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What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

I'm ridiculously private for a Wallace, Wallace and Wallechinsky-quality list of reasons. The main reason for things landing on my list of things I don't share with the world is that they can generate social drag for me in regards to my job.

I have a theory on social drag (the physics one) and how our weirdness and nonconformity increases the amount of energy we have to spend to generate social currency. This relates to the above tangentially (the linguistic one).

I teach life science to people larva. Larva are much more interesting than the things that made them. I also teach remedial mathematics, remedial writing and public speaking.

In many ways, me concealing my weirdnesses (it's a word now, dammit) from the larva (and their spawners) has a side benefit. When i defend a larvae's weirdness (from conformity enforcers) it appears that a non-weird person is defending them and saying 'hey, your weird is totally cool, tell me about it!'

Basically, I use secrecy to build rapport. What a douchey rationalization.