Margaritaville 2.0

Red-spotted Newt (Notophthalmus v. viridescens), male in breeding form, family Salamandridae, CT, USA

Subspecies of the Eastern Newt

This individual was photographed and released.

Put in the work, go to therapy, you can dress act and exist how you feel most comfortable. But changing your body to fix your emotional issues I promise you is not the answer and is totally backwards. You can't change sex, what you are doing is running from the problem via pretend.

Basically someone feels dysphoria because they feel shame at being a member of their sex who is non conforming in some way, this can be internal or external. That manifests in a physical reaction, it's similar to what happens with anorexics and just like that the answer isn't to hurt yourself, It will never be enough.

Self acceptance is the only healthy way forward, if you need a place to start DBT and ACT are what you should look into.

Also fun fact River, my ability to completely recreate this post word for word was because of you! You made such a big stink and made sure to host a screen shot of the post, I bookmarked it so if anything happens, I can go right back to your blog and recreate the post, thanks for being such a strong, pro-Hrt ally! ❤️

Anyways, if you ever decide you want to escape the cult mentality and talk, if you ever wanna escape the Christofascist MAGA adjacent world you've found yourself in, there are people willing to talk to ya, cult deprogrammers and such.

Hope you've managed to find a life that's peaceful.

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).

*puts a dandelion in your hair*