Scared is what you feel. Brave is what you do.

my strangest legacy - in high school, for one reason or another (I can’t remember) my friends and I wrote “34 days until March 2nd” on the whiteboard in the drama classroom. It was completely arbitrary but we kept it it up, “30 days until March 2nd”  ”23 days until March 2nd” etc. It spread around enough that the entire school is buzzing about what is going to happen on March 2nd. We figure we should think of something and decide to bring in cake. There were about 13 of us in total committed to bringing a cake. On March 2nd, during 3rd period lunch we all entered the cafeteria in a line (the parade of the cakes) and laid them out—a grand cake buffet for everyone in that lunch period. We did it the next year. And after we graduated it kept going.

my former teacher sent me a package. it’s the 10th anniversary this year. they’re already getting ready for march 2nd. it’s january.

OH MY GOD  LAST YEAR THE DUDES ON MY CLASS HAVE DONE IT

I’M NOT EVEN JOKING

That’s not even the half of it because

Grown ups really do not know this. I tell this to parents at least once a week, your child is sleeping/moody/putting on weight because their body is preparing to more or less jump the Grand Canyon of maturation stages. Hormone changes start a full YEAR before first menses.

Today I learned that the university of Coimbra in Portugal has a great 18th-century library, the Biblioteca Joanina, that maintains a colony of bats to effectively control the population of paper-eating insects called papirófagos. These bats are less than an inch long. They roost during the day behind the bookcases and come out at night. There doesn’t seem to be any English word for papirófago, a cursory search turns up no details about what sort of insect they are, and ngl I am slightly concerned about them as a phenomenon. But I think my overarching point here is clear: