saphariadragon

[saphariadragon]

(Sound on.) Bonus clip today: Penguins navigating stairs.

[saphariadragon]

As someone who is a Paleonerd and with a background in animation I have thoughts on Walking With Dinosaurs 2025.

1. The designs were... Meh. They seemed to take inspiration for the T-Rex more from the movie monster side of things than actual animal and there was some minor shrinkwrapping. Not terrible but meh.

2. The lighting and texturing? That was kind of off the entire way through and especially egregious on the nighttime edmontasaurs. They looked plastic not scaled and the utahraptor's feathers were... Too blended/soft as in there wasn't enough texturing. Feathers tend to be shiny and the way they were catching the light was too fur like. Basically the lighting and the textures were in the uncanny valley for me.

3. The animation.... Oh Lord the animation. I will admit it got better in some of the later episodes but again, particularly bad in the first one with the triceratops, and the utahraptor's too. It was jerky, and just didn't feel right. It's almost as if they didn't do any squash or stretch or follow through or realistic exaggeration. Honestly it reminded me of earlier cgi where the models did not have the ability to be warped as needed to get nice animation. It kept knocking me out of immersion.

4. The weight and mass????? Where was it? Like the T-Rex in the first episode's dead azdarchid was stiff as a board. It didn't swing with the movement of the rex. Things kind of felt a little on the floaty side and they really didn't incorporate the animals into the environment that well. Hell even the filmed part of dinosaur, the animated movie from Disney from over 2 decades ago actually worked with the live action environment more.

5. Why didn't they get the original composer, who did offer, to come back?!?! Part of the reason the og was excellent was the music.

6. The storytelling... Was meh. I did not mind the paleontology sections(but then again I am probably an outlier) but the original WWD was known for it's storytelling. Taking time out of the story to justify every point was a bit irritating even if I found them interesting. Like seriously, let us immerse ourselves in the dinos and limit the paleontology interrupting to just when it's absolutely essential/maybe at the end.

7. Far too much focus on North America and the Cretaceous. Part of the cool thing about the original was that it featured a number of times and locations. I missed that.

8. A positive is that it was better than life on our planet and I enjoyed it overall.

9. I still enjoyed it because eff yeah paleomedia but at the same time I went back and watched prehistoric planet and went... Why...

10. Long story short it needed more care taken with the animation and storytelling and music. The pacing was off with the number of interruptions for paleontology. I did still enjoy it but it had some problems.

[saphariadragon]

Hello everybody!

I updated my pridesaur list and added some respectable entries for Intersex, Abrosecxual, Greysexual, agender and butch lesbian. I am proud to say we are at 21 dinos!!!

But I am still very much open for more suggestions, so if you find any fitting dino pun, that I have not covered yet, please feel free to let me know ^.^

My goal still remains to have the most inclusive prehistoric pride dinosaur collection out there, so feel free to help me out a bit with fun ideas ;D

Happy pride to y'all!

I also got all of them as stickers on my etsy shop, so if any of you feel like supporting my silly dino art, please come by:

my prehistoric pride stickers:

[saphariadragon]

The last days of the petition against conversion therapy are FASCINATING to watch. I have been following it pretty closely for almost a year now, and the progress was, above all, steady. There was this jump when some algorithm in Finland picked it up, but even that was local.

And now, everyone is panicking.

Which really shows.

These past three or four days, multiple countries have reached the threshold. Even more notably, the number of signatures in total, the ones that we need to get one million of, are growing rapidly. There are only 400'000 signatures missing. Two days ago, it was closer to 600'000.

You can see the progress here:

Consider joining the fun by making everyone around you sign it!

[saphariadragon]

[saphariadragon]

i was at a little park fest thing today and someone was there with their cats who were trained to hang out in a stroller?? like they were SO chill it was amazing. the cats were obviously enjoying themselves and were very well trained to stay right in or under their catmobile.

until, that is, i rolled up in my wheelchair and one of them turned and saw my vaguely stroller-like contraption and *immediately* jumped out of his cat-approved-stroller to climb around on my chair like OH WOW WHEN DID WE GET ANOTHER WHEELEY THING YAY! :D

i was like sir you are not supposed to be here and he just looked up at me like oh yes i am ! i must stay in wheeled contraption !!! and he was wearing a lil bowtie so i could not argue with him

[saphariadragon]

Last night in Nebraska's largest city, Omaha, 3 term Republican mayor Jean Stothert was up for re-election, in the final days of her re-election campaign she went all in on transphobia, with a TV add accusing her Democratic opponent, John Ewing, "Ewing stands with radicals who want to allow boys in girls’ sports,”

Ewing and the Democrats fought back

and last night?

Congratulations to Omaha on its first black mayor, and remember calling Republicans bathroom creepers remains undefeated.

[saphariadragon]

Having ADHD is so fun because sometimes youre looking for something that you use regularly and definitely put away in a smart and reasonable place and you have absolutely 0 hope of remembering where and finding it. And then other times ur like "hmm I need a some kind of small pointed object. I feel like i remember seeing a paperclip under the left couch cushion a month ago, i wonder if its still there" and it is

[saphariadragon]

[saphariadragon]

And the updates of the shitty kind keep coming.

While a bipartisan group of judges two weeks ago said no, the power grab that is taking the ability of the governor, who just so happens to be a Democrat, to appoint folks on the board of elections is unconstitutional to the state constitution,last week someone reversed it. A judge (Republican of course) that looked at the case went nah, this is cool and the state auditor(also Red party) started appointing people.

Aka the folks who would be looking into this Griffin kerfuffle some more.

On a more positive note, Pat McCrory who was the last Republican governor of NC denounced Griffin and his bs.

In which NC Republicans, who already have far more power than they should because of gerrymandering, are attempting to steal an election from a Democrat because she narrowly won(by 700 votes) it by making 65000 people from majority Democratic areas verify their ability to vote in 15 days.

Griffin is a sore loser and an idiot and Riggs won the NC supreme court seat fair and square. It has been verified. Now he's getting his cronies to try and overturn the rule of law and the will of the people.

The irony of this is not lost on me and does not bode well for him if he manages to nick this election.

Please check if you are on the griffin list here and verify to prevent the blatant disregard for voters rights.

[saphariadragon]

The state government fell for the classic tech bro grift; cryptocurrency.

The state reserve is now gonna be converted to cryptocurrency and I am just like welp. Such a good idea... Much smart... Wow

When the Republicans watch the state's money go poof it's gonna be the state employees who suffer and I hate it.

[saphariadragon]

I am super against light pollution, and have been for decades

but I am also super annoyed by the way it's framed as "without light pollution you can see how beautiful the night sky is" way more prominently than it's framed as "hey, did you ever stop to think of how much energy/resources/money are literally wasted by having so much light shine up into the sky?"

so people get the idea that light pollution can only be remedied by eliminating all night-time light, which would make being outside at night very inconvenient, instead of by making night-time light shine only on the ground where, y'know, the people who need it are

[saphariadragon]

My coworker decided she didn't want to go to Kimberly Akimbo so gifted the tickets to me.

My mum and I went and had a blast.

It's not one we would have chosen to go see without the tickets. But it was delightfully camp and cheesy with ridiculous characters you really only find in plays. Funny too. Legitimately the only slightly negative aspect was, while the songs were great in context with the show, none were particularly memorable.

Not like Hamilton or Wicked's sound track.

[saphariadragon]

Description: [A video of a woman riding a galloping horse bareback while holding a large rainbow flag.]