Pete. That's it. Mostly.

Having been support staff in a mathematics department at a large, famous university nearby, my impression is that very high-level mathematics people are more neurospicy than even neurospicy language people. There can definitely be compensatory hubris.

Eres perfecta, eres preciosa, te pareces a Linda Evangelista, eres una modelo... Todo en ti es perfecto, ¿tú misma decoraste esas medias con pedrería? ¿Estás sonriendo? ¡Valentina, tu sonrisa es preciosa!

I’m sure that “ideally” we would like to do without … my path to that is working up to greater than body weight WITH support, so that when I do bodyweight without, everything says “hey, where’s the tough part?”

(The above noted purely in case it didn’t occur to you that you could build up slowly like that, as it did not occur to ME for a long time!)

That is ENTIRELY sensible.

My physio has me doing a lot of single-leg balancing and load-bearing stuff, and given my existing joint issues, damn right I use arm assistance a lot. Slowly over time, said assistance might go from “support on a whole hand” to “one finger down for feedback and safety.”

I would make a very silly English K’Niggit. My mother was indeed a hamster and my father smelled of elderberries. For sure.

I was a little old to get into Paramore as a “fan because they’re my same age as we’re coming of age together” but over the years it’s been impossible to ignore the buzz about how cool they are. ❤️ She seems like a true class act, punk division.

Otherwise I’d have to go around being Captain Doctor Coach Daddy Sir all the time and I am well too lazy for that high a workload. Nobody talks about the perils of being an accomplished person who never stuck to just one career! The horror! The horror!

fake respect. You can call me by my name anytime you like. 🫡

The difficult one is the ex-military enlisted guys who CAN’T help calling me “sir” when they learn I was an officer. Okay, Chief, I know you did 20 years, much respect, the training doesn’t just break when you retire.

Just don’t tell your buddies I’m one of those worthless officers who demands

my stated preferences LESS? LOL.

Yes this has happened in pretty much that way, once or twice. Nah, see: that’s a word I have history with, and people who get to use it are people I’ve vetted thoroughly. For qualities like “at least listens when I speak, whether or not they obey.” 🤣🤣🤣

There’s also the reverse: non-casual use of “daddy” or “sir” directed at me. Like: “Hey, daddy” is fine. But ”Hey, daddy, you’re such a hot daddy, will you be my daddy?”

It’s a no from me.

“Oh, it’s okay, this is just how I talk to daddies, daddy.”

So me being a daddy means you respect ….

I’m glad someone thinks of you that way. I’m glad you think of yourself that way. I might think of you that way in certain situations.

I’ll also sometimes think “And I was chopping wood before you were born and I wasn’t even a tough guy.”

It’s just funny in multiple ways. The jokes are also on me.

What I am not saying is that age and power dynamics always run in parallel. I’ve had people call me {honorific} while being my elder. I can imagine saying it to a younger person.

It’s that the act of posting one’s power-dynamic self-assigned identity on social media makes for cute situations.

Here’s a funny thing. It’s not that I’ve stopped noticing big blokes with muscles pulling macho attitude. It can still be fun. AND … when their birth year is, like, the year I completed my military service or something, do they think anyone’s going to refer to them as ”sir” just because? ….

Happy Birthday!!!

O hai!

Is it difficult being so handsome? Semi-serious question, sometimes people do get overly familiar and entitled with attractive people. Also a complete but sincere act of flirtatious flattery, of course.

My guess is that I get it from my dad as well. My mother’s health issues don’t really fit the profile but his might have. Dad was definitely not a bear in body type, though.

Bingo, and exactly why I mention this from time to time. It’s an especial risk among queer men who know how many bears have apnea.

Since that thread was a response to someone else’s diagnosis, I didn’t want to go on forever, but here’s one thing I left out. At least in my case, apnea is on the order of a bodily disability, not a lifestyle consequence.

Which makes it important to me not to rhetorically punish myself for it.

(Tapping the sign): sleep apnea and weight are correlated, but it’s a complex correlation and there’s still much we don’t know. Read the thread if you’re interested.

Like I say: I had it when I was young and skinny, I had it middle-aged and a big bear, I have it as an older fit grampa. Born for it. 😇💪🏽😇

So it’s always worth checking it out. Borg breathing machines aside, if you do have it, CPAP can level the playing field. A lot.

EVERYONE‘s tongue relaxes during sleep.

Because so much body self-maintenance and hormonal regulation happens during sleep, poor sleep quality will fuck us up in multiple ways.

Being physically fit helps me cope with apnea, but 60 pounds of weight loss didn’t budge apnea one bit.

And when I met him later in the day to review them, he said: “If I didn’t see that you were diagnosed with apnea in 1999, it would have been the first thing I mentioned. You were born for apnea.”

The root of my tongue sits too far back in my jaw. Any relaxation at night will close my airway …

In my case, it’s equally likely that apnea makes it easier for me to gain weight, harder for me to lose it, as it is that weight causes it.

In 2017 I saw an ear/nose/throat specialist in case he could make recommendations about my sinus inflammation. He sent me for CAT scans …

I think the statistical correlation between being heavy and having apnea may lead some of us to feel that it’s a kind of “lifestyle punishment“ that we should fix with the old diet-and-exercise standbys.

My personal story is only one data point, but it goes with the science I know of on the topic:🧵

In case it makes you feel any better, you could have apnea without even being a bear. My symptoms started at age 26, 6’3” (191cm) and about 180lbs/80kg. I was still a twink on the tall side. 🤣

Annoyances aside, CPAP is usually better than horrible sleep quality. Best of luck, man.

Consider that our recently-departed chosen family member could only have married if he were willing to lose his disability benefits for good.

Consider my recently-departed never-married brother, navigating a terminal disease with the help of a sibling he was lucky to live with.

an institution that provides benefits until I qualify for the elderly-person stuff, but I’m also romantically and financially connected to people whose loss to me would be both emotionally and economically fraught.

There are better ways to deal with these things than the legal hoops I’ve jumped.