Honestly? Myself. No one in my life asks how I'm doing, what I'm doing, if there's anything new... Then again I'm too much of a pushover anyway.
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I love your posts and have assumed that you chose your username after one of my favorite Trek characters in the history of the franchise, but did you know that Paul Stamets the Discovery mycologist was named for the actual Paul Stamets, a real life mycologist? Real-Stamets is interesting particularly because he is largely self-educated in mycology and who has multiple publications and awards in the field?
I did! You are right in guessing who I named my account after. He's also one of my favorites. First openly gay main Trek character meant a big deal to me. I know way more than I should about Discovery, including a lot of research and choices when it came to Stamets and Culber.
I love my little gay boys.
I think that, most of the time, we're all locked in our own tiny worlds that are completely filled by our lives, making us forget to really inquire about the people around us. But if you start talking about things, people are usually interested! It's not an easy thing to do, especially if you don't have many opportunities - but I can really recommend trying to share some bits and pieces about cool things that the other person might enjoy. Worst case they don't respond and you can drop it. But there's also a good chance it will lead to good things! :)
That's true for a lot of people but my situation is complicated. Like I said before, I've just learned to live with it.
Besides, the problems temporary enough. Eventually I'll die and then it'll solve itself.
At the risk of sounding edgy: Sex.
I live in the US. Sex, even just plain boring vanilla sex, is such a taboo topic. Everyone's uncomfortable about it, and that sucks. I think it's interesting, and fun, and there's so many things to talk about from actual activities to social constructs and more.
Whenever it comes up, I nerd out the same way I would when talking about a game I am currently obsessing over.
The idea of time. It’s insane to me to think about events happening at different times in different places. Or for the same event to take different amounts of time depending on your reference points.
The sun is 8 minutes away from us, so we are looking at it 8 minutes in the past. If it were to suddenly disappear, it would take 8 minutes for us to find out. That’s mine-blowing to me! It’s like the past, present, and future are all happening at the same time.
Nobody cares to humor me when I bring the topic up lol
So facinating, even gravity is affected by those 8 minutes. Iow we would rotate around a missing sun, for 8 minutes, same as with light.
This is all also related to relativity, that someone else wanted to talk about in this post, i am just saying ;)
I don't know if "rarely" is quite the right description, but I foster kittens. I meet lots of people who are excited to hear about it on a surface level and see pictures/videos/play with them, but it's been challenging to connect with other people who also foster. I'm desperate to trade stories, learn from, and teach other foster parents. I even started a community on Kbin and have posted there a few times, but haven't gotten any engagement (other than votes) so far.
In case anyone is curious, I'm still confused about how to properly link cross platform, but it's at [email protected]
I'm an American who has been living abroad for 7ish years now. I often read comments from people who say they would do it "but the taxes are brutal." Absolutely not the case. I dug deep into tax programs when I left and can comfortably say I am better off financially now than at any time I ever lived in the States.. A major part of that is my tax strategy.
I love talking about this but most people don't really care or realize how significantly it can change their lives.. Eyes just tend to glaze over.
I'd honestly be interested in listening if we lived in the same area. I'm a total noob when it comes to anything beyond basic money management. I hope you find people who appreciate your insights!
Smacking children and how it literally has no benefit to the child whatsoever, and makes you a bad parent if you still do it.
I used to be a strong supporter of smacking kids, I even signed a government petition to revoke the NZ anti-smacking bill, but after studying it at uni and then keeping abreast of the research afterwards, it has only negative effects, and yet bad parents still defend it.
Hard to talk about because people get weirdly defensive even when there's NO evidence that smacking kids is either beneficial or effective.
benefits of ritual and separating them from superstition.
I think it's interesting to explore different frames of mind. I used to be christian, but then I read the bible. afterwards, I embraced paganism which has a more positive and welcoming community generally. eventually, the seeds of reason became rooted in my mind and I grew to be the atheist I am today. I still appreciate the experience of group ritual, as it feels good to explore different aspects of my personality. I guess the roleplaying is therapeutic. mixing that with my interests in mythology makes for plenty of content to examine. what encourages different rituals to develop? what are the notable effects of ritual in general? is superstition somehow beneficial to the community? I find that digging around to explore these questions can keep me busy for hours, which I enjoy thoroughly. unfortunately, no one I know shares the same interests. most folks seem to be superstitious about it, lol.
I've always been an atheist but I come from a Catholic culture and have thought about this a lot. I feel that religion is kind of like ancient group therapy and the practices have a positive social impact. Gathering once a week with everyone in your community, singing songs and talking about how to be better people just seems like a good idea
Instead of complaining about the public educational system. How to improve on existing methods to spread ideas of curiosity and learning methods/mechanisms through FOSS means.
Anything. No one listens to me, actually listens. So I just make jokes and deflect.
No one listens to me, actually listens. So I just make jokes and deflect.
Wow damn, this hit home. It always feels like everyone is just waiting for their turn to speak when I am talking, so I eventually stopped having things to say unless it's a joke or a pun.
My topic failure - My son totally nerds out over amplifiers and guitar pedals. He frequently tries to talk to me about noise and resistance and power supplies and other words that i can't even remember. I really want to listen but i know my eyes glaze over and he gets irritated.
Try to find some closely related topic that you find interest in that he can relate to. Maybe old music or some other electronics topic. Then your son can meet you in the middle.
Cyber security stuff, but like the nitty gritty details and technical stuff. It's something I'm really passionate about, but if anyone brings up something and I start going into details, their eyes glaze over.
I guess most people like the headline, tldr version only. Lol
Metal.
Soil.
Metals in soil.
What do you want to know?
What are metals people wouldn't expect to find in their local soil?
Are there processes to extract most/all metal from soil?
What are the coolest properties of metals that you know?
Lots of things I'm really interested in are looked down on by other adults I know. I love animation but it's seen as something for kids. I love video games, but that's for teens, incels and nerds. And I love birdwatching, but that's for boring old people. Oh and also whatever my ADHD is making me hyperfocus on at any given moment. I could talk about any of those topics for ages, but more often than not people aren't interested, so I keep it to myself.
We should be friends. What's your favorite animated film and/or video game? For me, WALL-E and Borderlands 2. Both for technical reasons more than entertainment reasons.
Null models for weighted bipartite networks, and why people choose dumb network summary stats because they are lazy
Linguistics and the prescriptive bias of assuming a word’s meaning based on its blatant etymology
How skill makes games less fun and we need to embrace more chance in board games and video games
How cool it would be if we wrapped copper wire around the moon and used the earth-moon system as a huge electrical generator
Trains are awesome and we should have more of them
Old radio shows! I've been listening back through episodes of Suspense (about 400 so far) and there's some great stuff in there. There's some stuff that doesn't age too well, but there's also some surprisingly relatable stories. It's also fascinating to hear ads and snippets of news segments of the time, and to get a window of what people were worried about at that time. Not to mention that some of the episodes are just plain good thrillers that can be genuinely chilling. I can't wait to get through these and move on to The Twilight Zone.
One of my favorites has been "Please Believe Me" (https://youtu.be/J8kbEL1332A?si=ro-K9VK3X3Zi5DMI), the performances are so good.
The theory of relativity (special and general).
It is more that 100 years now, and it is perfectly true according to all current physicists, but still hardly anybody (outside of physicists) knows it. What a shame.
For example, GPS wouldn't work without it - your position would be wrong by a few miles all the time.
Personal finances, saving and frugal living
I don't remember ever meeting a person in real life with any significant interest in any of that.
Cryptography, because it's not fleshed out enough in many peoples' minds for them to have the same interest.
Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and the original edition of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG - the lore, the artwork and tracking down the books missing from my collection!
Cars. And I really like to talk reliability and engine design and other design related stuff, most car people don't even care about that. (Obviously there are plenty who do)
Astronomy
I'm currently watching Cosmos : A space time odyssey for my weekend
The original moon landing programs at NASA. I massively nerd out over Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
Psychology and physiology.
I swear my neuroendocrine system’s a lemon. I’ve had to learn basic and not so basic maintenance just to get the thing to run well enough to keep a job. I’ve struggled my entire adult life, and along the way I’ve learned a lot about trauma, stress, energy metabolism, brain parts, neurotransmitters, hormones, nutrition, inflammation, healing, spiritual work, things that alter the Big Five more than the literature says it will alter, etc.