Comic Books

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”.

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.