Everyone's a nerd about something. What are you a nerd about?

TheGoonch@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 176 points –

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?

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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.

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 :-)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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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.

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.

Wow, that hit hard. Thanks for taking the time to type that out.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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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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.

Iam curious what exactly you're doing. Are you setting up encrypted machines and sending PGP emails to each other?

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.

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:

  1. You have to handle them a lot when they are young or they will not make great pets.
  2. You can litter train them. They can't use cat litter though as clay dust is bad for their lungs.
  3. 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.
  4. They are highly social animals. It's especially cruel to keep one alone for its entire life.
  5. They are somewhat opportunistic carnivores.

I’m a software engineer who, for whatever reason, has trouble getting into sci fi and fantasy. I geek out about physics and history and my colleagues have frequently tried to get me into sci fi and fantasy things but unless it’s like Asimov or Vonnegut level, I get bored.

With history, I love non-military history. I will read anything about how normal people (or oppressed people) lived during times of peace but I find military history a little boring unless it’s really a turning point.

With physics, I’m very into cosmology and particle physics (to the point where I have fridge magnets of the standard model particles and a pillow with the CMB on it) but the practical side isn’t my thing. I would be a terrible civil engineer.

I used to be a huge nerd about the Elder Scrolls universe but I admit it's been a hot minute since I've played Skyrim so my overall interest has waned a bit.

Someone recently finished remastering all of Morrowind 👀

Wait, WHAT?! Alright well now I know what I'm doing, thanks for the info!

I like me some Tolkien. Not just the LOTR stuff, though that’s the bulk of it, but I’ve read some of his other books as well as the unfinished works as well. I really enjoy his worldbuilding and the old school storytelling where the hero doesn’t always do so well, mythical creatures aren’t so kind and cute, and dangerous thing lurk, waiting for you off the beaten path.

DJing, crypto, sports cars with manual transmissions, and building PCs. It's a damn shame that I still have to occasionally visit reddit, cause Lemmy doesn't have any active communities for any of my hobbies. Hell, this place is actively hostile towards two of them. I understand why, but damn.

Is it DJaing and crypto? Why does Lemmy hate DJaing ? ….wait.. is it manual transmission? Does Lemmy hate sports cars with manual transmission? 🙃

I always think I'm a nerd about video games until I come across someone who's played more than me. But I'll go on and on about certain games and franchises if someone lets me.

You don't have to be the ultimate nerd to still be a nerd about it. I'm the same way - there are massive game franchises I've never touched, but I'll get in deep on the ones I do play, but I only have about 2 friends who game so I never get the chance.

I love IoT and home automation stuff. A lot of folks think it’s still to have everything connected, but I like the fact that I can walk around the house like I’m on the Enterprise. If I could replicate food my life would be complete.

Baseball - its' history, I can go off on teams and players from a century ago.

Music - rock of nearly all genres, electronic, soul, jazz, blues, some classical and contemporary.

Cinema - I used to screen films for a local cultural center, everything from gritty psychedelic British crime thrillers like Performance to French new wave gems like Pickpocket, from classic Hindu cinema like Pather Panchali to twisted Japanese horror like Suicide Club, and anything in between.

Cosmology and Physics - a lifelong passion, I have some astronomer friends (there's an institute in my city) and can hold my own in conversation with them. Lately I've been getting a handle on things like Lorentz Transformations and Bell's Inequality Experiment (aka Quantum Entanglement).

Painting - the history of the medium, and although I prefer Modern Art, starting in the mid-19th century onwards, I can now navigate and appreciate the styles that have appeared through the centuries, say the differences between Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo.

EDIT: How did I forget Science Fiction?
I've read all of Isaac Asimov's stories on Foundation and the Galactic Empire, including some of the more obscure ones like "The Stars, Like Dust", "The Currents Of Space" and "Pebble In The Sky". Also, many of his standalone stories, such as "Nightfall" and "The Gods Themselves".
Hands down, Asimov is my favorite Sci Fi author, and I love the original "Foundation" trilogy like no other.

The first four books of Frank Herbert's "Dune" saga.
A whole bunch of Harlan Ellison's short stories.
Several of Philip K Dick's novels.
Throw some JG Ballard and William Gibson in there, for good measure.

Cosmology and Physics

You might really enjoy looking into Neil Turok's cosmological theory if you haven't seen it:

https://insidetheperimeter.ca/a-mirror-universe-might-tell-a-simpler-story-neil-turok/

Started as a very elegant solution to the asymmetry of matter to antimatter, and by now he and his coauthors have found the theory fits a number of different unexplained open questions in cosmology and have testable predictions we'll probably start having answers to in the next decade.

Bell's Inequality Experiment

There's been a recent head scratcher with this one too. While it is typically referred to as a variation of Wigner's friend, a recent experiment that was perhaps better described as a recursive Bell's Inequality found a similar set of three assumptions, one of which must be false:

https://www.science.org/content/article/quantum-paradox-points-shaky-foundations-reality

Then another recent "one of three must be false" was a mathematical paradox around quantum theory:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/frauchiger-renner-paradox-clarifies-where-our-views-of-reality-go-wrong-20181203/

You might enjoy some of these rabbit holes.

I don't know if it counts: but, despite not knowing how to read chords, read musical sheets or play any instrument, I'm a music addicted. Like... I know a lot of musical styles, enjoy obscure genres and oddities and watch videos of people peculiar instruments while etc... My newest obsession is lostwave. I kinda find intriguing about how many unknown songs still unidentified for more than a decade. And, when a lostwave that I enjoy to listen is finally identified, it's enough to make me happy for days! It's crazy, I know.

Same here. I have zero musical talent but I'm absolutely fascinated by how music is made. I will watch anything I can where someone is breaking down a song.

What's lostwave?

There are 2 types of LW:

  1. Unknown songs (there is a snippet or a full version of audio recorded, but the title/artist weren't identified)

  2. Songs that are lost (there are a title and/or the name of artist, but no one is able to find it).

Anyway... Is kinda of a hobby to wait for the song to be found/identified. And there are times that the time spent waiting worths a lot. There is a brazilian synthpop song that was a mystery for almost 30 years. The song kept the placeholder of Fond my mind while it was unknown. The song was identified (by the artist himself) as "Feels Like a Wish" from the duo Station K on December from the last year. I follow a lot of channels on YouTube about it! It's fascinating.

Among other things I have gone a little overboard on: DIY electronics, robotics; jeep SJs (former), fountain pens and ink, watches, typewriters, vintage audio and media, rc cars and planes, four wheeling, firearms, espresso, photography, gardening. I have other hobbies I'm less nerdy about.

Firearms history and engineering. Interestingly the American companies Remington and New England Westing House made Russian contract Mosin Nagants rifles for military service with the tsarist Russian army.

Which is facially kind of odd when Russia and America have been at each other's throats for most of living memory.

Ooh I didn't know that about Mosin-Nagants. I guess business sees no boundaries or something.

The histories of old military firearms is pretty fascinating to me.

Like the Finn-captured Nagants that were (in some cases) refurbed and used to fight the Russians... (I think I have that right; let me know).

Sort of wild that in the late 1800s Mauser was so successful in military rifles with dozens of countries fielding some type of Mauser model. Meanwhile Russia is like, nyet! -- and built their own completely different design (for better or worse).

I find the different designs fascinating, also.

Without looking it up I believe you're right. I think it was something like Finland didn't make any Mosin receivers but instead only issued captured then upgraded ones.

Also I want to say some American soldiers got issued Mosins to fight in Russia during the revolution against the Reds.

Video on American Mosins

https://youtu.be/L-OfevJb03M?si=

Interesting about us issued mosins. Those weird contract gun hybrid mix up things like the Webleys in .45 ACP are fun to read about. Anyway thanks for all the great posts on the forgotten weapons community.

Anyway thanks for all the great posts on the forgotten weapons community.

I'm just being the change I want to see. And I'm always glad to hear people enjoy what I share or to see people share their own knowledge.

Also if you haven't already looked into it the T48 might be up your alley.

Music and especially everything audiophile related. I got so many CDs at home, all ripped to .flac, and all of it is on my android Sony Walkman that I carry with me 24/7. Nothing beats listening to your favorite album through a pair of 1000$ earbuds while laying in bed, working or taking the bus.

What ear buds are those, at that price? Hope you don't mind sharing.

Of course not! They're the ThieAudio Monarch Mk II, absolutely amazing pair of IEMs.

Holy... They do look super professional and audiophile-y. What qualities to they have that warrant this price point? Super low interference, etc?

Well, a lot of things really. IEMs are different to regular earbuds in the way that instead of one speaker in the shell that does all the work, there are several smaller ones that are tuned to a specific frequency of the audio spectrum, which means that the audio engineers that make these can focus on making each of the smaller speakers sound good in their specific range instead of trying to make a single one sound good over the entire audio range.

What I love about these specific pair of IEMs is that they got a pretty great soundstage for being earbuds, and they are absolute beasts when it comes to clarity. The buds are super well balanced across the entire spectrum, and no part feels bloated or "tinny". That combined with the super great clarity makes it absolutely dreamlike to listen to, being able to hear the "vibrato" of guitar strings as they linger after a chord, or the great bass riffs of songs without having the bass frequency spectrum being obnoxiously loud and bloated. I was completely shellshocked when I first listened to them.

Ah wow, super interesting. I'd love to try and listen to something using those. Very cool regarding the specialized tiny speakers inside there. Just wish I could justify the price... A little bit on the too-expensive side for me. But maybe one day when everything else has been bought and done!

😳

Sweet, though! I'm too cheap and my ears too wrecked to be too much of an audiophile lol. I do have a bunch of decent vintage gear, CDs, records, 4-tracks, and some cassettes.

I'm definitely the stereotypical nerd in a lot of ways. I'm hugely into Star Trek, D&D (and TTRPGs in general), Pokemon, and sci-fi/fantasy novels, especially Brandon Sanderson and Becky Chambers. I'm running a Pokemon TTRPG campaign.

I'm probably equally nerdy about alcohol though, which is fun, and can augment all the other hobbies. I like to make specialty cocktails for premiers, and events in general, as well as thematic drinks for TTRPG sessions. We don't have a dining room at my house, we have a bar.

Oh, a fellow DnD guy, can I interest you in some homebrew?

Well, about the typical things. I write software. I play TTRPGs and video games and watch Star Trek and Star Wars. (Hell. I've been watching Red Dwarf lately and it's amazing. There's a niche thing for you.)

But aside from the more stereotypical nerd things, I've been really studying the fuck out of U.S. (because that's where I live) intellectual property and contract law lately. I've been watching law school study aids kind of content and reading this book that's mostly just the text of tons of legal rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and federal circuit courts on the subject of intellectual property.

The most interesting things to me in that space at the moment are:

  • The history of the duration of copyright in the U.S., the 1998 "Sonny Bono" Copyright Term Extension Act and the case "Eldred v. Ashcroft" which (unsuccessfully 🙁) challendged its constitutionality.
  • The case "Software Freedom Conservancy v. Vizio, Inc." and how the courts are agreeing to interpret the GNU GPL not just as a copyright license but also as a contract and the strategic benefits that could offer for GPL-enforcement cases moving forward.

Red Dwarf is awesome. I think I can count myself as a Red Dwarf nerd...

Absolutely random, useless trivia.

I think I'm a general shop nerd. I like making things for myself from scratch. You'll find me in the kitchen, you'll find me in the wood shop. I own and operate a 3D printer I built. I suppose it fits a shut-in like myself.

I know that it is not very original around 'ere but linux

But do you use Arch btw?

haha, no(mostly). I like what Arch is and definetly do think that there is a place for it but that place isn't one of my PC's as I have no time or effort to maintain a rolling release distro and want my pc to consistently work and not break after updates hence my distro of choice Fedora(it is a fork of fedora but it is pretty much fedors really) which is a stable relase distro. I use Arch inside distrobox to benefit from that sweet sweet AUR repo though.

I found that Arch worked the best for me as my main OS, been using it for around 3 years. True that sometimes it's a pain to set things up, but once it's done, life's just so easy!! Though, I use debian on my server.

Cryptography. It just fascinates me and I constantly want to know more about it.

What are some of your favorite cryptography/cipher history facts?

I just recently learned that cryptography was heavily regulated, in the US at least. What I mean to say is that in the older days (80's - 90's) it was illegal to export any encryption system out of the country. This was mainly due to concerns about the potential for these technologies to be used by adversaries to encrypt communications that could not be intercepted by intelligence agencies.

Obviously, cryptography is valuable, however it was unexpected to read about all the regulations in place regarding this subject, though, now I think it makes sense.

Phase 1 MCU, but specifically Civil War. I have and will write essays about my feelings on that whole deal and I still have resentment toward Tony stans who spent literal years cluttering up Ao3 with their dumb fics about how he never did anything wrong in his life. I think it mostly just got to me so much because what they were fundamentally defending is the existence of human registries for anyone meeting certain criteria, regardless of their actions (right as we had conservatives supporting Muslim registries in real life) and stuff like secret prisons with no trial (like an even worse Guantanamo), and it was really fucking concerning.

Oh, see, I'm doing it again.

Science in general, plus points if it's something related to microbiology or something in the human body going wrong.

I'm a bit of a nerd about longboarding and also building Commander decks in Magic the Gathering.

I wouldn't say I'm an expert in either case, but I'm really interested in trying different setups and also seeing people discuss their own experiences and builds.

EDH for MTG ey? I just got my izzet deck soft banned from my friend group. I sport Vadrik as my commander, and, well, izzet do what izzet do best lmao

Though fun fact, I have 7 decks and only 1 Sol ring haha

I've got an Izzet deck too! It's a pirate deck.

What an awesome looking deck, it seems infuriating to play against, so naturally, I love it!

I'm going to have to look for some of those cards at my local store, they seem amazing!

Unfortunately I have not uploaded my deck so I have no link to offer. I can see about doing that though

If you decide to share decklists, you might also take a look at the Manabox app. One of my playmates introduced me to it recently, and it seems to have some neat features. I've just been using Tappedout.net for so long out of habit.

Mate, love a bit of Russian lore and all that. If you want to have a bit of an eye opener, give The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn a read. It's funny but you'll feel guilty laughing.

Isn't this post a bit backwards, most of us on Lemmy are nerds, and probably in multiple ways, this post should be the opposite, where the nerds highlight all of the ways that they're "cool" or whatever.

Computer Science, hacking, physics, economics, geopolitics, jazz music... Im a generalist mostly

I do astrophotography as a hobby. It's frustrating, expensive, incredibly taxing since you're up all night. And then there's always pictures from things like the JWST people will compare your comparatively crappy images to. But I like doing it and will talk the ear off of anyone that asks.

Currently:

  • LBA/EIA Mediterranean history
  • Early Christianity history, especially around heresies and apocrypha
  • Large language model alignment and abstractions
  • Simulation theory
  • Tech futurism

In the past:

  • Psychology
  • Prestidigitation
  • Photonics
  • Politics
  • Programming
  • Computer security
  • Cognitive science
  • Film studies
  • Marketing & Advertising

Though for as long as I can remember my biggest interest has always been video games. It's just fairly common, especially on Lemmy.

What's fascinating with video games is you can integrate all of the above within one

RC cars

Photography

Bikes (even though I don’t ride anymore)

i'm a nerd about still thinking being a nerd should refer to intellectual pursuits and not just about liking something a lot...

my interpretation is that a nerd is someone who knows a lot about a thing they really like.

Is it not intellectual to like something a lot and dive head first into it and learn as much as possible about it? Wanting to learn about something starts off with a spark of passion

Russian turn of the century history buff? yes.
Star Wars fandom universe? no.
i mean, im happy for anyone to enjoy what they enjoy... i just don't think that's what nerd ever meant.
but words change, so whatever... i just remember when i was a nerd for liking math and computer programming...
now i'm not a nerd because i don't wear costumes and such...

Both definitions of nerd have co-existed for decades now. "Nerd" on its own is used as you described, a person devoted to intellectual, academic, or technical pursuits or interests.

However, if you scroll down a bit, you'll see:

also : a person preoccupied with or devoted to a particular activity or field of interest

So a "something" nerd, e.g. a theatre nerd, Star Wars nerd, or what have you, is distinct from using "nerd" on its own. Both definitions are equally valid and widely-understood.

Linguistic prescriptivism is lame #DescriptivistGang😎

i don't know why you dropped a dictionary link when i didn't disagree with the meaning...
yes, i know how it's used now... it's fine, really... just mildly annoying...
like, the movie "Revenge of the Nerds" had zero to do with this other, newer usage...
which again, is fine, words change in meaning over time...

So many things. Japan. Star Trek. 90's cartoons. Computers. Those are just a few.

IT service management. Technology is cool and all, but if your CMDB or your organizational change management culture sucks , you're going to have a bad time.

The geek/nerd distinction.

No questions.

Are you saying you take no questions ? because I have one

Are you saying you take no questions ?

Sorry, that was one more question than I was willing to take. You'll have to take it back.

I've always been a huge nerd for geography and traveling. Every other interest I tend to hyperfixate on then fall out of, but those 2 seem to be eternal. I love learning the history and geography of new places and going to see them.

The Harmonized Tariff System that helps standardize international trade and Customs. It’s part of my job, but I kind of love it and get really into the Explanatory Notes and CROSS rulings.

If we’re talking fun stuff, Star Trek starship classes.

Web development; Rocket League; badminton; skateboarding; music; space, science and physics and stuff. Later in life, history. Well maybe not a nerd of history, just find it super fascinating. Also lately, Star Wars.

I have a Star Wars room in my house. I’ve been collecting since I was a kid, though not really collecting on purpose until I was older.

I still have lots of stuff from then and I read a lot of books regarding the history and politics of Star Wars (pre-Disney era).

Disregarding the toxicity that has become of the fanbase, I find it incredibly fascinating and scary how democracies turn into dictatorships.

I would probably say that I'm a nerd about animation. I love to see animated movies and see how they are made, be it 2D, 3D or stop motion. I also like to watch some lesser known movies. Some of my favorites are 9, Jack and the Cuckoo-clock heart and Mune: Guardian of the moon.

I don't know if you're into gaming, but Steam Next Fest has a demo for a claymation adventure game called Harold Halibut that's pretty awesome

Also Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart was great and I don't hear many other people talk about it

Wow, what are the odds that all 3 people who have seen Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart would be in this thread?

Jokes aside, I'm in a similar boat to you. I love seeing behind-the-scenes looks at how all types of animation are made. Even dabbled in it a bit myself from time to time. I work at a video game company and have always wanted to get into the animation department, but have been stuck in the IT department for the better part of a decade now.

3D animation is really neat IMO because it's a blend of technical ability and artistic ability. The software and practices for creating 3D animations are pretty damn complex. Modeling with good topology, UV unwrapping, rigging, all before you can even start animating, lighting, rendering, etc.

Obviously traditional animation and stop-motion also require technical ability, but I guess I find 3D animation more accessible cause I'm a computer nerd as well.

Nothing, I like things but idk I don't feel like I get that heavily invested

It's got to be DnD- I don't just play it, I don't just DM it, I've actively studied how it's designed and balanced in order to make content that is better than the official stuff. I've found and ironed out critical flaws in how the game is set up and I've made pieces of homebrew content that are larger than entire books.

This is a hell of a bold claim to make, but I believe that I have come to understand the game better than its own Dev Team.