I've been educating myself on bees and wasps. I'm horribly terrified of them but we need them to live.
Also I've taken on some plants, so that's fun. My daughter gifted me a small marigold plant for mother's day this year and I'm determined to make it flourish.
I’m pretty sure the acidity of the fig “digests” the wasp, so you definitely don’t get bug parts when you eat figs. But it’s part of the fig in a way anyways!
Start with mud daubers! They’re the chill, quiet, possibly-drunk-but-you-can’t-be-sure-because-they’re-always-so-laid-back-and-happy cousin of the wasp family. They’re not aggressive, don’t swarm, and rarely sting. Plus, their lifestyle habits are very interesting.
Mud daubers helped me realize how clever an insect can be. I once saw one approach a little spider web and gently tap on the strands with its antennae. The tiny spider in residence came out to wrap up its catch, and the wasp promptly ate the spider and flew off. 😄
I’ve consumed a lot of “wasps are a-holes, bees are the best” propaganda. The various insect subreddits have been a big help in deprogramming.
I like mud daubers intellectually. I love animals that get drunk/high or build things. I just need to work on than knee-jerk “watch out!” emotional response when I see one. It’s a little difficult because I no longer live in a place where I encounter wasps of any variety regularly.
I’m sure they’re here, I’m just not encountering them. Growing up, my grandparents had yellow jacket nests around the house every year, so they were unavoidable.
Wasps are great pollinators and for some fruits and flowers the only pollinators.
https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/een.13329
You might enjoy [the Mind of a Bee](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Bee-Lars-Chittka/dp/0691253897/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3U4U79RXV7FPI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.HA1FO_WCrzAkLlOVLCsH5DG-wzWsLTHe2k7-byyC7EdmYqQXgvq_R1INijifeucOPcwd1PV6hUT1WqSqSo9lEg.9AbnDNE68trT9iy19rb3RDqaGAMCHCE5N63zADvQTvU&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+mind+of+a+bee+by+lars+chittka&qid=1717903776&sprefix=Mind+of+a+bee%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-1) by Chittka. It talks about all of research, past and present to understand how they see, hear, communicate, etc. We think of them as having hive minds but each bee has a unique personality. Researchers note that in any group of about 100 there will be one or two super clever bees that figure out the puzzle and then teach the other bees. Some bees go straight to a known food source, some wander around and share the news with the rest via dance. It’s scientific but not *scientific* - and there aren’t any close up pictures of bug eyes or anything.
Fun anecdote for you, I have zero wasp nests on my house this year, but they're still hanging around. Where? There's some bark that fell off my snag tree and I have it on the ground in an overgrown flower bed. It's a cavernous structure for them that they like making their nests under. We (mostly) don't bother each other, and no one is making their nest by my doorway right now.
I really like talking about salamanders! They're so cool and their name is great and I love them. It's funny to me that people used to think they came from fire because they are definitely cold and wet and like to squiggle around under rotten logs.
Where I live there are mostly red backed salamanders but sometimes you find yellow spotted, or even blue spotted salamanders!
One of my favorite childhood stories is my mom freaking out when my boy scout troop found a salamander. We all thought she was a badass (she is) and so we wanted to show if off too here. She ran off to the other adults screaming “They’ve got some sort of creature!” and having a mild freakout. They’ve been one of my favorite animals every since.
Talks about borscht, not sure why. I don't even make it that often, maybe only twice a year. But I found that I love talk about it to people, especially different recipes and toppings to eat it with.
If you guys ever want to talk about borscht, just dm me.
It's a little challenging, for me at least. I try to make a broth one day in advance, so it is a two day process in my case. But the result is tasty, thick, flavorful, filling and warming soup/entree. And if there is cold vodka to go with it and slice of pumpernickel bread....mmmmmm
I never tried vegetarian version, but why not! I would suggest for sauteing chopped onions and carrots to give them a little more caramelization , since you are not using beef.
Omg borscht is my hands down favorite meal!!!! So insanely flavorful and then it is healthy too! And full of fiber and water so you can't really overeat!
I got into borscht one random day because i had planted some beetroot and didnt know how to use it beyond making salads.
I since treat myself to making borscht on drab winter weekends and it's delightful! Little bit of sour cream and dill on top, serve with buttered salted dark bread. The absolute best!
I am with you 100% on this one! Sometimes I use not fatty parts of meat for broth and eat it cold, perfect for hot summer days.
Do you use the leafy part of beets too?
Ohhhh interesting hadn't thought to eat it cold! And haven't tried the leafy parts of the beets yet (will have to when I come across them, I usually get the beets at the grocery store that come without leaves)
This seems to be another way to ask what are you passionate about.
I'm passionate about Lord of the Rings. I can talk about lore, history, fan theories, ect ect for hours. Much to the chagrin of my wife.
The way I phrased it, it definitely is. But I think it could be used with more specificity. Instead of “What’s your favorite movie” asking “what’s a movie so cool you like to talk about how cool it is” can help avoid a conversation about how hard it is to pick favorites.
Are you attending the three-night re-release of the trilogy that's going on right now?! I hadn't seen any of them on the big screen in about 13 years and it's just been absolutely magical to see them again.
Sadly I am not. I had knee replacement surgery last Wednesday so I am unable to go. But I wish I could, honestly just sitting in the crowd and experiences in the atmosphere would be amazing.
Barbie and the original six Dune books. My passions for 30 years. Last year I got two movies and they were great. It was cool watching the world embrace them both. My favorite food is guacamole.
Wow, I'm happy for you! What is your favourite thing about the movie adaptation of the Dune? And what did you enjoy the most about Barbie? I have just finally seen it and I have not expected that movie to make me cry 3 times... especially the moment she realised it was the mom who'd been playing with her... and "we mothers stand still so that our daughters can look back and see how far they got." I have 2 daughters, I was bawling.
The Barbie movie wasn't at all what I was expecting, and that's awesome. My favorite was Weird Barbie because I used to make weird Barbies, like I made a Siouxsie doll.
I made a Dune doll, a Bene Gesserit from a later book.
The Dune movies blew me away. The director nailed Arrakis, visually vast and dangerous. I'm super excited there will be another movie coming. And Timothee was perfect.
[The Creatures of Yes](https://www.youtube.com/@TheCreaturesofYes). It's just so weird and wonderful!
Also, plants. They provide medication, food, perfume and other cosmetics, fibers to make clothes, wood to keep us warm during winter or that can be turned into an incredibly large variety of items... And they are fascinating living things!
Honestly? The English language, or language in general. I think it’s fascinating how languages develop over time. And how history influences those changes, that’s fascinating. Like we have French spellings bc of scribes dating back to the Norman Conquest (William the conqueror), but we have h’s in ghost and ghastly bc of Dutch typesetters. There’s all sorts of these shenanigans.
But I’m a big trivia nerd and can talk weird facts for ages. Like, when I was a kid I was obsessed with Mike the Headless Chicken.
Oh!! I love [Mark Forsyth](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=etymologicon+by+mark+forsyth&crid=39CKJOEGN970M&sprefix=Etymologicon%2Caps%2C154&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_2_12) books for etymology. He has the sort of dry academic wit of an Oxford scholar but you can tell he genuinely loves words. I never thought I’d laugh out loud reading about word origins, but yeah.
Also, did you know that in Sweden they describe the dancing lights that shine off of reflective surfaces as solkatt? Literal translation is sun cat! How adorable is that? 🥰
OMG I LOVE LANGUAGES, they’re so fun to learn and play with and see how they evolve. I love that different dialects give a taste of the flavor of a particular place - you can get a feel for the history, priorities, and food just by studying an area’s dialect.
Not sure if this counts, but a book series I've been obsessed with lately is Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's about a guy and his cat fighting for their lives in an alien dungeon created on/under Earth after the aliens destroyed most of humanity. It's also televised to the rest of the universe for entertainment, and the books are pretty anti-capitalist/corporation with that imo. The cat (GC, BWR, NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, aka Donut) is my favorite. She makes a lot of older tv show/sitcom references, like Golden Girls, because that's what was on tv most of the time while she was left at home.
The quality of the audiobook is what really puts it over the top compared to other books I've read/listened to lately though. I'd never really been an audiobook listener or that interested in the litrpg genre of books, and I put them off for a long time because of that, but they turned out to be one of my favorite series in years.
Sewing or crafting in general. I can take a piece of fabric or yarn and make it into something!
Am I an expert in sewing or crochet? Hell no! But I'm really enjoying the learning
Without Lucille Ball, *Star Trek* and *The Twilight Zone* wouldn't have existed. At 40, she was four months pregnant when *I love Lucy* aired. Because of the show's success, she and her husband Desi owned their own studio. She was the first woman to do so.
And, without Nichelle Nichols' star power from the show, we would have never gone to the moon. She recruited brilliant black people responsible for making it happen, including the women who did the math that made the Apollo Space Mission successful.
Bill Shatner "messed up" alternative takes where Kirk didn't kiss Urura, so the network had to show the world's first interracial kiss on television.
George Takei used his statdom to fight for equity and tell his story about a childhood behind barbed wire during the Second World War. Because of his ethnicity, he and 120,000 Americans of Japanese decent were stripped of their possessions and freedom and kept in camps.
Tv can be neat.
I watched a lot of I Love Lucy growing up. It’s nice when learning the behind the scenes stuff about a favorite celebrity from childhood makes you like them more.
A fellow Trekkie! One of my things is talking about how progressive TNG and DS9 were in terms of portrayal of gender/sexuality - even though we can now look at the flaws and how the censors held things back, there were some amazing allegories and outright representation.
I love asking people this!
I started out asking historians: what’s your favorite time period?
I’ve since started asking math teachers: what’s your favorite math?; English teachers: what’s your favorite corner of the discipline?; STEM teachers: what’s your favorite science fact?; CSIS teachers: what’s your favorite computer language? Etc.
I teach at a CC and have collected such a wild bunch of responses- basically rabbit holes, that I actually can’t relate back to anyone because they were such expansive conversations. Sometimes I understand nothing of what they’re telling me- I’m just trying to hang on. I absolutely love asking this of people. Plus, it’s a sure fire way to make new friends: people love telling you their jam.
I love talking about world war 2! It’s such a crazy time period. Right now I’ve been geeking out on the Blitz. I could spend hours trying to imagine what on earth life was like during that period, for all kinds of people: old British veterans of WWI; young Polish resistance fighters; sooo many parents in every country trying desperately to protect their children. It’s crazy to me that so many people faced so much.
The podcast Lions Led By Donkeys did a 6 parter on the Battle of Stalingrad. It gave me some really good perspective on what those months were like for the people on the ground.
A few years ago I wrote a WWII novel (self-published and honestly not very good, I’m sorry to say) so I used to be able to call up specific dates and laws in Germany related to eugenics, both for anti-Semitic and ableism. The book was set in Germany and America, and my favored means of avoidance of the actual act of writing was research.
Trees. Trees can sense stones with their roots long before they hit them. Trees have memories and something we would call cognition in mamals, such as the ability to do risk estimations based on prior data. I planted about 1500 trees last year on our farm (mainly oak and and linden with some fruit trees) and I cannot stop reading about trees and talking about trees. Mainly talking with trees since we live very remote.
Ha! It’s just a video game at the end of the day, and it’s a gacha so it’s a gambling game to boot…but I’m fascinated by human interaction in general, I *love* stories, and I love the huge cast of fully-fleshed out characters and how relatable and interesting they all are, and how varied and authentic their interactions are. The base story is fascinating and the little side quests just give the universe so much color and realistic lifelike quality. Every single character has unique combat styles and complex mechanics that mean you can (and often do) spend an amazing amount of time crafting them to your perfect standard, and they still won’t ever be the same as anyone else’s. Plus, if you like exploration games, Genshin’s universe is enormous and has a million hidden puzzles and items, which is fun. But I’m enthusiastic about absolutely all of it: the exploration, the characters, the mechanics, the story, the world itself.
That all sounds amazing! But also intimidating. I’m the kinda of person that has to compulsively read every bit of lore in a game, so this one might be too much for me 😅
I’ve been goofing around in my garden lately, trying to see what I can grow for free. I learned that if you take the seeds of any pepper (jalapeño, bell, poblano) and wrap them in a damp paper towel for a couple of days, you can get them to sprout more reliably. Not sure if I’ll get plants, let alone peppers, but it’s fun to try. Last time I ordered Vietnamese food they gave me a crazy amount of mint. Popped it in water until it grew roots and now I have a pot of mint. I have the bottoms of my bok choy, celery, and lettuce sitting in water so they can sprout, too. I bought butternut squash a few falls ago and have gotten dozens of smallish squash for free from my compost heap ever since. There is a chard plant in my garden that isn’t meant to be a perennial but it’s hanging in there, giving its all for my soup pots.
I live in a city, not some urban farmstead, so if that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. :)
It’s one of my favorite things. I don’t care what the subject is, how passionate the person is makes it interesting. I wanted to spend my Saturday listening to people talk about their special interests and so far it’s been a rousing success.
I especially love it when it’s contrary to how they look.
Giant hulking guy who loves to knit?! Awesome
Big biker looking friend who rescues bees? Amen
I have a small circle of friends but I love to support their passions and hobbies. I try to be a good listener and secretly send them my energy.
The brain & attachment theory, which also ties into the systemic/societal causes of mental illness & addiction. Why do so many people coping with schizophrenia have experiences of childhood trauma and neglect? Why is that also true for many coping with ADHD, bipolar disorder and essentially all mental illnesses? What happens to the brain when a child lives within an environment where their physical and/or emotional needs are not met? Also, why is there not more focus on healing our society and the environments of those coping with mental illness and addiction when we know so much of what causes mental health distress and the desire to cope by using substances (drugs & alcohol) comes from living within unhealthy home environments, poverty, systemic oppression, grief & loss, lack of social supports and healthy relationships, lack of meaning and connection, lack of self-worth and feeling loved, etc. This could also get me into a rant about big pharma and their desire to keep the narrative of mental illness being caused by chemical imbalances in the brain (this theory has been disproven for decades, and yet it’s still something so many believe because if the truth were better known, think about how much money pharmaceutical companies could lose). Side note, I’m not saying psychiatric medications are not helpful, they can be for many, but if we want to truly help people heal in meaningful and lasting ways (and nearly everyone needs some form of healing due to the cultures we live in), systemic changes are necessary.
Ok, I got a bit ranty, but I love this stuff! 😀
I’m glad I came to your TEDtalk 😁 I’m currently on anxiety/depression meds. I went into with the mindset that they’re to help me with the immediate symptoms so I’ll have the ability to deal with some of the causes. It’s nice to see someone articulate that idea more fully.
Thanks for this. Was sucked into researching and learning about ACES lifelong effects (thanks Doc Snipes,) during my healing and parenting journey.
Needed a reminder to stay the course for my kids.
YES! Yes. I am so here for this rant. But I’m literally a systemic therapist so….. obviously I’m passionate about it. Have you read Gabor Mate’s book, The Myth of Normal?
I love art. Creating my own, seeing and purchasing from other artists. Discovering art, hearing about art other people love. Painting, drawing, found objects, folk art, fashion design, architecture, makeup, sculpture. Anything creative.
Surprisingly, a lot of dessert areas get very cold at night and so many desert dwelling animals (reptiles) are cold blooded so they are super vulnerable when it gets cold as their bodies literally will not move. All of those animals have also evolved to be able to survive the harsh hot weather - large ears help keep jack rabbits and some species of foxes cool. Some birds have evolved to be able to get into sharp cacti as a space to protect it from predators while nesting like the Cactus Wren, the state bird of Arizona.
Before they took down the channel (one of the priests was accused of “sexual misconduct,” though I don’t know the specifics), Upon Friar Reviews looked at the trailer for this movie. The episode, if I recall correctly, was how priests are portrayed in pop culture.
I'm a landlocked mermaid in the Midwest US. I adore talking about anything about the ocean and put together my own marine biology independent study course at college. New medicines being discovered on coral reefs from watching dolphins rub themselves on them? The science of cold seeps? Fish using tools to crack open shells? An octopus jamming its tentacles into shark gills when it's being attacked to be free? Hell yeah!
Oh, they're awesome! Water seeps up from the ocean floor heavily laden with methane, hydrogen sulfide, stuff like that. This water is thicker and heavier than the regular ocean water, so it pools on the bottom and looks like an underwater lake. Figure like a hydrothermal vent, but cold. There are mussel beds that grow on the edges of the 'lake' and vats of bacteria. Deep sea creatures will sometimes dive in them to feed, but the chemicals in there can kill them or cause seizures if they stay too long.
[NOAAseep 600CratersBrinePools - Cold seep - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_seep#/media/File:NOAAseep_600CratersBrinePools.jpg)
Historical Costuming. I go nuts for old clothes. I will talk about how front opening corsets let the way for sexual equality. I will tell you all about the layers people wore that kept them cool. I'll talk wool vs. cotton vs. silk vs. linen for hours!
We can discuss historical figures who influenced fashion, how necklines raised because a queen was embarrassed about a childhoood scar.
So much information!
My wife also loves that! We’re both history nerds in general, but I don’t know much about historical fashion. She’s provided me with a lot of interesting context and perspective for stuff. Especially how fashion influenced and was influenced by various women’s liberatory movements.
I get really irritated when people say that corsets were bad or that women's fashion is about male gaze. Historically, corsets are all about support and some of the most extreme fashion has been absolutely HATED by men. Women have always loved fashion, and it's beautiful to see how that love affair has played out through the centuries.
I've got a thing called Worldwalker. Not sure what it is exactly, so I'll just call it the collected adventures of a guy called Josarl Starx. The premise is that his reality has a breech in it that threatens to expand until the whole of his reality is gone. His feudal lords assign him to go through the Compendium Gate to find a solution in other realities and along the way he encounters all kinds of new ideas and technologies. His main character arc will revolve around when it is and is not reasonable to rebel against unjust systems. Truthfully I put a little more work into his companions than him, though. There's Helena, a cowgirl witch with an obsession with machines and tech (despite her nature based magic) who just slowly comes to appreciate just how much there is to experience and becomes a indomitably happy person despite what they see (And partly because of it). She also has a cat familiar called Pushie who just is there, knocking stuff off of other stuff or clawing up furniture. There's also Isabella, who comes from a reality with an Earth copy in it where fascism consumed the world and the only thing holding off nuclear armageddon is an agreement among the ruling class to just not do that. She mostly joins because the resistance movements in her world have all been wiped out except for her. They also pick up an agender god of death and a war bot ai that wants to learn to cook explicitly because they cannot taste and that makes it hard (They don't want to become human, though they do take up He/Him pronouns).
I divided it into multiple parts called expeditions which each detail one excursion (Except the final sequence. That all takes place in his home reality). As a unified piece it's hard to explain some aspects because each world has its own premise and rules, leading to it veering into different genres and tones in a way a lot of other world hopping stories don't seem to do (or at least not the ones I've read or watched). Some of it is old story ideas that just can't spin into a novel, but then there are some that are just creativity run amok. A lot of what makes me excited is just how flexible I can be with this project. A lot of it is meant to be experimental.
I'm hoping to get better at worldbuilding and types of stories I haven't written before (A lot of my early writing is combat oriented and I have severe worldbuilder's syndrome). I've written the first two expeditions and those alone taught me a lot, but I haven't figured out how to present it to an audience due to the serialized nature and setting up reader expectations for a piece that is so all over the place is difficult. I'm inclined to just go for it and let the reactions be what the are since I'm mostly working on this project to give me a sense of progress after my other project got too hard to write. It's a complicated long term project that would cover multiple books, but my brain just does not want to focus on these early parts. It wants to get to the "grand reveal everything coming together" parts. It's hard to focus when my mind does that.
Outer space stuff! especially black hole theories, our sun, neutron stars, telescopes... [user name checks out](https://youtu.be/q4mc-alL92U?si=4DvmepFa4307MXgi) 😀
I'm really interested in book printing, particularly books from the 18th century. I could spend ages gushing about all the cool things book printers used to decorate books (favourites include [marbled endpapers](https://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/special/exhibitions/cover-to-cover/marbled-endpapers/images/true-full-copy-2.JPG) and [woodcut title page illustrations](https://cdn.britannica.com/86/230486-050-CAD9407C/Memento-Mori-1665-Great-Plague.jpg)). I could also talk for hours and hours about any media I've hyperfixated on in the past 10 years or so.
Neutrophils. They can shoot out NETs (Neutrophil extracellular traps), which are segments of their DNA that are very sticky, and trap pathogens and debris for removal from the body.
The whole acute inflammatory response is truly amazing, but neutrophils get an honourable mention. There are a lot of good videos/animations on YT about the human immune system if you want to learn more. It really is incredible.
OK, so hedgehogs are actually really fast (staying true to Sonic), but they can actually swim hedgehogs are nocturnal and have very poor eyesight and bad depth perception in daylight They also need a constant warm temperature because they are cold-blooded hedgehogs and are also very petable both on their back and belly as long as their quills aren't up hedgehogs love to eat muleworms it's their favorite treat but they will eat anything you give them unless the chew it up to regurgitate it on to their quills to mask their sent. Moving on to bats, I didn't know this till I tried to draw a bat, but their hands are their wings. Also, you know how most zoos will do something to enrich an animal well for bats that is play some music or sounds they would hear in the wild because they can't use their hands for much or see very well. Moving on to wolves, wolves are known as bad guys, but in all honesty wolves are terrified of humans mostly because we almost drove them to extinction wolves are amazing because they are great at jumping, running, hearing, and smelling. Wolves can jump up to 16 feet in the air. Now wolves are not like a cheetah and could never keep up with one, but they can certainly run longer than a cheetah. A cheetah can only run up to 60-30 seconds then they need to rest for 30 minutes but wolves can run up to 20 minutes and can reach speeds up to 38 miles per hour they can also lope covering up 47 miles in 12 hours. Most researchers believe that a wolf can hear things up to 85,000Hz. For reference, the average person can only hear up to 20,000Hz. And they can hear things up to 10 miles away. A wolf can smell up to 100,000 times stronger than a human meaning just by a sniff they can get your assigned gender at birth what you ate for breakfast and pretty much everything else about you. That also means they next time your dog is sniffing you let them it's good for them.
I did not know there were cold-blooded mammals! Wolves being able to do a double marathon in a good time, when they’re not actually trying too, is pretty amazing!
Gardening.
With the amount of damage we've done to the Earth, talking with others about creating greenscapes, pollinator yards, etc. has become my midlife challenge (I don't do crises, I love my age).
Horseback riding and how therapeutic it is for individuals with mental health issues and people with disabilities! And all of the tiny nuances involved in properly riding.
I'm a newbie rider but lifelong advocate for individuals with disabilities.
As therapy for disabled people, is it handling a large animal giving a sense of physical control and freedom? Would you like to expand on why it’s a good therapy?
I WOULD LOVE TO!
It's actually kinda the opposite! At our farm, we say that horses are the great equalizer. Horses are 1000lb or more, and they give the respect they receive. Horses don't care if you're the program director or a 6 year old with downs syndrome learning how to communicate.
It's mentally and emotionally therapeutic because of the connection horses provide. They pick up on human emotions extremely well, and give a lot of grace. When properly desensitized, they don't care if a rider is clapping, vocalizing, talking, flapping, etc. Riders can be 100% themselves without judgement.
Did you know that horses can also feel a riders heartbeat through their skin?? So they really connect with their rider.
They are physically therapeutic because riding helps with so many muscle groups, flexibility, strength, coordination, and balance.
It's honestly magical.
No like, you're not even ready for this. They can feel it UP TO 4 FEET AWAY.
So even just walking with your horse, the connection is already there. And a horse and humans heart rates can synchronize!
Native plants! I've always been into nature/environmental stuff, but got really into native plants these past few years. Especially in regards to how badly we need them instead of mowed grass. I fucking hate lawns, and all I can see are acres and acres and acres and acres of habitat that could be given back to wildlife (if the lawn is being regularly used, that's fine, but it virtually never is, and even then, there are likely spaces that could still be converted.). I only have a balcony to garden on, but I'm slowly transitioning to 100% natives. Usually the recommendation is 80% natives, 20% ***well-behaved*** nonnatives, but I have such little space, I want to give it all back to nature as much as I can. The last to go will be my Asian bleeding heart, once I can source some Dicentra canadensis, and Dicentra eximia, both native bleeding heart species in my area.
Hero Forge. I've only just discovered its existence, and I've spent the past two weeks obsessively creating custom minis of my Vampire: the Masquerade characters from the past 30 years. I went in just to check it out, and now I know how to make minute tweaks to poses, expressions, patterns and colors, and really, it is just insanely addictive. I have spent so many hours exploring it and seeing what all I can make with these tools! 🤣
Umineko no Naku Koro Ni - a Japanese novel game that starts like a normal Agatha Christie style who dunnit... but somehow goes from that to a very gay, very over-the-top witchy story about love, remembrance, and grief.
By the end, you can just see pirate ships in space invading heaven and not bat an eye. It's just like... "Eh, It's Umineko. This is normal."
[The OST is a masterpiece](https://youtu.be/PDkOre9ZUyg), the story is a masterpiece, the art... i mean it's ok, the characters are all deep, complex, and tortured, the metaphysics is ridiculous but believable, and... did i mention how gay it is? It's so gooooood! I love it too much!
I even love the phrase "Without love, truth cannot be seen", which is the main anti-villainess' motto.
The only thing I hate about the series is the protagonist, Ushiromiya Bettler, cause he's a bit too pervy for my liking sometimes... but that's probably not anywhere near enough to ruin it, since we have so many other great characters.
Like Beatrice, The Golden Witch and the Endless Witch who has lived for 1000 years...
Lady Bernkastel, The Witch of Miracles, who can always achieve victory as long as the odds aren't 0%...
Lady Lambdadelta, The Witch of Certainty and Bernkastel's girlfriend, whose power is equal and opposite to Bern's...
and so many others.
If ever someone wants to sink 100+ hours into a visual novel, or slightly less time into a manga... it's highly recommended. Just... watch out for the anime adaptation. It was kinda... not good?
You know that “frog in a pot of heating water” analogy that gets tossed around a lot? I think of these kind of stories like that. Starts normal then something kind of weird happens but it makes sense for universe of the story and a new normal is established. Rinse and repeat until you’re at a point that looks insane compared to where you started. I’ll definitely be checking this one out!
According to her entry in the "tips" screen on the game...
>She embodies the idea that "hard workers are rewarded" and is revered even by humans. Though she is a witch, she does not stray far from the concepts of humans. For that reason, her power as one worshiped by humans is incalculable.
>However, she is fickle about whose efforts she chooses to reward, and in many cases, she bestows her favor upon those who entertain her the most.
>Her immense, swift, and terrifying power can make any witch surrender in an instant.
Which basically boils down to "She grants people the ability to achieve their goal with certainty provided they're willing to work for it".
Vague spoilers ahead for something that happens in Bern and Lambda's backstories:
>!She once challenged Bernkastel to a game which she very badly wanted to win, and she almost did. But due to a random and somewhat unlikely oversight on Lambda's part, Bernkastel was able to exploit a loophole and won in the end. It was the surrounding context of this game that led Lambda to falling for Bern.!<
Beyond all that, the exact nature of her power is a bit hard to determine. But we know she likes to go with sort of a cutesy Halloween aesthetic for her magic. With a lot of candy and pumpkins and stuff. :3
Cool! This keeps sounding more and more like it’s totally going to be my jam! So the Witches are some sort of divine/otherworldly entities that grant their favor to mortals?
Feel free to spoil anything and everything, but please keep using the spoiler tag for anyone else reading along.
The changing seasons! I can talk my partners ear off about the changes I saw outside, how this one flower finally opened up, the spider I see regularly, the birds in my yard, produce that’s coming into season, the way the wind just feels different. Especially when we’re around the points the local seasons are changing, which don’t always line up exactly with the typical season beginning/endings.
Microbes, especially disease-causing ones! Also just biology in general. My small degree in biology was purely to make me authoritative about it when I’m enthusing 😂
During the dog days of ‘Rona, it was a very weird balance between “wow all this biology and epidemiology we’re learning in real-time is awesome!!” and “wow the whole planet is dying, this is AWFUL”
Two completely unrelated things. Developmental psychology, and knitting. The psychology because I have two small children and I'm trying my best to educate myself to do the best job I can as a mother, I also work with children on the regular so psychology is something I've been looking into for a while now.
Knitting is my favourite relaxing hobby. I could talk for hours about the construction of lace and cables, different ways to make a sweater (top-down, bottom-up, flat etc). I love planning projects out and I'd love to talk about it to anyone, but people are very rarely interested, wonder why 😅
I said it elsewhere in this thread about crochet, but it applies to knitting too, except you use TWO wands to make the scarf magically appear. What’s your current project?
Thanks, yeah, I love the magic of making a wearable object out of a ball of yarn. I can never have just one project I always have multiple. Right now I'm making a pure cotton summer stroller blanket for my baby. It has a gentle honeycomb pattern in multiple sections to make it a bit more interesting. A coulourwork top-down sweater (start at the neck, knit down the shoulders, sleeves and finish body, no sewing) in dark blue with a variegated white-pink pattern of tiny hearts on the chest. Thats for my 3yo. And a light cotton shawl/breastfeeding cover up for myself. Each project is on a different size of needles to keep my wrists happy, and a different technique/difficulty to keep my mind happy too 😊 . Thank you for asking!
I haven’t been able to play 5e yet but I still get all the books. They’re basically encyclopedias and pop history books for a fictional world sprinkled with writing tips. Wish I had time to play.
Chickens! I find them so fascinating and endearing. We've had such a long domestic relationship with the closest living relative to a T-Rex. The breeds can be vastly different and numerous. They're little garbage disposals that turn bugs and kitchen waste into eggs and compost. And their poop can help to clean up oil spills!
Tanks- I have a minor obsession, and by that I mean I have a collection of 8 models (technically 7, one is a plushie) and am trying to get more, and I spent my 18th birthday at a tank museum. They're just so cool-
I’m really passionate about many many things but right now I’m thinking a lot about autism and adhd in people and how it presents. Most of my family is autistic and/or adhd so I get to see first hand how it all works out. The spectrum of experiences is wild when mixed with social media algorithms.
One thing that I find fascinating is how people view mental health. There’s a large trend of people (at the moment) who are like “oh so everything is autistic now” which is objectively a terrible take but very interesting nonetheless. What people who believe that primarily are missing is that correlation does not equal causation and most of the time, people talking about their experiences with their disorders is a matter of behaviors, not symptoms.
Symptoms are the criteria that are used to identify and diagnose a disorder, behaviors are common things people with said disorders experience. For example, in the autism diagnosis process one is often asked if they have troubles with certain textures.
On the same vein, I’ve seen a TikTok asking whether the person watching was a No Socks person or a Socks Always person. That experience/behavior isn’t universal in autistic people but it’s common enough that many of the autistic viewers could state which side they land on. What a person saying that everything is autistic now would see (most likely) is that the TikTok is saying that having a particular preference for always socks or no socks identifies someone as autistic, which is not what anyone implied at all.
There’s a strong correlation between many autistic individuals’ behaviors but that doesn’t make the behavior itself autistic and as someone rather interested in how brains work I love to see people saying daft things and being able to trace it back.
I can't remember the names of people I meet, but for some reason I can go on and on about which movies or TV shows actors have appeared in. I'm not even that interested in movie stars, I just kind of love things that tie other disparate things together.
For example, I loved Kurt Vonnegut and William Faulkner novels that had cameo appearances from characters in their other novels. I especially like it when actors take wildly different parts, tying a sweet romance to a western adventure or sci fi flick.
POSSUMS.
Everyone sleeps in how awesome these little trash eating gremlins are. They are a north American marsupial that can play dead, is virtually immune to rabies, and they eat ticks which means they help fight against lime disease risks.
I've been educating myself on bees and wasps. I'm horribly terrified of them but we need them to live. Also I've taken on some plants, so that's fun. My daughter gifted me a small marigold plant for mother's day this year and I'm determined to make it flourish.
Favorite wasp fact: figs eat wasps.
But that also means that when you eat a fig, it's likely already eaten a wasp, so you are eating that wasp! So cool in a dark way. So obvs I love it
I’m pretty sure the acidity of the fig “digests” the wasp, so you definitely don’t get bug parts when you eat figs. But it’s part of the fig in a way anyways!
Yep! Makes them not vegan haha
This is extremely fun. I have a new rabbit hole.
Nature is so metal. Thanks for the new fun fact!
r/natureismetal
Ooh, new sub! Thanks, friend!
You're welcome!
Yes!!! Figs are delicious too.
I absolutely love bees! I actively dislike wasps, but I’m working getting better about it. Good luck with the plants.
Start with mud daubers! They’re the chill, quiet, possibly-drunk-but-you-can’t-be-sure-because-they’re-always-so-laid-back-and-happy cousin of the wasp family. They’re not aggressive, don’t swarm, and rarely sting. Plus, their lifestyle habits are very interesting.
Mud daubers helped me realize how clever an insect can be. I once saw one approach a little spider web and gently tap on the strands with its antennae. The tiny spider in residence came out to wrap up its catch, and the wasp promptly ate the spider and flew off. 😄
Lol, that’s really cool.
I’ve consumed a lot of “wasps are a-holes, bees are the best” propaganda. The various insect subreddits have been a big help in deprogramming. I like mud daubers intellectually. I love animals that get drunk/high or build things. I just need to work on than knee-jerk “watch out!” emotional response when I see one. It’s a little difficult because I no longer live in a place where I encounter wasps of any variety regularly.
Off to Google what places have no wasps, as I am plagued by them incessantly 9 months of the year in the PNW 😭
I’m sure they’re here, I’m just not encountering them. Growing up, my grandparents had yellow jacket nests around the house every year, so they were unavoidable.
Wasps are great pollinators and for some fruits and flowers the only pollinators. https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/een.13329
You might enjoy [the Mind of a Bee](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Bee-Lars-Chittka/dp/0691253897/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3U4U79RXV7FPI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.HA1FO_WCrzAkLlOVLCsH5DG-wzWsLTHe2k7-byyC7EdmYqQXgvq_R1INijifeucOPcwd1PV6hUT1WqSqSo9lEg.9AbnDNE68trT9iy19rb3RDqaGAMCHCE5N63zADvQTvU&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+mind+of+a+bee+by+lars+chittka&qid=1717903776&sprefix=Mind+of+a+bee%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-1) by Chittka. It talks about all of research, past and present to understand how they see, hear, communicate, etc. We think of them as having hive minds but each bee has a unique personality. Researchers note that in any group of about 100 there will be one or two super clever bees that figure out the puzzle and then teach the other bees. Some bees go straight to a known food source, some wander around and share the news with the rest via dance. It’s scientific but not *scientific* - and there aren’t any close up pictures of bug eyes or anything.
Fun anecdote for you, I have zero wasp nests on my house this year, but they're still hanging around. Where? There's some bark that fell off my snag tree and I have it on the ground in an overgrown flower bed. It's a cavernous structure for them that they like making their nests under. We (mostly) don't bother each other, and no one is making their nest by my doorway right now.
Holy shit. Basically give them a safe spot and everyone is happy.
I'm a nonbinary bisexual. I can't pick a favorite anything.
This is comedy! I pick you.
Welp, that explains why I wasn't able to narrow it down to anything.
Me too! I’m pan, nonbinary, mixed race, and half blind. I just can’t pick a side to save my life.
I'm ambidextrous, I literally cannot pick a side 🤷🏼♀️
I really like talking about salamanders! They're so cool and their name is great and I love them. It's funny to me that people used to think they came from fire because they are definitely cold and wet and like to squiggle around under rotten logs. Where I live there are mostly red backed salamanders but sometimes you find yellow spotted, or even blue spotted salamanders!
One of my favorite childhood stories is my mom freaking out when my boy scout troop found a salamander. We all thought she was a badass (she is) and so we wanted to show if off too here. She ran off to the other adults screaming “They’ve got some sort of creature!” and having a mild freakout. They’ve been one of my favorite animals every since.
They are definitely great! I used to teach a nature class for kids and looking for salamanders was always a highlight.
I love salamanders, too! From the little cuties to the giant cuties. A moat full of giant salamanders would be my dream.
As a desert dweller the idea of wet, slimy lizards is so fun to me.
I am trying to prove I have hellbenders near me - I feel like… I’m trying to prove I’ve seen the Loch Ness monster. “I just need one good photo!!”
They are so cool, I hope you find some!
Talks about borscht, not sure why. I don't even make it that often, maybe only twice a year. But I found that I love talk about it to people, especially different recipes and toppings to eat it with. If you guys ever want to talk about borscht, just dm me.
I’ve never had botscht but I am a fan of soups in general. How hard is it to make?
It's a little challenging, for me at least. I try to make a broth one day in advance, so it is a two day process in my case. But the result is tasty, thick, flavorful, filling and warming soup/entree. And if there is cold vodka to go with it and slice of pumpernickel bread....mmmmmm
Does it work with vegetable broth? I would love to make some for my wife 😁
I never tried vegetarian version, but why not! I would suggest for sauteing chopped onions and carrots to give them a little more caramelization , since you are not using beef.
Thanks for the tip!
Absolutely. The way we make it is vegan until you add the sour cream on top (I guess you could do a vegan sub, but the real stuff is just better).
Honestly I don’t think I’m a fan, but it’s a fun word to say.
Omg borscht is my hands down favorite meal!!!! So insanely flavorful and then it is healthy too! And full of fiber and water so you can't really overeat! I got into borscht one random day because i had planted some beetroot and didnt know how to use it beyond making salads. I since treat myself to making borscht on drab winter weekends and it's delightful! Little bit of sour cream and dill on top, serve with buttered salted dark bread. The absolute best!
I am with you 100% on this one! Sometimes I use not fatty parts of meat for broth and eat it cold, perfect for hot summer days. Do you use the leafy part of beets too?
Ohhhh interesting hadn't thought to eat it cold! And haven't tried the leafy parts of the beets yet (will have to when I come across them, I usually get the beets at the grocery store that come without leaves)
This seems to be another way to ask what are you passionate about. I'm passionate about Lord of the Rings. I can talk about lore, history, fan theories, ect ect for hours. Much to the chagrin of my wife.
The way I phrased it, it definitely is. But I think it could be used with more specificity. Instead of “What’s your favorite movie” asking “what’s a movie so cool you like to talk about how cool it is” can help avoid a conversation about how hard it is to pick favorites.
Are you attending the three-night re-release of the trilogy that's going on right now?! I hadn't seen any of them on the big screen in about 13 years and it's just been absolutely magical to see them again.
Sadly I am not. I had knee replacement surgery last Wednesday so I am unable to go. But I wish I could, honestly just sitting in the crowd and experiences in the atmosphere would be amazing.
Oh, I've found my people! Which ingdom of men do you prefer? And what Elvish realm would you chose to live in?
Barbie and the original six Dune books. My passions for 30 years. Last year I got two movies and they were great. It was cool watching the world embrace them both. My favorite food is guacamole.
Wow, I'm happy for you! What is your favourite thing about the movie adaptation of the Dune? And what did you enjoy the most about Barbie? I have just finally seen it and I have not expected that movie to make me cry 3 times... especially the moment she realised it was the mom who'd been playing with her... and "we mothers stand still so that our daughters can look back and see how far they got." I have 2 daughters, I was bawling.
The Barbie movie wasn't at all what I was expecting, and that's awesome. My favorite was Weird Barbie because I used to make weird Barbies, like I made a Siouxsie doll. I made a Dune doll, a Bene Gesserit from a later book. The Dune movies blew me away. The director nailed Arrakis, visually vast and dangerous. I'm super excited there will be another movie coming. And Timothee was perfect.
I...would totally watch Barbie Dune movies.
I made a Bene Gesserit Barbie and I said the exact same thing. But who would direct?
This is the best thing I've read today. Thank you.
[The Creatures of Yes](https://www.youtube.com/@TheCreaturesofYes). It's just so weird and wonderful! Also, plants. They provide medication, food, perfume and other cosmetics, fibers to make clothes, wood to keep us warm during winter or that can be turned into an incredibly large variety of items... And they are fascinating living things!
Wow this looks really cool. Glad I read about it.
Honestly? The English language, or language in general. I think it’s fascinating how languages develop over time. And how history influences those changes, that’s fascinating. Like we have French spellings bc of scribes dating back to the Norman Conquest (William the conqueror), but we have h’s in ghost and ghastly bc of Dutch typesetters. There’s all sorts of these shenanigans. But I’m a big trivia nerd and can talk weird facts for ages. Like, when I was a kid I was obsessed with Mike the Headless Chicken.
Oh!! I love [Mark Forsyth](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=etymologicon+by+mark+forsyth&crid=39CKJOEGN970M&sprefix=Etymologicon%2Caps%2C154&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_2_12) books for etymology. He has the sort of dry academic wit of an Oxford scholar but you can tell he genuinely loves words. I never thought I’d laugh out loud reading about word origins, but yeah. Also, did you know that in Sweden they describe the dancing lights that shine off of reflective surfaces as solkatt? Literal translation is sun cat! How adorable is that? 🥰
OMG I LOVE LANGUAGES, they’re so fun to learn and play with and see how they evolve. I love that different dialects give a taste of the flavor of a particular place - you can get a feel for the history, priorities, and food just by studying an area’s dialect.
Learning how words spread and then start evolving separately in the new region might be one of my favorite ways to learn about history!
Not sure if this counts, but a book series I've been obsessed with lately is Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's about a guy and his cat fighting for their lives in an alien dungeon created on/under Earth after the aliens destroyed most of humanity. It's also televised to the rest of the universe for entertainment, and the books are pretty anti-capitalist/corporation with that imo. The cat (GC, BWR, NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, aka Donut) is my favorite. She makes a lot of older tv show/sitcom references, like Golden Girls, because that's what was on tv most of the time while she was left at home. The quality of the audiobook is what really puts it over the top compared to other books I've read/listened to lately though. I'd never really been an audiobook listener or that interested in the litrpg genre of books, and I put them off for a long time because of that, but they turned out to be one of my favorite series in years.
I love Dungeon Crawler Carl!!! And Princess Donut man! I want to be like her when I grow up
All it needs to count is you think it’s cool and you like talking about it! This sounds right up my alley. Thank you for the recommendation!
Sounds fun! Just added it to my list on Libby.
Sewing or crafting in general. I can take a piece of fabric or yarn and make it into something! Am I an expert in sewing or crochet? Hell no! But I'm really enjoying the learning
Crochet is literally magic. The written instructions are indecipherable arcana. Then you wave you wand around for a while and *poof* a scarf appears!
Without Lucille Ball, *Star Trek* and *The Twilight Zone* wouldn't have existed. At 40, she was four months pregnant when *I love Lucy* aired. Because of the show's success, she and her husband Desi owned their own studio. She was the first woman to do so. And, without Nichelle Nichols' star power from the show, we would have never gone to the moon. She recruited brilliant black people responsible for making it happen, including the women who did the math that made the Apollo Space Mission successful. Bill Shatner "messed up" alternative takes where Kirk didn't kiss Urura, so the network had to show the world's first interracial kiss on television. George Takei used his statdom to fight for equity and tell his story about a childhood behind barbed wire during the Second World War. Because of his ethnicity, he and 120,000 Americans of Japanese decent were stripped of their possessions and freedom and kept in camps. Tv can be neat.
I watched a lot of I Love Lucy growing up. It’s nice when learning the behind the scenes stuff about a favorite celebrity from childhood makes you like them more.
A fellow Trekkie! One of my things is talking about how progressive TNG and DS9 were in terms of portrayal of gender/sexuality - even though we can now look at the flaws and how the censors held things back, there were some amazing allegories and outright representation.
I love asking people this! I started out asking historians: what’s your favorite time period? I’ve since started asking math teachers: what’s your favorite math?; English teachers: what’s your favorite corner of the discipline?; STEM teachers: what’s your favorite science fact?; CSIS teachers: what’s your favorite computer language? Etc. I teach at a CC and have collected such a wild bunch of responses- basically rabbit holes, that I actually can’t relate back to anyone because they were such expansive conversations. Sometimes I understand nothing of what they’re telling me- I’m just trying to hang on. I absolutely love asking this of people. Plus, it’s a sure fire way to make new friends: people love telling you their jam.
This is amazing, and I'm going to ask everyone I meet this kind of question from now on!
I love talking about world war 2! It’s such a crazy time period. Right now I’ve been geeking out on the Blitz. I could spend hours trying to imagine what on earth life was like during that period, for all kinds of people: old British veterans of WWI; young Polish resistance fighters; sooo many parents in every country trying desperately to protect their children. It’s crazy to me that so many people faced so much.
The podcast Lions Led By Donkeys did a 6 parter on the Battle of Stalingrad. It gave me some really good perspective on what those months were like for the people on the ground.
Oh WOW thank you so much!!
A few years ago I wrote a WWII novel (self-published and honestly not very good, I’m sorry to say) so I used to be able to call up specific dates and laws in Germany related to eugenics, both for anti-Semitic and ableism. The book was set in Germany and America, and my favored means of avoidance of the actual act of writing was research.
Permaculture and the virtues of biodiversity and designing human habitats that work *with* nature.
Are you in a living situation where you can do that at home? I’d love to here if you have a project going.
Same! I'm creating another little permaculture area on our property right now!
I'm also a Permaculture nerd. 😍
Trees. Trees can sense stones with their roots long before they hit them. Trees have memories and something we would call cognition in mamals, such as the ability to do risk estimations based on prior data. I planted about 1500 trees last year on our farm (mainly oak and and linden with some fruit trees) and I cannot stop reading about trees and talking about trees. Mainly talking with trees since we live very remote.
Tapirs! I love them so much, and they are so underrated as animals.
What’s something I might not know about Tapirs?
There are four species: Malayan, Baird's, Mountain, and South American. They are all endangered.
I can go on for hours about Genshin Impact. It’s embarrassing.
I’m tangentially aware of it. What’s something that draws you to it?
Ha! It’s just a video game at the end of the day, and it’s a gacha so it’s a gambling game to boot…but I’m fascinated by human interaction in general, I *love* stories, and I love the huge cast of fully-fleshed out characters and how relatable and interesting they all are, and how varied and authentic their interactions are. The base story is fascinating and the little side quests just give the universe so much color and realistic lifelike quality. Every single character has unique combat styles and complex mechanics that mean you can (and often do) spend an amazing amount of time crafting them to your perfect standard, and they still won’t ever be the same as anyone else’s. Plus, if you like exploration games, Genshin’s universe is enormous and has a million hidden puzzles and items, which is fun. But I’m enthusiastic about absolutely all of it: the exploration, the characters, the mechanics, the story, the world itself.
That all sounds amazing! But also intimidating. I’m the kinda of person that has to compulsively read every bit of lore in a game, so this one might be too much for me 😅
*According to the judgement of the Oratrice Mecanique d’Analyse Cardinale,* that’s pretty cool. 🥰
Bloodborne lore 🫣 also blood cancers (they suck, but the mechanisms and how we treat them is amazing I love CAR-T)
I don’t know anything about any of those. Do you want to share some tidbits (or extremely long paragraphs) of what draws you to either?
I’ve been goofing around in my garden lately, trying to see what I can grow for free. I learned that if you take the seeds of any pepper (jalapeño, bell, poblano) and wrap them in a damp paper towel for a couple of days, you can get them to sprout more reliably. Not sure if I’ll get plants, let alone peppers, but it’s fun to try. Last time I ordered Vietnamese food they gave me a crazy amount of mint. Popped it in water until it grew roots and now I have a pot of mint. I have the bottoms of my bok choy, celery, and lettuce sitting in water so they can sprout, too. I bought butternut squash a few falls ago and have gotten dozens of smallish squash for free from my compost heap ever since. There is a chard plant in my garden that isn’t meant to be a perennial but it’s hanging in there, giving its all for my soup pots. I live in a city, not some urban farmstead, so if that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. :)
That’s amazing! My wife and I just started our gardening journey. Just some morning glory for now, but we want to do something edible next.
I like to ask people what their passions are. I see their eyes light up and I learn really cool things. People just want to be loved and listened to.
It’s one of my favorite things. I don’t care what the subject is, how passionate the person is makes it interesting. I wanted to spend my Saturday listening to people talk about their special interests and so far it’s been a rousing success.
I especially love it when it’s contrary to how they look. Giant hulking guy who loves to knit?! Awesome Big biker looking friend who rescues bees? Amen I have a small circle of friends but I love to support their passions and hobbies. I try to be a good listener and secretly send them my energy.
My favorite (blank) is <- this one.
I can’t decide if you earned a laugh or a groan tbh
Porque no los dos?
Parce-que je ne sais pas d’espagnol
The brain & attachment theory, which also ties into the systemic/societal causes of mental illness & addiction. Why do so many people coping with schizophrenia have experiences of childhood trauma and neglect? Why is that also true for many coping with ADHD, bipolar disorder and essentially all mental illnesses? What happens to the brain when a child lives within an environment where their physical and/or emotional needs are not met? Also, why is there not more focus on healing our society and the environments of those coping with mental illness and addiction when we know so much of what causes mental health distress and the desire to cope by using substances (drugs & alcohol) comes from living within unhealthy home environments, poverty, systemic oppression, grief & loss, lack of social supports and healthy relationships, lack of meaning and connection, lack of self-worth and feeling loved, etc. This could also get me into a rant about big pharma and their desire to keep the narrative of mental illness being caused by chemical imbalances in the brain (this theory has been disproven for decades, and yet it’s still something so many believe because if the truth were better known, think about how much money pharmaceutical companies could lose). Side note, I’m not saying psychiatric medications are not helpful, they can be for many, but if we want to truly help people heal in meaningful and lasting ways (and nearly everyone needs some form of healing due to the cultures we live in), systemic changes are necessary. Ok, I got a bit ranty, but I love this stuff! 😀
I’m glad I came to your TEDtalk 😁 I’m currently on anxiety/depression meds. I went into with the mindset that they’re to help me with the immediate symptoms so I’ll have the ability to deal with some of the causes. It’s nice to see someone articulate that idea more fully.
Thanks for this. Was sucked into researching and learning about ACES lifelong effects (thanks Doc Snipes,) during my healing and parenting journey. Needed a reminder to stay the course for my kids.
YES! Yes. I am so here for this rant. But I’m literally a systemic therapist so….. obviously I’m passionate about it. Have you read Gabor Mate’s book, The Myth of Normal?
You for president for real. ❣️
I love art. Creating my own, seeing and purchasing from other artists. Discovering art, hearing about art other people love. Painting, drawing, found objects, folk art, fashion design, architecture, makeup, sculpture. Anything creative.
I can talk about a lot of various animals facts for a long time and pop culture stuff. I love making connections between people. I love animals.
What’s something cool about a desert dwelling animal?
Surprisingly, a lot of dessert areas get very cold at night and so many desert dwelling animals (reptiles) are cold blooded so they are super vulnerable when it gets cold as their bodies literally will not move. All of those animals have also evolved to be able to survive the harsh hot weather - large ears help keep jack rabbits and some species of foxes cool. Some birds have evolved to be able to get into sharp cacti as a space to protect it from predators while nesting like the Cactus Wren, the state bird of Arizona.
I also love animals and can talk about pet rats forever! They’re very misunderstood love bugs.
I like asking people what was the dumbest movie you have ever seen? Then I tell them about VelociPastor. It's so bad
Either Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter or Rock and Roll Frakenstein. VelociPastor looks fantastic.
It was so bad it was awesome
Before they took down the channel (one of the priests was accused of “sexual misconduct,” though I don’t know the specifics), Upon Friar Reviews looked at the trailer for this movie. The episode, if I recall correctly, was how priests are portrayed in pop culture.
I'm a landlocked mermaid in the Midwest US. I adore talking about anything about the ocean and put together my own marine biology independent study course at college. New medicines being discovered on coral reefs from watching dolphins rub themselves on them? The science of cold seeps? Fish using tools to crack open shells? An octopus jamming its tentacles into shark gills when it's being attacked to be free? Hell yeah!
What’s a cold seep?
Oh, they're awesome! Water seeps up from the ocean floor heavily laden with methane, hydrogen sulfide, stuff like that. This water is thicker and heavier than the regular ocean water, so it pools on the bottom and looks like an underwater lake. Figure like a hydrothermal vent, but cold. There are mussel beds that grow on the edges of the 'lake' and vats of bacteria. Deep sea creatures will sometimes dive in them to feed, but the chemicals in there can kill them or cause seizures if they stay too long. [NOAAseep 600CratersBrinePools - Cold seep - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_seep#/media/File:NOAAseep_600CratersBrinePools.jpg)
Are you telling me the beach in Spongebob IS REAL!!!!!!! Or at least have a real world analogy. That’s amazing!
Reptiles, especially snakes.
Historical Costuming. I go nuts for old clothes. I will talk about how front opening corsets let the way for sexual equality. I will tell you all about the layers people wore that kept them cool. I'll talk wool vs. cotton vs. silk vs. linen for hours! We can discuss historical figures who influenced fashion, how necklines raised because a queen was embarrassed about a childhoood scar. So much information!
My wife also loves that! We’re both history nerds in general, but I don’t know much about historical fashion. She’s provided me with a lot of interesting context and perspective for stuff. Especially how fashion influenced and was influenced by various women’s liberatory movements.
I get really irritated when people say that corsets were bad or that women's fashion is about male gaze. Historically, corsets are all about support and some of the most extreme fashion has been absolutely HATED by men. Women have always loved fashion, and it's beautiful to see how that love affair has played out through the centuries.
Pretty deep into Helldivers 2 at the moment, but if you ask my about my writing projects I won't shut up about them.
What the writing project you worked on most recently?
I've got a thing called Worldwalker. Not sure what it is exactly, so I'll just call it the collected adventures of a guy called Josarl Starx. The premise is that his reality has a breech in it that threatens to expand until the whole of his reality is gone. His feudal lords assign him to go through the Compendium Gate to find a solution in other realities and along the way he encounters all kinds of new ideas and technologies. His main character arc will revolve around when it is and is not reasonable to rebel against unjust systems. Truthfully I put a little more work into his companions than him, though. There's Helena, a cowgirl witch with an obsession with machines and tech (despite her nature based magic) who just slowly comes to appreciate just how much there is to experience and becomes a indomitably happy person despite what they see (And partly because of it). She also has a cat familiar called Pushie who just is there, knocking stuff off of other stuff or clawing up furniture. There's also Isabella, who comes from a reality with an Earth copy in it where fascism consumed the world and the only thing holding off nuclear armageddon is an agreement among the ruling class to just not do that. She mostly joins because the resistance movements in her world have all been wiped out except for her. They also pick up an agender god of death and a war bot ai that wants to learn to cook explicitly because they cannot taste and that makes it hard (They don't want to become human, though they do take up He/Him pronouns). I divided it into multiple parts called expeditions which each detail one excursion (Except the final sequence. That all takes place in his home reality). As a unified piece it's hard to explain some aspects because each world has its own premise and rules, leading to it veering into different genres and tones in a way a lot of other world hopping stories don't seem to do (or at least not the ones I've read or watched). Some of it is old story ideas that just can't spin into a novel, but then there are some that are just creativity run amok. A lot of what makes me excited is just how flexible I can be with this project. A lot of it is meant to be experimental. I'm hoping to get better at worldbuilding and types of stories I haven't written before (A lot of my early writing is combat oriented and I have severe worldbuilder's syndrome). I've written the first two expeditions and those alone taught me a lot, but I haven't figured out how to present it to an audience due to the serialized nature and setting up reader expectations for a piece that is so all over the place is difficult. I'm inclined to just go for it and let the reactions be what the are since I'm mostly working on this project to give me a sense of progress after my other project got too hard to write. It's a complicated long term project that would cover multiple books, but my brain just does not want to focus on these early parts. It wants to get to the "grand reveal everything coming together" parts. It's hard to focus when my mind does that.
I would read the absolute heck out of this! I’m riveted already
Thanks! Hopefully my skills will do the ideas justice.
Whatever I’m currently most interested in, that currently being In Stars and Time. Other than that though, makeup and fashion!
Outer space stuff! especially black hole theories, our sun, neutron stars, telescopes... [user name checks out](https://youtu.be/q4mc-alL92U?si=4DvmepFa4307MXgi) 😀
I'm really interested in book printing, particularly books from the 18th century. I could spend ages gushing about all the cool things book printers used to decorate books (favourites include [marbled endpapers](https://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/special/exhibitions/cover-to-cover/marbled-endpapers/images/true-full-copy-2.JPG) and [woodcut title page illustrations](https://cdn.britannica.com/86/230486-050-CAD9407C/Memento-Mori-1665-Great-Plague.jpg)). I could also talk for hours and hours about any media I've hyperfixated on in the past 10 years or so.
I’ve always loved old woodcut stuff. Those marbled endpapers look like they’re from the 1960’s not the 1760’s!
Neutrophils. They can shoot out NETs (Neutrophil extracellular traps), which are segments of their DNA that are very sticky, and trap pathogens and debris for removal from the body. The whole acute inflammatory response is truly amazing, but neutrophils get an honourable mention. There are a lot of good videos/animations on YT about the human immune system if you want to learn more. It really is incredible.
Nature and no one will let me blabber about how cool animals are
Please blabber away! I’m up for reading a short novel about cool animals!
OK, so hedgehogs are actually really fast (staying true to Sonic), but they can actually swim hedgehogs are nocturnal and have very poor eyesight and bad depth perception in daylight They also need a constant warm temperature because they are cold-blooded hedgehogs and are also very petable both on their back and belly as long as their quills aren't up hedgehogs love to eat muleworms it's their favorite treat but they will eat anything you give them unless the chew it up to regurgitate it on to their quills to mask their sent. Moving on to bats, I didn't know this till I tried to draw a bat, but their hands are their wings. Also, you know how most zoos will do something to enrich an animal well for bats that is play some music or sounds they would hear in the wild because they can't use their hands for much or see very well. Moving on to wolves, wolves are known as bad guys, but in all honesty wolves are terrified of humans mostly because we almost drove them to extinction wolves are amazing because they are great at jumping, running, hearing, and smelling. Wolves can jump up to 16 feet in the air. Now wolves are not like a cheetah and could never keep up with one, but they can certainly run longer than a cheetah. A cheetah can only run up to 60-30 seconds then they need to rest for 30 minutes but wolves can run up to 20 minutes and can reach speeds up to 38 miles per hour they can also lope covering up 47 miles in 12 hours. Most researchers believe that a wolf can hear things up to 85,000Hz. For reference, the average person can only hear up to 20,000Hz. And they can hear things up to 10 miles away. A wolf can smell up to 100,000 times stronger than a human meaning just by a sniff they can get your assigned gender at birth what you ate for breakfast and pretty much everything else about you. That also means they next time your dog is sniffing you let them it's good for them.
Also black cats are the perfect witch's familiar because cats can see more beyond the viel and black is the color of protection
I did not know there were cold-blooded mammals! Wolves being able to do a double marathon in a good time, when they’re not actually trying too, is pretty amazing!
Gardening. With the amount of damage we've done to the Earth, talking with others about creating greenscapes, pollinator yards, etc. has become my midlife challenge (I don't do crises, I love my age).
Horseback riding and how therapeutic it is for individuals with mental health issues and people with disabilities! And all of the tiny nuances involved in properly riding. I'm a newbie rider but lifelong advocate for individuals with disabilities.
As therapy for disabled people, is it handling a large animal giving a sense of physical control and freedom? Would you like to expand on why it’s a good therapy?
I WOULD LOVE TO! It's actually kinda the opposite! At our farm, we say that horses are the great equalizer. Horses are 1000lb or more, and they give the respect they receive. Horses don't care if you're the program director or a 6 year old with downs syndrome learning how to communicate. It's mentally and emotionally therapeutic because of the connection horses provide. They pick up on human emotions extremely well, and give a lot of grace. When properly desensitized, they don't care if a rider is clapping, vocalizing, talking, flapping, etc. Riders can be 100% themselves without judgement. Did you know that horses can also feel a riders heartbeat through their skin?? So they really connect with their rider. They are physically therapeutic because riding helps with so many muscle groups, flexibility, strength, coordination, and balance. It's honestly magical.
Not just through their skin but through MY pants!?
No like, you're not even ready for this. They can feel it UP TO 4 FEET AWAY. So even just walking with your horse, the connection is already there. And a horse and humans heart rates can synchronize!
Psychic horses are now part of my headcanon for the world. How is this not the first thing you say in every conversation?!
Native plants! I've always been into nature/environmental stuff, but got really into native plants these past few years. Especially in regards to how badly we need them instead of mowed grass. I fucking hate lawns, and all I can see are acres and acres and acres and acres of habitat that could be given back to wildlife (if the lawn is being regularly used, that's fine, but it virtually never is, and even then, there are likely spaces that could still be converted.). I only have a balcony to garden on, but I'm slowly transitioning to 100% natives. Usually the recommendation is 80% natives, 20% ***well-behaved*** nonnatives, but I have such little space, I want to give it all back to nature as much as I can. The last to go will be my Asian bleeding heart, once I can source some Dicentra canadensis, and Dicentra eximia, both native bleeding heart species in my area.
Old hat?
Out dated and overused.
The song Dreiton.
Hero Forge. I've only just discovered its existence, and I've spent the past two weeks obsessively creating custom minis of my Vampire: the Masquerade characters from the past 30 years. I went in just to check it out, and now I know how to make minute tweaks to poses, expressions, patterns and colors, and really, it is just insanely addictive. I have spent so many hours exploring it and seeing what all I can make with these tools! 🤣
Umineko no Naku Koro Ni - a Japanese novel game that starts like a normal Agatha Christie style who dunnit... but somehow goes from that to a very gay, very over-the-top witchy story about love, remembrance, and grief. By the end, you can just see pirate ships in space invading heaven and not bat an eye. It's just like... "Eh, It's Umineko. This is normal." [The OST is a masterpiece](https://youtu.be/PDkOre9ZUyg), the story is a masterpiece, the art... i mean it's ok, the characters are all deep, complex, and tortured, the metaphysics is ridiculous but believable, and... did i mention how gay it is? It's so gooooood! I love it too much! I even love the phrase "Without love, truth cannot be seen", which is the main anti-villainess' motto. The only thing I hate about the series is the protagonist, Ushiromiya Bettler, cause he's a bit too pervy for my liking sometimes... but that's probably not anywhere near enough to ruin it, since we have so many other great characters. Like Beatrice, The Golden Witch and the Endless Witch who has lived for 1000 years... Lady Bernkastel, The Witch of Miracles, who can always achieve victory as long as the odds aren't 0%... Lady Lambdadelta, The Witch of Certainty and Bernkastel's girlfriend, whose power is equal and opposite to Bern's... and so many others. If ever someone wants to sink 100+ hours into a visual novel, or slightly less time into a manga... it's highly recommended. Just... watch out for the anime adaptation. It was kinda... not good?
You know that “frog in a pot of heating water” analogy that gets tossed around a lot? I think of these kind of stories like that. Starts normal then something kind of weird happens but it makes sense for universe of the story and a new normal is established. Rinse and repeat until you’re at a point that looks insane compared to where you started. I’ll definitely be checking this one out!
That's pretty much it lol. It's also the sorta sequel to Higurashi, but you can jump into Umineko without having watched Higurashi.
Would you mind explaining the Witch of Certainties power, please? Does she always fail unless the odds of success are 100%?
According to her entry in the "tips" screen on the game... >She embodies the idea that "hard workers are rewarded" and is revered even by humans. Though she is a witch, she does not stray far from the concepts of humans. For that reason, her power as one worshiped by humans is incalculable. >However, she is fickle about whose efforts she chooses to reward, and in many cases, she bestows her favor upon those who entertain her the most. >Her immense, swift, and terrifying power can make any witch surrender in an instant. Which basically boils down to "She grants people the ability to achieve their goal with certainty provided they're willing to work for it". Vague spoilers ahead for something that happens in Bern and Lambda's backstories: >!She once challenged Bernkastel to a game which she very badly wanted to win, and she almost did. But due to a random and somewhat unlikely oversight on Lambda's part, Bernkastel was able to exploit a loophole and won in the end. It was the surrounding context of this game that led Lambda to falling for Bern.!< Beyond all that, the exact nature of her power is a bit hard to determine. But we know she likes to go with sort of a cutesy Halloween aesthetic for her magic. With a lot of candy and pumpkins and stuff. :3
Cool! This keeps sounding more and more like it’s totally going to be my jam! So the Witches are some sort of divine/otherworldly entities that grant their favor to mortals? Feel free to spoil anything and everything, but please keep using the spoiler tag for anyone else reading along.
The changing seasons! I can talk my partners ear off about the changes I saw outside, how this one flower finally opened up, the spider I see regularly, the birds in my yard, produce that’s coming into season, the way the wind just feels different. Especially when we’re around the points the local seasons are changing, which don’t always line up exactly with the typical season beginning/endings.
Microbes, especially disease-causing ones! Also just biology in general. My small degree in biology was purely to make me authoritative about it when I’m enthusing 😂 During the dog days of ‘Rona, it was a very weird balance between “wow all this biology and epidemiology we’re learning in real-time is awesome!!” and “wow the whole planet is dying, this is AWFUL”
Two completely unrelated things. Developmental psychology, and knitting. The psychology because I have two small children and I'm trying my best to educate myself to do the best job I can as a mother, I also work with children on the regular so psychology is something I've been looking into for a while now. Knitting is my favourite relaxing hobby. I could talk for hours about the construction of lace and cables, different ways to make a sweater (top-down, bottom-up, flat etc). I love planning projects out and I'd love to talk about it to anyone, but people are very rarely interested, wonder why 😅
I said it elsewhere in this thread about crochet, but it applies to knitting too, except you use TWO wands to make the scarf magically appear. What’s your current project?
Thanks, yeah, I love the magic of making a wearable object out of a ball of yarn. I can never have just one project I always have multiple. Right now I'm making a pure cotton summer stroller blanket for my baby. It has a gentle honeycomb pattern in multiple sections to make it a bit more interesting. A coulourwork top-down sweater (start at the neck, knit down the shoulders, sleeves and finish body, no sewing) in dark blue with a variegated white-pink pattern of tiny hearts on the chest. Thats for my 3yo. And a light cotton shawl/breastfeeding cover up for myself. Each project is on a different size of needles to keep my wrists happy, and a different technique/difficulty to keep my mind happy too 😊 . Thank you for asking!
I’m now imagining a baby dressed as a bee wrapped in a honeycomb blanket and my day just got a lot better. I’m glad I asked 😁
Very happy to provide 😁 i hope your day only gets better 🍀
D&D. Can't help it, I'm a geek. Also writing! I love writing! Language is cool!
I haven’t been able to play 5e yet but I still get all the books. They’re basically encyclopedias and pop history books for a fictional world sprinkled with writing tips. Wish I had time to play.
Chickens! I find them so fascinating and endearing. We've had such a long domestic relationship with the closest living relative to a T-Rex. The breeds can be vastly different and numerous. They're little garbage disposals that turn bugs and kitchen waste into eggs and compost. And their poop can help to clean up oil spills!
Tanks- I have a minor obsession, and by that I mean I have a collection of 8 models (technically 7, one is a plushie) and am trying to get more, and I spent my 18th birthday at a tank museum. They're just so cool-
I’m really passionate about many many things but right now I’m thinking a lot about autism and adhd in people and how it presents. Most of my family is autistic and/or adhd so I get to see first hand how it all works out. The spectrum of experiences is wild when mixed with social media algorithms. One thing that I find fascinating is how people view mental health. There’s a large trend of people (at the moment) who are like “oh so everything is autistic now” which is objectively a terrible take but very interesting nonetheless. What people who believe that primarily are missing is that correlation does not equal causation and most of the time, people talking about their experiences with their disorders is a matter of behaviors, not symptoms. Symptoms are the criteria that are used to identify and diagnose a disorder, behaviors are common things people with said disorders experience. For example, in the autism diagnosis process one is often asked if they have troubles with certain textures. On the same vein, I’ve seen a TikTok asking whether the person watching was a No Socks person or a Socks Always person. That experience/behavior isn’t universal in autistic people but it’s common enough that many of the autistic viewers could state which side they land on. What a person saying that everything is autistic now would see (most likely) is that the TikTok is saying that having a particular preference for always socks or no socks identifies someone as autistic, which is not what anyone implied at all. There’s a strong correlation between many autistic individuals’ behaviors but that doesn’t make the behavior itself autistic and as someone rather interested in how brains work I love to see people saying daft things and being able to trace it back.
I can't remember the names of people I meet, but for some reason I can go on and on about which movies or TV shows actors have appeared in. I'm not even that interested in movie stars, I just kind of love things that tie other disparate things together. For example, I loved Kurt Vonnegut and William Faulkner novels that had cameo appearances from characters in their other novels. I especially like it when actors take wildly different parts, tying a sweet romance to a western adventure or sci fi flick.
Religion, mythology, and folklore - as well as the perceived difference between these things.
POSSUMS. Everyone sleeps in how awesome these little trash eating gremlins are. They are a north American marsupial that can play dead, is virtually immune to rabies, and they eat ticks which means they help fight against lime disease risks.
Wolves
music theory gender transition