1. your suffering can’t end until you stop identifying with it. if your sense of self is tied up in your suffering, anyone or anything that attempts to separate you from it will become the enemy because, whether consciously or subconsciously, you will on some level believe they are trying to take away a part of who you are.
When we realize that we don’t have it all together, we can care for people because we no longer feel morally superior to them. Consequently, we are quicker to help than to give advice, quicker to listen than to lecture. […] Knowing we are inadequate before God and other people leads to compassion, but thinking we are good before God and others makes us self-centered and difficult to live with. The better we think we are, the less we can love. The more we see our need, the more we’ll turn for help . . . and the more we’ll help others because we are able to see their need.
Paul E. Miller (Love Walked Along Us: Learning to Love Like Jesus, page 55)
okay so, guy at work, who i find out afterwards is famous at this place for being a sex pest, comes up and starts with what i also learn is his favorite opener to conversations where he’s going to be a sex pest, namely: “Do you know where the term ‘blow job’ comes from?”
and here he made his first fatal error. his moment of hubristic sex pesting. because of course i know where the term blow job comes from, i love learning about sex and the history of sexual terms! i know so much about oral sex that i could write a book on it!
his second error: approaching a little autistic freak with what he intended to be an uncomfortable sex question that would make me feel weird and gross. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, I Have Never Misjudged A Man’s Intentions So Incredibly In My Life. because i did not realize he was trying to harass me. because i love talking about sex facts, albeit not usually at work. unless. someone prompts me. my coworkers are the kind of people who are generally online enough to know terms, but not exactly what they mean, and they realized they could ask me a while back and get good answers without the resulting awkwardness because i do not experience shame. i am primed to answer questions like the one he has proposed.
So I Answered It.
and well, really, what happened is that I began answering it, then realized the answer required a bit more context. I mean, you can’t just say “oh, well, the term first appears in writing in the 1940s” without first explaining that ‘blow’ by itself already had sexual connotations for centuries, and then, really, are we talking about the origin of the term or the origin of the act. and well we have a ton of literature and art depicting fellatio throughout human history, did you know a lot of it was men performing it on other men? oh, that reminds me, there are a multitude of latin words for oral sex performed on penises, and hold on let me quote you the entirety of catullus 16 from memory and explain it’s fascinating insights into the roman world of homosexuality-
i do not know how to turn any of this ^ off, by the way. i’m sure some people out there have a switch that disables their infodumping mid-speech. i do not. and i also didn’t realize he wasn’t looking for a real answer until my other coworker explained so hours later. he could not excuse himself from the conversation he started, and i made a conservative man at least 30 years older than me to listen to my catullus recitation. i will sodomize and facefuck you, indeed.
anyway, i think i got a bad grade in being sexually harassed. my pro tip is maybe don’t start with what a very autistic individual will misconstrue as you earnestly asking them to explain sex to you. the special interest shield will cause splashback damage.
Zig (genus de novo) zag (a Malagasy legless skink related to Paracontias), March 2026. Zig is the first new genus of Malagasy skinks discovered since the 19th century, so this is quite notable! New species discoveries are common, new genus discoveries are much rarer. Some new Scincidae genera have been named recently in the form of splits from other (wastebasket taxon) genera, however, discovering a completely unknown highly divergent lineage like this is a rarity. Zig zag is a special little boop noodle.
Solenostomus snuffleupagus (sp. nov), May 2026 (literally, study was released a week ago), a new species of ghost pipefish, named for its fuzzy appearance bearing resemblance to Mr. Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street (pictured above). The genus Solenostomus contains six other species of ghost pipefishes. However S. snuffleupagus is so highly divergent in appearance, that when it was spotted in 2001 it was immediately known to be strange. It took 25 years of searching the Great Barrier Reef to officially find & scientifically describe this bizarre fish.
S. paradoxus, the type species of Solenostomus.
S. leptosoma, another species, to make clear the typical appearance of a ghost pipefish and why S. snuffleupagus is distinctive.
Though not all species were sequenced, genome sequencing suggests that S. snuffleupagus is the most evolutionary divergent of all Solenostomus (Maroubra, a syngnathid true pipefish, is used as the outgroup).
For context, what Solenostomus is:
Solenostomus is a monotypic genus (the only genus in its family) in the family Solenostomidae. They comprise the sister taxon to the Syngnathidae (the true pipefishes, seadragons, and kin, which contains the famous seahorse Hippocampus). Unfortunately, in Solenostomus, males do not get pregnant (the only thing that would have made S. snuffleupagus even more incredible), but they are closely related to the true pipefishes (all of which exhibit male pregnancy).
Those are two incredible discoveries within just the span of two months, here's to more wonderful scientific names!
It's NOT a New Years resolution. We've talked about this.
But since I am starting a new planner, I have blocked off a little section for three things: Consume, Create, Maintain. And each day, I want to have at least one thing in each box.
Consume can be: Watch movie. Scroll social media. Look at pretty art. Play video game. Read book. Listen to music. Listen to podcast. Drink a latte. Have a candy. Brew some of the fancy tea. Etc.
Create can be: Draw, paint, doodle. Crochet. Write a long blog post. Write in my journal. Put stickers in my journal. Work on a jigsaw puzzle. Make some food that involves more than opening a box. Have an in-depth chat about our D&D characters with friend. Arrange trinkets on a shelf to be aesthetically pleasing. Create a playlist. Etc.
Maintain can be: Text friend and ask what's new. Write a letter to grandma. Call sister. Dust off the bookshelf. Put away that half finished craft project. Brush the cat, or clip his nails. Change the sheets. Go grocery shopping. Use a sheet mask. Use that leave-in conditioner. Throw out that dried-up nail polish. Etc.
Because y'all know that otherwise my ADHD ass will pick ONE of those categories and do it ALL DAY until I collapse.
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