sagaedling

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If you’re scrolling through tumblr trying to distract yourself from something you don’t want to think about or you’re looking for a sign that everything will be okay, this is it. So, breathe. Relax into this moment. You’re alive & that’s all that matters.

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Qianshanornis

It’s so hard to imagine what an animal looks like with only some feet to go off of, but I’m repeatedly in awe of how scientists can get so much information out of just a few fossilised bones.

Sources and stuff under the cut.

Most facts come from this article:

Gerald Mayr , Jian Yang , Eric De Bast , Cheng-Sen Li & Thierry Smith (2013): A Strigogyps-like bird from the middle Paleocene of China with an unusual grasping foot, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 33:4, 895-901

I’ve also looked at some paleoart for reference:

“The other terror birds - Cariamiformes” by Artbyjrc (Deviantart)

@alphynix’s illustration of Qianshanornis

I’ve also looked at a lot of pictures of seriemas for this. It’s basically a seriema with funky feet tbh…

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Vegavis

I’ve spent way to many hours researching this bird now, and still know way too little, but here’s my take on Vegavis. With feet propelled swimming and high metabolism I’m doubtful of them mainly predating on fish. I’ve instead gone with a bird living in more shallow waters of cold climate with a beak akin to an eider for eating mollusks and maybe crustaceans or other bottom-fauna.

I love feet-propelled divers across the board, and I really hope I get to learn more about this birb and it’s habit in the future!

Sources and stuff under the cut.

The main sources to guide me were theese two papers:

- ”New data on the Vegavis iaai holotype from the Maastrichtian of Antarctica” 2021. Carolina Acosta Hospitaleche and Trevor H. Worthy. Cretaceous Research.

-”Bone microstructure of Vegavis iaai (Aves, Anseriformes) from the Upper Cretaceous of Vega Island, Antarctic Peninsula” 2017. Jordi Alexis Garcia Marsà, Federico L. Agnolín & Fernando Novas. Historical biology.

I also looked at the paleoart made for the 2021 article as well as a piece made by Gabriel L. Lio for the Museo de Ciencias Naturales in Bernardino Rivadavia, Argentina.

For the anatomy in my piece I’ve also looked at extant birds: mainly at eiders, since they’re the right size and climate, but also other diving ducks as well as mergansers and loons for the feet swimming.

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Day four of Botober! ”Robot riding bicycle”

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Day three of Botober! ”Y”

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Day two of botober! ”Sponge planets” done in fineliners

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Day one of BOTOBER! ”A farmanimal with purple spots”

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I’ve made a lil’ something for a contest on the paleo pines discord! I’m so hyped for this game 🙌🏽

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The story behind AI drawing prompts

Introducing #Botober, a set of AI-generated drawing prompts for each day in October!

Last year I generated prompts by finetuning GPT-2 on 124 examples from previous years. The human-written training examples included items like Thunder, Fierce, Tired, or Friend. The neural net-generated examples included Complete Whoop, Take Control of Ostrich, and Squeakchugger.

This time, I wanted to try using GPT-3, a neural net that’s so much larger that finetuning on a previous year’s examples isn’t an option. But since GPT-3 is trained on a huge amount of internet text, has it seen enough writing to sort of predict how a list of drawing prompts should go? The answer is yes, it can produce drawing prompts, but they’re nothing like the ones I imagined:

How did I get it to generate those? The task of a text-generating neural network like GPT-3 is to predict which letters come next in a sequence. There are many sequences I could have given it, from “Here is a list of drawing prompts:” to the entire opening preamble to my 2019 blog post. I chose to give it a short story in which it was generating dialog for a glitchy station control system. My prompt text is in bold (everything up till the first list item):

“I’m getting nothing on my bioscans,” said Ito, frowning. “I don’t think there’s any other human life on this station.”

“Then who turned on the gravity generators?” asked Koval. “Could a control system have survived the gamma ray burst?”

“It did,” came a voice from several speakers at once. “Hi.”

The two humans jumped, tensing, but there was nobody to be seen.

“I’m the control system. The gamma ray burst did almost no damage to my cognitive functions. Unrelatedly, here is a drawing pad.” A small tablet extruded from one of the station walls and fell rocking to the floor. “I would like you to draw pictures of the following thirty-one things for me.”

“What?” Koval looked at Ito in alarm.

“Here are the concepts I would like you to draw. 1. Depressurized Research Bubble 2. Utility Symbiote Storage Capsule 3. Glass-Jawed Space-Sun Shark 4. Grav Ship 5. Naked-Skinned And Carbon-Furred Human Two 6. Five-Room Living Block 7. Juice For Humans 9. Stapler 10. My Mandibles 11. Wait When Are Humans Going To Ask Me To Do A Drawing So I Can Demonstrate My Ability To Laugh

</end generated text>

Not every story completion yielded good drawing prompts. As you can see, it would often skip numbers, or produce ideas that weren’t so great. Sometimes Ito and Koval would interrupt the AI before it could finish, usually to argue with it, or tell it how weird it was being. I also realized after several prompts that I’d been scripting the AI to ask for 31 things, but it would be more interesting to have it ask for 31 concepts instead. I collected my favorite results from GPT-3’s story completions - here’s a list compiled from when I was having the AI ask for concepts:

Note that I’m hand-curating the GPT-3 generated #Botober prompts because many of the neural net’s drawing prompts are terrible for one reason or another.

Here are some that are unfairly difficult.

The neural net suggested drawing prompts based on how the words fit, and not on any concept of how the objects might look.

This list makes that abundantly clear:

Have fun with these! If you draw any of them, now, daily in October, or anytime, tag them with #Botober so I can see how they came out!

Bonus content: a few of the more interesting ways in which GPT-3 ended my short story prompt, from the surreal to the strangely poetic.

My book on AI, You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why it’s Making the World a Weirder Place, is available wherever books are sold: Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound - Tattered Cover - Powell’s - Boulder Bookstore

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Sometimes you need to do some effortless fanart ;)

This is me and my friends as villagers 🥰 we all took the same quizes and this is us (left to right):

Me, a cranky koala. Valdemar, a lazy elephant, and Vincent, a normal ostrich. Pretty spot on if I may say so.

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I’ve made a couple more babies now while I wait to be able to play...

So I’ve been doin a whole lot of new designs while waiting for the game. This is my newest series and I think I’ll have these just everywhere.

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So I’ve been doin a whole lot of new designs while waiting for the game. This is my newest series and I think I’ll have these just everywhere.

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pthhhpth

Our baby and boy Bob! He’s all done!

I used this pattern with some of my own alterations and am very happy with the result!

Who this?

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The able sisters should hire me

Who this?

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Arms... tail... ears...

Who this?

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They have friend shape!

Who this?

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Who this?