It’s very depressing to ask someone about their weekend and the answer is always nothing more than TV and sleep.
I know somebody who maintains a gas powered go kart that his son races with. I don’t know much about it, and I’d never be into it, but at least hearing about what he is up to is interesting.
Maybe you and I are open to hearing about new and interesting things. Great!
But thanks to ADHD, I am prone to acting a little too excited and can sometimes overshare.
Then, when I finally notice the discomfort of my interlocutor, I feel acute embarrassment for being such a weirdo. And that is just no fun at all, ya know?
Far better to keep the ol' mask on and say as little as possible until I get to know someone better.
I can always find people into whatever specific hobby I am into if I want to geek out so it's all good.
Reading this thread reminded me of my mother often ignoring what I said as a child. And one specific time when she said she didn't want to hear about a video game I was excited about.
Not huge injuries, there is certainly far worse that can happen. But it does shape who you are to be shut down like that. Shit parenting, as gen x is used to.
I hope I have never done that to anyone. Just listening without criticizing is not difficult.
Here's a summary of a few passion project research holes I went down over the past few years (citations available):
- It's very likely that the Gospel of Thomas was related to the writings of Lucretius, there's a high chance the historical Jesus was talking about indivisible parts of matter (atomism) and a decent chance he was talking about natural selection, both ideas extensively found in Lucretius in some cases with near identical language to what's both canonical and apocryphal
- Nefertiti ("beautiful woman who arrived") and the story of Helen of Troy have some remarkable overlaps, particularly given Herodotus's account of Helen ending up in Egypt the whole time - and the two datable parts of Herodotus's version both line up with the 18th dynasty, which was parallel to the Mycenaean conquest of Anatolia
- Ramses II was described as appearing to be a Lybian Berber in his forensic examination, and had around 50 sons, which makes the ancient claims the story of Danaus (the Lybian ruler who was brother to a Pharoh with 50 sons) occurred in the 19th dynasty a bit more intriguing
- There may have been some truth to a Moses/Mopsus narrative at the tail end of the 19th dynasty, but it would have related to the twelve groups of tribes of Anatolian peoples captured by Ramses II at Kadesh and some of their later actions as part of the confederation referred to as "the sea peoples" - this lines up more closely with Greek and Egyptian accounts of the Exodus tale as multiethnic or including Greek ancestors too. Some of those sea peoples were later forcibly relocated to the Southern Levant where there was cohabitation near the local Israelites who later on have stories about these events, talk about Dan "staying on their ships" or trading with Tyre alongside the Greeks, and recent archeology has found Aegean style pottery made with local clay in Tel Dan or the only apiary in the "land of milk and honey" importing Anatolian bees in Tel Rehov, which starts to cast a very different picture of some old stories
So, you know how most Australian mammals are marsupials (the ones with a pouch)? Well, the fossil record suggests marsupials first arose in the Americas and later went on to reach Australia around 50 million years ago, probably just one lucky small species that later would become kangaroos, koalas, tasmanian devils and a bunch of other fun dudes. The thing is, as far as we're aware, the timeline of events means they got to Australia after it got separated from the rest of Gondwana with two interesting implications:
First, that they got there through rafting, which means a couple individuals crossed some expanse of ocean on top of some floating vegetation or whatever and ended up being lucky enough to survive till they landed on a new continent. Interestingly, that's also the main theory on how (non-human) primates got from Africa to South America.
Secondly, that they migrated from South America to a not-yet-frozen-Antarctica and only then to Australia, which means all their friends who lived on Antarctica and were lucky enough to not end up in the middle of the ocean on top of some floating tree trunk ended up unknowingly condemning their descendants as the continent slowly drifted southwards and completely froze up around 10 million years ago.
When you love someone, you can’t hear enough about their current hyper fixations. “Would you shut up”, “Nobody cares”. These are things I heard a lot as a kid. I had to reach my 30s to finally feel the magic of “Please tell me more”.
I can geek out about 40K, Dune, ASOIAF, Dark Souls. And my girlfriend smiles at me and is happy I am getting exited like a child. It really is something when you give a 20 minute lecture about Necron history and get questions about the specifics. Just yesterday, when we went to bed, she wanted me to talk about Rincewind and Discworld. FREAKING RINCEWIND! When can you talk about him?! She loves to listen to me and I love to listen to her.
Don’t let shit people spoil the fun for you. You are beautiful, your weird hobbies and fixations are beautiful. Go find a good person who will be weird together with you.
I'm fascinated by this woodworking tool called the Festool Domino. It's got the form factor of a biscuit joiner, but it's a router instead of a circular saw, so it cuts a deep, short, wide mortise to receive a loose tenon they call a Domino.
This tool is still protected under patent by its inventor, it's brand new. But the type of joinery it's for - loose tenons - are older than writing. Prehistoric wooden structures have been found held together with loose tenons. Some 8,000 years we've been making mortise and tenon joints, and the technology is STILL under development.
This post made me think to recommend the series 'Connections' by James Burke if you vibe on the strange relationship between odd events and inventions in history that lead us....here.
Caveat: it was filmed in the 70s so enjoy polyester and bell bottoms, but also scary prescient predictions, some of which have already come to pass.
You know how every flashlight you've ever owned is a piece of shit that barely if ever works?
They don't have to be that way. You get what you pay for. Fenix, Nitecore, Acebeam, Thrunite, Wurkkos and to a lesser extent, Klarus,
Klarus has had a lot of quality control failures in their recent generations of lights.
Then there's Nebo, Nebo lights aren't made very well, they flicker at just the right frequency to ruin video recordings and photos.
I know from personal experience what it's like to spend a few minutes passionately pouring your heart out about something that fascinates you to someone only to find out they were barely listening. I will either hear someone out or try to stop them before they get too far if I know I'm just not going to be interested in it.
Because there's hearing about people's passions and then there's being too polite to tell a guy to shut the fuck up about your little ring you got that's going to help you with archery that you've been talking about for half an hour because we're trying to play D&D here. (Years later and I'm still annoyed I didn't try to bring that monologue to an end 20 minutes earlier).
EDIT: I just realized those two paragraphs are unrelated. My personal experience was me doing the same thing to someone else and realizing (in much, much less than half an hour) that it wasn't worth my time.
I agree! Hearing people being very enthused and happy about something is very comforting to me.
As others have pointed out, there are exceptions -- flat earthers, religious fanatics, violent people -- but even then, it's not the hearing part that's the problem -- it's more the problematic content itself
Ya know, the Appalachians are old enough that they're split across the Atlantic Ocean.
The international Appalachian trail is a thing.
Plus, there's sections of the Appalachiana in the south that ended up being "settled" by people from where the biggest section of be Appalachians in Ireland exist. There's a major Scots-Irish population in my neck of the woods.
"Settled" refers to the fact that there were already people in the area as a whole, so saying that the Europeans that took the land settled it is a a matter of not having a better word to use that wouldn't also require an explanation.
If you do like learning such facts, go watch all this guys tv shows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burke_(science_historian)
Some model trains operate on a system called DCC, or Digital Command Control. As an alternative to DC, or Direct Current-driven models, it’s a commonly-held misconception that DCC runs on an AC, or Alternating Current circuit. In reality, it’s still using direct current, but combining it with PWM, or Pulse Width Modulation, to embed digital signals at slightly higher voltages than the regular operating voltage. These signals can be used to address individual models and send commands that allow for a model to have more functions than a DC model would be capable of, such as more sophisticated lighting, finer motor controls, sound features, consists, speed matching, automation, and a lot more.
this post is my spirit animal
Hell yea. I love hearing about other peoples passions.
Here's the (now archived) reddit post the image is from:
Listening to people who are passionate about something is fantastic, especially if they're good at it where they can get you excited too
It’s funny because the people who are like ‘no one wants to hear it’ will launch into a diatribe about garden hoses or something like they don’t realize that is a niche interest. I had to catch a relative out about that. I think she’s gotten a bit kinder since.
The hard part is finding anyone who wants to listen to you rambling about your stuff.
You can make seedling leaves move in quite a noticeable fashion without touching it. With an adequate light source the leaves will be almost horizontal to maximize light absorption for photosynthesis. If you move the light source or remove is completely and come back a short period of time later the leaves with almost vertical while the plant is growing up trying to find a light source, aka leggy seedlings. The leaves can change direction in a 15 minute timeframe in some circumstances.
That all makes perfect logical sense to me, but how did a tiny little seed turn into this weird looking green stem with 2 tiny leaves on it in the first place. I get it but I don't at all at the same time and it's one of the most wild things to me.
