Ask Lemmy

The idea of time. It’s insane to me to think about events happening at different times in different places. Or for the same event to take different amounts of time depending on your reference points.

The sun is 8 minutes away from us, so we are looking at it 8 minutes in the past. If it were to suddenly disappear, it would take 8 minutes for us to find out. That’s mine-blowing to me! It’s like the past, present, and future are all happening at the same time.

Nobody cares to humor me when I bring the topic up lol

At the risk of sounding edgy: Sex.

I live in the US. Sex, even just plain boring vanilla sex, is such a taboo topic. Everyone's uncomfortable about it, and that sucks. I think it's interesting, and fun, and there's so many things to talk about from actual activities to social constructs and more.

Whenever it comes up, I nerd out the same way I would when talking about a game I am currently obsessing over.

Honestly? Myself. No one in my life asks how I'm doing, what I'm doing, if there's anything new... Then again I'm too much of a pushover anyway.

I'm an American who has been living abroad for 7ish years now. I often read comments from people who say they would do it "but the taxes are brutal." Absolutely not the case. I dug deep into tax programs when I left and can comfortably say I am better off financially now than at any time I ever lived in the States.. A major part of that is my tax strategy.

I love talking about this but most people don't really care or realize how significantly it can change their lives.. Eyes just tend to glaze over.

I don't know if "rarely" is quite the right description, but I foster kittens. I meet lots of people who are excited to hear about it on a surface level and see pictures/videos/play with them, but it's been challenging to connect with other people who also foster. I'm desperate to trade stories, learn from, and teach other foster parents. I even started a community on Kbin and have posted there a few times, but haven't gotten any engagement (other than votes) so far.
In case anyone is curious, I'm still confused about how to properly link cross platform, but it's at fosteranimals@kbin.social

Instead of complaining about the public educational system. How to improve on existing methods to spread ideas of curiosity and learning methods/mechanisms through FOSS means.

Lots of things I'm really interested in are looked down on by other adults I know. I love animation but it's seen as something for kids. I love video games, but that's for teens, incels and nerds. And I love birdwatching, but that's for boring old people. Oh and also whatever my ADHD is making me hyperfocus on at any given moment. I could talk about any of those topics for ages, but more often than not people aren't interested, so I keep it to myself.

benefits of ritual and separating them from superstition.

I think it's interesting to explore different frames of mind. I used to be christian, but then I read the bible. afterwards, I embraced paganism which has a more positive and welcoming community generally. eventually, the seeds of reason became rooted in my mind and I grew to be the atheist I am today. I still appreciate the experience of group ritual, as it feels good to explore different aspects of my personality. I guess the roleplaying is therapeutic. mixing that with my interests in mythology makes for plenty of content to examine. what encourages different rituals to develop? what are the notable effects of ritual in general? is superstition somehow beneficial to the community? I find that digging around to explore these questions can keep me busy for hours, which I enjoy thoroughly. unfortunately, no one I know shares the same interests. most folks seem to be superstitious about it, lol.

Null models for weighted bipartite networks, and why people choose dumb network summary stats because they are lazy

Linguistics and the prescriptive bias of assuming a word’s meaning based on its blatant etymology

How skill makes games less fun and we need to embrace more chance in board games and video games

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

Trains are awesome and we should have more of them

Smacking children and how it literally has no benefit to the child whatsoever, and makes you a bad parent if you still do it.

I used to be a strong supporter of smacking kids, I even signed a government petition to revoke the NZ anti-smacking bill, but after studying it at uni and then keeping abreast of the research afterwards, it has only negative effects, and yet bad parents still defend it.

Hard to talk about because people get weirdly defensive even when there's NO evidence that smacking kids is either beneficial or effective.

Metal.

Soil.

Metals in soil.

What do you want to know?

The theory of relativity (special and general).

It is more that 100 years now, and it is perfectly true according to all current physicists, but still hardly anybody (outside of physicists) knows it. What a shame.

For example, GPS wouldn't work without it - your position would be wrong by a few miles all the time.

Cryptography, because it's not fleshed out enough in many peoples' minds for them to have the same interest.

my mental issues 🥴

Anything. No one listens to me, actually listens. So I just make jokes and deflect.

Classical music, film history, and Quake

Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and the original edition of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG - the lore, the artwork and tracking down the books missing from my collection!

The original moon landing programs at NASA. I massively nerd out over Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.

Personal finances, saving and frugal living

I don't remember ever meeting a person in real life with any significant interest in any of that.

My topic failure - My son totally nerds out over amplifiers and guitar pedals. He frequently tries to talk to me about noise and resistance and power supplies and other words that i can't even remember. I really want to listen but i know my eyes glaze over and he gets irritated.

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

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

The municipal waste management industry.

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

For context I dont even work in that field.

Psychology and physiology.

I swear my neuroendocrine system’s a lemon. I’ve had to learn basic and not so basic maintenance just to get the thing to run well enough to keep a job. I’ve struggled my entire adult life, and along the way I’ve learned a lot about trauma, stress, energy metabolism, brain parts, neurotransmitters, hormones, nutrition, inflammation, healing, spiritual work, things that alter the Big Five more than the literature says it will alter, etc.

Astronomy

I'm currently watching Cosmos : A space odyssey for my weekend

Morrowind lore and FNAF lore

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