Category: Uncategorized

A Dinosaur A Day, Tumblr, and the Future

a-dinosaur-a-day:

Things are Changing on ADAD

This blog is coming up on its 5 year anniversary, which naturally means I want to change everything about it. I’m kidding, of course, but we are going to have some big changes in the new year (2019). First, let me go over the purpose of this blog:

ADAD has Four Primary Goals:

  1. To be an encyclopedia that covers every. Single. Dinosaur. In current scientific thought, we classify animals based on their ancestry (so, common descent). Dinosaurs are defined by the first two animals ever dug up as fossils and called dinosaurs – Iguanodon and Megalosaurus. This means that Dinosaurs are the most recent common ancestor of Iguanodon and Megalosaurus (the last ancestor they had in common) (also of Diplodocus but let’s not get into that today), and all that ancestor’s descendants. 

    If you want to picture it a different way: your grandparents are the most recent common ancestor of you and your cousin. Now, you both also have your great-grandparents as ancestors, but they aren’t your most recent common ancestor. Furthermore, when you have kids, they’ll still be a part of that family group, even though they’re a new generation. 

    This group includes birds, because birds evolved from dinosaurs (the evidence is substantial). This means that birds are dinosaurs, and I have to cover every bird. 

    This is actually a novel goal – most dinosaur encyclopedias only cover the dinosaurs as we classically defined them, or all dinosaurs that lived in the Mesozoic (which includes some birdy dinosaurs since birds evolved in the Mesozoic, the “age of reptiles”). And most bird encyclopedias don’t cover extinct ones to any extensive degree. And there certainly isn’t an encyclopedia that covers both (apart from, well, regular encyclopedias). So, one of the main goals of ADAD is to cover birds as well as non-avian (not-bird) dinosaurs (and their closest relatives). 

  2. To be an encyclopedia that is accessible for all readers. So many scientific blogs and other resources use fairly complicated language and bad formatting. I try to make my articles with the simplest language possible, while still making it interesting and fun for all readers of all levels. Still, this is a place where we have to grow, especially since the head author (Meig) and all the other members of the ADAD team have their own accessibility issues to grapple with. This encyclopedia also allows scientific knowledge to reach groups that are typically disenfranchised by traditional education (such as those with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community, women, and people of color). We have actually conducted statistical studies on this and the results are promising! We are making a difference, though we have a lot of room to grow. 

  3. To bring fun to scientific education. Memes, silly posts, silly competitions, jokes, rants, all of these are fair game on ADAD, because meme culture makes learning fun, at least, and it keeps things interesting. Plus, taking things seriously is against my programming. 

  4. FLUFF. Recent discoveries have indicated that many dinosaurs had feathers or almost-feather covering on some or most of their bodies – especially the closer you get to birds on the dinosaur family tree. However, paleoart (art of prehistoric life) is slow on the uptake when it comes to new discovery, and people still tend to lean on the scaly side for dinosaurs – even to the point of being wrong. As such, a major purpose of this blog is to lean on the feathery side instead! Sometimes this means being accurate where others are not, and sometimes this means representing dinosaurs in ways that are implausible. We never, however, represent dinosaurs more fluffy than is possible, so none of these reconstructions are inaccurate. We just fill a void in how dinosaurs are represented, to help bring balance to the images of dinosaurs on the internet. 

Tumblr was the correct platform for this blog to exist on, primarily due to happenstance (how I got the url in the first place was sheer dumb luck), but also due to the ability of the platform to bring dinosaurs to people who don’t usually have access to science, in combination with fun memes and jokes as is typical on the site. It also allowed for some leeway for the earliest days of the blog when it came to images – I credited every piece of art I used, but I didn’t have to ask for permission in most cases, allowing me to have images for articles where otherwise I wouldn’t have had anything to accompany the text.

So, this leaves ADAD with some current problems:

  1. There are about two years’ worth of entries that need updated art, made by the people I pay, that I have permission to use, that are also as fluffy as the blog requires. Unfortunately, the artists do not have time to update these entries, because there is very little being brought in from the Patreon and already scheduled entries every day. 

  2. Leaving New Users Behind. Because I go by order of evolutionary relationship, I have finished non-avian dinosaurs, so anyone new following is literally in the middle of Bird Hell. I could do throwbacks, of course, but it’s not quite the same, and I can’t throw back to those posts that don’t have art (so everything from the first two years of ADAD; I’ve only had the Patreon for three years. Oh my Gd. Three years. What is time.) 

  3. New Discoveries. Because of the complete and utter inflexibility of the current schedule (evolutionary order + weird special weeks = I can’t shift the schedule around easily), we haven’t covered newly discovered dinosaurs in a shameful amount of time. And that sucks! Because they’re super cool! 

  4. Stagnation. Going in taxonomic order means that yeah, we get a bunch of cool dinosaurs that are all related in a row, but also every, single, crappy, dinosaur, from, that, group, that, isn’t, different, from, the, previous, one, at, all. And this is boring – for me to write, for the artists to draw, and for you guys to read. 

  5. The sheer multitude of birds. This kind of ties in to 2 and 4, but for every non-avian dinosaur there are 2.26 times as many birds (in terms of genus. It’s actually even more than that, but, I’m not doing it by species, so). This is insane. This is literally insane. But I’m not backing down on goal one, so… 

  6. Tumblr is Terrible. Over a year ago, it made it so that posts with external links (such as those for my patreon and ko-fi, you know, funds I need to live; as well as my sources for my information) don’t show up in search results. This means that the blog has stagnated in terms of follower growth. This is bad enough, but now the website is probably going to go kaput because of all this NSFW crap going on, so if anything we’ll be losing readers.

So what is our solution?

ADAD is starting over in the new year, and with a different organization system.

This might seem crazy – there are 12 years worth of dinosaurs total – but there are a lot of reasons to do this.

  1. This will allow us to bring variety to the blog
  2. This will allow new users to see non-avian dinosaurs
  3. This will allow us to update old entries in terms of written content and the art
  4. This will allow us to finally do new dinosaurs
  5. I will start over on Tumblr, and start completely on WordPress, so if Tumblr implodes I still have the blog somewhere else, and I can start to grow the community more elsewhere in addition to Tumblr. I WILL stay on Tumblr as long as it exists, but this gives me an exit strategy if it implodes.

The wordpress blog will be ADAD sans memes, but it will bring in a new audience, more recognition, and hopefully more Patreon money, so the blog can grow further! Also, restarting will allow me to change the format of the posts, which will make them more accessible and hopefully show up in the Tumblr search results.

I’m not bitter, you’re bitter. 

So, on January 1, 2019, we’re starting again!

What’s the new organization system?

Random, with themes for each day of the week.

This gives us flexibility in the schedule – to break up monotony, help us maintain our workload easier, and add in new taxa to the schedule. It also allows for us to regulate it so that there are a healthy mix of birds and not-birds every week.

What are the daily themes?

Mesozoic Monday – Dinosaurs from the Mesozoic

Terrestrial Tuesday – Dinosaurs that mainly make their living on the ground

Water Wednesday – Dinosaurs that mainly make their living in the water or near water

Theropod Thursday – Theropods: meat eating dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor, also birds of prey

Flying Friday – Dinosaurs that can fly!

Songbird Saturday & Sunday – Passerines, which by species make up half of dinosaur diversity

This will give us a very nice mixture of nonavian and avian dinosaurs every week, as well as interesting diversity and differences between each one. This will help us to mix up living and extinct animals, long and short entries, things we can just copy over from ADAD’s first run and things we have to write from scratch. There can even be theme weeks! And requests can come back! Random doesn’t just mean random number generator, it also means we can change things to our fancy if we want or need to.

So, we hope all of these changes will solve many of the problems that ADAD faces. We have read your responses to the survey, and we hear you – we think this solution will solve everyone’s complaints and help us go forward into the future in a better way.

If you have concerns, don’t hesitate to contact us via FanMail (yup, it still exists) or an ask. We recognize this means ADAD will go on for many more years – but let’s be real, because of new discoveries, that was going to happen anyway.

Thank you all for your understanding! We’re really excited about this change, and we hope you all will enjoy it!

prokopetz:

Basically, I think life-sim RPGs that span multiple years of in game time should have older protagonists for plausibility reasons. If you’re in your thirties, looking exactly the same after four or five years isn’t especially remarkable, but if you’re asking me to believe that the protagonist looks exactly the same at age twenty as she did at age fourteen, I can only suspend my disbelief so far!

theassortment:

theassortment:

The Three Minibot Musketeers (Cliffjumper, Gears, Brawn; Various Transformers Series; Hasbro; 1984-2009)

[From my personal Transformers movie-verse.] These three Autobots tracked Megatron to Earth independently of Prime’s team. They touched down in the Death Valley area and operate undercover, silently tracking Decepticon activity as it is found.

Cliffjumper: Tracker/Gunner. Deserted Cybertron years ago, disgusted with the ruin of his world. Detests the Prime lineage, but loyal to Autobots – suspicious of other mechanoids. An expert tracker and pursuer. Gravity enhancers in feet and wheels let him walk/drive on walls, ceilings; hover cells float him over difficult terrain. Slashes enemies with nanotech “poison” blade, then charges 3-stage plasma cannon to maximum and obliterates what’s left of their armor. Difficult to ease into social situations; not physically very durable.

Gears: Close-quarters combat/transport. A former Decepticon gladiator and supply operator. Defected, met Cliffjumper and convinced him to go off-world. Knowledgable of Cybertronian armor, weak points; exploits them in melee combat.  Is best in narrow corridors and bottlenecks. Projects hard-light bubble up to 5 feet; dispels the shield explosively. Energy efficient: carries up to a week of Energon supplies in truck mode. Not useful in open-field or long-range combat. Light shield ability typically takes a full day to recharge. Friendly, but resentful of mainline Autobots for failing to recognize his defection. 

Brawn: Gunner/Explorer. An old friend of Cliffjumper’s. Was eager to leave Cybertron after the destruction of many of its natural landmarks.  Doesn’t trust authority figures. Loves rugged Earth terrain. Drives up stairs, through forests, over mountains. Winch pulls him into unlikely situations; sometimes traps himself on purpose. “Anyone seen Brawn?” Cliffjumper says. In combat, the ying to Gears’ yang. Pours on the heat, then pours on more. Programs back-mounted machine gun with combat details, then lets it do the firing while he scatters enemies with blasts of pure force from twin kinetic pistols. Stubborn: Refuses help when stuck in awkward situations. Not useful in combat when ammo runs out.

I kept these three figures over the years mostly because of my little head-canon for them.

Source: theassortment

justsomeantifas:

fullhalalalchemist:

 Lobbyists are pushing a bill that would be super bad for copyright. Think SOPA and Article 13 + 11 meshed together. Like THAT bad.

It’s called H.R. 1695/S.1010, and what it would do is allow the president to appoint who will be the next Register of Copyrights. Right now that office is under the control of the Library of Congress. It’s a non-political position. But Hollywood has been lobbying hard to get this into a political position.

Whoever Trump picks is obviously going to be someone who bows to the whims of Hollywood and pushes for things like website blocking, upload filters, etc. It’s bad. It’s like BAD bad.

Anyway, it’s heading into a Senate committee meeting on December 12. I’m not going to lie, it looks dire. BUT it hasn’t passed the committee yet so it’s not headed to the Senate yet so I mean idk, let’s TRY to at least get them to not pass this law?

Dial
1-916-823-9612 and enter your zip code to call your Senators and ask
they stop this legislation before a crucial committee vote.

You can email your representative’s here.

However, calling is the most effective.

prokopetz:

It really entertains me watching all these people who’ve come to my blog via vent posts I’ve written about leftist shenanigans, assuming that I’m some sort of crypto-fascist and insisting that those anecdotes must be made up because no real person could possibly have their head that far up their own arse.

Like, buddy, in terms of my actual political beliefs I’m about two hairs shy of being a full-on anarchocommunist. And I’m actually kind of curious where y’all are living, because if there’s a world out there where the political left isn’t rife with crypto-authoritarian dimwits with a worrying enthusiasm for discussing what things – and what people – will have to be Sacrificed For The Cause™, I want to live there too!

Like, I have had long conversations with people who think we should stop medicating mental illnesses because palliating the symptoms of a diseased society is counterrevolutionary.

Just the other day I had the privilege of hearing from a dude whose big, world-saving plan was to abolish all remote and rural communities in order to make it easier to plan bus routes.

And don’t even get me started on the fucking Leninists – like, you do realise you’re claiming the Holodomor never happened in front of a guy who lost half his family tree to it, right?

Does it seem like it comes up rather a lot? Well, yeah – because this is the only community where I can vent about it and people will have the slightest clue what the fuck I’m talking about. Can you imagine trying to take this particular constellation of grievances to Facebook?