Seth Finnegan
@sethf.bsky.social
Marine paleobiologist & geologist @ UC Berkeley Integrative Biology & UC Museum of Paleontology
I have an honorable compromise
September 28, 2025 at 3:50 AM
I have an honorable compromise
Was searching family tree images to illustrate a point in a lecture and came across this (AI-generated?) genealogy, which...um...yikes😬
August 30, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Was searching family tree images to illustrate a point in a lecture and came across this (AI-generated?) genealogy, which...um...yikes😬
Incredible example of how AI is destroying Google search: working on a paper on mollusk shell assemblages in Panama so I tried to search for the classic paper on the left (which I know about because I was a field assistant). Instead Google AI hallucinated a completely fictional architectural firm.
June 12, 2025 at 4:47 PM
Incredible example of how AI is destroying Google search: working on a paper on mollusk shell assemblages in Panama so I tried to search for the classic paper on the left (which I know about because I was a field assistant). Instead Google AI hallucinated a completely fictional architectural firm.
It really is amazing -I just left it on for an hour in my screened-in office here in Panama, and even with only about half the local avifauna in its database it recorded 34 species
-more than can actually be shown here
-more than can actually be shown here
June 9, 2025 at 3:16 PM
It really is amazing -I just left it on for an hour in my screened-in office here in Panama, and even with only about half the local avifauna in its database it recorded 34 species
-more than can actually be shown here
-more than can actually be shown here
New molluscan phylogeny just dropped, thanks to the amazing evolutionary insights of Google AI
June 8, 2025 at 1:32 PM
New molluscan phylogeny just dropped, thanks to the amazing evolutionary insights of Google AI
I'm not sure I know that site —where is it? This is from Gatun Formation (Late Miocene) cuts next to a housing development in Cativa, near Colon. They make bedforms in places!
April 21, 2025 at 12:37 PM
I'm not sure I know that site —where is it? This is from Gatun Formation (Late Miocene) cuts next to a housing development in Cativa, near Colon. They make bedforms in places!
Hold on while I photoshop a vest onto palpatine
April 20, 2025 at 6:45 PM
Hold on while I photoshop a vest onto palpatine
Yellow-rumped cacique vocalizing from somewhere near my office –really wish this made me think of something other than R2-D2. (sound up)
April 20, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Yellow-rumped cacique vocalizing from somewhere near my office –really wish this made me think of something other than R2-D2. (sound up)
Biggest yard iguana I have seen yet –must have been close to 2 meters from head to tail
April 20, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Biggest yard iguana I have seen yet –must have been close to 2 meters from head to tail
I'll admit its disorienting and disconcerting to be in a place with literally no Paleozoic rock, but the Neogene has its own special charms (like less time spent squinting at cooked limestones thinking "wtf even is that thing?")
April 20, 2025 at 4:28 PM
I'll admit its disorienting and disconcerting to be in a place with literally no Paleozoic rock, but the Neogene has its own special charms (like less time spent squinting at cooked limestones thinking "wtf even is that thing?")
Until June 20th, then I come back to confront the brutal realities of 2025 in the U.S. Have you ever been down here? Good snail country…
April 20, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Until June 20th, then I come back to confront the brutal realities of 2025 in the U.S. Have you ever been down here? Good snail country…
Morning scrum at the hummingbird feeder –some great examples here of frame rate aliasing, the same effect that makes fast-moving wheels and helicopter rotors look like they are turning slowly and/or in reverse.
April 20, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Morning scrum at the hummingbird feeder –some great examples here of frame rate aliasing, the same effect that makes fast-moving wheels and helicopter rotors look like they are turning slowly and/or in reverse.
Bonus points for also indirectly referencing this
April 18, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Bonus points for also indirectly referencing this
Noted without comment
April 16, 2025 at 12:54 AM
Noted without comment
Just walk away. Give me your pickles, the olives, the kimchi, and the whole compound, and I'll spare your lives. Just walk away. I will give you safe passage in the wasteland. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror.
April 3, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Just walk away. Give me your pickles, the olives, the kimchi, and the whole compound, and I'll spare your lives. Just walk away. I will give you safe passage in the wasteland. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror.
Things are awful right now but I'm on sabbatical in Panama (I know) at the federally-funded Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (I know) gearing up for an NSF-funded project (I know) and am determined to take solace in the biodiversity, so here's a green honeycreeper that has claimed our feeder.
February 5, 2025 at 2:58 AM
Things are awful right now but I'm on sabbatical in Panama (I know) at the federally-funded Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (I know) gearing up for an NSF-funded project (I know) and am determined to take solace in the biodiversity, so here's a green honeycreeper that has claimed our feeder.
Love this glyptodont reconstruction in the excellent Tokushima Prefectural Museum — it’s the first one I’ve seen that manages to capture the very specific derpy look of an actual armadillo
January 26, 2025 at 11:49 PM
Love this glyptodont reconstruction in the excellent Tokushima Prefectural Museum — it’s the first one I’ve seen that manages to capture the very specific derpy look of an actual armadillo
Literal moment of Zen (Ryoan-ji Zen Buddhist temple, Kyoto)
January 14, 2025 at 12:11 AM
Literal moment of Zen (Ryoan-ji Zen Buddhist temple, Kyoto)
A new life awaits me in the Off-world colonies
January 11, 2025 at 10:53 PM
A new life awaits me in the Off-world colonies
Some pictures from a few days in the (currently very damp) Russian River valley north of San Francisco
January 4, 2025 at 8:43 PM
Some pictures from a few days in the (currently very damp) Russian River valley north of San Francisco
TIL that, like some of their
chelicerate relatives, pycnogonids fluoresce under UV! Turns out there are far more of them hanging out in the intertidal than I had realized before.
chelicerate relatives, pycnogonids fluoresce under UV! Turns out there are far more of them hanging out in the intertidal than I had realized before.
January 2, 2025 at 5:27 PM
TIL that, like some of their
chelicerate relatives, pycnogonids fluoresce under UV! Turns out there are far more of them hanging out in the intertidal than I had realized before.
chelicerate relatives, pycnogonids fluoresce under UV! Turns out there are far more of them hanging out in the intertidal than I had realized before.