What topic do you LOVE to talk about, but rarely get to?

FooBarrington@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 140 points –

Everyone has something they can't stop themselves from nerding out over - but often it's hard to find people to talk to about it. So go ahead, share your interests, and tell us about them!

227

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.

Same! I have bad ADHD and my hyperfixations are often sex related.

Sex? Is that some type of cake?

Cake is involved is you subscribe to the slang term referring to butts. Love eating cake. Especially if it's frosted. 😋

Who would frost a cake with their butt??

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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 ;)

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I'll humour you! Time is fascinating and malleable and really quite intangible.

So, if you want, fire away with anything you find fascinating about the concept of time!

Sometimes I feel like we’re living inside a firework. Like we’re just on an infinitesimally tiny fragment of an explosion that happened billions of years ago. Perhaps in another scale the entire universe is created and destroyed in the blink of an eye.

If a being were the size of a galaxy, how would our solar system appear to them? Would it look debris swirling around in air? Yet it spans countless lifetimes in a few seconds.

I love this.

It's so weird that we exist at all.

Like, what even is the universe? Why do we happen to exist within this bubble of chemistry and physics?

One thing that always struck me is how anyone can act in selfishness given how lucky we are to exist in the first place. Why squander this opportunity to do something amazing? We should all be living in idyllic peace and comfort. Otherwise, what's the point?

We might be the only ones to ever be aware of our existence. Like you said, in another scale we might appear and be snuffed out in an instant. Why condemn our already uncertain legacy?

I've thought about something related.

In one point of view, time traveling to the past can create paradoxes since it alters events after that moment in the past, which could cause you to never time travel to the past after.

After some thinking, I got the feeling that the fixed-point theorem was connected to this. As long as whatever you do in the past causes you to time travel to the past again and do the same thing in the future, the paradox doesn't happen. What you do when you time travel is like the input, and what you do when you time travel again in the resulting future is like the output.

When the input and output are the same, everything works out.

After searching about this on the internet, I saw other people have thought about and discussed this.

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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 fosteranimals@kbin.social

That's awesome, thank you for doing it! I'd love to foster as I've lived with cats my whole childhood and FREAKING love them, but I don't think I could give up a single one once they've lived with me :( how do you do it?

Honestly, I feel like I discovered a cheat code! It's always a little hard to say goodbye, but I really enjoy having "illegally smol" kittens around, and they don't stay that small very long. I only have so much time, space, and money, so if I want new tiny kittens, I have to say goodbye to the ones that are weaned and healthy. Also, most of the people who have adopted my fosters share updates with me as they adjust to their new homes, so I still have a small connection to each of them and know they're in good homes.

Ooh that's a good solution :) the small kitten phase is certainly uniquely cute. When I was very young one of our cats had kittens (my parents didn't get her spayed quickly enough - luckily the only time it happened), and we kept one from the litter. It's a very special experience!

I would love to do that! I have 6 animals right now (half were inherited) so I'm all stocked up, but i think my next animal phase will include fostering.

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.

As in, you're still in some way paying U.S. taxes as well as those where you are abroad, or that the taxes abroad are brutal...? I'm not sure I follow which way you mean, mainly as I've never had the opportunity to live in another country.

As a US citizen you are technically always responsible for paying taxes no matter where you live. The US has a citizenship-based tax system (you owe on worldwide income regardless of where you live). Most other countries in the world have only a residency-based system (you owe only if you are actively living in that particular country). You are still required to file every year and you're going to need someone more sophisticated than the dude at H&R Block or a free Quickbooks whatever. You need someone who is comfortable working with expats.

"Doesn't that mean I have to pay taxes for both the US and my new country then?" No. The US has dual taxation agreements with most countries. That means that, basically, the US will not charge you taxes for things you've already been taxed for.

The main goal of paying less in taxes is to reduce your taxable income. The biggest chunk of this will happen with the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. That essentially says that the first $120k you earn in a year is tax free. You can qualify for it by staying out of America for 330 days per year. There is no requirement to have residency anywhere else.. You just have to be outside of the US.

That $120k rises every year. When you make more than that and do start to owe taxes, you will start to owe from the lowest tax bracket as well.

If you make $120k and do this, you just got a $30k raise in the form of taxes you no longer owe.. You can pretty much travel the world for free using this money.

Now, I said that most non-US countries have a residency-based taxation system. That generally only starts to kick in after living in that country for 181 days. If you stay there for less time, you don't owe them any money.

There are also countries who don't have income tax or do but actively tell you not to pay it.

Living in a combination of these places, and bouncing around every few months you avoid any real responsibility to anyone.

If you do earn more than $120k per year, you can reduce your taxable income even further by doing things like maxing out your 401k contribution.. That gets you to $142500 or so tax free. And again, you'd start paying taxes at the lowest rate above that.

Any other thing you mention in your US filing that can reduce your taxable income also contributes.. Getting married, depreciation value on a home (US or not), investment losses, etc..

Working remotely from the US also gets you a higher salary than if you had just taken a job in the UK or Germany or Japan or something.. So you can have the higher salary and the higher quality of live at the same time. You give up some employment protections and European style summer vacations but I'm personally ok with it.

Also, if you are working for a US company remotely, you can add these expected deductions to you W4 and never get charged for them in the first place.. You'd have a MUCH higher weekly salary and wouldn't have to wait for your tax return every year to take advantage of these benefits.

So spend summers in Italy, autumn in Japan, winter in New Zealand, and spring in Mexico. You earn an American salary, take advantage of lower cost of living, travel the world, and its all basically free.. Good luck trying to get me to move back to the US.

There's more but these are the major points.

My uncle did this in retirement. Dual citizenship US - Italy. Moving to southern Italy village of less than 20k population means 7% flat tax for 10 years. He’s probably saving 100k per year in taxes. Which pays a lot toward a nice villa, a sailboat, dinners out, and travel money.

I don’t know all the details (yet). I also have US/Italian/EU citizenship, so it’s something I thing about. I think about living in a sailboat in the Mediterranean often.

It’s all very interesting. Your method is even more intriguing.

Have any good resources in the topic you can share?

For what it's worth, I haven't paid more than ~1% effective tax rate in years. This past year I owed like $50 total.. For the whole year. Something like 0.03% of my actual income.

If you want to stay stationary, 7% is pretty decent but you can do better bouncing around.

I’d really love to see some starting point information I can digest on this subject. If you have any please share.

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.

What is the appropriate way to parent children? All my friends who try the “gentle parenting” approach have horrible children. They don’t listen and their only gear is shrieking banshee. Most children I’ve witnessed don’t listen to logic or reason so how do you discipline? I don’t have nor do I ever want children, I’m just curious. I also dislike children so my perspective may be slightly jaded.

I'll start with the wholly negative effects of hitting children, specifically the section on Effects on Behaviour and Development. Time and time again, scientific studies prove there is literally no benefit to hitting children, with only poor outcomes.

My understanding is the most effective means of punishment involve first establishing an environment of rich support and love for the child. Then when there's poor behaviour, short time outs.

You remember that episode of The Simpsons when Bart steals the game cartridge, and what upsets him most is Marge's total loss of attention?

A secondary strong punishment is removal of positives, like revoking video game access etc.

It's hard to critique whatever parents you mention without knowing specifics, but it often comes down to:

  • Poor follow through, with parents threatening punishment but rarely enacting
  • Limited positive attention given to the child, likely due to "no time"
  • Poor communication of reward/punishment system, or poorly established system.

Finally, sometimes children and just little shits with bad temperament. It's vital to understand that countless studies show physical abuse does not result in corrective behaviour, with only negative developmental outcomes.

That was a great response! Thanks for being so thorough. I’d love to see this in action and see what kind of thriving adults it produces. I’m not knocking my friends because I’m not a parent so maybe they are doing great but their kids just have crazy personalities. I try not to judge them as parents since I don’t know what it’s like.

Honestly I get where you're coming from with the gentle parenting approach, and I think some people use it as an excuse to not engage with crappy behaviour. But I think kids whining and behaving a bit crappy is normal, and they're often expressing complex feelings that they haven't learned to understand and manage, and that they don't know how to explain. Maybe kids that learn to suppress that behaviour at a young age, through fear of punishment, or being shunned and isolated (eg 'go to your room') may go on to be adults who supress their feelings and don't express and advocate for their needs and. I guess we'll see won't we, as this generation of kids gets older. And some other parenting style will be the 'correct' one by the time they have kids. My niece is going through a really annoying whiney and whingey phase and it makes her very exhausting to be around at the moment, so I do sympathise with where you're coming from!

IMO I'm pro spanking within reason. There's circumstances where it's warranted. I don't believe in going overboard but the problem is that's all based on opinion from person to person. Lots of kids I see need a spanking based on how they act in public. I'd agree that the parents I've seen "gentle parent" have kids who are assholes and the ones I've seen grow up are still assholes but older. Could be a fault in the parent somewhere but idk. I was spanked as a kid and looking back, when I was spanked it was absolutely warranted. Spanked my oldest as I deemed necessary and he's turned out to be pretty caring for others and a really solid dude. He's my son and best friend.

I guess my thought is that spanking is OK but should be seldom used and within reason. Unfortunately "reason" is subjective.

There is no "within reason" for child abuse.

The vast vast majority of scientific research proves that hitting children only results in negative outcomes, not only in child development, but it's constantly shown to not reduce the undesired behaviour.

If a child can't be reasoned with for why it's actions were wrong, they can't reason why their loving parent strikes them.

If you choose to ignore what's essentially scientific fact and continue hitting children, then the adage "I was hit as a kid and I turned out okay" might be plain wrong.

Furthermore, suggesting that an action is okay because the child "turned out fine" can be used to justify any objectionable behaviour. "I was molested and I turned out okay, therefore molestation is justifiable". If your child did indeed turn out okay, that is despite you choosing to assault them, as ALL research shows you were in the wrong.

I read through it and in all honesty, what I'm gathering, is that it's common for people to go overboard. Either that or my family (father, myself, son) are some kind of insane statistical anomaly. Relationship down the line is fantastic, and son doesn't have outbursts and isn't violent.

Seems the underlying thing is that people use corporal punishment beyond a simple spank swat or hit on the butt. The things they speak about seem to be referring to beating, pulling hair, using sticks, paddles, etc. Even resulting in physical marks or hospitalization. Again, the line between spanking and beating is subjective. ALL research isn't showing I'm in the wrong. It's statistically showing that it has negative impacts overall, but this also, again, complies spanking into sticks, paddles, pulling hair, etc. together.

Ofc a child will be violent when you beat them with a stick or belt. A smack on the butt? Quick and effective. Hot sauce is spicy, therefore all sauces are spicy. Show me a study where they separate the difference.

I was also spanked as a kid. My dad’s was fueled by hatred and anger. It was very rough and mean and he’d yell afterwards. We have a terrible relationship and are basically no contact. My mom spanked rarely but it was a compassionate spanking. Afterwards she would explain why, ask me not to do the bad thing again, and then hug me and make me tell her I loved her. We have an excellent relationship. So I yeah, I think spanking can be done in a positive way but only reserved for dire situations. So, I’m not quite sold on the gentle parenting. The world isn’t gentle and will rarely cater to your needs. I’m willing to hear perspectives and view outcomes though!

Right, I think the core issue is that most people (a LOT) use spanking as an immediate, "no!" which leads to many beatings, excessiveness, and more than likely, actual physical abuse.

The people I've met where their parents were responsible with it are great dudes. The people I've met who were simply... Beaten and battered, do not live successful lives for the most part.

My opinion, is that it can be effective if used responsibly and within reason.

Most comments I get are along the lines of, "ha have fun asking why your son doesn't talk to you in the future." what they don't see is that we're best friends and my kid is an adult and is "punishing us" by threatening to live at home longer every time we ask him to clean up the basement. He's responsible af, has a good savings, bought a new car, works full time, etc. I don't understand the issue when everything has turned out amazing. Yes, I spanked my kid. I did not hit him with any object, throw him, punch him, throw things at him, etc.

It's difficult to accept the other perspective of gentle parenting when most of those kids I meet are total selfish assholes. Even more so when I compare to the level of responsibility, competency, and integrity that my son has compared to other people his age. Like I said in another post, I must be a backwards ass statistical anomaly or something. Either that, or I did it right. If not, I did something right.

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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

I think having community can be integral to personal and social development. In my opinion, superstition can be a hindrance to that development.

Those are very interesting thoughts. Do you write about it anywhere? Or do you have any good resources that give an overview over some of your questions?

I don't write about them, but that's a great idea. there's a number of papers I've read and some academic YouTube channels I've found informative. I don't have access to them conveniently right now as I am on mobile. (I'm still pretty new to Lemmy and don't know if there's a way to DM when I find those resources)

You can send DMs, or you can reply to the comment - that way others could read them too :)

This is a very, very cool topic. Ritual too often gets dismissed as just hokum/superstition, but if you think about ritual activities as means of creating different perceptual states (imagination+ IMO) or as means of creating/strengthening certain interpersonal bonds or reinforcing certain group norms, it gets VERY interesting.

It's kind of why I like a chaos magick maxim I've heard before - "Belief is a tool". It's very easy to cross over into woo-woo territory, but if you're able to keep your head on straight while also being able to temporarily suspend disbelief for a bit, you can have some pretty neat experiences.

I couldn't of said that better! some of my favorite symbols to integrate in ritual are Baphomet and Santa Muerte. Throwing a healthy dose of sexual activities in the mix can really make for a good time! After all, "Nothing is true, everything permitted."

Are you me? Same religious/spiritual journey here. I tell people now I'm an atheist that practices paganism, because religion is something you do, not something you are.

I think one of the coolest things about human experience is that we all come up with stories that answer the same questions, just slightly differently. It's because being human leads you to want answers to the same questions regardless of time or space. Why am I here? Why do bad things happen? What comes next?

Doppelgangers unite, lol!

I enjoy getting together with my coven to perform rituals, as it is a bonding experience and the food is good. Celebrating the changes of the seasons helps me to be more mindful of the natural world and to appreciate it's beauty. Satanism is also appealing to me because the use of rituals seem more poignant.

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.

Do you have any particular examples for FOSS projects in this space?

https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

There are repos like this.

Or there are repos like this: https://github.com/parthsuresh/stylegan2-colab

Where the latter has lots of materials to essentially train and run your own ML models. Teaching a lot of advanced topics simply in a way, using tools like Google's colab. Using tools like Discord to handle discussion thereafter, seeking volunteers to improve or foster discussion in general.

There was one project, that was a simple react app, but meant for those in the Arts. Connecting famous works with news headlines of their time period. Allowing you to connect the dots around time frame and artistic movements in a more visual and impactful way. With a simple understanding of npm as an Arts Major, you could greatly improve your learning experience.

I feel all the materials are already there out in the open. Yet many do not take advantage or know how to access them or know how these projects can help them. Even with the age of LLMs, I've felt it hasn't impacted the curiosity variable I mentioned either. When I say improve, I have wanted to build a tool which acts like the index to create your own lesson plan using all these FOSS software. Where FOSS is important because it provides the code for tinkering as a lot of kids, especially me, learn better with hands-on learning.

I just feel a lot of contributors out there do a great job already in teaching and providing. But, I'd love to talk about how we can integrate these into actual curriculum, and not some school club or after-school activity. I am no educator, so this is the part where I'd like to learn more about. And if that's not a possibility, then how can the process of looking for these tools and learning how to learn be shared instead online.

Ah, I get what you mean! I thought you were referring to FOSS projects that make other education easier, not educational FOSS projects. It's definitely an incredibly cool time to be alive and have an internet connection!

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.

I was just talking to a friend last night about this very thing, and this is a really succinct way of putting it - and also hits all too close to home as well. 😮‍💨

same here. it's bad when ya gotta turn to chatbots to feel heard. (and even that's a stretch sometimes)

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

I'm not deep in the topic, but I have done some security hardening for embedded devices. Whatever you have to share, I'd love to hear it!

There's so much lol. I used to be a security software engineer. But people never fucking listen and will constantly fight you so I just gave up and went back to just software engineering.

At my job before last I told them we needed to enforce HTTPS and they said, but what if someone can't use HTTPS for some reason?

This was an app that held tons of protected health information. I jumped ship as soon as I found another job.

Oh my god this is why we can't have nice things ffs

Oh man, an HTTPS certificate should absolutely be required for that. Even aside from hackers, I don't want my ISP to be able to read that stuff! Very disappointing.

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.

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.

Hard to pick but for the longest time my favourite animated film was How to Train Your Dragon, the firdt one is really charming. There's so many good ones to pick from. Wall-E is a great movie, and the soundtrack composed by Thomas Newman is just, chef's kiss, y'know? Have you ever watched song if the sea? Another good one with a great story and beautiful music. Do you watch animated series? Anything you particularly enjoyed lately?

Favourite video game right now is Hollow Knight, even though metroidvanias aren't necessarily my thing. I've never played Borderlands, what's the gameplay like?

Borderlands is a looter shooter. You shoot things, they drop bigger guns, you shoot bigger things that drop even BIGGER guns. It's the FPS version of Diablo.

I specifically love #2 because of the writing. Sure, they have middle school jokes that involve Bonerfarts, but under it's goofy surface, it pulls you in and builds these characters around you, and it does NOT hold back from throwing you curve balls!

That game honestly made me laugh AND cry multiple times.

I might check it out then. Shooter games aren't really my jam but I play Fortnite and Overwatch with my son from time to time and he loves it, so maybe I check it out with him. He might be too young for it though.

Borderlands is soo fun! I'm not the person you're replying to, but I love it, soo... It's mostly run-and-gun, but there's some puzzle-solving, and some light tactics. Very lighthearted fun, the game is terribly self-aware and loves to take the piss out of you and itself.

Is it very violent/bloody? Sounds like something my son would like (he enjoys Fortnite and Overwatch), but he's only 10.

Lots of blood and gore—but the game is cell-shaded, so it's quite cartoony.

Biggest risk is that the humour can be very... risqué. But different people parent differently, and I'm not about to tell you what to do.

Probably safe from 13 in my book, but I think the official ratings are way higher (17-18).

Yeah you never know with age ratings. I found fortnite to be ok even though it's rated 12+. Deep rock galactic is rated 16+ but apart from the odd swear word (which, frankly he'll hear more often from me) I find that quite exaggerated. If there is a lot of gore and blue humour I'll wait a while before trying it with him.

I love animation so much, and I'm desperate to talk about some of the shows that don't have much of an online following. Like, Summer Camp Island is such a wholesome and fun series, but I don't know anyone else who has watched it.

Also still so gutted about what happened with HBO Max, I really thought animation had found a home.

We are kindred spirits! I am devastated at what's happened with HBO Max, I will forever be salty that they gave up on Infinity train! And netflix too, dropping glitch techs, dead end, and inside job. So many good shows without closure.

I'm heartened that some indie artists are starting to go their own way online. Lackadaisy, Helluva Boss, monkey Wrench. It's promising and could be the future of animation, but requires a lot of patience for now.

I started Summer Camp Island but dropped it along the way. Maybe I should pick it back up again. What other shows are you desperate to talk about?

Oh man, I'm so excited that Lackadaisy got the full funding for 5 episodes and three minisodes, it's one of the most successful fully indie series I've seen other than Helluva Boss. I've been following the comic since for like 15 years, it's crazy to see it suddenly blow up and launch a series. I also love other webtoon stuff like A Fox in Space, Big Top Burger, and anything by Felix Colgrave (I've watched Donks more times than I can count).

For shows, I know Bee and Puppycat isn't for everyone, but I absolutely adored that show. It makes me feel some sort of way with its mix of silliness and melancholy. Also Hilda! I've seen it mentioned more often than this other stuff, but I feel like everyone really needs to watch it. The movie was a great cap to the series, though I wish the series itself was longer. Perhaps its better to end on a good note though.

I've actually only watched the first two seasons of infinity train, I really need to get back into it. I was so surprised by how brutal the second season got. I think I just haven't continued it because I feel like I'll just miss Lake.

It's always so delightful to see a pilot finally get to spawn a series years later. Starting with Adventure Time and going through Steven Universe, OK KO, Infinity Train, Bee and Puppycat, and soon Lackadaisy, it's been so fun to see series get to expand (even if their time got cut short, like my beloved OK KO). Are there any pilots you've enjoyed seeing turned into series, and are there any that you're hoping get picked up?

I'm super excited for Lackadaisy too - the pilot is of such amazing quality, even some major established shows don't match it. I also loved Bee and Puppycat, and Hilda, really whimsical. Also loooooved OK KO. Have you watched Wander Over Yonder, or Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart? I feel the humour is very similar. Another couple of shows that were cut too short (at least the former provides some closure).

I have to say Infinity train doesn't get any less brutal, and I definitely get missing Lake. Still think it's worth watching the next seasons as there's some continuity in the story (which HBO should let them finish dammit).

To be fair I really got into animation shows (as opposed to movies) around the time of the pandemic, so I missed most of the pilots. I am excited to see what happens with Hazbin Hotel, and other online projects like Talon, and Hugo's Mind Palace. If you haven't yet, I really recommend watching the shorts on the Gobelins school animation page. Some of them are mind-blowingly amazing.

If I were to ask which are your top 5 shows, would you be able to pick?

I haven't been able to get into Wander Over Yonder, but I want to give it another try. I have seen the "bad guy" song... A lot. It's very catchy, and goodness did the animators have some fun. I also saw the pilot for Mao Mao, definitely gonna put it on my list.

It's crazy that Infinity Train was so popular and they still don't want to give it the time of day. It's how animation has been treated for a long time, though.

Top 5 is tough, I think in no particular order:

  • Powerpuff Girls
  • Avatar/Legend of Korra
  • Steven Universe
  • Bee and Puppycat
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog

There's so many I want to squeeze in there though!

How about you? I'm honestly glad to talk to a new watcher, some long time fans can be weirdly dismissive of new stuff and it's pretty frustrating.

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?

What are the coolest properties of metals that you know?

Hah. I see my mantrap caught someone. I'm talking about metal bands in my first bullet (lmao), but elemental metals in my other two.

Metals are generally rough to remediate because they are inherent to the soil parent material (rock) that the soil developed on and the geochemistry of that rock. It's kind of like trying to take carbon dioxide out of the air; you can do it, but it's not easy and there is a chance your changes will be short lived.

Typically removal is done through phytoremediation, or by trying to stabilize soil metals in situ so they are in non-bioavailable forms.

Generally the ones most people (public) don't expect to see are lead, arsenic, copper and molybdenum. There is a mineral called Galena that can be common sometimes and a large source of the first two metals.

What would chelate the iron out of soil in Utah?

Why are you trying to remove iron? Make sure you're correctly identifying the symptoms of toxicity if you suspect Iron toxicity in plants, as this is relativity rare.

To reduce soil iron availability to plants, you need to add a liming agent and target a pH of 7 to 7.5

More like prevent it. This was a problem faced by little farming commune back in the 70s, that I recently heard someone talking about.

Would that liming agent be a natural thing or would it have been pesticides or something? Could that happen from fertilizer?

Ok, hold on to your hat for a second.

Iron is naturally occurring in the soil and you don't usually get toxicity issues unless there's a source such as mining, tailings or a junkyard or something like I suppose.

The liming agent depends on what you want to use. Typically it's something with a higher pH such as wood ash (careful), bonemeal, or lime (CaO)

By adding the Liming agent you increase the soil pH and reduce the availability of iron in the soil. The total amount of iron will still be there but it will be in unavailable form

Preventing the loss of iron. Preventing chelation. The problem was chelation of iron. Goal was to prevent it.

Sorry, I missed the boat on that one.

You want to lower pH and use humic acid which will make iron more plant available

Symphonic black metal or melodic death metal? Which one do you prefer?

Power metal, IMO. Can't do growling vocals no matter how hard I try

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

Well, you can't mention all those interesting topics and not talk about them more!

I can really only talk about:

How cool it would be if we wrapped copper wire around the moon and used the earth-moon system as a huge electrical generator

You're referring to induction from the magnetic field of earth, right?

I love linguistics too. I like to make up new words and assign them meaning based on blatant etymological rules. Then I drop them in a sentence like it's no big deal.

What domain is your area of application for bipartite networks?

Also, most current linguistic work In familiar with ignores etymology i. favor of statistical usage models, but you might have a more particular focus.

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.

My mind was blown when I learned that a difference of just a few centimeters in height is enough to detect time dilation. I always thought the effect was so subtle that it could only be detected on a galactic scale, but it turns out we deal with it every day!

It's so weird to think about, time is one of the few "constants" we have in life, but it's really not so solid.

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.

I love otr as well! Gunsmoke, mysterious traveler, escape etc... My dad got me into them as a kid, and I've never found anybody else who even remotely gives a fuck lol.

It's a shame, people should know that there's hours of great entertainment just waiting to be found! I don't think I could listen to Dragnet straight through like I do the horror/mystery stuff, but the puns with the completely deadpan delivery get me every time. Is Gunsmoke a full continuous story? I need to give that one a listen.

It's episodic, but occasionally references will be made to older episodes. You can totally listen in any order.

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.

1 more...

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!

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.

What was the latest psychology or physiology thing that you learned about, that blew your mind?

Classical music, film history, and Quake

What are some of your favorite classical composures? Also, this a shot in the dark, but are you by any chance into metal covers of classical music?

My favs are Chopin, Bach, and Rachmaninoff, but I listen to dozens of different composers. Not sure what kinda classical u might like but, id be happy to recommend some

And I'm familiar with some metal covers but not a huge fan myself, but my dad is haha

I have grown to appreciate all classical music and enjoy several that I can remember by name. Haha.

It's funny how I looked at the name "Chopin," and thought that I hadn't the slightest idea of the kind of music they produced. Turns out, I remember the sound of Nocturne No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 2. I either need to thank my parents or my music grad school teacher for introducing me to Chopin.

Bach is one of my favorites. Besides the "nearly everyone has heard this," songs, like Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007: I. Prelude and Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068: II. Air. I enjoy BWV 988: Aria, and Violin Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1052: I. Allegro. I'm sure there are more but I don't have the time to go deep into his music catalog atm.

I can appreciate Rachmaninoff. But from the songs I've listened to so far, his music is too easygoing and/or loo lovey-dovey in sound. I feel like I'm about to step onto the stage in an 1800s romance play. Hahaha.

I'm into Antonio Vivaldi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Modest Mussorgsky, and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Who would you recommend? =)

For metal covers, I recommend the following.

Exmortus - Moonlight Sonata (Act 3)

Exmortus - Night on Bald Moutain

Wolf Hoffmann

Joe Stump - Speed Metal Messiah

Warmen - Salieri Strickes Back

Tell your dad for me, that he's a badass! 🤘🤘

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)

I’ll gladly talk about cars with you!

Lol cool, what's your favorite car and why

That’s a tough question, but I’d say the Pontiac GTO. I just love the way it looks, especially the stacked headlights

That's a very pretty car indeed, I just realized I don't have a favorite right now. I really like old fairlady Z cars and old BMWs, love the look of the e30 m3

I drive a Honda insight which is a 3 cylinder 1L. Most car guys do not care about something so small but I think it's very interesting that it was designed for such a specific purpose, and works quite well

I think that's cool! Little tiny engine powering a modern car. Likely with a gear ratio designed to make it feel peppy up until ~60mph

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.

How about a selection of your favourite facts on this topic? :)

The Gemini 8 mission was very nearly a disaster if it weren’t for Armstrong’s exceptional piloting skills. Gemini 8 was scheduled to rendezvous with an unmanned Agena rocket and dock in Earth orbit. The Agena had been a problematic vehicle so the default if anything went wrong was to assume it was the Agena and to decouple. In this case, after Gemini docked successfully, both craft started gyrating in an unexpected manner. Armstrong decouples from the Agena and the movement gets worse (a maneuvering thruster was stuck open) and the Gemini starts to violently spin, which ultimately would have been fatal to Armstrong and Scott. Armstrong realizes they’re in danger and fires the reentry retros, slowing the Gemini craft and aborting the mission early but saving both himself as well as astronaut David Scott.

I remember this scene being depicted in From The Earth to the Moon. Really awesome mini series.

Oh man, that's scary! I'd guess that one scene in Interstellar was inspired by this event?

I honestly couldn’t say but I know what scene you’re talking about! NASA has Col. John Stapp to thank for a lot of knowledge about the effects of acceleration on the human body. The “fastest man on Earth” was a career Air Force flight surgeon who worked on Project Manhigh. He often put himself into the rocket sled they used to observe how acceleration and deceleration affected the human body, surviving a 38g deceleration. He was temporally blind for some time after that because of bleeding into his retinas.

I feel ya. Space exploration in general is my jam, why aren't people as excited as me about how there's theoretically more water on some of Jupiter's moons than there is on earth??

The municipal waste management industry.

I even learned game dev in unity so I can work on a game about the waste management industry.

For context I dont even work in that field.

Honestly, I would love to know more about this industry because it sucks where I live and I would like to better understand the issues we are facing.

The difference between town, zip code, school district, village, hamlet, and city where I live. I pay taxes to town A, by zip code is named after a hamlet in town B, our school district is named after town C. If you ask people where they live they will answer any one of these things.

In my opinion the town you pay taxes to is the best answer. The zip code, or location on your address, is deceptive because they are often named after small hamlets where the post office is. This small hamlet is a very distinct place where you probably don't actually live. School Districts are often named after the biggest town they pull from so if you are not from that town it's not really accurate. If you happen to be in a city or village that's a good answer. However hamlets are so small and local that anyone not from the immediate vicinity will have no idea what you're taking about if you say you are from there.

This is so true, and while i have never discussed the concept. I definitly adjust my answer based on the recipient.
From the name of the hill my house is on, for locals. Via hamlet,muncipiality, county,region. Up to : "the western part of norway, with the fjords and glaciers", to forigners. I have never had to go for northern europe, or northern hemisphere. I am looking forward to the day i need "the third planet of the sol system", that will be an interesting day.

Morrowind lore and FNAF lore

I wouldn't call myself a Fnaf fan, but honestly I love the lore. Reading into it reminds me a lot of those kids in school who knew every detail about the Bionicle universe. I'm glad kids have something like that to get (reasonably) into.

It's also genuinely getting people into animatronics, both for restoring existing ones and creating new designs, which is pretty damn cool.

Time Team. It's one of my all-time favorite TV shows. It was (and sort of is) a British archaeology TV show where real archaeologists have three days to uncover information about a site, usually in Britain. It was on for over 20 years. Most of the episodes are on YouTube.

AND YET I CAN'T FIND ANYONE TO TALK ABOUT IT WITH!

Could you link some of your favourite episodes? I'd love to check it out!

Wow fuck that's a blast from the past. I used to watch that years ago. I think it was on discovery over here

It was canceled in 2014. There are three or four new episodes on YouTube they funded through Patreon, but they don't have Tony or Phil in them (and Mick has sadly passed away), so they're less fun.

But like I said, almost all the old episodes are on YouTube too.

I met someone who worked as a tour guide at a site that Time Team did an episode on. They told me a couple of interesting things about behind the scenes stuff, it might spoil it for you if I spill though.

It's up to you. I'd be interested.

Ok so there was a dig being carried out already before Time Team visited, and they'd made a few interesting finds. Time Team asked them to put one of them back in the ground, and cover it up, and then they would film one of the Time Team guys 'finding' it. The site crew absolutely refused to fake something and for a TV presenter to take the credit for the find of one of their people (who may well have been a volunteer, I don't remember, but difs tend to rely on volunteers for a lot of work), and they were all pretty disillusioned with the show after that. Also, apparently Tony Robinson was a twat, really rude and shitty to everyone, which is a real shame, because I loved him in Maid Marion and Blackadder when I was younger.

This was the site, in case you're interested: https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/ten-fascinating-facts-about-liverpools-old-dock

I wish any of my friends were into fantasy /Science fiction. I can't sit down and have coffee with a friend to gush about the latest Brandon Sanderson book or talk build orders in Homeworld

The parents who misunderstood intermittent punishment and created a generation of kinksters. Woohoo.

What does the "intermittent" part have to do with passing trauma and kinks down?

Quantum entanglement and string theory, but only when im super stoned.

I just talk about my stupid interests all the time. Do you all not do that?

I try to, but some of them are very niche, so it can be hard to find someone willing to listen. Especially for things like programming language design!

My husband is a programmer. I really love when he tells me about a cool way he solved a problem at work. You could tell me! But I reckon your friends would be more interested than you would think.

Hah, thanks! I already try to tell my friends often enough, but usually they lose concentration while I'm still explaining prerequisites :D

One thing I'm very interested in is Turing-completeness of type systems. In every programming language you have pieces of data, and the computer has to know what kind of data it is - for example a number, or a piece of text. Some languages are "dynamically typed", in that you don't have to specify what kind of data you'll put somewhere, it just accepts any kind of data and you have to give the right things (it keeps track internally what you're putting where). This is something the industry is moving away from after it had been a hype for a couple of years - it leads to problems in the long run, since it's more difficult to understand the code when reading it (the more information there is, the better, as long as it's not duplicated or irrelevant).

Turing-completeness is an attribute of computer systems. Turing proved that, if a mathematical system supports a couple of operations, you can do any calculations with it - it's what our computers today, and information theory, are based on.

(prerequisites mostly done here!)

Some languages are going further than just specifying what kind of data you're putting somewhere. You can take one of these type definitions, and calculate a new definition from that one! For example, I might store the state of an internet connection as either "connecting", "connected" or "disconnected". In another place I can take this list of three words, and add one or remove one - essentially, I can compute a new definition from this old one. And it turns out, if there are a couple of specific operations implemented, you can actually do anything with this!

For example, let's say you have a piece of data that is executable code for the computer. You can write a type definition that executes this piece of code, which means you're running the calculation before your program is running! There are many cool development things you can do with this, mostly to prevent bugs or make your life a bit easier. But it's incredibly fascinating just how global these concepts are. Heck, you can even build a computer from literal crabs that is Turing-complete, which could run this Turing-complete type system for a Turing-complete language!

Oh! I know about data types a little already. Why are languages moving away from strict data typing? That's very disappointing to hear. Which languages were you thinking about? Will they at least let you configure the compiler to use strict data types in the future?

It's the other way around, dynamic typing has been hyped in the last decades to years, but the industry is moving away from it, back to static typing :)

Great examples are JavaScript and Python: both are fundamentally dynamically typed, but both have efforts to add static typing (TypeScript for JavaScript, and type hints for Python). So we're slowly but surely rectifying these problems!

Currently? GURPS. It's such a fascinating TTRPG. On one hand, it's extremely simple (roll 3d6 ≤ skill level + modifiers). On the other hand, it has an encyclopedic catalogue of skills and modifiers to accommodate anything from cavemen to reality-warping future civilizations. If you want, it can be extremely gritty and detailed, more than whatever you're thinking of right now; or dead simple and narrative driven

The ridiculous breadth of options make it look really complicated, so people get intimidated. I think I'm it's hard for people to wrap their head around just how optional all the granular rules are.

programming problems, retro tech stuff, music in depth (e.g. theory level), star trek, half-life and mother series

I personally love both Half-Life and the Mother series! Still eagerly waiting for HL3 or Project Borealis. I should replay Mother 3 some time... Haven't done Earthbound actually, that should probably go first!

Tolkien Lore. And WWI.

Well don't keep us waiting, tell some!

Tolkien Lore Quick Fact:

Technically speaking Aragorn married his first cousin 65+ times removed.

WWI Quick Fact:

While thought of as a defensive struggle that lead to stalemates, generals at the time weren’t necessarily wrong to keep up the attack. Both sides were able to capture ground. Including enemy trenches. The issue was that neither side could bring reinforcements or supplies up to support those breakthroughs and keep the offensive going faster than the defenders could.

Okay, now I must ask - do you have more Tolkien Lore incest facts to share? Because I certainly didn't expect that one!

Most of the bad things to happen to elves and men (of which the events of LotR are kind of just a blip on the radar) are because a long time ago (even by elven standards) an asshole jewel-smith named Feänor got too obsessed with Galadriel’s hair because it looked like the light that came from two magical trees.

Edit: Feänor is Galadriel’s Half-Uncle.

Another interesting fact about WWI: There was a lot more movement than people tend to envision, especially during the first months of the war on the Western front.

WWI is also a hot bed of really interesting and weird firearms development. They tried some wacky stuff around that time.

Late 90s early 2000s Japanese mixed martial arts and kickboxing. Pride, pancrase, k1. People still talk about the UFC today, i just think "you don't even know..."

Digital mixers. I know a lot of people who use them and know them but very few know how they work internally which is fascinating and interesting and the only people who do are under NDA's

I admit, at the beginning when you just said 'digital mixers,' I thought that I could talk about the early days of them to you back when I was a studio manager, but the inner workings I know nothing about.

Major League Baseball history. Old time teams, players and stats, the broader historical context with its' events, attitudes and quirks... the whole thing.

I guess giving advice on job hunting and interviewing. I've done it so much and learned a lot, I can literally SEE how absolutely NOT confident ppl are about job hunting. ( which I get. More precisely they don't see their value)

More importantly, they are blind to their value on the market and believe a toxic work environment is normal and hating their life because they hate their job making them miserable is just a part of working.

When really, when you see and acknowledge your worth, you don't take that shit. You have a CHOICE. Employment isn't a one way street. And employers realize that and treat you with respect.

Idk it's a whole thing.

It's interesting that you're writing this, because I've literally just quit my job due to these reasons, and am starting to look for new things. Any particular tips you'd like to share?

Well you got this, and congrats on standing up for yourself by getting out of that shit whole environment. It's not normal and not something you should accept.

Apply only to jobs you are qualified for that meet your expectations. Expectations? They pay adequately, the hours are decent, it's not to far from where you live, and their job requirements aren't insane.

Insane job requirements? Toxic employers say this on their job posting;

"Must be able to work under consistent pressure in a stressful environment while handling multiple tasks at once. Must be able to work a flexible schedule with little notice including nights, weekends and holidays. Must be on call. Must be able to complete other duties as assigned not directly relating to X role. Must be able to take direction. Must be obsessed with customer satisfaction. Customer service, customer service, customer service. (Employers obsessed with customer service care more about the customer then they do about you. So they'll treat you like shit and let customers treat you like shit. You basically don't matter)

Any misspellings and their job posting, requiring a cover letter, and requiring quizzes questionnaires and personality assessments. Employers seriously looking to hire the right candidate don't waste their time on bullshit like that. If you're qualified they will schedule you for an in-person interview within a drop of a hat.

Look at Google reviews glassdoor and indeed and get rid of your LinkedIn profile (unless you're in tech) LinkedIn is used to SCREEN YOU OUT.

Employers don't need to see your connections, a picture of what you look like, and your inspirational statement. all they need is your resume and if they feel that you're qualified they can schedule you for an interview that's all they need to know is the information that's on your damn resume.

Realize you're worth and have some standards. Don't let employers dick you around. Because they will and once you show them that you respect yourself and your time it's easier to weed through the bullshiters and you'll find and actually good healthy employer.

Anyway lol I could go on all day lol

Can you follow up on the weed you out linkedin thing? I got a job at an engineering firm and set one up because all my coworkers had one.

Do you mean employers look at it to judge you on what you look like and what you post? Or that employers pass by anyone that has one?

They look at it and form a bias against you. Think about it. All you're doing is making it easier and giving employers reasons to not hire you.

You're better looking then the hiring manager? Not hired. You're a republican? Not hired. You're a single mother? Not hired. Left a comment on a post making employers look unfavorably? Not hired. You're overweight? Not hired. You're older? Not hired.

Those aren't things they need to see or know about. They say nothing about you as a job candidate and your skills and abilities to do the job that they're hiring for.

This is why I'm against linkedin. You shouldn't have to show all of that fucking information about yourself it's private and irrelevant.

The only thing that matters is the skills and experience on your resume. Because that's what they need for the role right? All the other information about you is not necessary information that will determine if you can do the job or not.

We've been using applications and resumes to gain employment for years and years. that's how people have been getting jobs over the decades. There's no reason for an online portfolio that tells everything about you in order to get a job.

Don't hand over ALL that information about yourself to them. It's irrelevant.

All they need is the information that is on your resume that is absolutely it.

Linkiden and indeed (with the fucking quizzes) is making it easier and easier for employers to not do any of the leg work to find the right candidate. Or even pay attention to ppls resumes.

And vet for the right person for the job. Instead they are becoming nit picky and basing employment off of frivolous reasons and personality questioners that are not a real evaluation of how you will perform in your role, or the work environment.

Gotcha. Yeah, while I do have a photo up, I don't post anything but updates to my resume. I don't scroll or comment or anything social on there, specifically because why even would you??

Thank you very much for all those points, it#s a good thing to read them summarized like this! My last employer actually did have some negative Glassdoor entries, and I convinced myself it'll be different since I worked in a different part of the company. Definitely learned my lesson that these problems are not local to only parts.

By any chance do you have some go-to examples of good resumes you like to point people to as what to do with theirs vs. what not to do? I realize this will vary given jobs and you should tailor it accordingly, but some base starting points are better than nothing.

https://www.blueskyresumes.com/

This helped me tremendously. Look at their before and after examples.

I did my resume 14 times until I saw this and was finally done using the examples they gave

Oh wow, that's a load more examples than I'd expected, thanks! I'll have to look over these for what might apply to what I'm interested in.