I know it’s an unpopular opinion given current circumstances, but I’ve always been a huge nerd about Russia. The history, the geography, the music, etc. And as an American, I’ve always found it fascinating how U.S.-Russian relations have fluctuated over time. We’ve gone from allies, to enemies, to frenemies. This doesn’t mean I support Z or Putin, of course. What are you a nerd about?
Comic Books
Oh my
This guy came with the receipts. What does the insurance cost?
You have to get special collectibles insurance. Varies depending on what you have.
Comic book guy IRL
My friends would all tell you how tired they are of hearing me go on and on about urban planning and infrastructure.
The ways in which our communities are built have such a large and profound impact on our lives, yet most people give little thought to it. IMO a great deal of the social woes we’re dealing with (at least in North America) are caused or made worse by our lack of sensible city-planning, from carbon emissions to social isolation.
There exists so many cool and interesting ways to build solid, sustainable communities! It’s really exciting! Sadly I have to live that excitement by researching other countries. The only form of city-planning that seems to exist here in Canada is “highway going through a parking lot interspaced with strip malls and encircled by single-family housing suburbs”.
Are you me, but Canadian? I completely and entirely agree with your comment (USA checking in). Some of our biggest issues are directly caused by our utter dependence on cars, but also by different driving laws in different areas, dumb exit / entrance designs, lack of signage in critical areas (especially regarding high-speed turns) and general disrepair of the roads. These things all compound to make accidents one of the leading causes of death worldwide.
There should be more uniform rules and regulations regarding letting just anyone drive a 2+ ton vehicle, and it’s abhorrent how little you need to know to pass a driving test
I want to be nerdy about infrastructure, but I think, just like being a vet, it would make me way too sad lol
You’re pretty on the money there, at least if you live in an area with poor infrastructure. I can’t go outside without feeling a bit of dispair for how my city is built for cars rather than people. Car-centricity is everywhere I look.
How many hours of cities skylines have you played and what is your opinion on the second part?
Honestly, maybe two hours? I’m not much of a gamer anyways, but the little experience I had with the game focused too much on cars for my liking. I hear there are mods that fix that but I never got around to installing any.
It’s definitely extremely car centric, and it’s always annoyed me how it just magics away cars instead of modeling parking. However they do have the tools (through expansions/dlc) and there are community mods that allow one to live out some public transit fantasies. I’ve been working on a certain city concept for years that’s nearly entirely car independent and I could probably make it the entire topic of one of my nerd-outs.
this is the one i always get most worked up about, just because it’s so important and no one seems to realize it
like good god if we just agreed to stop building terrible infrastructure we could have so much more pleasant lives, we would save lives, and we’d save money! AAAAAAAAAAAAA
Where can I learn more about this? It sounds interesting!
There’s a ton of good resources out there! If you’re in North America, Strong Towns is a great place to start. On YouTube there are great channels like Not Just Bikes, RMTransit, and City Beautiful.
We need to build a strongtowns community on here
That’s a really good idea. Just checked and c/strong_towns does actually exist! It’s not active but if we all start using it we could make it into something.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !strong_towns@lemmy.world
I subbed
I second the recommendation for Not Just Bikes on YouTube, probably one of the online content creators who’ve had the biggest effect on me. Another good one is Oh The Urbanity!
I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, but I’ve heard many recommend Confessions of a Recovering Traffic Engineer written by the founder of Strong Towns. Honestly, a lot of sources I’ve seen reference this book or are inspired by Strong Towns.
I’m into this too. Is there a good Lemmy community dedicated to urban planning and infrastructure?
This would be interesting to me as well!
Boardgames! I used to be more into trading card games like Magic, but got tired of the cost and constant churn, and then spent the last couple years delving deeper into boardgames, including hosting a weekly game night that regularly has 8-10 people :)
Ankh is a fun game but boi howdy does it take a while. That said though, one of my favorites it Scythe and that can take a while too. Have you been to GenCon?
I haven’t! I’ve been to a couple smaller conventions local to me, and definitely would like to attend one of the “big ones” like GenCon :-)
Love your organization! We are struggling hard with that, we have a lot of littler games and idk where to put them.
I use the bin in the lower right for some of them, but the DVD case up top is great for small box stuff!
Very nice collection. We have a few cross over. What’s your opinion of Voidfall?
It’s really fun! It’s definitely a completely different kind of game than an Eclipse or Twilight Imperium, but if you like heavy euros there’s a lot to like about it. I really enjoy the unique technologies in each game, and the ability to define your own scoring criteria through agendas.
Inis and Brian Boru!
High five.
If Innovation is not in any of those small boxes, my recommendation is to try out Innovation(because you’ve covered everything else nicely). (c:
It’s there! Right on top of the Root boxes :)
I love Brian Boru, but I’m still not very good at it! The drafting feels like it has a pretty high skill ceiling.
Perfection.
Mead. It’s such a simple recipe: Honey, water, yeast. Thats all you need to make a basic mead. Its so easy. Once you start researching more though, good lord. Ph balances, Sparkeloid v. Bentonite, fruit addition before, during, or after fermentation, Primary fermentation, secondary, racking. Don’t even get me started on the chemical additives for stabilization, and sanitation. My kitchen becomes sterile operating room every time I do a brew. I’ve also got this dope refractometer that makes me feel like a goddamn scientist every time I use it.
You are a scientist.
I’d be a lot warmer and a lot happier with a belly full of mead.
My favourite drinking buddy! Let’s get some mead!
I am a computational chemist and biochemist. Ive been an insurance agent and worked in IT at the DOD, I am a masters Starcraft 2 player, Minecraft mod pack creator and Mod dev. Aside from English, there are 4 other languages that I understand well enough to be conversational. I have had some of my art featured in a museum. I am a mathemagician. I have tutored thousands of students in Math, chemistry, biology and physics. I built a spreadsheet that tracked 30+ parameters of 600+ foods that I used to help my mother with her kidney disease and me with diabetes. Her kidney disease has been stable for 5+ years and I dropped over 80 pounds in a year.
Take your pick.
My if I ever finished a single project
You’re too powerful, Valve pls nerf
(Actually though that’s impressive, congrats and I salute you)
Speaking of nerfs, I found out that I was/am ADHD in my final semester of college.
How did it feel to get a diagnosis, if you don’t mind me asking?
Imagine that for your entire life you felt there was something different about you, that there was a gulf between you and most other people and that you felt alone. And then you finally know that not only was it not your imagination, you now know why you felt different. And you no longer feel as alone anymore. You know that there are others that are a lot like you. You look back and a lot of things about your life click into place whereas they didn’t before. It fundamentally changed how I saw myself and those around me because it gave me insight into how my mind works and how my mind is different than most peoples’ in more concrete and less anecdotal terms. And it allowed me to be more compassionate toward myself. For a long time I felt like I didn’t live up to the expectations of others because of a personality flaw. And I realized the full extent of how much abuse I had undergone because of those expectations. I did the best that I could and people often gave me the impression that was never good enough.
This past week, my sons teacher suggested getting him evaluated. As a result I’ve been doing a lot of reading about ADHD and related conditions. Just about everything I read makes me think “weird, this describes me”.
Obviously I’m going to do whatever I can to help him, but now I wonder if there is anything I should look into to help me. I wonder how much different my life would be if I figured this out earlier.
ADHD is very heritable. Something like 80 to 90%. In other words, it would not at all be surprising if it turned out you are also in the ADHD tribe. As for what you can do, you could ask your provider for an ADHD assessment. If you are ADHD, you cant rewind time but you can get the support you would need and it is never too late to do that. Just be aware that assessment as an adult is often expensive even with otherwise good insurance. If that is a major hurdle, depending on your area, there may be “pay as you are able” mental health establishments that may be able to help.
As for what to do before you are assessed, there are things that help ADHD people that dont require special accomodations or medication. eg. exercise helps regulate emotions and movement often helps alleviate feelings of restlessness and helps concentration/focus. 80% of adults with ADHD go to sleep much later than normal and/or have difficulty getting enough sleep. Research indicates this is a bidirectional issue. i.e poor sleep quality worsens ADHD and ADHD likely causes insomnia/delayed/poor sleep.
Wow, that hit hard. Thanks for taking the time to type that out.
Are you going to switch over from StarCraft to Stormgate?
Honestly I mostly played Starcraft because I liked the lore surrounding it. I started playing in junior high back in 1997 and liked the universe it built. But after 30,000+ games getting to where I am, I am kind of burnt out by it. Stormgate would have to have its unique charms for me to want to jump ship to it and from what I have seen, its too close to starcraft for me to want to play it. As it is, I would rather play something like balder’s gate 3 or something else story heavy, pve or creativity focused rather than pvp.
Which mods are yours?
Theyre unreleased and theyre kind of garbage as theyre mcreator mods :/. I dont really have the patience to code them from scratch. One adds terrain blocks eg. coral, colored sand, lunar soil, martian soil and rock etc. The latter blocks are textured based on NASA photos of the actual dirt and rock of the moon and mars. I added the moon and mars as places you could fly to using the elytra. Venus and a few other places were added and are based on old scifi depictions. The elytra flight mechanic was based on an old DnD campaign I was part of where planets and moons could be visited via hot air balloons.
The other mod adds custom potion effects. eg. a potion that burns the player when theyre in the sun, one that deals damage if theyre in water, “cursed” potions that do things like close containers as if a cat was sitting on them, technical potions that do stuff behind the scenes eg. execute commands etc. I think its up to 40 or so by now.
Id like to eventually recode them from scratch but there are hundreds of more pressing issues with the pack.
I’ve fallen out of most of my hyperfixations (yay depression) but I used to be really into:
-Words, I loved the idea you could express entire and specific meanings with a single word
-Gemstones and their mythology. More around what people used to believe and cultures rather than current day “crystal” stuff. Also, they are mad pretty
-Chemistry, I used to do backyard chemistry and loved the feeling of alchemical-like hands on stuff. chemistry feels like magic!
-Plants/Toxins/Toxic animals, what more do I gotta say? Nature is metal AF and don’t give AF. It’s wild the solutions it generates and how humans use them or adapt them.
Ever heard of toki pona?
toki! mi jan Jojo, mi pilin pona taso li pona tawa toki.
I have not! I haven’t dabbled too much into other languages, but after reading a quick synopsis is seems pretty fun and efficient!
I was almost at the point where I could say I speak it, but I’m not really there anymore. There’s a discord called “ma pona pi toki pona” (a nice place for toki pona) that I liked for a bit.
It’s a fun language to play with because it forces you to be all poetical with your words since there’s only so many of them.
What are some of your favorite ‘all encompassing’ words, that we might not know?
Also, fuck depression. It’s not welcome but it still shows up at my ‘house.’
Hmmm, well all encompassing would be something like omnipotent and panacea which most people know. To be more accurate it conveys something specific, clearly, in less words. I.E. “Draggle” - to drag through dirt and mud. As opposed to just “drag” -to be pulled along the ground. “Brontide” - a storm off in the distance. “Bombilate” -a soft buzzing noise, “Quiescent” -inactivity, at rest, akin to tranquility. ( these definitions are not verbatim, just from memory)
The problem I always have with using words like that is people always take you as arrogant, know it all, or pompous. Also, ironically, it saves no time because on order for it to be effective the other person needs to know and understand the word to get the meaning laconically.
So I rarely use the words except as “hey fun fact” stuff
I am a bit nerdy about programming language and a lot less nerdy about hardware.
Honestly, I’m kinda afraid to think about it. There’s a nonzero chance I have no in-depth nerdery. Aside from introspection, I’m not sure there’s anything I really can consider myself knowledgable about. At least more than anyone who takes a cursory interest in anything.
What you choose to do, is more important than what you have a natural ability to do.
Because the thing you choose to do, you will eventually master them.
Real. I guess you could say you’re a you nerd?
Welp, this hits too close to home. The combination of parental abuse, obession with psychology(partially cause by said abuse) and having no friends or going outside depression, plus being inside all the time,daydreaming has led to be having an ungodly understanding of myself and general human behavior.
Is it good? Well, depends on the situation, in my case, its more like a moderm man being totured with electricity, knowing how that works and knowing why are being tortured and where you are and who are your capture, as opposed to being a caveman and having no idea what the fuck is going. In short, it’s not much of use to me
As someone with ADHD, there is no end to the number of things that fascinate me in life, and as such, I tend to obssess and nerd out on a lot of things. Probably my biggest nerd things are this:
Sonic the Hedgehog: I was gifted a SEGA Game Gear with Sonic 2 for my 9th birthday (30 years ago) and I loved everything about the world and characters. I’ve been a loyal fan ever since. I own every American comic book that’s been released, I’ve seen all the various shows and movies, and I’ve played most of the games (minus the rare arcade games and games on consoles I never owned, e.g. the Nintendo DS). I even built a website to keep a logical reading order of all the main comic series that have been released. It’s a few months out of date right now; my personal life got super busy these past few months, but I’m finally free to update it again. It’s considered a valuable resource in the Sonic fandom, as the comics can get really confusing without a reading order to guide you. Especially the old “Archie Comics” Sonic series. They had so many miniseries and spinoff comics that it gets confusing really fast.
James Bond: I dunno why, but I really got into spies back in jr high school. Back then, I loved the movie Harriet the Spy and enjoyed the film GoldenEye. The video game GoldenEye 007 came out for the Nintendo 64 and my friends and I were obsessed with it. Then my dad bought me two VHS collections (yes, I’m old) of all the James Bond films and I spent my summer vacation nerding out over all the old films, from the '60s and onward. I learned James Bond was the origin of so many action/spy tropes I had seen parodied in cartoons and movies. The bald villain with a scar and a Persian kitty in his lap. The gadgets, the cars, the well-dressed gentleman spy, plots to rule the world, etc. All pay homage to James Bond films. I really got into it.
I especially loved learning about Ian Fleming, the original author of the James Bond books, and how he was a British Naval Commander during WWII and worked Intelligence for the allies. His work was more boring desk work than save-the-world action, and his original novel version of Bond definitely had more desk work than his movie counterpart. I actually did a whole James Bond movie marathon, including all the official and non-official films, and reviewed them in depth on my movie review blog. I even compared them a little to the books they’re based on, where it was applicable. Most of the movies are completely independent of the books. Some only share a book title and nothing else, e.g. Moonraker. The books and movies are very different from each other.
Movies/TV shows: As you may have guessed from my last link, I also nerd out about movies and TV shows. I’ve watched thousands of films in my life and hundreds of TV shows. I still consider it a fun hobby; I haven’t gotten to the point of learning about filmmaking techniques, obsessing over actors or directors, watching awards shows, etc. But I really enjoy getting lost in a good story for an hour or two, and I started a review blog to analyze and break down just what is so good (or bad) about the storytelling in movies and TV shows.
My last movie marathon (a Studio Ghibli marathon) was interrupted by an Internet outage and I haven’t had time to pick it back up in a long while. But I finally find myself with loads of free time again, so I might finally complete that marathon in the coming months.
There are so many other things I’d consider myself a nerd of, but these are a sample of the larger nerdom topics I enjoy.
Cool! Can totally relate.
Elasmobranch reproduction and embryology. It’s just a topic that has always been interesting. Sharks, rays, and skates are all rather closely related. But we have skates- which lay eggs (oviparity); rays- which give live birth, via internal egg incubation (ovoviviparity); and sharks- which, depending on the species, lay eggs, incubate the eggs, or experience a more “mammalian” pregnancy known as vivparity. And then, there is the intrauterine cannibalism that is known in the species Carcharias taurus, where the fetal sharks are still developing, the yolk sacs have been depleted, so the fetal sharks eat the others within the uterus, resulting in the birth of two offspring (sharks have two uteri, so one from each).
And then there is the parthenogenesis phenomenon, that we only know about because of captivity. Certain sharks- notably bamboo sharks- if absent of a mate, can trigger a response that causes ova to mature and develop into a clone of the mother. This is also known to happen in lizards.
And a large number of female elasmobranchs can also store the sperm of males after copulation to fertilize their eggs for years.
It’s just a fascinating topic all around.
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I’m a nerd about translation, translation choices, and differences in cultures. I find it fascinating that the tiniest details in your language choice are capable of changing the meaning entirely. I also happen to be a Russian, so maybe this example for the Russian-English language pair would be interesting to you:
Given: комната = room мальчик = boy одна из = a (one of) эта/этот = the (that) в = in вошел = walked
В одну из комнат вошел мальчик. A boy walked in a room.
Этот мальчик вошел в эту комнату. The boy walked in the room.
В эту комнату вошел мальчик. A boy walked in the room.
Этот мальчик вошел в одну из комнат. The boy walked in a room.
English uses a/the to define what’s known/unknown, and Russian doesn’t have a similar tool but it can change word order and add some extra words for more precision. Russian also uses a lot of cases to define who does what and when, and English just doesn’t need that, the word order does it all.
Looking at all that makes me feel like I’m watching something beautiful. Like I find solace in the fact that there is more than one way to see things.
I wondered how things worked in Russian without articles like the and a.
Preaching the use of GNU/Linux & GPG. Only had one or two takers. Both I built and maintained for. I’m married to one and the other lives an hour drive away and I don’t drive.
No one listens. No one ever listens bar my wife. I’m offering free computers in exchange for practicing the art of preaching. No one has even accepted it bar my wife. facepalm We’re all gonna die very very soon now.
We’re all gonna die very very soon now.
On a cosmic scale, that’s been true for all of human history.
2030 by our radar & no longer.
Iam curious what exactly you’re doing. Are you setting up encrypted machines and sending PGP emails to each other?
That and reading signatures on software installed.
I’m a bit of a grammar/language nerd-- I think it’s interesting to see the different structures of languages and the various ways concepts get communicated. Also by looking at what’s on the level of single words you can get an idea about what’s important culturally.
For example in Japanese, there’s not really a word for brother or sister, you always have to say olderbrother or youngerbrother. That’s because the hierarchy of ages was important enough culturally to get codified into the language.
I maybe partial to some Lord of the Rings.
Rabbits. Had them as pets throughout my childhood and I was fascinated with their behavior. Sadly, some of my knowledge came from irresponsibleness as pet stores used to sell them willy nilly without good care instructions. This was also during the dial-up modem era so there wasn’t much on the internet then either.
Here’s some things to know:
- You have to handle them a lot when they are young or they will not make great pets.
- You can litter train them. They can’t use cat litter though as clay dust is bad for their lungs.
- If you don’t get them fixed, especially the females, they can be predisposed to a lot of reproductive system cancers and be extremely aggressive.
- They are highly social animals. It’s especially cruel to keep one alone for its entire life.
- They are somewhat opportunistic carnivores.
I love when they binky
Oh yes, binkying was always pure joy to watch!
