Sam Benc 🐟

@nonvieta

Cartoonist. Adult Teenage Dirtbag 🌱 Friend of shrimp 🦐 She/her 🏳️‍🌈 Ⓥ Philadelphia Making a GN, LAST SHIP TO MARS (Henry Holt, 2026) 💌 Samantha.benc@gmail.com Rep'd by @draper-claire.bsky.social

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Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· 19d

Testing out some tools from the new Aqua Studio pack from @truegrittexture.bsky.social and reallllly loving it! I adore painting with watercolor traditionally but usually digital approximations don't have the right "feel". So far though, these have the most juice of any I've used and I'm excited!

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· 29d

I need to do a comic with elaborate historial costume soon because I REALLY love drawing it

Pen and ink drawing of a young woman in Hungarian folk costume

Ink and copic sketch studies of Baviaran Bridal crowns on young women

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Jul 10

I’ve decided to name him Uncle and now he’s got multiple suitors knocking on his crevice door. If I don’t see some baby sparrows this summer I’m going to be so disappointed!

Male house sparrow (Uncle) sitting in the entrance of his nest site

Three female house sparrows checking out his digs

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Jul 9

This painting stuns in real life - I saw SO many paintings of Mary as an art student, and almost none where she feels like a human who once lived. A teenage Palestinian girl, dressed in rumpled peasant clothing looking fearful and awed is not how we typically see or think about Mary. It’s beautiful.

“The Annunciation” by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Jul 8

My Special Elden Ring Guy

Pencil and ink drawing of an armored man

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Jun 27

You know what? Girl, you earned it.

A squirrel sitting and contentedly eating

A squirrel extending its body like a snake to eat bird suet

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Jun 12

Taking a break from work to sketch Finnegan...his little snout looked so appealing to draw

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Jun 11

Putting a certain Philly Celebrity in the comic....

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Jun 7

I was doing some weeding and revealed a big ole snail! What a beauty she is!

Photograph of a large yellow garden snail

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Jun 6

I’ve been watching this house sparrow outside the cafe window where I like to work for a few weeks. He staked out this sweet nest spot and I’ve been rooting for him to find a wife and today he has company. He came over to sit in the window and eat a big next to me and I’m so proud of him

Photo of a male house sparrow sitting on a windowsill

A photo of a male and female house sparrow on the crumbly stone outer wall of a building. The male is cleaning his feathers and the female is sitting in a crevice.

Female house sparrow inspecting the crevice where my boy has been camping out

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Jun 4

Some more quick climbing warm ups

Black and white digital sketching of people bouldering, with primary color accents on the points of contact

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Jun 3

We don't give fish anywhere close to enough respect or consideration! But this illustrates why flashy plans or assumptions that we can someday simply "bring back" species lost should be nothing more than a worst case, LAST resort assumption. Extinction is much more than individual death.

$Excerpt from "What a Fish knows" by Johnathan Balcombe "Predation by humans presents a sadder side to the loss of cultural knowledge. According to a 2014 study by a team of fisheries biologists and biophysicists, the plundering of fish populations by humans, and our preference for larger (and therefore older) indi-viduals, has disrupted the transmission of knowledge of migration routes among fishes. The researchers developed a mathematical model based on three factors: (1) the strength of the social links between the fishes, (2) the fraction of informed individuals (only older fishes knew migratory routes and destinations), and (3) the preference these informed individuals showed for certain desti-nations. They found that social cohesion, and the presence of informed individuals, were the most important factors for avoiding loss of coordination and group dissolution."$

Excerpt from "What a Fish knows" by Johnathan Balcombe

"These cultural disruptions might not be reversible. Culture is not coded into genes, so once lost, it is unlikely to be regained. "If you restore the fish populations, lit might not be enough," says Giancarlo De Luca, a biophysicist with the study team. "They have essentially lost their group memory." This might explain the failure of many animal populations to recover even when persecution is ended. North Atlantic right whales, western North Pacific gray whales, and many populations of blue whales have shown little signs of growth in the half century or more since we stopped wholesale whaling. The same goes for many species of fishes when their numbers became too low to sustain a commercial catch. As nets and hooks were turned on other species, cod, orange roughy (formerly called by the less palatable-sounding "slimehead"), Patagonian toothfishes (also known as Chilean sea bass), and other long-lived species presumed to have cultural knowledge accumulated over generations, are not bouncing back."

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· May 26

New little guy just dropped and I like him

Series of comic panels featuring a young woman looking as a white striped locust, picking it up

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· May 23

Back on my activity studies and it's giving me....story ideas...

Black and white sketch studies of various people bouldering

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· May 16

Bonkers!!! Reminder that evolution is not a ladder that we climbed to the top of

We conveniently classify animals with backbones into five groups: fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. This is misleading because it fails to represent the profound distinctions among fishes. The bony fishes are at least as evolutionarily distinct from the cartilaginous fishes as mammals are from birds. A tuna is actually more closely related to a human than to a shark, and the coelacanth—a "living fossil" first discovered in 1937—sprouted closer to us than to a tuna on the tree of life. So there are at least six major vertebrate groups if one counts the cartilaginous fishes.

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· May 16

Reading right now and damn! Fish are so much more complex and cognitive than we give them credit for and reading this really gives you a sense of just HOW much of what we value about ourselves really belongs, not exclusively to humans, but to the animal kingdom at large.

Photo of the book “What a Fish Knows” by Jonathan Balcombe

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· May 11

Why do I write so many crowded outdoor scenes??

Colored Comic panel of an outdoor farmers market with people shopping at a fruit stand, a clothing stand

Comic panel of Mara shoving through a irritated looking crowd of people

Comic panel of a crowd of people, facing away from us, gathering under an industrial looking bridge. Someone is silhouetted in the foreground

Comic panel of Mara looking exasperated in the right side of the foreground, a crowd is gathered watching a confrontation between a uniformed officer and a young woman

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Apr 28

I’ve been thinking about this a lot: optimism is good and important, but we have room and need for pessimism too! Pessimism doesn’t mean “giving up” any more than optimism means “taking action”.

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Apr 27

I finished The Omnivore’s Deception by @jsanbonmatsu.bsky.social and without any reservation, I believe everyone should read this book. We need to be thinking about sentience, exploitation and systems of global abuse in a different and bigger way than we have so far as a society and this book is it.

SOMEONE HOME: CONSCIOUSNESS AS SINGULARITY
Every consciousness unfolds within the bounded conditions set for it by evolution-exhibiting the psychological, perceptual, cognitive, and emotional repertoire particular to its species. At the same time, every consciousness remains always itself alone, a singularity. Just as no two bodies can coincide in space and time, no two consciousnesses ever coincide-each remains its own horizon of possibilities. No "T" coincides even wholly with itself: every consciousness reaches beyond itself-beyond the horizon of what it is given. It remains always a free, spontaneous agent of its own existence.

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Apr 19

I got so worked up I forgot alt text!!!

Compared with omnivore diets, plant-based diets cause less biodiversity loss, freshwater use, air and water pollution, antibiotic resistance, and human disease. Climate change is, however, the most often discussed, and studies suggest that switching to a vegan diet in the United States could reduce food system greenhouse gas emissions by 47 percent. Switching to plant-based food systems internationally could reduce global food system emissions by 49 percent. Since the food system accounts for 10-30 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions and 34 percent of global emissions, this could reduce total U.S. emissions by 5-14 percent and global emissions by 16 percent.

If we pursued, for example, a limited substitution of beef with beans, we would achieve up to 74 percent of the reductions needed to meet climate targets, while also reducing land use. Similarly, our work at UCLA showed that after learning about the connections between food and the environment, students made voluntary, modest shifts in diet; extrapolated across the population, these small shifts would add up to 33 percent of the needed reductions to meet the Paris Climate Accord.

More importantly, we cannot meet climate targets without moving toward a plant- rather than animal-based food system. A recent study showed that by 2100 a business-as-usual food system would result in more emissions than the total allowable budget from all sectors if we are to meet the 1.5 C climate targets. Of five mitigation strategies studied, a shift to plant-rich diets was the most effective at reducing food system emissions. Similarly, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has compared the mitigation potential of various dietary patterns, with the vegan diet having the highest potential reduction of 8 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Apr 16

There is, sincerely, no helping these people.

Enough Floridians have fallen in love with the scrub jay that, over the years, they have repeatedly been proposed as our state bird, replacing the rather blah mockingbird.
Unfortunately, longtime National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer has repeatedly shot down the idea.

When supporters boasted about how gentle the scrub jays are, pointing out that they will eat peanuts right out of your hand, Hammer scoffed.
"Begging for food isn't sweet," Hammer sneered. "It's lazy and it's a welfare
mentality.

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Apr 15

Words I’m trying to live by more instead of worrying about being annoying or upsetting people’s peace

Excerpt from The Omnivore’s Deception by John Sanbonmatsu

“William Lloyd Garrison's rebuttal to the gradualists of his own day, in the inaugural issue of The Liberator:
I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromis-“

Excerpt from The Omnivore’s Deception by John Sanbonmatsu

“ing as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; —but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest-I will not equivocate-I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch-AND I WILL BE HEARD.”

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Apr 9

I feel increasingly positive that all these fuckers are aware that we have crossed (or are going to in the next couple years) “the tipping point” of our climate and are happily grabbing their cash. The only way to turn this thing around is degrowth, NOW, and they would rather see it burn.

The truth is that we are already in the early stages of climate catastrophe. Spring temperatures in the Western United States have shattered records. In the Colorado River basin, an already severe drought is worsening thanks to record-low snow levels in the Rocky Mountains. High temperatures, dry vegetation and low rainfall may result in a terrifying fire season.
Without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the impact of climate change will become only more severe. Homes and businesses will be destroyed, neighborhoods will become uninsurable or even uninhabitable, and shocks to food or supply chains will cause unrest. Eventually, even the NASA administrator may have to admit that the situation is catastrophic.

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Apr 9

Yeah, this is why it's pretty complicated to feel excited about the Artemis program.

NASA is still trying to conjure the notion of inspiration. Perhaps if and when Artemis II returns safely to Earth, a generation of children will be inspired to see our world from above. But for now, NASA is throttling the scientific pipeline and diminishing our ability to see and understand our planet. Everyone deserves the benefits that climate science can bring - an understanding of the present, the ability to plan for the future and the sheer joy of learning about the world, even as it changes. Without science, the stunning images of Earth from space are only pretty pictures. We all deserve so much more.

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Apr 4

This is the kind of thing that drives me batshit insane when the AI bros and gotcha boys who haven’t spent longer than two seconds considering “intelligence” or “consciousness” in their life until Claude told them it liked their new book idea. You cannot have a mind without autonomy of experience.

Passage from John Sanbonmatsu’s 2025 book “The Omnivore’s Deception”

“SOMEONE HOME: CONSCIOUSNESS AS SINGULARITY
Every consciousness unfolds within the bounded conditions set for it by evolution-exhibiting the psychological, perceptual, cognitive, and emotional repertoire particular to its species. At the same time, every consciousness remains always itself alone, a singularity. Just as no two bodies can coincide in space and time, no two consciousnesses ever coincide-each remains its own horizon of possibilities. No "T" coincides even wholly with itself: every consciousness reaches beyond itself-beyond the horizon of what it is given. It remains always a free, spontaneous agent of its own existence.”

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Apr 2

I need everyone to understand when I say I'm not having a good time coloring this is what I'm working with

Panel of a girl walking toward a staircase, in a lush forest

Shot of a crowd of people looking on a SpaceX shuttle launch

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Mar 31

From another article, but I think it pretty neatly encapsulates where we are currently at. Regardless of what happens, the ideology alone is devastating.

“Past meetings of the God Squad have included lengthy testimony from biologists, ecologists and other scientists who have studied the species at issue. For instance, discussions at the 1992 meeting, including a debate over statistical models on the northern spotted owl population, went on for nearly four weeks.
No outside experts were invited to Tuesday's meeting, which lasted roughly half an hour before the vote.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/climate/god-squad-whales-gulf.html

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Mar 28

Currently reading The Omnivore’s Deception by John Sanbonmatsu. This is the rebuttal to the Omnivore’s Dilemma that we NEED and one of the best ethical philosophy books I’ve read in a good while. Emotionally rough, but both clarifying and galvanizing, cannot recommend it enough

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Mar 9

Reading today and really excited about it 👀

Sam Benc 🐟@nonvieta· Mar 9

My partner doesn’t like beets which is a shame because I made SUCH a good borscht tonite it’s not even funny!! The perfect accompaniment to the sourdough we bought from some guys operating out of a lumber yard.