your new friendVault Dweller18+
229 posts
do it nya :3c
watch the trailer đź‘€
wishlist on steam âś…
u r done good job catgirl lovs u đź«¶đź’š
Hi everyone!
I wanted to let you know about the visual novel, On a First-Name Basis with the Dead, which I helped work on as the CG artist.
It's a urban fantasy following a gloomy necromancer who teams up with a cheery policewoman to solve the mystery behind a series of grave robberies, while learning about magic and possibly finding love along the way. Part 1 is currently available for free on Itch.io, with a 2nd part in the works! I hope you enjoy it if you decide to give it a read!
Requested by anon
UNBEATABLE
âś° More indie games you may have missed:
IndieGameLover @ Youtube
indiegamelover.com
Perhaps one of the biggest fish tragedies of all time is that tunas, the large, fast, powerful apex predators of the open ocean that have evolved to be perfectly hydrodynamic thanks to millions of years of evolution, with fins that can be retracted into grooves in the body for maximum smoothness, which can heat up their swimming muscles and brains and eyes to become even more efficient hunters, who are in fact several species of fish, the largest of which (Atlantic bluefin) can reach four meters in length and rivals the marlins in being the largest perciform fish.....
....are just kinda known as a food item by most people. Like cod, this animal should be a symbol of raw power and speed, not fish dinner time
My unactualised dream of having a doctor who themed metal band called The Cult of Skaro
In a world where motorcycles have grown as big and heavy as the ambitions behind them, Honda has tossed out a reminder that sometimes small is just right. The Honda Dax 125, set to hit U.S. shores for the 2025 model year, is a nod to the iconic 1969 CT70—a bike that carved out a special place in the hearts of American riders. The Honda Dax 125 Takes Fun to a New Level The Trail 70, with its…
May 9th, 1386: England and Portugal ratify their alliance with the Treaty of Windsor. It is the oldest diplomatic alliance still in force.
https://somniladon.itch.io/husker
My freshman indie dev project, Husker, is out and free to play on itch right now! Inspired by surreal explortion projects such as Yume Nikki and Garn47, Husker is a game about traversing deeper and deeper down surreal rabbit holes of a hollow univers.
I know the title sucks, I couldn't think of anything poetic or clever ok? Anyways, still catching up on croc papers to summarize and this one did make a few waves when it was published about a week ago.
"Expanded phylogeny elucidates Deinosuchus relationships, crocodylian osmoregulation and body-size evolution" is a new paper by Walter, Massonne, Paiva, Martin, Delfino and Rabi, with quite a few of these authors having considerable experience with crocodile research. The thesis of the study is both simple and unusual. They suggest that several crocodilians traditionally held as stem-alligators, namely Deinosuchus, Leidyosuchus and Diplocynodon, weren't alligatoroids at all. In fact, if the study holds up they might not have been true crocodilians.
Ok, lets take a step back and briefly look at our main three subjects. Deinosuchus of course needs no introduction, a titan of the Cretaceous also known as the terror crocodile in some more casual sources, its easily one of the most iconic fossil crocodiles. It lived on either side of the Western Interior Seaway during the Campanian, fed on giant turtles and dinosaurs and with size estimates of up to 12 meters its easily among the largest crocodylomorphs who have ever lived.
Artwork by Brian Engh
Leidyosuchus also lived during the Campanian in North America and I would argue is iconic in its own right, albeit in a different way. It's historic to say the least and once housed a whole plethora of species, but has recently fallen on hard times in the sense that most of said species have since then been transferred to the genus Borealosuchus.
Artwork by Joschua KnĂĽppe
Finally there's Diplocynodon, the quintessential croc of Cenozoic Europe. With around a dozen species found from the Paleocene to the Miocene all across Europe, it might be one of the most well studied fossil crocs there is, even if its less well known by the public due to its relatively unimpressive size range.
Artwork by Paleocreations
All three of these have traditionally been regarded as early members of the Alligatoroidea, one of the three main branches that form Crocodilia. In these older studies, Alligatoroidea can be broken up into three groups nested within one another. Obviously the crown is formed by the two living subfamilies, Alligatorinae and Caimaninae, both of which fall into the family Alligatoridae. If you take a step further out you get to the clade Globidonta, which in addition to proper Alligatorids also includes some basal forms with blunt cheek teeth as well as Orientalosuchina, tho jury's still out on whether or not they are truly alligator-relatives. And if you take a final step back and view Alligatoroidea as a whole, then you got our three main subjects neatly lined up outside of Globidonta in varying positions.
Below a highly simplified depiction of previous phylogenies. Deinosuchus, Leidyosuchus and Diplocynodon are often regarded as non-globidontan alligatoroids.
This new study however changes that long standing concensus. The team argues that several features we once thought defined alligatoroids are actually way more common across Crocodilia and even outside of it while also leverging some of the features of Deinosuchus and co. that have always been out of the ordinary. For instance, early alligatoroids are generally characterized as being comparably small, having had short, rounded heads, the afforementioned globular cheek teeth and of course the feature that still allows us to differentiate them from true crocodiles, the fact that they have a clear overbite. Now Leidyosuchus, Deinosuchus and Diplocynodon all have proportionally longer snouts than alligatoroids, their teeth interfinger like in crocodiles and most prominently (and namegiving for Diplocynodon) there is a large notch behind the snout tip that serves to receive two enlarged teeth of the lower jaw. These are of course just superficial examples, but if you wanna get into the nitty gritty check out the paper.
Below a simplified version of the papers phylogeny. Borealosuchus clades with Diplocynodon and Leidyosuchus and Deinosuchus are successive taxa. Planocraniidae are the sister to Crocodilia, which consists of Crocodyloids, Gavialoids (together Longirostres) and Alligatoroids.
Something also worth addressing in light of these results is salt tolerance in crocodilians and paleogeography. Basically, if you ignore Deinosuchus and co. (or well, just follow this new paper), then it is most likely that alligatoroids originated on the continent of Laramidia, i.e. the western half of America back when it was bisected by an enormous inland sea. Today, alligatoroids are famously intolerant of saltwater, yes, there are instances where alligators have been known to enter coastal waters, but its a far cry from what true crocodiles can achieve (just an example here's my recent post on Caribbean crocodiles). Given that alligatoroids don't appear on Appalachia, the other half of North America, until after the inland sea closes, this very much suggest that this intolerance goes way back. This has however always been at odds with Deinosuchus, which famously showed up along both the eastern and the western coast of the inland sea and at least lived close enough to the coast to leave its mark on the shells of sea turtles. We know it inhabited various near-shore environments and even stable isotope analysis of its teeth points towards it consuming either saltwater or prey that lives in the ocean. To a lesser degree its worth mentioning Diplocynodon, which though usually a freshwater animal has at least one species from coastal deposits. Now I do think its worth highlighting that just being salt tolerant doesn't necessarily mean they can't have been alligatoroids, given that salt glands could have easily been lost after Deinosuchus split off from other alligatoroids. Nevertheless, a position as a stem-crocodilian does add up with it being salt tolerant, with the assumption being that being tolerant to saltwater is basal to crocodilians as a whole and was simply lost in a select few lineages such as alligatoroids.
Given that its range spanned both coastlines of the Western Interior Seaway as well as direct evidence for interactions with marine life, Deinosuchus likely ventured out into the sea from time to time like some modern crocodiles.
There's also the matter of timing. When alligatoroids first appeared 82 million years ago, we already see the classic blunt-snouted morphotype with Brachychampsa and our dear giant Deinosuchus. Now if both were alligatoroids, this would suggest that they've been separate quite some time before that to bring forth these drastically different forms, yet attempts to estimate the divergence date suggest that they split no earlier than 90 million years ago. So if Deinosuchus is not an alligatoroid, then the timeline adds up a bit better. However I think the best example of this new topology really explaining an evolutionary mystery doesn't come from Deinosuchus, but from Diplocynodon. Those that know me might remember that I started working on researching Diplocynodon for Wikipedia, a process that's been slow and painfull both due to the 200 years of research history and the good dozen or so species placed in this genus. Tangent aside, one big mystery around Diplocynodon is its origin. They first appear in the Paleocene and survive till the Miocene, tend to stick to freshwater and oh yeah, species of this genus are endemic to Europe. Given that previous studies recovered them as alligatoroids, nobody was quite sure where Diplocynodon came from. Did they originate in North America and cross the Atlantic? Where they salt tolerant before and simply stuck to freshwater once in Europe? Or are they a much older alligatoroid lineage that entered Europe via Asia after having crossed Beringia. You know, the kind of headbreaking stuff we get when the fossil record is incomplete. But this new study recovers Diplocynodon as being closely related to the non-crocodilian Borealosuchus from the Cretaceous to Paleogene of North America. And that makes some sense, historically the two have been noted to be similar, hell there were even cases when Borealosuchus remains were thought to be North American examples of Diplocynodon. And Borealosuchus has the same double caniniforms as the other crocs we discussed so far. So when our three former alligatoroids got pushed outside of Crocodilia, Diplocynodon ended up forming a clade with Borealosuchus. And since Borealosuchus was wide spread in America by the late Cretaceous, and possibly salt tolerant, then it could have easily spread across Greenland and Scandinavia after the impact, giving rise to Diplocynodon.
The results of this study seem to suggest that Borealosuchus and Diplocynodon are more closely related that previously thought.
And since this is a Deinosuchus paper...of course theres discussion about its size. A point raised by the authors is that previous estimates typically employ the length of the skull or lower jaw to estimate body length, which might not be ideal and is something I definitely agree with. The problem is that skull length can vary DRASTICALLY. Some animals like early alligatoroids have very short skulls, but then you have animals in gharials in which the snout is highly elongated in connection to their ecology. Given that Deinosuchus has a relatively long snout compared to early alligatoroids, size estimates based on this might very well overestimate its length, while the team argues that head width would yield a more reasonable results. Previous size estimates have ranged from as low as 8 meters to as large as 12, which generally made it the largest croc to have ever existed. Now in addition to using head width, the team furthermote made use of whats known as the phylgenetic approach, which essentially bypasses the problem of a single modern analogue with peculariar proportions influencing the result. Now there is a bunch more that went into the conclusion, but ultimately the authors conclude that in their opinion, the most likely length for the studied Deinosuchus riograndensis specimen was a mere 7.66 meters in total length. And before you jump to any conclusions, DEINOSUCHUS WOULD HAVE GOTTEN BIGGER TRUST ME. I know having read "12 meter upper estimate" earlier is quite a contrast with the resulting 7.66 meters, but keep in mind this latter estimate is just one specimen. A specimen that in previous studies was estimated to have grown to a length of somewhere between 8.4 - 9.8 meters. Now yes, this is still a downsize overall, but also given that this specimen is far from the largest Deinosuchus we have, this means that other individuals would have certainly grown larger. Maybe not those mythical 12 meters, but still very large. So please keep that in mind.
Two different interpretations of the same specimen of Deinosuchus. Top a proportionally larger-headed reconstruction by randomdinos, bottom a smaller-headed reconstruction by Fadeno. I do not care to weigh in on the debate other than to say that size tends to fluctuate a lot between studies and that I'm sure this won't be the last up or downsize we see.
Regardless of the details, this would put Deinosuchus in the "giant" size category of 7+ meters, while early alligatoroids generally fall into the small (<1.5 meters) or medium (1.5-4 meters) size categories. The authors make an interesting observation relating to gigantism in crocs at this point in the paper. Prevously, temperature and lifestyle were considered important factors in crocs obtaining such large sizes, but the team adds to that the overall nature of the available ecosystem. In the case of Deinosuchus, it inhabited enormous coastal wetlands under favorable temperature conditions and with abundant large sized prey, a perfect combination for an animal to grow to an enormous size. And this appears to be a repeated pattern that is so common its pretty much regarded as a constant. To quote the authors, "a world with enormous crocodyliforms may have been rather the norm than the exception in the last ~ 130 million years." For other examples look no further than the Miocene of South America, the extensive wetlands of Cretaceous North Africa or even Pleistocene Kenya.
One striking example for repeated gigantism in crocodilians can be found in Miocene South America, when the caimans Purussaurus and Mourasuchus both independently reached large sizes alongside the gharial Gryposcuhus. The illustration below by Joschua KnĂĽppe features some of the smaller earlier members of these species in the Pebas Megawetlands.
So that's it then, case closed. Deinosuchus and co aren't salt-tolerant alligators, they are stem-crocodilians. Deinosuchus was smaller than previously thought and Diplocynodon diverged from Borealosuchus. Leidyosuchus is also there. It all adds up, right? Well not quite. This all is a massive upheaval from what has previously been accepted and while there were outliers before, the alligatoroid affinities of these animals were the concensus for a long time. Future studies will need to repeat the process, analyse the data and the anatomical features and replicate the results before we can be sure that this isn't just a surprisingly logical outlier. Already I heard some doubts from croc researchers, so time will tell if Deinosuchus truly was some ancient crocodilian-cousin or if previous researchers were correct in considering it a stem-alligator. I for one will keep my eyes peeled.
Hwiccewyrm trispiculum lived during the late Triassic, around 208-202 million years ago, in what is now England. It was one of the last known members of the procolophonid family, a lineage of small stocky lizard-like animals that had been widespread and abundant earlier in the Triassic.
(Traditionally procolophonids are classified as parareptiles, but some recent studies suggest this group is paraphyletic or polyphyletic, with some "parareptiles" potentially nesting within the diapsids instead.)
Measuring around 30cm long (~1'), Hwiccewyrm had wide flaring cheek bones ornamented with large spines, and like some other procolophonids it may also have had bony scute armor on its body. Its large blunt teeth suggest it was feeding on particularly tough foods such as fibrous vegetation or hard-shelled invertebrates.
———
NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon
References:
Butler, Richard J., et al. "Hwiccewyrm trispiculum gen. et sp. nov., a new leptopleuronine procolophonid from the Late Triassic of southwest England." The Anatomical Record 307.4 (2024): 1390-1420. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.25316
Meade, Luke E., et al. "A new procolophonid with complex dentition from the Late Triassic of southwest England." Papers in Palaeontology 10.6 (2024): e1605. https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.1605
Merck, John. "The Reptilian Stem - A Work in Progress" University of Maryland GEOL 431 Vertebrate Paleobiology, 2025, https://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/geol431/lectures/17sauropsida.html
Wikipedia contributors. “Hwiccewyrm” Wikipedia, 20 Mar. 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwiccewyrm
Wikipedia contributors. “Parareptilia” Wikipedia, 04 Apr. 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parareptilia
“Say it before you run out of time. Say it before it’s too late. Say what you’re feeling. Waiting is a mistake.”
— Unknown
Taiki Yokochi De FREEDOM
There are four types of fish scales!
Cycloid scales are thin, overlap, and flexible. They're found on primitive teleosts (like minnows and carp).
Ctenoid scales have small, backwards pointed scales (known as cterns) make the fish more hydrodynamic and faster. They're found on Advanced Ctenoids (like perch and sunfish).
Ganoid scales are thick, diamond-shaped, and mostly non-overlapping. They're found on Chondrostei (like sturgeons and paddlefish).
Placoid scales are spikey and tooth-like with nerves. These are found on Chondrichthyes (like sharks and rays).
Ichthyology Notes 3/?
kuguri sashi tutorial by guccciclone on instagram
sashiko is such an interesting japanese technique for mending clothes! I still have yet to try it yet I want to one day!
Here we are with another part of music genre stamps. Just like the goth stamps i made, its a "my favorite genre is in this stamp" + aesthetic stamp combo.
Punk genres listed for this batch, because theres so many punk genres
Anarcho-Punk (i.e. Crass, Rudimentary Peni, The Mob, Lost Cherrees)
Celtic Punk - punk + celtic music (i.e. Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly)
Chain Punk - from the meme involving "chain vs egg punk". Has more hardcore punk roots, aggressive
Egg punk - from the meme involving "chain vs egg punk". Quite similar to synth punk due to usage of synths.
Crust punk (i.e. Nausea, Axegrinder, Doom, Deviated Instinct. Aus Rotten)
D-Beat - artwork inspired by those "d beat album covers that has band members censored eyes". Bands like Discharge (where the genre name is from), Anti Cimex, Driller Killer
Emo/Emotional Hardcore (more focused on bands like Rites of Spring, American Football, Jimmy Eat World, and all of those stuff. I'll try to make a different emo stamp for the likes of MCR, Fall Out Boy, and Paramore)
Folk Punk (i.e. Pat the Bunny, Days n Daze, Mischief Brew)
Grindcore - even it's more related to metal. I decided to include here since it was rooted from hardcore punk. Example bands: Napalm Death, Extreme Noise Terror
Digital Hardcore - electronic music + hardcore punk. Some mostly use guitars (i.e. Rabbit Junk) and some will have mostly electronic sounds than guitar (i.e. Machine Girl). Decided to have more cyberpunk aesthetic for this, 'cause it sounds like stuff you play in middle of a fight in a cyberpunk world
Hardcore Punk - apparently "hardcore" can mean different music genres (Beatdown hardcore is one of it but theres also hardcore techno), but lets focus on the punk. Bands like Bad Brains, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and Minor Threat.
Horror Punk - spooky punk music. (i.e. Blitzkid, Misfits, Calabrese)
Oi! (i.e. Oi Polloi, Angelic Upstarts, Camera Silens)
Punk Rock - supposedly for the classic punk rock sound but stamp can be used for punk rock in general. Example bands: The Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols
Ska punk (i.e. Operation Ivy, Less than Jake, Against all Authority)
Skate Punk - something you have heard on Tony Hawk pro skater games. Anyway... bands like NOFX, Suicidal Tendencies (also metal), Pennywise
Street Punk (i.e. GBH, Varukers, UK Subs)
Synth Punk (i.e the Screamers, Suicide, Devo)
feel free to use it to your personal page, carrd, neocities, strawpage, toyhouse, sheezy, deviantart, etc. No need to credit when using the stamps (like putting html embeds and stuff) but linking any of my pages is appreciated when reposted, reblog, or reupload on different places.
đź“·: Travis Gauthier
neolithic inhabitant of the andean plateau: hmm i wonder if there are any good edible tubers growing around here
the humble potato:
fuck i need to restud my jacket soon
For Patreon subscribers at ÂŁ11+, an Auguste angst story set after the end of Creme de la Creme!
Find all 19 bonus stories here and see the current list below:
Interactive stories
Silk Handkerchief (Asher Garnett POV: a terrible afternoon tea)
Grey Jacket (Javi del Quiros: readying to leave Zaledo)
Tizari Square (Auguste Renaldt, MC POV: a visit to Jezhan, friendship or romance)
Shiny Shoes (Hartmann, MC POV: stress at Gessner, friendship or romance)
Background POV stories
Tomi Danelak, 1755: meeting Pascha for the first time
Fiore Roldan, 1752: a holiday with Jaime gone wrong
Matia Frasada, 1748: an ill-fated expedition
Varenn Korzha, 1754: an unwanted letter
Raffi Claudian, 1759: meeting exciting new friends
Savarel Lopes, 1760: a bad time on leave
Story Prompts (MC POV)
Auguste/MC & Holding Hands
Beaumont/MC & Waking Up Together
Denario/MC/Savarel & Eyes Meet
Fiore/MC/Savarel & Too Hot
Hartmann/MC & Cooking
Raffi/MC & Stargazing
Rys/MC & Coffee Shop
Other stories
Florin Kraemer, 1757 - Wartime AU: a new arrival in the trenches
Cezara Dalca, 1754Â - Gallatin teacher triad story (F/M/M, first-time, explicit)
hello would you consider making a tutorial for diy pins :)
Yes yes i can, i have some stuff goin on today but i think ill have time later in the afternoon (at least in my time itll be afternoon) so later today ill try and put it out
I was asked to show how i make pins so this is what i do to make a pin from shit around my house. If youre a can tab collector like me, you’ll like this one too. (Ps, in the photo above, mine are a lil scuffed because i wear these on my every day jacket so that can happen too so beware)
1.) Use your pliers to flatten down two of the back edges of the bottle cap, if you wanna keep the design upright, do this on either side of the design on your cap.
2.) Bend your can tab slightly in half, very slightly, not too tall.
3.) slide your can tab into the back of the bottle cap vertically, the bent edges should be on the left and right of your tab.
4.) Slide your safety pin with the pin/pointy side facing up into the can tab with either end of the safety pin nesting in the flattened edges from before, you can do this through that middle rung on the tab if you want, i never do.
5.) bend all the edges of your cap down and around the tab in the middle, you can sorta control the shape here if you choose to. Also beware that this might scuff up the front, it typically does for me
6.) Now you have a pin, at this point you can glue it for extra hold on the can tab or the back of the safety pin if you want or you can design the front of the pin with paint or markers, id imagine you could even print a design to glue onto the front if you want a pin with a certain photo but ive never tried it personally.
After that youre done and have the ability to make pins with anything you want on them now !
Sounbchbob
He’s so cool
I'm not going anywhere for the foreseeable future (I enjoy it here! I like being able to receive and answer asks very easily, and keep up with the blogs I follow!), but if you want to cover all your bases, you can find me at:
Bluesky (hpowellsmith)
Patreon (hpowellsmith) (you can subscribe for free to be emailed when I make public posts; I don't have a newsletter yet, but this is the closest thing to it at the moment)
My website (hpowellsmith.com) (you can keep up with the blog by entering the url of my blog into an RSS reader)
itchio (hpowellsmith)
The Choice of Games forum (HarrisPS)
"you have to buy switch 2 games, don't you think the workers deserve to be paid?" that's not how that works. that's not how any of this works. you dumb motherfucker. they get a salary. they don't get royalties
I just finished How To Ru(i)n A Record Label, Larry Livermore’s first-hand account of the rise and fall of legendary East Bay punk label Lookout Records, which he cofounded and, among many other bands, gave the world Green Day.
I’m not a massive nonfiction fan, but Livermore’s voice and brutally honest accounts of major and minor events made this a great read, not just for fans of pop punk music, but those who like a good story well told.
I was introduced to Lookout Records by my roommate at the start of my freshman year of college when he loaned me Energy by Operation Ivy. I couldn’t stop listening to it. It was my gateway to Green Day, Screeching Weasel, Mr. T Experience, Pansy Division, and so many more awesome bands.
I loved Lookout’s releases so much, it became one of two labels from which I would buy a new release even of I didn’t know the band. The other was 4AD, home of the Pixies.
And my love of the East Bay pop punk sound led to me see Green Day play a small club in Richmond, VA about a year before they signed with a major label. The second time I saw Green Day was last year at SoFi Stadium in L.A. Quite the change.
(It’s also worth mentioning Richmond, VA’s own Avail became one of the few non-East Bay bands on Lookout.)
Anyway, if you’re a music fan, an old punk, or just like a good memoir about a historic moment in music created by a handful of outcasts and misfits, check out the book.
“Be with someone who will take care of you. Not materialistically, but take care of your soul, your well being, your heart.”
— Unknown