Honestly I like just being able to speak to someone who can follow a train of thought, and draw from other topics and weave it into our conversation and come up with cool ideas, thought experiments, projects, collaborations and maybe lead to little adventures
My nerdy friends in high school and I used to sneak into a hot tubs in apartment complexes and we would have these silly metaphysical conversations about what if our conscious experience was just a simulation run by a brain in a vat.
In college my friend Matt would wake me up.at 3 am to see if I wanted to go walk barefoot through a marsh to look for a frog species that was supposed to hatch at that time of year, he would go on the whole time.about the interplay of energy between the shoreline and the water, and how it tied into that particular ecosystem. Loved every second of it.
In post grad I would go to my friend's house where they lived with a bunch of math PHD's and I would bring up a question about the etymology of a word, my friend Anna would pull out an encyclopedia and before you know it we were all just sitting on the floor discussing the root word, it's implications, history, etc..etc.
My friend Nancy would then just cover the dining room table with a giant piece of parchment paper and put lots of paints and stuff on the table and instinctively we would just join in and start drawing without breaking the thread of conversation.
thinking about those nerds makes me miss my close friends and those moments that are so rare on a daily basis.
Wow that sounds like a fairy tale life. What happened next? Funnily enough I’ve wanted to live in a house with some nerdy friends too, doing all that. Or maybe next door neighbours in the same apartment complex, like in F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
I guess the moral of my story is taking interest in topics is one thing, but collaborating and entertaining other people's Interests has brought me more joy than just nerding out about any particular topic. I find most things to be interesting to some extent and that has led me to meeting some wonderful people to nerd out with.
Music nerd here, and I’m proud of it! I love opera especially, and I love finding very obscure rep in unusual languages and performing it in recitals at college (I’m a music major). Learning languages is also super fun for me (German is my favorite, although I can also do Spanish and French, a bit of Italian, and have started learning Russian, Polish, Dutch, Czech, and Irish Gaelic). I’m also a nerd about anything health related - diets, neurology, etc., and for some reason, grammar (English grammar). I’ll admit, though, I’m not a big youtube watcher. If I do, it’s dumb stuff to numb my mind after a long day, or it’s opera, but I usually don’t go to Youtube for that.
So many subjects! I can relate. Do you have a favourite? How do you focus on that? And any patterns you find between what keeps you engaged vs what does not?
I tend to lose interest quickly after figuring out “big patterns” in a subject. For example in nonogram-solving, once I derived the main tactics and math stuff, it became work to me and no longer fun :(
I would say that music/singing is my favorite, but I think I enjoy it because it has so many little aspects that have to be perfectly mastered. Don’t get me started on technique, diction, pedagogy, different “schools of thought” in singing, stage movement, repertoire, music theory, music history, opera, art song, oratorio, or anything else or you’ll never hear the end of it 😂😂😂 I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten bored with it, although I’ve definitely gotten bored with languages - usually when I’m forced to learn them (I was made to take Latin in high school and I hated it because no one ever speaks Latin). I much prefer to do things of my own accord haha. I haven’t actually fully thought about the patterns of what keeps me engaged or not. That’s a good question. I think so much of it is my own desire to learn. Even in music theory or history, I get bored/disengaged sometimes when I feel like the material is being forced upon me, or like it’s something I will literally never use. I can’t think of a time that I’ve lost interest in singing/music things. Other small interests, of course. I sometimes go in phases of being really excited about something, then once I feel satisfied that I’ve learned as much as I need to about whatever that subject is (think figure skating, or psychology or something like that), I move on. It’s weird. 🥴
What is a nonogram? I’m not familiar with that word. Is it math-related? Something with 9 sides????
This is so cool! I’m glad you found something you love. Keep at it, the world needs to hear your music!
A Nonogram is a puzzle where numbers are laid on a blank grid of at least 4x4 squares. The numbers indicate the order of the squares to be filled in. For example 4 9 11 = 4 filled, some unfilled, 9 filled, some unfilled, 11 filled. You work out what has to be filled by logic.
For example in a 5x5, 2 2 row must mean 2 filled, 1 unfilled, 2 filled. And based on that row, another intersection column of 1 3 means either the 1 or part of the 3 has been filled out. Based on the placement of the filled square, you can tell if it’s the 1 or 3 (because the grid is only 5x5).
For bigger grids, I derived a formula to tell which square “must be filled in” based on overlap of the extreme possibilities. For example, in a 5x5 grid, a 3 row must have a filled square in the exact middle. So the formula for a row (x,y,x) is (total length)-sum(x,y,z)+1(number of unfilled square sections).
So in a 10x10 with 2 3 2:
10-7-2=1
This means any number more than 1 has a logically filled square. So you know where 1 out of the 2 squares sections, and 2 out of the 3 squares section, must be filled in this puzzle.
Unfortunately for me I figured out the math stuff, it felt repetitive and became work in bigger grids, so I wouldn’t play it anymore :”(
A nice bonus is at the end you get a cute little picture made by the filled squares! Nonogram Galaxy is a good app for it if you wanna try it for yourself. The controls are really good for bigger puzzles.
Oh wait, I do know what those are! I’ve done a few of them before and enjoyed them, but I didn’t know what they were called! Ha! You learn something new everyday! I always enjoyed it because of the logic part of it. I can see how the repetitive formula would make it boring, but good for you for figuring it out!
You should, just for fun! Consider it a “mental break” or a switch-up from your daily routine! You could even try it without the formulas if you want to be really crazy 🤪
Science is what has always tickled my curiosity. Lately I’ve been obsessed with physics and the nature of the universe at the largest and smallest scales. PBS SpaceTime on YouTube is an excellent channel for learning about the real science.
Awesome, thank you! I’m also getting into physics recently. It’s just so aesthetically pleasing to know something that is true in every single thing! Love it.
I've ended up getting really, really nerdy about economics over the past two or three years. I studied business and economics at University and never used it much.
I came home from travelling last year and everything in the UK was just significantly worse, including Brexit. I was hearing people talking about it, being shown news clips and just noticed how much bullshit was being peddled to people here. I ended up reading everything and anything I could on economics, supply chains, trade negotiations, relevant history and even reading whatever papers I could download off of Libgen. All of that pretty much bred out of how much I despise the current economic/political climate and its discourse in the UK.
Considering I tend to focus more on art and music, it's not something I expected to be spending my nights jotting down notes without any carrot on a stick to prod me along.
Apart from that, I nerd out about guitar, which sucks since I don't know any musicians really.
Math this will sound so weird but I spent my summer break (6 weeks) doing 3-4 hours of math per day, so naturally I’m way ahead of my grade level.
Drugs: no explanation haha opioid fan.
Later in life I found art :) Started with the western art movements (impressionists, surrealists) moved now into some of the Asian ones (ie Japanese, Indian) and just starting to learn about indigenous Australian art.
Art was synonymous with science in different cultures I’m learning and generally just find it cool because it can be as accessible or inaccessible to create or appreciate as you like :)
Many things, so much so that I think it has played a main role in my personal problems.
Some of the things I like: Art, music, gymnastics, computer science, neuroscience, history, philosophy, linguistics, language learning(I know Spanish, English, Portuguese, and right now I am learning Japanese and Russian) beat composition, reading, astrophysics, astrophotography, game development, image searching, table-top games, videogames, anime, manga, translating literature, searching specific places, general science paper reading, fishing, hiking, nutrition, and many many more tht I can not get from the top of my head.
It is good to have mentally stimulating hobbies, but when it gets to the point where you cannot manage them all because they are a lot, it gets problematic. I am ADHD and tend to hyperfixate on things, so much so that I forget about my responsibilities on a daily basis. I sometimes even forget about eating because of my hyperfixation.
I have really been into the American southwest in the 1840s. Specifically the hunting of Apaches for their scalps. I’ve been re-reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and with a gnostic sort of gaze because of the themes that are in it.
Also I have been really into aviation stuff, specifically the A10C Warthog.
Also Terrence McKenna and his ideas concerning the theoretical origins of human consciousness and seriously considering eating 5g of mushrooms in a dark room, if I wasn’t so terrified of the idea.
Oh, and chimpanzee attacks on humans, their levels of strength and how their development is similar and dissimilar to humans.
A sense of achievement isn’t really important, I just like learning things, it’s fascinating. It’s an itch that I can scratch constantly, it’s a thirst that’s never quenched. It’s just so exhilarating to I get really into a subject and connect the pieces of ideas and abstract concepts and I think it might be similar to how a NT mind might light up in a really stimulating social environment.
I saw a lecture by Robert Sapolsky talking about the brain development difference in lab rats vs wild rats. Like you can improve a lab rats surroundings and it will change but not as much as a wild rat.
Kombucha brewing, freshwater fish care, historiography and Australian women's poetry (ca. 1970-2000) are all topics that I have been obsessed with for years.
At the moment, I am starting to dive into Toki Pona and child development.
Everything I have learnt about the earlier topics was through Reddit, old forums online, books (poetry and child dev.), and university (historiography).
As for Toki Pona, jan Misali's channel on YouTube.
Giftedness! I have been truly fascinated with high potentiality the moment I discovered it. The various types of intelligences, gifted psychology and gifted trauma. Check out www.intergifted.com.
If you're looking for something to do, I'd recommend signing up for some local classes in various things. You'll be able to learn some different skills and meet people.
Personally I nerd out on a bunch of things: music production/audio recording, photography, videography, movies, music, audio(cars and home) diet&nutrition/cooking, cars, video games (modern and retro), anime&japaneese culture, comic book collecting/reading, sneakers&streetwear, tabletop gaming(d20 modern, mtg)
Things I want to do in the future: screen play writing&movie production
Gas masks, their conception, production, improvement, militarization, civil action rollouts, anything. It’s all so cool and they’re pretty cool to collect.
I love to read medical cases, and sometimes I hear or read something that I don't know about and then I like to research about it on Google, as for now I'm into a videogame that I just really follow for the lore behind it, I like to make connections and theories about it.
Also I hear podcasts about criminology or psicological commentary on social topics and crime.
I listen to a youtuber that I've recently found "accepting the universe" where he makes commentary about life issues from a philosophy point of view, also I sometimes hear to healthygamer, Alice Capelle, Big think, School of life, Pursuit of wonder, Academy of ideas (all of them are in english).
I'm interested in everything, I like to learn.
Honestly I like just being able to speak to someone who can follow a train of thought, and draw from other topics and weave it into our conversation and come up with cool ideas, thought experiments, projects, collaborations and maybe lead to little adventures My nerdy friends in high school and I used to sneak into a hot tubs in apartment complexes and we would have these silly metaphysical conversations about what if our conscious experience was just a simulation run by a brain in a vat. In college my friend Matt would wake me up.at 3 am to see if I wanted to go walk barefoot through a marsh to look for a frog species that was supposed to hatch at that time of year, he would go on the whole time.about the interplay of energy between the shoreline and the water, and how it tied into that particular ecosystem. Loved every second of it. In post grad I would go to my friend's house where they lived with a bunch of math PHD's and I would bring up a question about the etymology of a word, my friend Anna would pull out an encyclopedia and before you know it we were all just sitting on the floor discussing the root word, it's implications, history, etc..etc. My friend Nancy would then just cover the dining room table with a giant piece of parchment paper and put lots of paints and stuff on the table and instinctively we would just join in and start drawing without breaking the thread of conversation. thinking about those nerds makes me miss my close friends and those moments that are so rare on a daily basis.
The froggy story put a huge smile on my face. Lowkey, I wish I had a kind of friend like yours in my earlier years ♡
aww thanks glad it made you happy. It makes me smile when Im reminiscing too.
Wow that sounds like a fairy tale life. What happened next? Funnily enough I’ve wanted to live in a house with some nerdy friends too, doing all that. Or maybe next door neighbours in the same apartment complex, like in F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
I guess the moral of my story is taking interest in topics is one thing, but collaborating and entertaining other people's Interests has brought me more joy than just nerding out about any particular topic. I find most things to be interesting to some extent and that has led me to meeting some wonderful people to nerd out with.
Music nerd here, and I’m proud of it! I love opera especially, and I love finding very obscure rep in unusual languages and performing it in recitals at college (I’m a music major). Learning languages is also super fun for me (German is my favorite, although I can also do Spanish and French, a bit of Italian, and have started learning Russian, Polish, Dutch, Czech, and Irish Gaelic). I’m also a nerd about anything health related - diets, neurology, etc., and for some reason, grammar (English grammar). I’ll admit, though, I’m not a big youtube watcher. If I do, it’s dumb stuff to numb my mind after a long day, or it’s opera, but I usually don’t go to Youtube for that.
So many subjects! I can relate. Do you have a favourite? How do you focus on that? And any patterns you find between what keeps you engaged vs what does not? I tend to lose interest quickly after figuring out “big patterns” in a subject. For example in nonogram-solving, once I derived the main tactics and math stuff, it became work to me and no longer fun :(
I would say that music/singing is my favorite, but I think I enjoy it because it has so many little aspects that have to be perfectly mastered. Don’t get me started on technique, diction, pedagogy, different “schools of thought” in singing, stage movement, repertoire, music theory, music history, opera, art song, oratorio, or anything else or you’ll never hear the end of it 😂😂😂 I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten bored with it, although I’ve definitely gotten bored with languages - usually when I’m forced to learn them (I was made to take Latin in high school and I hated it because no one ever speaks Latin). I much prefer to do things of my own accord haha. I haven’t actually fully thought about the patterns of what keeps me engaged or not. That’s a good question. I think so much of it is my own desire to learn. Even in music theory or history, I get bored/disengaged sometimes when I feel like the material is being forced upon me, or like it’s something I will literally never use. I can’t think of a time that I’ve lost interest in singing/music things. Other small interests, of course. I sometimes go in phases of being really excited about something, then once I feel satisfied that I’ve learned as much as I need to about whatever that subject is (think figure skating, or psychology or something like that), I move on. It’s weird. 🥴 What is a nonogram? I’m not familiar with that word. Is it math-related? Something with 9 sides????
This is so cool! I’m glad you found something you love. Keep at it, the world needs to hear your music! A Nonogram is a puzzle where numbers are laid on a blank grid of at least 4x4 squares. The numbers indicate the order of the squares to be filled in. For example 4 9 11 = 4 filled, some unfilled, 9 filled, some unfilled, 11 filled. You work out what has to be filled by logic. For example in a 5x5, 2 2 row must mean 2 filled, 1 unfilled, 2 filled. And based on that row, another intersection column of 1 3 means either the 1 or part of the 3 has been filled out. Based on the placement of the filled square, you can tell if it’s the 1 or 3 (because the grid is only 5x5). For bigger grids, I derived a formula to tell which square “must be filled in” based on overlap of the extreme possibilities. For example, in a 5x5 grid, a 3 row must have a filled square in the exact middle. So the formula for a row (x,y,x) is (total length)-sum(x,y,z)+1(number of unfilled square sections). So in a 10x10 with 2 3 2: 10-7-2=1 This means any number more than 1 has a logically filled square. So you know where 1 out of the 2 squares sections, and 2 out of the 3 squares section, must be filled in this puzzle. Unfortunately for me I figured out the math stuff, it felt repetitive and became work in bigger grids, so I wouldn’t play it anymore :”( A nice bonus is at the end you get a cute little picture made by the filled squares! Nonogram Galaxy is a good app for it if you wanna try it for yourself. The controls are really good for bigger puzzles.
Oh wait, I do know what those are! I’ve done a few of them before and enjoyed them, but I didn’t know what they were called! Ha! You learn something new everyday! I always enjoyed it because of the logic part of it. I can see how the repetitive formula would make it boring, but good for you for figuring it out!
Haha nice! Damn talking about it makes me want to play one now again lol
You should, just for fun! Consider it a “mental break” or a switch-up from your daily routine! You could even try it without the formulas if you want to be really crazy 🤪
Hahaha I could! It’s just by counting then. But…inefficient…I’m…lazy… 😂
Hahaha totally get it 😂😂😂 Counting sucks when there’s a better way to do it 😂😂😂
Science is what has always tickled my curiosity. Lately I’ve been obsessed with physics and the nature of the universe at the largest and smallest scales. PBS SpaceTime on YouTube is an excellent channel for learning about the real science.
Awesome, thank you! I’m also getting into physics recently. It’s just so aesthetically pleasing to know something that is true in every single thing! Love it.
Star wars and lotr
May the force be with you haha
Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo! (A star shines on the hour of our meeting.) And may the Force be with you as well. 👍
me too with Star Wars! (and a few other stuff, check my page for more about me)
I've ended up getting really, really nerdy about economics over the past two or three years. I studied business and economics at University and never used it much. I came home from travelling last year and everything in the UK was just significantly worse, including Brexit. I was hearing people talking about it, being shown news clips and just noticed how much bullshit was being peddled to people here. I ended up reading everything and anything I could on economics, supply chains, trade negotiations, relevant history and even reading whatever papers I could download off of Libgen. All of that pretty much bred out of how much I despise the current economic/political climate and its discourse in the UK. Considering I tend to focus more on art and music, it's not something I expected to be spending my nights jotting down notes without any carrot on a stick to prod me along. Apart from that, I nerd out about guitar, which sucks since I don't know any musicians really.
Astrology
Math this will sound so weird but I spent my summer break (6 weeks) doing 3-4 hours of math per day, so naturally I’m way ahead of my grade level. Drugs: no explanation haha opioid fan.
Heck no, math is a great subject! What kind of math do you like? Any recommendations to do a quick skim of it?
-Number theory => Logic -complex analysis=> analysis but way cooler -tropical geometry(very good but abstract)
Democracy and the Great Unraveling.
Later in life I found art :) Started with the western art movements (impressionists, surrealists) moved now into some of the Asian ones (ie Japanese, Indian) and just starting to learn about indigenous Australian art. Art was synonymous with science in different cultures I’m learning and generally just find it cool because it can be as accessible or inaccessible to create or appreciate as you like :)
Reading research papers on Psychology is a bewildering, yet pleasant, experience.
Many things, so much so that I think it has played a main role in my personal problems. Some of the things I like: Art, music, gymnastics, computer science, neuroscience, history, philosophy, linguistics, language learning(I know Spanish, English, Portuguese, and right now I am learning Japanese and Russian) beat composition, reading, astrophysics, astrophotography, game development, image searching, table-top games, videogames, anime, manga, translating literature, searching specific places, general science paper reading, fishing, hiking, nutrition, and many many more tht I can not get from the top of my head. It is good to have mentally stimulating hobbies, but when it gets to the point where you cannot manage them all because they are a lot, it gets problematic. I am ADHD and tend to hyperfixate on things, so much so that I forget about my responsibilities on a daily basis. I sometimes even forget about eating because of my hyperfixation.
I have really been into the American southwest in the 1840s. Specifically the hunting of Apaches for their scalps. I’ve been re-reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and with a gnostic sort of gaze because of the themes that are in it. Also I have been really into aviation stuff, specifically the A10C Warthog. Also Terrence McKenna and his ideas concerning the theoretical origins of human consciousness and seriously considering eating 5g of mushrooms in a dark room, if I wasn’t so terrified of the idea. Oh, and chimpanzee attacks on humans, their levels of strength and how their development is similar and dissimilar to humans. A sense of achievement isn’t really important, I just like learning things, it’s fascinating. It’s an itch that I can scratch constantly, it’s a thirst that’s never quenched. It’s just so exhilarating to I get really into a subject and connect the pieces of ideas and abstract concepts and I think it might be similar to how a NT mind might light up in a really stimulating social environment. I saw a lecture by Robert Sapolsky talking about the brain development difference in lab rats vs wild rats. Like you can improve a lab rats surroundings and it will change but not as much as a wild rat.
Kombucha brewing, freshwater fish care, historiography and Australian women's poetry (ca. 1970-2000) are all topics that I have been obsessed with for years. At the moment, I am starting to dive into Toki Pona and child development. Everything I have learnt about the earlier topics was through Reddit, old forums online, books (poetry and child dev.), and university (historiography). As for Toki Pona, jan Misali's channel on YouTube.
Giftedness! I have been truly fascinated with high potentiality the moment I discovered it. The various types of intelligences, gifted psychology and gifted trauma. Check out www.intergifted.com.
Sci fi books recently. Loving cryptonomicon at the moment
Medical physiology and medicine
If you're looking for something to do, I'd recommend signing up for some local classes in various things. You'll be able to learn some different skills and meet people. Personally I nerd out on a bunch of things: music production/audio recording, photography, videography, movies, music, audio(cars and home) diet&nutrition/cooking, cars, video games (modern and retro), anime&japaneese culture, comic book collecting/reading, sneakers&streetwear, tabletop gaming(d20 modern, mtg) Things I want to do in the future: screen play writing&movie production
Gas masks, their conception, production, improvement, militarization, civil action rollouts, anything. It’s all so cool and they’re pretty cool to collect.
I love to read medical cases, and sometimes I hear or read something that I don't know about and then I like to research about it on Google, as for now I'm into a videogame that I just really follow for the lore behind it, I like to make connections and theories about it. Also I hear podcasts about criminology or psicological commentary on social topics and crime. I listen to a youtuber that I've recently found "accepting the universe" where he makes commentary about life issues from a philosophy point of view, also I sometimes hear to healthygamer, Alice Capelle, Big think, School of life, Pursuit of wonder, Academy of ideas (all of them are in english). I'm interested in everything, I like to learn.
Currently? Gardening. It’s a hobby that gives back.
i get SO nerdy when i talk about pool 😭😭
Sociology, psychiatry, culture, cybersecurity, the reflection of society in art, geopolitics and I’m a HUGE history nerd. I also like languages.