Gods.peeled & Good Luck

Me before I came out, when I did pageants and modeling.

This was me the day of my junior prom. The dress weighed around 20 lbs, was the first one I tried on, and my makeup was done by someone who still thought brown lip liner looked good on white people. I spent the entire day being photographed and generally hating how I looked and wishing I could figure out why, when everything was technically perfect.

Came out in 2016, here's nine years of transformation (in reverse order, sorry)

Turns out I'm neither a Normal Guy nor a woman, but a much weirder type of faggy masc thing.

In my lifestyle lolita egg era. Somehow getting to dress like a princess gave me the will to get up in the morning

granted being a big ol goth doesn't really fit the bill of "socially acceptable heterosexual femininity" but i was HYPER feminine when i was closeted, especially in the years between when i FIRST tried to come out (age 16 - around the time of those first photos) and when i actually made the jump (age 19 - about a year after the last photo)

you can tell in that second to last photo i literally got a tattoo that said "MAD GIRL" which was an exercise in many things, including abstract self-harm, a visual reminder that i had given up on myself, and wildly underestimating the number of dudes who would misread it as BAD GIRL and take that as a cue to say gross shit to me while i was at work

anyway never kill yourself

haha yeah 🫣

consciously dipped my toes into the gender fuckery pool at around 15/16 but I was pentecostal at the time and well. took them out real quick

i tried very very hard to be “femme” for a LONG time but during covid lockdowns I didn’t have to perform for anyone and I slowly started to let it all go and now I’m a silly little man 😌

@an-android-child

good news! its nothing to do with being smart, its a niche part of an already confusing scientific field. taxonomy is a kind of dark magic bullshit

I'm gonna walk through the meme above as a starting point because otherwise there is a lot to talk about and nowhere clear to start. Feel free to ask for further clarifications because this is now a college lecture class this will be on the test(kidding)

Oh also opinions on taxonomy vary wildly depending on a few different things so if you disagree with anything I say here, feel free to fight me to the death in the taxonomy thunderdome. I understand this is how postdocs like to settle things

First, the taxon in question: Order Accipitriformes. Hawks, Eagles, Kites and Allies. Contains well, the stuff I just listed along with buzzards(not the American understanding of the word, New World Vultures aren't accipitriformes), Old World Vultures(yeah they are different from NWV), Ospreys, and a few other odds and ends.

Disclaimer one, it does not include falcons or owls. Falcons are parrots who chose violence and I think owls are a kind of sentient beachball. I cannot help with these

Disclaimer two, most of those words(Hawks, eagles, kites, etc) mean nothing. They are honestly more of a visual descriptor than any actual category. You do have stuff like "true eagles"(genus aquila) but that doesn't include stuff like bald eagles. A Cooper's Hawk is more closely related to a Northern Harrier than it is to a Red Tailed Hawk. Honey Buzzards are a kind of kite. Just make your peace with all of that now.

Okay back to the meme. First bullet point I thinks is pretty self explanatory with my above explanation. Stop categorizing them they clearly want to make you suffer Second point: Buteo is a genus that contains a bunch of accipitriformes that are commonly known as hawks(ex red tailed hawk, common buzzard) and has a lot of taxonomic drama, which is partially why I used it for this joke. The other reason is that I'm biased and its one of my favorites.

Third point: Buteogallus is you guessed it another genus of a bunch of accipitriformes(Black Hawks and Allies). Most of them are known as hawks, but the Chaco Eagle and Solitary Eagle are both also in buteogallus, because they hate you. I picked them for this joke because they are relatively closely related to buteos. There are a few that are more closely related to buteos, but the name similarity made it funnier to me. Buteos and the Cooler Buteos

"Initial ID was Nisaetus Cirrhatus but it's actually Pernis Ptilorhynchus" If you ever wanted proof that morphological taxonomy is fake, that's what this is for. The birds mentioned are Changeable Hawk-Eagle and Oriental Honey Buzzard respectively, and often get confused for eachother by people on iNaturalist, so it's a correction I make semi-often. However, they are pretty far from eachother on the taxon tree(I believe Nisaetus is closer to True Eagles? It recently was shifted around though cuz it was split off from Spizaetus so don't quote me).

Changeable Hawk-Eagle, Oriental Honey Buzzard

"Frameworks and binoculars" This joke was just me dunking on birders. I have no idea how often actual taxonomists use binoculars. I'm an engineer

The images:

A tree???: This is a taxon tree showing the updated position of Booted Eagles relative to other eagles based on a recent genetic study. I think I chose this one in specific because it was the only one out of the ones I have saved that fit in the slot. Yes I have multiple accipitriforme taxon trees saved don't worry about it

Range Overlap Hell: This image shows the complete range distribution of the Common Buzzard(buteo buteo)(also known as the steppe buzzard)(also known as motherfucker who makes my life harder). It's called range overlap hell because, well, it overlaps with a lot of very similar looking birds, and makes it a pain to ID everyone involved

Also it keeps having taxon changes every 5 minutes with stuff getting rolled into a b.buteo ssp or being split off into a morphologically identical sp and I'm this close to losing it I swear to god. Anyway heres a common buzzard and a bunch of birds its range overlaps with. Yes these are all different species no I am not fucking with you

Common Buzzard, Upland Buzzard, Eastern Buzzard

Himalayan Buzzard, Long Legged Buzzard, Forest Buzzard

Now that you are starting to understand my ire, the next joke: This Motherfucker

That image is allegedly of a Cape Buzzard. What's a Cape Buzzard? Good question. I can't answer it. It may be a new buteo species found in South Africa. It may be that a handful of migratory Steppe Buzzards are staying in South Africa year round instead of heading back where they came from. It might be that nobody can consistently identify a Forest Buzzard. Who knows. Not me. They won't let me DNA sequence the buzzards for some reason.

(I cannot, for the life of me, find the photo I used here. However I think you've seen enough brown buteos with belly streaking to get the point)

"Hello I'd like to see a specimen of Buteo Buteo ssp Buteo''

Buteo Buteo as stated earlier is the scientific name for Common Buzzards. Ssp stands for subspecies, and b. buteo has a bunch, with are indicated with different names. You can also specify that this is the "default" ssp by repeating the species name. So a steppe buzzard would be buteo buteo ssp vulpinus, while the default is buteo buteo ssp buteo.

a lot of people are giving examples in the notes of things they just find annoying like not using headphones in public, but OP is talking about actual literal scripts of things to say in awkward situations

if you have a date or two with someone and you don't see a relationship developing? most millennials / gen Zers just end up ghosting. but a social script that might have been taught and rehearsed in the past could be:

"I really appreciated getting dinner with you the other night and I enjoyed your company, but I'm afraid I didn't feel a spark. I wish you the best, and hope you find that special someone!"

Remember things about your friends! Ask people about their weekends, hobbies, holidays, studies, and jobs! Listen for the concerns people have and what they are working on! Draw connections between one person and another to get the ball rolling. "Oh, Maura, you just got your first cat! You should talk to Felix, he used to work at a rescue. Felix, please tell Maura all the new-cat-guardian pointers."

"Bill, Sheila, Xan, this is my friend Kale. Kale is really into Star Trek, Bill you and them should talk about it!"

If you're looking for a manual on these sorts of things; social etiquette, social scripts, how to handle difficult and/or awkward social situations, etc. then I highly recommend picking up any book by Miss Manners. Her books really are the gold standard for learning the types of skills this post is talking about. I should also mention that Miss Manners is witty and hilarious so her books are also fun to read.

The best book by Miss Manners to get started with would be Miss Manner's Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. This one is probably the best starting point because it gives the best overview of all the basics.

Sorry @darlingdear but I couldn't let this stay in the tags.

I say this as someone who is neurodivergent had grew up very socially awkward, but recently I find the "screw small talk, I wanna get to know the REAL you" attitude to be pretentious as well as a demonstration of a lack of boundaries.

But also, I think a lot of people who have this attitude don't actually really know what does qualify as small talk. The definition of small talk is any topic that's of no real consequence and includes topics like food, pets, sports, music, whatever show you're currently streaming, whatever book you're currently reading, and yes, the weather. A lot of people who have this "I hate small talk / I don't do small talk" attitude probably think it's only reciting a bunch of secret scripts about the weather, and don't realize how much they engage in small talk whenever they talk about their pets or their favorite foods or the really cool show they're watching right now.

Small talk is a way of sounding out a person’s attitudes. It’s about finding out if they’re a rabid asshole or someone you want to spend more time with.

I had a professor who got angry at a group of (mostly women), from five countries, all of whom met yesterday, for talking about daytime TV. He basically insulted us and called us shallow.

It's not just the fact that this book is perfect for those of us who are neurodivergent, who can really benefit from having a book which kindly and patiently bothers to explain social rules and norms that people just expect you to know without ever telling you themselves.

It's also the fact that, despite this book being nearly 45 years old, Miss Manners makes it clear in the preface and opening chapters that she is explicitly against classism, sexism, and homophobia. She also makes it explicitly clear in the preface that her personal belief in the importance of good manners and etiquette has nothing to do with a desire to return to "the good old days", because those days were not actually good for women, LGBTQ+ people, poor people, and people of color.

What really made me re-fall in love with Miss Manners though was right in the opening chapter she addresses using sexualized threats and insults to debase and degrade others (you know, like "get fcked", or "suck my genitals", or "yeah well that's not what your mom / sister / other female family member had to say last night") because if sex is something that's supposed to be good and pleasurable, why are we using it as a threat to debase and degrade others? Honestly I love her so much for calling out the inherent sex-negativity of using sexualized threats and insults like that, and nearly 45 years ago at that!

no. he doesn't use emojis. i'm not kidding when i say i have seen him use one once in two years. everyone was shocked.