Coprolithic 💩🪨🗺️

@coprolithic.bsky.social

1060 Followers 788 Following

GIS wonk occasionally kidnapped by archaeologists, palaeontologists and fish people. Photographer, knapper, and all weather cyclist in a city reputed to be winter 11 months per year. #GIS #archaeology #climate #cycling #yegbike #yegdt #cats #photography

The intersection of 104 Street and 102 Avenue. The downtown farmers market is on and the intersection has been redone in brick with tram lines crossing it.
A close-up of flakes of bark much which has erupted with bright orange beads that are slightly pear-shaped. Spiderweb-like tendrils attach them to the wood.
A texture relief image of tile SU14sw 1m Composite Digital Terrain Model lidar data, depicting the Salisbury Plains around Stonehenge. Relief is exaggerated to emphasize topography, so subtle dry drainage channels and lazy meandering stream beds look much sharper. A highway cuts across the middle from east to west, with the Stonehenge ring just off the road to the west of a drainage channel running north-south down the middle of the map. In the immediate vicinity are numerous burial mounds, including King Barrows to the east, the Norman Down round burial cemetery to the SW, and the Cursus Barrows to the NW. The fields of the western half of the landscape is stippled with trapezoidal patterns indicating ancient agricultural enclosures. River Avon winds its way through the SE corner, the British Army's Larkhill Garrison sprawls along the north edge of the image.
A "share your concerns form". The location is reported as Edmonton, 97 Street from Yellowhead to 137 Ave. The reason for reporting is "Cost to taxpayers". The concerns are described: Absolutely ridiculous. Super expensive to maintain. Terrible to drive. Terrible parking. Seems to have been designed by cows. Unsafe for all users due to turning cross traffic. An affront to the quality of life of all nearby. Negligible usage for 20+ hours per day (see picture for typical flow). Could really use better dedicated transit and bike/MUP infrastructure. Worst bike lane ever.
A cursory sketch drawing of a pig looking up and to the left. A crudely drawn piece of poop sits perched upon its massive scrotum, directly underneath a little star shaped dot beneath its tail which signifies its anus.
A bike lane into the hear of Edmonton. In the background is Churchill Square and the towers of the Ice District. It is a lovely, perfect day for bicycling and there is a dumpster parked in the lane with a bunch of red barrier fences around it.
A screenshot of a news article with a picture at the Calgary Stampede of Pierre "Piddles" Poilievre wearing a white sparkly blouse and cowboy hat giving a lecture at Calgary Stampede. The article reads: Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre has again echoed U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth's pledge to abolish "woke" policies in the military and replace them with a "warrior" culture. Speaking at a Calgary Stampede event on July 4, Poilievre, wearing a cowboy hat, told Conservative partisans: "We will ensure that military spending goes to protect our country and support our troops."
A Masters of the Universe themed “Limited Edition” of Whiskas Temptations cat treats, with He-Man riding a Battle Cat regalia version of the Temptations cat mascot in pursuit of a distraught chicken. The label describes the flavour as “Eternian Roast Fowl”.
A large, long-haired black cat rolling in the dust upon a patio.
A 1:50K scale map entitled "Sand and Gravel Deposits of the Project Area." A river cuts through the SE corner, with a rose area indicating "Sand and Gravel" and an orange area indicating a deposit of "Sand, silt & clay minor gravel". Ages of valley thalwegs are also indicated on the map. A road runs atop what is apparently a Ridgeline overlooking the river. A hillshade effect has been applied which gives a reasonable indication of hilly terrain, but not so much that some of the streams particularly make sense. It is also rather rough and pixellated.
A Planorbella duryi ramshorn snail with a baby Neocaridina davidi shrimp riding upon its shell.
A grey texture relief map layer depicting an area around a lake with multiple watercourses. The terrain is striated with glacial landforms running NE-SW. The resolution is fine enough that roadbeds can be discerned.
A reticulated hillstream loach (Sewellia lineolata) clings to quartzite river rock with the sort of anxious expression that suggests that it is wondering if it remembered to turn the stove off. It has a pancake shaped body and fin arrangement that makes it resemble a tiny stingray, and true to its name it is in fact reticulated with yellow and black spots. A translucent red Neocaridina davidi shrimp has settled onto the rock next to it.
A dark little tortoiseshell cat on a very vintage looking floral patten rug. A torbie and white cat sits upon a nearby bench looking back at the other cat.
A roofline above a door with a single large window set into it. Poised above the door are two Canada geese. The one on the right is winding up for a particularly loud honk.
A green hopsack jacket cut in the style of a hunting jacket with large bellows pockets and broader lapels. The buttons appear to be horn. The model wearing it is a tall thin guy, who has matched it with a waffle texture brown shirt and khakis.
Dear Devin, I hope you don't mine me calling you Devin. You don't exactly seem like a stickler for professionalism, so I will be taking a fairly informal tone here. Thank you for taking an interest in the minutiae of 132 Avenue NW in Edmonton. I actually used to live very near this formerly terrible stroad. I was a little surprised to see that you were suddenly concerned about it and had even bravely ventured to the area. When I lived there, it was a rather rough spot, but given that you seem like the sort who would be at risk of bleeding out if you accidentally encountered so much as a sharp cheddar in the cheese section at your local Walmart, I congratulate you on surviving the experience. I happened upon your letter to one of our councillors, and I see you're labouring under a few misconceptions as to the nature of 132 Avenue. The main issue that you seem to be having is that you're under the mistaken impression that 132 Avenue impacts the provincial road network. I can see how you might be under this impression because at first glance the unrenovated portions look a bit like the Yellowhead and there are a few folks who driver their numpty trucks on it like it is the Yellowhead even with all of the school zones nearby where they're not supposed to be doing 90 km/h.
A big bowl of wide hand-pulled noodles, glistening orange with chili oil sauce, coated with flecks of spices and sesame.
A brown paper bag of 22.7kg of silica sand upon a garage workbench. Its label says it is from Sil Industrial Materials of Edmonton and Calgary Alberta, probably intended to be builder's sand.
A Costco size bag of organic potting soil, showing the ingredients side which lists just sphagnum peat moss, composted wood bark, and perlite.
The pop up at the end of the previously linked comic, reading, "Still not as weird as Scott Adams' blog!"
A cube rimless aquarium of low iron high clarity glass. In the back is a black background with cats eyes, nose and whiskers.
A torbie and white medium hair cat sprawled across a green rug with a Victorian floral motif. The cat wears a sparkly Christmas tree vest costume, complete with decorative bauble ornaments. A simulated fireplace is visible in the background, set into a sage green wall.
A small warship at sea in what appears to be spectacularly nice sailing conditions. It has a helicopter deck aft and a gun turret fore. A single squared off funnel is visible amidships, a CWIS atop the hangar, and multiple radar masts on the fore superstructure. It's painted a lovely shade of haze grey, and is flying a white naval ensign with a Canadian maple flag on it. The hull number 341 is stencilled on the side a quarter of the way from the bow.
A torbie and white medium hair cat wearing a sparkly Christmas tree vest and being very festive and only somewhat trying to eat the lower branches of the artificial tree in the background.
A 1960s ticky-tacky box of grey stucco and beige siding that has seen better days, complete with a damaged front door.
Two jars of preserves (“Fig and Grapefruit Chutney” and “Pineapple with Lemongrass”) next to a black plate of Hawkins Cheesies.
A WHO WOULD WIN meme. On the left if an ore carrier with "Edmund Fitzgerald" stencilled on its side. It is labelled "a good ship and true with a load of iron ore 26,000 tons more than it weighed empty". On the right is a map of Lake Superior with wave height and direction. At the SE corner of the lake it is reaching 9m. It is labelled "one stormy boi".
A yellow and green campaign sign illegally placed too close to a roadway on a public boulevard. Certain graphic design choices were definitely made in its composition. It reads "Clean up the City – Clean up Council" at the top. In the middle, in a weird clutter of elements, it reads, "Patrick Stewart.ca". At the bottom it reads in tiny letters, "Ward O-Day'min" on the left, and "For Councillor" on the right.
A rather lavish bit of paleoart of the VW Beetle-sized armadillo Glyptodon trundling along through a Pleistocene landscape. The Glyptodon perhaps accidentally has an uncanny deeply bemused WTF expression on its face.
Someone named Taylor Shanker is really mad about indigenous ward names and is talking about how EVERY VOTE COUNTS in a council race that Darrel Friesen would go on to lose in recount.
A sunset silhouette of a street lamp with a large raven perched atop it, its beak open in mid croak. In the background are the silhouettes of trees, townhouses, and an old airport control tower.
Edmonton School Division Ward A results showing her at 87.38% with 25% of polls reporting, over her opponent anti vaccine actual flat earther Amyjoy Clow.
A sample license plate with the Alberta logo at the top, a sample plate number of AAA 0000 with a wild rose in place of a dash and the "Strong and Free" Anglicization of the motto from Alberta's coat of arms. This is all set over an image of a prairie landscape with mountains and a dramatic blue sky in the background. Two people on horseback are situated bottom right, and bottom left is a couple of pumpjacks which are quite rusty and are unlikely to have pumped in over a decade.
A short clip of a Sarracenia purpurea (Northern pitcher plant) with a large fly crawling upon it. The plant is a very attractive red and bright green mottled colouration, with some rather substantial pitchers. The fly can be seen crawling around the aperture, greedily slurping up the plant's intoxicating secretions with its proboscis.
A hand holding a lumpy heirloom tomato. The tomato is lushly red on the bottom, darker on the top, and easily larger than the palm of the hand holding it. More tomatoes are evident on the quartz countertop in the background, as are various kitchen implements.
A top down photo of a garden with several raised beds. Sidewalk runs down the right side from the back porch to the garage. A gravelled fake stream bed with a stepping stone across it runs across the middle left to right.
A torbie and white shorthair cat asleep wrapped in a towel, her head leaning against a green, yellow and black flannel shirt. Listen with sound for snores.
A movie poster for Weird: the Al Yankovic Story, depicting Daniel Radcliffe as Al Yankovic rampantly playing an accordion on stage, while surrounded by enthusiastic fans at foot level. He is cast in violet tinted spotlights, head tossed back, mouth open as if in mid scream. The tagline says, “The world belongs to the weird.” Streaming free November 4 on the Roku channel.
Dear Joe-Bob, I presume you won’t mind if I take a bit of informal tone here. I can tell from your recent letter that you are anything but a stickler for professionalism. Thank you for your kind invitation to save us from the menaces of healthcare, functional literacy, science, hygiene, a reliable egg supply, tourism, the use of seasonings in food, longer life expectancy, the beauty of our environment, the many protections we all enjoy under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, journalism, and responsible firearms ownership and the vastly higher standards of marksmanship that we so routinely achieve. Reading your letter has made me aware of how little you understand the history and laws of your own country, let alone ours. But, we’re going to have to decline to give you our land to strip mine. It isn’t even actually ours to give, given that our provinces out west exist on a complex framework of treaties between the First Peoples and the Crown. While we have not always been the best at living up to our treaty obligations, to put it mildly, these are treaties between nations and exist upon a legal plane higher than the machinations of provincial governments. It’s also a bit of a misconception on this part that folks out west are particularly yearning to be part of the Untied States of America. For most of those who do, there has in the past when your immigration system had any semblance of function been the option of just moving. Support for separation, even in Alberta, has never been considerable. Yeah, you can find some high sub 50% numbers in an online poll by a “newspaper” that gears its writing to a Grade 2 reading level, but in polls with any kind of methodology, the soft support for the idea runs maybe a third, and that’s if the question posits the unrealistic scenario that there is no cost for leaving. On the level of provincial politics, we mostly just use the idea to try to get more pipelines to tidewater so we can sell more of our oil and gas to Asia ins…
The ubiquitous giant blue hardcover, dusty, gold-letteredNational Geographic Atlas of the World (in this case the seventh edition). It is sitting on the lower tier of a coffee table, with the tip of some kind of sword in the background.
The view from a hilltop up in the Muskoka area. The leaves are starting to take on reds and oranges. A twisted old dead pine is visible foreground right. A granitic rock face is visible in the centre foreground, suggesting that this formation is a resistant batholith left over over from when glaciers scoured away all of the softer rock. Many kilometres in the distance, the twisted form of Lake Muskoka is visible, its islands all similar scoured granites.
A tweet by Kevin O'Leary which reads: I'm in New York for two days and reached out twice to Zohran Mamdani's team to request a face-to-face meeting. No reply last night. This morning, they said "no interest". That's disappointing. If he wants to lead this city, he should be open to hearing from investors. I'm not partisan. I care about policy. And I had real advice on housing, real estate, tech, and economic growth.
Two row house garages. The one on the left is small and single story. The one on the right is larger and has a second floor with windows for an apartment over their garage garage. More row houses are evident in the background.
A raised aluminum garden bed with nasturtium and pak choi in the foreground, and everything being crowded out by three huge tomato plants that originate somewhere in the back half of the planter. It overflows with tomato greenery, blending together in a fearsome tangle. Another bed with less feral vegetables can be seen in the background, and slate stepping stones mark a path on the left. To the right, a reasonable facsimile of a stream formed from a subglacial channel can be seen.
A stack of sourdough blueberry pancakes on a green plate. The pancakes are so packed with blueberries as to render them structurally dubious. More blueberries have been sprinkled all over, creating a circumstance which is basically a heap of blueberries with some pancake batter to hold things loosely together. It is Vaccinium driven hubris in breakfast form.
A close up video of a Venus flytrap, whose trap is tightly closed. Something inside it wiggles, emitting a high pitched buzzing sound.
A snowy picnic table out in front of a shop which has a sandwich board that reads, "Soup is fine, but have you tried POUTINE." Snow is falling though it is melting upon the sidewalk but has accumulated upon the table. In the background is a barber shop and an old art deco movie theatre. On the table, the snow has been swept aside to create space for a takeout container of delicious poutine.
An artificial stream bed in a garden, with a slate stepping stone path crossing it. The edge of two raised garden beds made of green corrugated metal are visible on the left. A large boulder is near the fence in the background, with another to the right. Most of the surface is bark mulch. The bed of it is partly filled with quartzite pebbles, with landscape cloth underneath.
A tortie and white cat sleeping in a pet carrier, seen through the carrier’s screened sidewall.
A takeout container packed with poutine with some manner of smash burger with tomato and cheese on the left side. A can labeled “The Growlery Beer Company, Dunkel Larry, Dark Lager is behind it. It’s on a patio table, with a planter box of herbs to the right. In the background is a defocussed hint of a city skyline.
A rock with dull grey-green cut through by rough surface of coarse triclinic crystals of ruddy brown and icy white. Through the mid part of it are brassy yellow metallic cubes of pyrite. Grey, glassy crystals, some evidently hexagonal, are also visible, especially in the left 1/3 of the image.
A yellow steel frame roadster bike with a matching chain guard and chromed fenders. Red Clarijs bags are slung over the rear rack. It is parked upon a brick path overlooking a deep river valley spanned by a black trestle bridge. There is a deep layer of snow in the background, which seems to have undergone a bunch of freeze-thaw. The lighting is a touch dramatic, with the sun apparently low on the horizon somewhere off frame to the right.
A black and off white cargo bike parked at a bike rack. The side basket is visibly loaded with nasturtiums and pansies. The front rack has a lavender topiary secured to it by way of a cargo net. Shelves of bedding plants in the background suggest that this is in front of some manner of greenhouse.
A torso level shot of someone wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a black background, tropical looking vegetation and various cartoony looking dinosaurs on it.
White siltstone with extremely well preserved fossil fish skeletons. including fin structure.
A black and white step through e-bike parked in an alley behind a brick building near an intriguing rock pile. Several rocks have been bungie corded and cargo netted directly to the bike’s front and rear racks.
Bluesky user @steveboots saying, "If you want to understand why western Canadians don't feel respected, peruse my replies."
A rainy day with snow-capped mountains in the background. Scrubland covers the former mining town of Mountain Park, Alberta. A hint of Tek's short-lived coal mining operation is barely visible in the mid-distance.