Liz Decolvenaere
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tallakahath.bsky.social
Liz Decolvenaere
@tallakahath.bsky.social
3.2K followers 1.7K following 670 posts
Computational chemist with a focus on QM, Force Fields, and how ML can aid in both. Also: Cosplayer, LARP writer, birder, occasional science communicator, and several other things. She/they.
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tallakahath.bsky.social
I save that assumption for when the depictions show the two sharing a birdhouse, often in Winter as these tend to show up in holiday-themed decorations.

The latter having different problems, given that birds only use birdhouses during breeding season, and cardinals don't use birdhouses at all!
A garden flag depicting two bright red cardinals in winter hats posed in front of a birdhouse, with a light covering of snow on top.
September 10, 2025 at 1:35 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
I am begging everyone: if you are going to make a product involving cardinals, please talk to literally anyone who looks at birds to know,

1. Those are two *male* cardinals

2. Most seasons of the year is the males are *very* territorial

This depiction is highly ornithologically suspect!!!
A photo of the front of the magazine USA Philatelic, showing their new fall stamp with two stylized bright red cardinal birds among greenery.
September 10, 2025 at 1:16 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
More Dragon Con notes: everyone needs to appreciate this slide from @tkingfisher.com from her talk on the four sexes of white-throated sparrows at the Solve for X variety show in the Science track ( @dconscitrack.bsky.social )
A PowerPoint slide shown on a projector. The slide shows a busty cartoon woman in the left, with a white-throated sparrow's head (white-striped), and a female gender marker. On the right are two white-throated sparrows indicated as male, one white-striped, one tan-striped. The two male sparrows have voice bubbles saying "would" and "oh yeah".
September 2, 2025 at 2:48 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
It is the time where I travel home from Dragon Con, and emotionally, as well as physically, I am here:
A sculpture of a corn-plane hanging from the ceiling in an airport terminal. The front half of the plane is a corn cob, with wings made of leaves on the stalk, a tail of stalk, and nacelles of smaller corn. The sculpture is titled "Corncorde".
September 2, 2025 at 2:43 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
!
A picture of a green and black wooden grackle on top of a coffee table book ("trace", by Michele Carragher)
April 2, 2025 at 12:12 AM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Me: why does my body hurt at APS?
Also me:
A graph from the poster's fitness tracker, showing an average of 9.74 miles/day walked since Sunday (when the poster arrived at APS)
March 20, 2025 at 4:42 AM
tallakahath.bsky.social
✨conference dinner✨

(don't @ me on the pink Red Bull, it is objectively the best flavor)
Photo of a can of pink Red Bull, And an upside down APS conference badge saying Liz
March 19, 2025 at 6:35 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
You've heard of girl dinner, and boy dinner, but are you ready for:

✨conference dinner✨

(technically lunch, but time doesn't exist at conferences)
A photo of someone holding a can of (pink, berry flavored) red bull, against a blurry background of a conference session
March 18, 2025 at 7:41 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
The Dragon Con'er in me is always pleased to see how the ribbon selection at APS gets bigger every year (this booth had a back side with more ribbons!).

...next time I need to bring and drop off a few of my own...
A large display booth showing off a variety of badge ribbons available, a mix of pronoun ribbons and funny ribbons like "Trouble Maker" and "Your Mic Is Muted"
March 16, 2025 at 11:35 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Time for another long weekend of being weird: heading off for Intercon W! Come find me as yet another death goddess (apparently I get a bit typecast), or one of another half dozen personas I'll be donning this weekend as I go from LARP to LARP.
A woman in a black sequin dress, red pumps, vinyl gloves, a fur stole with a feathered sleeve, a ribcage harness and a goat's skull mask, stands with one hip cocked.
February 27, 2025 at 8:33 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Figured startup picture day was a good day to get some mileage out of my benzene earrings
A metal earring in the shape of a benzene molecule. A woman is wearing the earring, her face mostly out of frame.
January 23, 2025 at 1:04 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Watching the Eaton fire evac zones crawl closer and closer to places and people dear to me has been heartbreaking.

Finding a map of fire extent has also been really, really hard.

But TIL NASA has data for this: firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs...

#EatonFire
NASA FIRMS data showing detected hotspots in Altadena relating to the Eaton Fire. Large swaths of Altadena and Sierra Madre are covered in red boxes indicating fire.
January 9, 2025 at 12:37 AM
tallakahath.bsky.social
You will be visited by three spirits

(source: pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...)
Figure depicting "Nonadditive interaction" as text in the center, pointing out to three other text groups: "Exchange - SAPT(DFT)", "Induction - SAPT(DFT) - XSAPT" and "Dispersion - CCSD(T)-MP2 - SAPT(DFT) -MBD" Trimers of small molecules decorate the background, which is otherwise white.
December 25, 2024 at 6:18 AM
tallakahath.bsky.social
WE GOT THE DAMN THING OUT

(the damn thing: A valve cartridge stuck in a valve, the valve is installed inside the wall and it's free floating, there's no way to torque the cartridge without torquing the whole valve, so we drilled some holes in a 2x6 to make a brace)
A photograph of a shower wall with a circular-ish hole in it, in the hole is the front of a cartridge of a valve. Two screws stick out of the valve which are normally used for mounting the trim. A photo of a 2x6 with three holes drilled in it: a big one in the center through which a socket is threaded, and two smaller ones above and below the big one which are holding screws that are anchored to the valve in the wall. Someone is currently holding the socket wrench and pressing their knee against the board. Everything is within a tiled shower.
December 8, 2024 at 5:59 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Do y'all think I have enough coffee?

(Backstory: I had a subscription turned on, and my partner and I would squirrel them away in random locations when they arrived. When the subscription renewed, we always assume that we needed more coffee. We finally found *all* of the coffee when we moved.)
A photo of 18 boxes of Wandering Bear (boxed cold brew) stacked up in and on top of a kitchen shelf.
December 8, 2024 at 3:44 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Great, I always wanted some mid-century furniture to go with my MD my supercomputer!
A picture of a promotional card explaining the "Anton Collection" line of furniture at West Elm. A media console of a mid-century design is shown, "designed by West Elm in our Brooklyn studious"
December 8, 2024 at 3:16 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Watching @ckennelly.bsky.social stare at pickles at the grocery store and I'm reminded of the time a colleague misspelled classical as vlassical and I Had To Do It
A jar of (vlasic) pickles labeled "vlassical; Newtonian dill chips"
December 1, 2024 at 11:50 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
I need my LARP friends to appreciate that I took time out of my NM trip to send the casting survey for Barbenheimer from the most appropriate location available
A photograph of a person holding a laptop in front of a white shack/building with a sign above: "Los Alamos project main gate", a replica of the Los Alamos entry checkpoint.
November 30, 2024 at 6:43 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
I'm beginning to think I should find a new travel agent...
A large brick and stone sign reading "Las Vegas, New Mexico" on the side of the road
November 27, 2024 at 5:07 AM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Vegas, baybeeeeeeeeee~!
A lone road sign on the right side of a desert highway reading "Las Vegas" as "Exit 347". The photo is taken at night from the passenger seat. The background behind the road is pretty much pitch black.
November 27, 2024 at 4:09 AM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Guess that airport! The chairs and color scheme I think are distinctive.
Brown leather chairs stationed in an airport gate area, with a reddish tile floor and beige walls. There's a turquoise sign that says "B4" on a column. Brown wood and leather bench-like chairs with little rounded domes upon their top edge. The benches are in front of glass pane windows with blue edges, and a blue/red/brown faded striped carpet.
November 24, 2024 at 4:20 AM
tallakahath.bsky.social
@ckennelly.bsky.social 's unreasonably organized bookshelf
Black bookshelves against a blue wall. The books filling the shelves span a variety of non-fiction topics, but are organized by *size* instead of author or subject.
November 19, 2024 at 3:04 AM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Decorating our new roost with some gorgeous artwork from @pigeonpost.cafe !
An orange nuthatch hex sign (four nuthatches in four-part symmetry, on an orange background) on a dark blue wall over a threshold.
November 18, 2024 at 2:16 AM
tallakahath.bsky.social
shit's on fire, yo
A photograph of smoke billowing up from a distant shoreline covered in trees. In the near field are more trees, and the middle is the Hudson River. The day is otherwise bright and cloudy, with the smoke billowing out the left side of the image.
November 17, 2024 at 3:50 PM
tallakahath.bsky.social
Using your CR box to cool your cookies,
Pros:
- efficient
- v clean air
- whole house smells like cookies
Cons:
- whole house smells like cookies (they are not for me so I'm just hungry but cannot eat them)
A wire rack with snickerdoodle cookies on it, on top of a Corsi-Rosenthal box (four furnace filters taped together into a box with a box fan on top as an impromptu air purifier).
August 4, 2024 at 5:58 PM