of old age & there's been an outpouring of grief from the whole community. He greeted kids on their way to primary school. He chilled at the shops. He brought little pops of joy to people's lives just by being friendly & happy. We need more Daves in this world. RIP buddy.

Love the name. Are they prone to melodrama then?

A person's hand with the fingers dyed blue. A really nice blue that was much better off in the bottle it came from.

Inkpot vs human. Inkpot wins with a spectacular splashdown.

Try looking for something else unrelated you need but have also lost. An eraser, say, or a favorite pencil. You won't find the second thing, but often while searching you will find the first one.

Nobody knows why this works. It just does.

My current painting is entitled " It was better before the cat walked on the wet ink". It's an abstract piece.

Now it is, anyway.

I've had an idea for a short story bubbling around incomplete for about a fortnight. A piece fell into place & I wrote the whole thing in one evening, gave it to someone to read & they chuckled in all the right places. Total side quest from the main writing but damn it felt good. #WeeknightWriters

Gosh, if only there was a spare $200 million hanging around that could be used for funding research. But that golden ballroom ain't going to build itself.

😡😡 #priorities

Look, I generally try to keep politics out of my feed. But... Trump and the Republicans' version of government doesn't have money for healthcare or science or accountability. But does have £200 million for a golden ballroom. Wtf. I originally thought this was an Onion story.

Sketches of dogs

A summer's morning at the park. Best models ever. #dogs #sciart

Header text: "HEY YOU! YES YOU! TAKE THIS SHIT OUT OF LINKS!" This is followed by a couple example urls, with a red square highlighting the sections with source identifiers. The rest of the text is as follows: Source identifiers are used to track your activity on a site. Where you came from, what device you use, and even who you talk to. Whether it's written clearly in the url or tied to a random string of characters, it's assigned to your activity. When you send a link containing a source identifier to somebody and they click it, it signals to the website that you two are connected. And that data goes right back to the website operators, and thus their advertisers. Whenever you select "share" or "copy link" on a social app or website, it creates a link like this. If you give even the smallest shit about online privacy, it's important to remove them. Everything after the "?" symbol can be removed without issue, especially sections starting with "si=" or "utm_source="

I saw an infographic a couple years ago about how to remove source identifiers from links and why it's important, but I can't find it again and too many people I know are sending me links with them so here's an infographic straight from the oven

Update thread #2. Hemlock
One thing we worked on is a different tool to complement Nightshade. We discovered a new attack on diffusion models that is more generalizable than Nightshade. It targets an entirely different part of AI training pipeline, basically making AI models poison themselves.

Meteor shower?