A gentle rebuke, well taken

Matt and I had a great time at DinoCon 2026 this weekend just gone. One of the highlights for me was running into Tim Versteeg and Joschua Knüppe, who run the PaleoStream channel. They had a stall in the vendor hall, stocked with some fantastic palaeoart. The reason I mention this is that Tim was wearing this T-shirt (co-designed by Tim and Joschua): “I was born after Miker Taylor first presented on the Archbishop … And all I got was this lousy T-shirt”. That first presentation was Taylor (2005) at the London SVPCA. Well. I mean to say. It’s nice that people care about my work, but to be called out about it in T-shirt form — something that must have required a fair bit of planning and organization — is an occasion for sober reflection. In my defence, work has started on the Archibishop — you can see the in-progress manuscript on GitHub — but I have to admit that the “work has started” post is itself now more than eight years old, and the last time I touched that manuscript was eleven…