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.
What’s ironic is that so many are doing TV and sleep on their weekends because they are depressed and exhausted from the week, with only two days before starting it over, less in many cases
That’s the unfortunate part of modern society. Many people are barely able to make a living to get by that when they do have time off, all they want to do is sleep and do nothing. It’s not that they are necessarily lazy or unmotivated, it’s that they are tired and need the rest.
People don’t create, or get into a hobby unless they have enough free time and money.
If all your free time is spent on trying to get a bit more money to live … any bit of time you have to just sit will be spent either sleeping or watching TV.
To be fair, sleeping is awesome and TV shows have had 100 years of continuous improvement.
I don’t have any energy to do anything else. I hate being asked about my weekend. Why do I have to entertain? They can just tell me about their own weekend instead and I’ll offer my own information if I have something to tell.
I don’t assume people are asking for their own entertainment. I think they are trying to connect. Conversation is one of the way people connect to each other. If it’s just for entertainment It’s so much easier to just get entertainment from a phone rather than go the effort to interact with people.
All the coal in the ground was made in one specific period of history when trees were “new” and there was nothing that broke down dead trees for food. Trees that die now do not become coal. No new coal is being made.
That whole story about how long it took for fungus or anything to evolve to the point it could break down trees was a fascinating surprise to me, that also highlighted how evolution works.
However nowadays, I see it mostly as important to share from the perspective of both climate change and cultural resilience. We all know the connection to climate change, but ….
I love watching apocalypse movies, but an op Ed I read really struck home. The premise was that if there were enough of a disaster to knock humanity back a century or more, we would never be able to recover. So many easy sources of energy through fossil fuels have been picked clean to where they are no longer recoverable without modern technology, and we can’t get back to modern technology without Easy sources of energy. Fossil fuels in general were created once. There are no new ones created. But there are no substitutes that would let a re-building society pass that level of development.
That’s a very interesting story if you think about it. I would say that it is possible to reach our technology level again without fossil fuels. It just takes a lot longer. The biggest issue for this is getting materials as steel or copper. Wind turbines are relatively simple and don’t need that much technology. As a more stable form of energy production we have trees and bio mass. It would cost a lot of our trees to get back to our current state, but I think it’s possible. You just have to remember to not make the same mistakes again.
Wind turbines are certainly doable at be lower technology levels, but how do you scale that up to enough power density for things like refining metals? How could you even have enough of an iron or steel industry to build things, including tools? Concrete? Glass? Chemicals? How would appliances ever be cheap enough for home/personal use?
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.
The solution is to find another ADHDer and overshare together! Autistic people might work too! It’s certainly one of the major reasons why I vibe well with other people who have autism or ADHD.
Can confirm, have the autism, please overshare your lastest obsession. I sm here for it.
Far better to keep the ol’ mask on and say as little as possible until I get to know someone better
I’ve done this as well, but it did lead to more of a solo type of life for me (something that I personally want). I’m not saying that it’ll work for everyone like that, but just to keep an eye out for it if you’re someone who needs companionship.
I hear you. I have tendencies in the ADHD direction and too many similar experiences. However that also means I could really focus when someone is sharing their passion
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.
Those injuries are worse than many people realize, I think. Dismissing your kid’s enthusiasm basically sucks the joy out of their life. Kids literally need recognition and validation from parents. Encouragement is a big deal. When you share exciting things and get shot down, you either stop sharing with anyone, stop being excited, or both.
If we can’t ever be enthusiastic about anything what’s supposed to be the offset to all the misery life throws at us, periods of numb ennui? Lol
My parents often responded to any enthusiasm with some kind of negativity. I don’t recall any shared excitement. I’m also gen x, if you couldn’t guess lol.
“Well, whatever, never mind.” --Kurt Cobain.
I got to admit it is difficult pretending to be interested in whatever K-Pop thing is going on, I have daughters. Do make an effort. Bet you didn’t know that Black Pink broke up.
Yup. ’shut up’ was the parenting of the 70s.
I think there was some sort of anxious period where people thought if they are sitting down and listening to someone they saw it as a ‘waste of time’ rather than quality time to connect with someone.
Maybe try like a sandwich. Listen to them talk, tease them about it, then listen some more. That way you are still learning and letting them share while not bored.
When you were a child did you only ever talk about video games? Just curious.
No. Why would you think that?
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
What’s on your research agenda now? Like, what is an unanswered question (with respect to your own knowledge) that you’re curious about?
Most of my attention has shifted over to following emerging research on large language models. Right now my key focus there is relating to alignment strategies. I’ve had a strong suspicion since GPT-4 released that the way in which the most recent models are being fine tuned throws away a lot of valuable skills outside what we measure for, and that instead an alignment strategy more similar to the interplay between intrusive thoughts and the prefrontal cortex would achieve more consistent alignment results without sacrificing capabilities. There’s been a few papers over the last year (and even just the last few weeks) that are starting to support similar findings.
In terms of history stuff, there’s still a few odd details I might circle back to, but it mostly feels like I hit diminishing returns unless we see significant new discoveries in materials (which I actually hope we will as LLMs become capable enough to translate into English the extensive bodies of untranslated but discovered works like the Oxy papyri).
One is to follow up on a line of inquiry I’d find relating to grammatical fingerprinting of Paul’s epistles. There was a 2017 psych study that found vulnerable narcissists have a greater degree of personal reference in their writing, and he’s always struck me a bit of that type (“I’m the least of the apostles” fluctuating with “I’m not less than the greatest of the apostles”). When I analyzed the letters in English, there’s significantly more personal reference in the undisputed Pauline letters than non-Pauline Epistles. But the really interesting part is the disputed letters. Only one falls within the range of the undisputed letters in its frequency of personal reference, and it’s one that most scholars have historically thought was forged (2 Timothy). At some point I’ll come back around to doing a similar analysis on the original Greek.
Another recent thread I may look more into would be the Mediterranean parallels for terms translating as “Great Lady” in the LBA and early Iron Age. There’s some weird nuances to a term like that being applied in the Bible to various women, particularly alleged around women connected to the Egyptian pharoh’s household - but when I cross referenced Egyptian records around the relevant time I only see a similar translated term being applied to a Hittite queen who was co-signing the world’s first extant treaty. So now I’m wondering if either (a) the association with Egypt in the OT was an anachronistic rationalization for a foreign concept that was actually originating from Anatolia (like the bees and potentially the tribe of Dan) or (b) if it really did relate to Egypt but because of one or more queens coming from Anatolia marrying into the Pharoh’s household. If the latter, it might help narrow down specifically which dynasties a few alleged events were supposed to have been occurring.
It depends. I wouldn’t listen to Andrew Tate, no matter how passionate he may be. I’d rather try to understand flat earthers than him.
Understanding the flat earth “theory” is hilariously fun, understanding Andrew Tate is just a sad perverse fascination with brain damaged insecurities.
Yeah like at least they’re creative about it you know?
Exactly. I have never seen Tate(to be fair I have only seen clips) make models or perform experiments to support their argument like the flat earth people do. They also provide supporting evidence, Tate just says “trust me bro”. Flat earthers have conventions, Tate just has convictions.
Well, Tate is a self confessed rapist who needs to play make belief to appear a billionaire to impress young boys. Don’t ever watch him, really.
Not impress, to swindle and brainwash.
That too, yes
If you can put the damage hes causing aside. Hes an interesting specimen. Completely brain broken and hilarious. Unfortunately people listen to him.
other than that one needs to do opposition research.
On the other hand I’d listen about him since I had no experience or awareness of him since I’m not on social media. Behind the bastards did a good podcast episode on him.
“I would now like to present my theories on Dark Souls lore, and why Vaatividya is wrong about nearly everything.”
This is relevant to my interests…
For real, I hate that I didn’t meticulously document everything day 1 on Elden Ring because there were some bits of text that existed the day it came out that have since been removed and they would have completely changed a lot of what the story is believed to be in that game.
You can still download any old version of Elden Ring from Steam
I took physical notes… Played completely blind and tried to figure everything out on my own. Probably not too many item descriptions though.
I am particularly proud that I noticed the Katamari Damacy reference in the item description for the Graven Mass talisman.
The primeval current is a forbidden tradition of glintstone sorcery. To those who cleave to its teachings, the act of collecting sorcerers to fashion them into the seeds of stars is but another path of scientific inquiry.
If you haven’t played Katamari Damacy: The game is about rolling random crap up into a ball to turn it into a star because your dad got drunk one night and accidentally ate them all, so you need to fix it. The graven mass enemies are those balls of sorcerer heads you see once in a while and they were being used to make stars. 😂
I know that Patches is circumcised. Don’t ask why I know that.
Wait… Can I clip the camera through his pants and confirm this? 🤔
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.
Huh…if marsupials first arose in what is now the Americas, why are modern day American marsupials so…just opossums? I would expect a greater variety where they originated than where they migrated to. Competition from placental mammals not present in Australia?
Yup. As far as I know the placental mammals on Australia arrived there much later so the marsupials had already filled most available niches at that point.
That is SO COOL! Thanks
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.
How’d the prehistorics make them? Drill two holes and chisel out between? Or did they pre-date drills and chisels?
Behold the world’s oldest intact wooden structure. The frame of a well dated to 7,000 years ago found near Lake Constance. I don’t think it is known for sure how it was made, but the linked article talks about experimental archaeology using stone axes and adzes and chisels/gouges made of bone and antler. I’m not sure drills were invented yet.
By the time of the ancient Egyptians they had gotten remarkably sophisticated. Even by the pre-dynastic period some 5,000 years ago they had copper saws, chisels, axes and adzes, and bow drills. Egyptian ships were often constructed with mortise and tenon joints which would be secured with through-holes and dowel pins to lock them in place. They would use mortise and tenons to build furniture, examples found in tombs survive today. These would be glued with hide glue and often reinforced by lashing with cordage. The oldest varnished wood pieces are ancient Egyptian. A third kingdom coffin contains the oldest known plywood.
Few other activities connect me to ALL of human history quite like woodworking. My workshop is full of tools that are made of glass reinforced nylon and aluminum, driven by digitally controlled brushless DC motors powered by lithium polymer batteries, turning tungsten carbide blades and bits…and I use these state of the art 21st century tools to create wooden joinery older than horseback riding.
Oh that’s very cool.
This reminds me of how for many years, we didn’t know how Roman Concrete was so strong. The Romans knew it was super strong, and part of why buildings like the Pantheon have held up so well is that Roman concrete incorporated what we now refer to as Pozzolans - alumina or silica containing binders that, when used as an additive to concrete, makes the concrete stronger over time due to reactions with water. Original Roman concrete used volcanic ash from near the city of Pozzuoli, hence the name.
Bone and antler chisels. TIL
Per the article I linked, you’d have to look around for suitable stone, but hunting or herding means you’ve always got bones around.
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 am a software engineer, my wife lets me ramble about all sorts of development and other nerdy things related all the time without a single complaint.
She is my rubber duck, which I apologize to her for :D
Rincewind is my fav character next to
DEATH
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.
Goddammit I was gonna post the exact same thing.
FYI, Burke JUST released a whole new season of Connections on CuriosityStream.
That looks great. Pretty cheap too for one month which would be enough to binge it.
That’s what I did, because it’s something I actually want to financially support, and there are plenty of other good shows on the service as well… but not enough for more than a month. That said, if you prefer to sail the seas I can point you in the right direction…
Cheers. I appreciate the offer but I think I’ll spend the few quid. Going to give the old series a whirl first
So… If I were asking for a friend…
I want to recommend the podcast Go Fact Yourself . It’s a trivia podcast with minor celebrity guests as contestants. The trivia questions asked are from one of three categories which the contestants provide ahead of time as something they are an expert in outside of their field of work. You get to meet some interesting people, and the experts they bring onto the show to judge the final answers really make the show and creates some very interesting conversations. It’s basically a show letting people talk about some of their favourite things.
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Same goes for headlamps and their sketchy durability. Could scarcely get one to last more than a year before some switch or battery door failure. Sung the praises of Thrunite when I found them. Terribly disappointed at the discontinuation of the TH-20 design. Taking either 14500/AA batteries was just great.
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Ok so you list bad stuff but don’t say anything about better stuff?
You got a recommendation for a decent little pocket light? I had a Streamlight Microstream give up and…I dunno.
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Most of the time I hear, “Oh, yeah? That’s cool.” End of conversation. I still like my interests and tons of other random people on the internet do too, but my interests don’t generally align with my IRL co-workers unless we’re talking about our kids.
To some degree we need more time and money to do interesting things I guess? Or maybe people need more curiosity. Idk.
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.
It’s not really what you say, it’s how you say it. There are people who can make zoning regulation interesting, and then you have people who are talking about a shooting they survived boring.
I’ve always thought about talking in a way that respects people’s time: just give them a brief statement. If they care, you can deliver deeper. And even then, you should have checkpoints when you are talking. If they say damn that’s crazy, I’m like yea…
Yeah, I’ll always remember from olden days pouring my heart about computers and the internet, before they were everywhere, and the crowd listened in what I thought was rapt attention. I even related Unix (at the time) to PCs, which they may be more familiar with …. Then at the end the only comment was “I thought you said ‘feces’.”
I’ll always remember when I was still new-ish to the Boston area, talking to visiting family about all the great things the city has to offer, including connecting various sights to actual history. It was a special Fourth of July weekend, and I may have been overly passionate connecting history of both culture and technology to one of the more interesting tourist attractions, to see the USS Constitution “sail” on its turnaround cruise through Boston Harbor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution). Afterwards, my ex-mother-in-law commented “it didn’t make sense to me why they would take a piece of paper out of the National Archives in DC and put it on a boat”
Way too many of us have strong memories where our passions went awry, so are much more cautious about sharing them up with others unless we know they have similar interests. People suck
I will love listening to your passion, and will do my best to ask leading questions to encourage you to go into it, to see that excitement in your face and voice, and in the hope I learn something, but I’ve been burned too seriously too many times to be very open about sharing mine
So they dropped 2 fun facts that can be interesting stories.
When I think of someone telling me about their special interests I think of someone telling me about their Roblox loot for 20 minutes straight.
Yeah good point. People who over share rarely have this many interesting topics. I can only bear so much of someone going into great details every day about a game or some fantasy setting I haven’t and probably will never experience myself. Geeking about stuff is fine but a lot of people aren’t great at summarizing to laymans.
I am sure I have bored the shit out of a few people like you (yay ADHD /s).
Far better to say too little than too much and embarrass myself and watch others slowly back away lol
Fact is most people are interested in things I find boring and vice versa. I guess that’s why most conversations are so superficial.
The trick is to use layman’s terms and try to get the person you are talking to to follow along and get interested only to reveal In nineteen ninety eight the undertaker threw mankind off hеll in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer’s table
