I do stuff

If you watch the smaller of their young

With the vocabulary I have the closest I can get semantically is ‘mid-nestling to fledgling fresh-fallen from the nest’ but the concepts don’t quite map to how human offspring develop. Another way to phrase it is able to move around under their own power but still heavily dependent on parental intervention for survival.

1. The play face smile. Here we see the relaxed open mouth with a droopy lower lip exposing the bottom teeth. Often accompanied by low guttural chimp laughter. This face is both an invitation to play and a way for individuals to check in and make sure everyone is still having a good time while playing. You younger siblings out there know how “playing” with your elder brother/sister is all well and good until “it’s Not Funny Anymore Cause That Really Hurt, Twin!!!” (No? Just me? Damn.)

2. Silent bared teeth display which can be an appeasement gesture / sign of submission as they try to avoid possible conflict. Tense mouth and at least partially exposed upper & lower teeth. This is kinda on a spectrum and go from something little like “hey that termite mound snack looks good, can I get in on that too?” all the way up to…

3. The Fear Grimace. It is what is sounds like. “I am afraid and I don’t want to fight. I’m submitting. Please don’t hurt me.” Mouth may be somewhat open, lips are tense and retracted, and teeth very visible (possibly with some partial gum exposure). See the female below on the right who is fear grimacing at her screaming friend.

4. The scream. “I’m upset and I DO NOT LIKE THIS!!!!” Fight or flight is going down and screaming animal is in the thick of it. Lips are completely retracted, full teeth & gum exposure, and mouth is open in a loud scream vocalization. See the female on the Left in the above photo as she screams at something (/someone) off camera.

5. Neutral face. Talk about going from the highest high to the lowest low. This is a chill happy primate at a low arousal state. Casual relaxed face and eyes. Not challenging anyone, but not seeking out a particular grooming/play buddy either. Just watching the world go by for a bit.

This is just a general example of the gorgeously nuanced field of facial communication in primates. If I had to pick (without audio / video / context clues) I would say the bonobo in the OP is doing a silent bared teeth display begging for something towards shore (thus the extended hand) possibly edging more towards a fear grimace. They aren’t exhibiting any overt aggression, but that by no means makes them safe to be around.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Love,

Your friendly neighborhood Ethologist / Primatologist

Sources:

Marina Davila-Ross, Goncalo Jesus, Jade Osborne, Kim A. Bard. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Produce the Same Types of ‘Laugh Faces’ when They Emit Laughter and when They Are Silent. PLOS ONE, 2015; 10 (6): e0127337 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0127337.

Parr LA, Waller BM. Understanding chimpanzee facial expression: insights into the evolution of communication. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2006;1(3):221-228. doi:10.1093/scan/nsl031.

Facial expression categorization by chimpanzees using standardized stimuli. https://europepmc.org/article/pmc/pmc2826112

Parr LA, Waller BM, Vick SJ, Bard KA. Classifying chimpanzee facial expressions using muscle action. Emotion. 2007;7(1):172-181. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.1.172

His career brought him millions upon millions of dollars and lasted almost 40 years. He finally admitted to painting fraudulent art after the white paint he used came under scrutiny. 

“ Bob Simon: What do you think this Max Ernst would be worth? Wolfgang Beltracchi: This one? Simon: Yeah. Beltracchi: $5 million, I think. Simon: $5 million.  And you can do it in three days? Beltracchi: Yeah, oh yes, yes, sure, or quicker” -From a 60 minutes interview with Bob Simon

In The interview with Beltracchi, he said that none of his forgeries are copies, they’re all original works that the famous artists could have painted.

“Beltracchi estimates he has done 25 Max Ernsts. He is not copying an existing work. He’s painting something he thinks Ernst might have done if he’d had the time or felt like it.”  -  The Con Artist: A multi-million dollar art scam

His wife was also in on the scam, she would dress up in old clothing and take pictures holding the paintings with old cameras to fake proof of the paintings’ ages.

Izzy gets muppetified against his will.

Rediscovered a sketch from my sketchbook and spent WAY too much time in clip studio to make this.

You do NOT need to "earn" meals through exercise.

You know why?

Because exercise only accounts for about 20% of your calories. The majority of the calories your body burns, it uses to keep itself alive. It uses them to power your brain and metabolism. In fact, your brain ALONE is responsible for spending about 20% of your calories.

Your BRAIN, just to keep itself going, uses up just as many (or even more!!!) calories than all the exercise you do.

Your RESTING metabolic rate is responsible for burning between 60 and 75% of your calories.

The big flannel, big jewellery, big nails, big dress pants, dark lipstick with heavy makeup look that now so many influencers love is literally chola fashion.

This whole mess.... Our entire goddamn government is fucked.

Keep fighting. I'm not going to give up. I'm not going back in the closet to make bigots comfortable.

My friends deserve to stay married.

My niece deserves to live free and love who she wants.

My trans students deserve to live their lives in their truth.

This world does not get to be defined by those who hate.

I was so happy this year seeing so many of my students being open about who they are.

I will not let this world destroy their joy.

This is potentially an unpopular opinion (?), but I will say there is a slight nuance to the class discussion in Our Flag Means Death specifically around Ed and Stede and where they meet in the middle as far as class and wealth. It is not rich vs. poor, or at least not just that. Rather, it’s the trope of New Money vs. Old Money.

(I know Tumblr cuts these long posts automatically these days but this got rather too long for me to take the chance.)

I wish to be clear, this is purely based on the show - I neither know nor care much about the historical Stede Bonnet, except when it is interesting/funny to include details from his life.

Specifically, this theory is based on this dialogue here:

Mr Bonnet: One day, all this will be yours. Not ‘cause you deserve it, or ‘cause you’ve earned it. Lord knows you haven’t done that. Because you lucked into it. What do you suppose that makes you? Stede: Fortunate? Mr Bonnet: Fortunate? Oh, no. A weak-hearted, soft-handed, lily-livered little rich boy. That’s all you’ll ever be, Stede Bonnet!

Like…objectively, this is a really weird thing for a member of the landed gentry to say.

Being born into wealth and privilege is sort of the point. Having to earn money is so…grubby, after all. It implies that you weren’t born into this world, and thus, by the standards of those who have had money for centuries, don’t really deserve it. Like- the whole concept of a hereditary gentry sort of breaks down if we acknowledge that it’s just a matter of lucking into something you don’t really deserve.

Plus, Mr Bonnet seems to really, truly resent that his son was born into wealth and privilege, despite that being…sort of an inevitable result of his living in wealth and privilege himself. Sure, this could be him externalising self-loathing about being a ‘weak-hearted, soft-handed, lily-livered little rich boy’ himself…but it also makes a lot of sense as the resentment of a self-made man at those born into wealth. A quality which is…understandable and justifiable, given how awful old money is to new money, but becomes unjustifiable when it’s being taken out on a child who had no say in how or where he was born and who was only born into wealth in the first place because you made your fortune. Like- if you didn’t want your children to be born/grow up rich…maybe consider starting a family before making a fortune, or don’t have them at all?

It’s also…weird and interesting to me that this is the insult Chauncey chooses to repeat in episode 9:

Like…Chauncey and his brother Nigel were Stede’s schoolmates in their youth. He’s an Admiral in the Navy in an era where you had to pay for a midshipman’s commission (granted, you needed actual competence to make it from there, because the Navy was considered far more vital than the Army, but that just means you needed that and money/patronage to get ahead, not that you could reliably succeed on competence alone).  He is clearly a member of the gentry himself, and yet he’s lashing out at Stede in a way that specifically includes criticism/condemnation hinging on wealth?

Yeah, okay, in a Doylist sense, this is just to link back to Stede’s trauma and make it inevitable that he’s going to break and go back to his old life…but from a Watsonian perspective? That does kind of sound like the resentment of a long-established member of the landed gentry at someone whose fortune was made relatively recently and is wealthier than those who, according to the standard gentry/aristocratic view of the matter, ‘deserve’ their wealth thanks to generations of ancestors lucking into being born into money.

And it’s kind of notable, from this angle, that Stede’s love of fine things and luxuries also fits with a stereotype of new money as a lot flashier than old money…and that is, indeed, something that Nigel Badminton mocks him for when he first sees Stede’s cabin on the Revenge. And…yes, okay, he is right about how staggeringly impractical the whole set-up is, and it could just stem from him having years of experience at sea while Stede is very new and mostly going off an adventure-novel idea of life at sea…but it’s still suggestive. (Yes, I know that this notion of ‘excessive ornamentation is a New Money thing’ dates more from the 1800s, but this is a show made in the modern day and using a lot of signalling/language/coding that is familiar to a modern audience, but which would be entirely alien to the 1710s, so…I think it’s still a valid argument.) Stede has more of an idea of what to do with wealth than Ed does, sure…but he still fits poorly in gentry society. And, sure, a lot of that is childhood trauma, neurodivergence and queerness…but it is notable that even the ways in which Stede uses his inherited wealth do not meet with the approval of the social world to which he was brought up, in ways which themselves have some subtle class connotations.

My last argument is…probably the weakest, but I do sort of want to include it. The Bonnets clearly already have some land, based on the flashbacks to Stede’s childhood…but it is notable that this is how it’s phrased:

Mary: So, I have to marry a complete stranger? Mrs Allamby: Well, yes. He’s not some derelict. He has money. 

Stede: I just… I thought that, when I did marry, it could be for love. Mr Bonnet: Peasants marry for love. Mary has acreage.

I don’t think the difference between ‘money’ and ‘acreage’ is accidental here. 

‘Acreage’ has connotations. Historically in British society, wealth derived from land was higher-status than wealth derived from literally anything else. We can see this a century later in the works of Jane Austen - Lizzy Bennet is able to say ‘He is a gentleman, I am a gentleman’s daughter, so far we are equal’ because both her father and Mr Darcy derive their fortunes from landowning, despite the vast difference in the size of their fortunes. The Gardiners, on the other hand, are a cut below Darcy socially and his politeness and friendliness to them is notable, because their money is derived from commerce and ‘trade’, even though they are better-off financially than the Bennets.

The Bonnets seem to already have an estate, all right, but that isn’t the same as having made a fortune from landowning. And this economic argument about the families seems to be framing this as a fairly traditional ‘new-money family with great wealth but without the land that would make that money respectable marries land-rich gentry without the money to make that acreage as profitable as it could be’.

First off, I agree that the vitriol from Stede’s dad is really weird unless he is New Money looking down on his son who was born into the wealth and privilege he earned. I still think it makes him a bloody monster for treating his son that way, but it at least explains the dynamic of, uh, dude you’re rich too wtf? if he has a dim view of Old Money and is watching his son grow into the characteristics of people he despised. If he’s naturally acquisitive, which it sounds like he is, then it makes sense too that he’d continue to expand the wealth he acquired by forcing his son to marry for “acreage” and I completely agree, Mary is landed gentry, Stede married into at least a portion of that.

One really interesting point that you made is that maybe Stede is not super Old Money and is indeed looked down upon by those who are, including the Badmintons, who might not be as wealthy even if they are very obviously privileged. That was well spotted!

Which brings me to my favorite point of yours and where I think I can bring it full circle: Stede isn’t super old, aristocratic money, but to Ed’s eyes he is. There is actually a hierarchy at play that play Ed isn’t totally aware of, at least at first that rich people have hierarchies too and Stede isn’t necessarily at the top of it, even if he seems like he is to Ed. The French aristocrats introduce this possibility and he might get a further inkling of it when Chauncey shows up, or he might not know it all.

Because what Ed might not grasp is that Stede is an outsider even to Old Money and that makes him unique and more willing to leave it all behind to be a pirate, also it might be part of why Stede is so class-blind compared to his peers and why he’s so open and sharing with Ed of all those things in a way that clearly surprises Ed (and might also anyone who has interacted with the privileged in this somewhat-fictionalized world). Stede isn’t Old, Old Money interacting with Ed’s New Money he is, in a more complicated way, “Son of New Money, Transitioning into Old Money But Never Quite Fit In, Grew Up With Old Money’s Privileges and Social Mores but also its Restrictions, Hated the Burgeoning Old Money Society and Restrictions So Much He Decided to Leave it All Behind and is Therefore Comfortable With New Money or even No Money, If Only They Accept Him in Return (Also Very Willing to Share the Joys of Privilege Without the Restrictions or Bigotry)”.

This is potentially an unpopular opinion (?), but I will say there is a slight nuance to the class discussion in Our Flag Means Death specifically around Ed and Stede and where they meet in the middle as far as class and wealth. It is not rich vs. poor, or at least not just that. Rather, it's the trope of New Money vs. Old Money.

(I know Tumblr cuts these long posts automatically these days but this got rather too long for me to take the chance.)

to say that when people hold up asexuals like me as a reason to ban any expression of kink from pride parades and the like, i am reminded of an experience i had in kindergarten, where a fellow five-year-old completely misunderstood how my dairy allergies worked and thought he could make me pass out by waving a piece of cheese at me.

like, okay, i don't experience sexual attraction to anybody; that doesn't mean i'm gonna melt like the wicked witch of the west if i see someone else wearing bondage gear. i'm a grown adult and frankly, straight allo culture throws more explicit portrayals of sexuality at me every day. trust me, i can handle it. don't project your puritan ideals onto me.

Great Pyramids, but they’re the Bass Pro Shop in Tennessee

Eiffel Tower, but it’s the cowboy version in Paris Texas

London’s Tower Bridge, but it’s the replica in Suzhou China (it has twice as many towers lol)

The Statue of Liberty, but she’s in Spain and one-uping by holding TWO torches, damn

The Taj Mahal but it’s in Bangladesh and it’s pink and like, I’m sorry, but like, really cute

The Great Sphinx, but it’s in China and also Iron Man is there

I literally spent the weekend being gay and open about it and feeling so good with my friends and partners and just....

Fuck, I hate that anyone EVER had to hide themselves

I had to do it and it's terrible knowing there's others who are still forced to pretend