Compared to people around me I seem to know a lot about fashion history, textiles and clothing in general.
Hot tip, like literally a hot tip, if you’re having trouble being miserable in the hot weather this summer, try wearing 100% cotton, loose fitting clothes that cover your skin. 100% Linen or a linen/rayon blend is even better but pricey. Wear a hat. Polyester, acrylic, spandex, microfiber, they’re all plastics that not only insulate you but don’t absorb your sweat. That “moisture wicking technology” athletic clothing is always going on about is total bullshit. Wear a linen shirt in the sun with a breeze and marvel at the magic of evaporative cooling. Covering your skin with a hat and sleeves not only helps prevent sunburn, but is also your own portable shade. You know how much cooler it is in the shade, right?
You might look at pictures of old timey people all dressed in big dresses and long sleeve shirts and waistcoats in the old west and think “wow they must have been so uncomfortable!” but I bet you they were more comfortable than you in your polyester. Just ask a reenactor!
I am an expert on disaster response preplanning for hospitals and have basically read every English, German and Italian publication on that matter. Sadly that does not pay well…
Imagine a Venn Diagram with three circles:
Ships and their electronics
Linux servers
Industrial roboticsI’m in the middle where all of those intersect. Pays well.
A ship, a Linux server, and an industrial robot enter a bar.
…and the bartender asks: “Is my geophysical survey data ready yet?”
And the industrial robot asks: “Why does a bartender need geophysical survey data?”
Not my question to ask. Whoever pays for the survey gets the data.
I can read and write using the Standard Galactic Alphabet from the Commander Keen series
I’ve delved way too deep into the fall of the Western Roman Empire. I think I know a lot about Majorian, Stilicho, Aetius and Ricimer. My gf at this point even knows who Honorius is and why he was a bad emperor. Edit: and that he had chicken :)
When I saw the meme “How often do you daily think about the Roman Empire”, I knew that it was about me, because the answer is yes :/
I, too, would like to be destroyed by goths
The joke never gets old ;)
I have a lot of niche knowledge about specific issues relating to different brands/models of laptops and phones. it’s very rare I find an issue I can’t diagnose within an hour with prior knowledge. ask me anything I suppose?
oh, also, I happen to know that Ohio is the only state that doesn’t share a letter in common with the word mackerel. works for the territories too. doesn’t really get more niche than that.
My laptop doesn’t work underwater. Is it the brand of charger?
e: Nevermind I pulled it out and it’s still not working. Must have been a coincidence unrelated to the water.
hmm, sounds like a classic PEBKAC error.
God no, my chair hasn’t worked since the catapult incident
I play a mud called Starmourn. I know the archeology system very deeply, including how long it takes for your npc dig site members to dig, what the two stages of digging are, and what a supervisor actually does (…not as much as you’d hope, but more than you’d fear)
I also know designing in the game, but they’re are many people in the game that design!
I’ve always agreed with that saying “jack of all trades, master of none, but better than master of one” … but I didn’t expect to feel so frustrated that I don’t have any fun niche knowledge.
This was a great question, and I’ve loved reading all the answers!
yea you and me both. Let’s sit in the audience and have fun
A really painful type of coordinate transformation I once had to develop to try and shed some insight on Hawking radiation near black holes.
Unfortunately the results were fucking ugly and I gave up trying to understand them, largely due to the fact that except under very specific circumstances they’re basically impossible to calculate (you get something similar to divide by zero errors).
Nice case:
Not nice case:
There was a ton more related stuff I could have spent a PhD working on, but life didn’t really allow it (and frankly I’m okay with that, I’m actually doing enjoyable stuff for the first time in my life instead of fighting my brain).
Are you a post-doc now? If so, congrats! If you dont mind me asking, what exactly was your research about (not a physics/mathy person so ELI5 would be appreciated)
Nah, I never even started a PhD mostly due to financial circumstances. But I’ve since realised I kinda hated academia because of untreated ADHD lol. I may go back to it one day after I’ve got treatment sorted but I really doubt it, I found my passion in music instead.
I’ll try and ELI5 haha. Think of a black hole like a battery, stuff falls in to charge it and then it discharges by tickling empty space into creating particles. The problem is that the particles it creates seem to be random, which means it acts like a big delete button for the stuff that fell inside. Due to quantum stuff, this shouldn’t be possible, so some process could exist to encode the information about the original stuff onto the particles that leave the black hole. Importantly this doesn’t actually mean the particles that leave have to be the same as what fell in, you just need to able to look at them and then reconstruct it. Kinda like if you scrambled a book in a way which makes it look random, but is actually a secret code that still has the whole story contained inside.
My research was to look for that information being written on the particles leaving the black hole, basically by comparing how space and time outside the black hole changes over time and seeing what it does to the tickling.
Assuming you meant ticking , but that is a great insight and perspective to research from!
Nah, I absolutely meant tickling. Black holes make empty space wiggle a bit and it produces particles.
The actual process is much more complicated ofc but that’s the picture in my head of the quantum field theory, if you tickle the surface of a still pond it’ll make ripples which is sorta the same thing.
I once worked for a company that designed “educational” programs that turned out to be little more than glorified corporate propaganda!
Ask me what the appropriate level of cynicism should be when it comes to anything related to “corporate culture.”
Go on… ask me.
Acoustic propagation. I design large format PA systems and as a result need to know both how to make sound and stop sound at a large scale. It is entirely possible and actually relatively easy to be super precise with where sound goes or doesn’t go. The problem is cost.
Noticed you haven’t been getting any feedback on this. That’s probably a good thing right? ;)
Reading books on natural philosophy. By that I mean, not mathematics of the physics itself, but what do the mathematics actually tell us about the natural world, how to interpret it and think about it, on a more philosophical level. Not a topic I really talk to many people irl on because most people don’t even know what the philosophical problems around this topic. I mean, I’d need a whole whiteboard just to walk someone through Bell’s theorem to even give them an explanation to why it is interesting in the first place. There is too much of a barrier of entry for casual conversation.
You would think since natural philosophy involves physics that it would not be niche because there are a lot of physicists, but most don’t care about the topic either. If you can plug in the numbers and get the right predictions, then surely that’s sufficient, right? Who cares about what the mathematics actually means? It’s a fair mindset to have, perfectly understandable and valid, but not part of my niche interests, so I just read tons and tons and tons of books and papers regarding a topic which hardly anyone cares. It is very interesting to read like the Einstein-Bohr debates, or Schrodinger for example trying to salvage continuity viewing a loss of continuity as a breakdown in classical notion of causality, or some of the contemporary discussions on the subject such as Carlo Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics or Francois-Igor Pris’ contextual realist interpretation. Things like that.
It doesn’t even seem to be that popular of a topic among philosophers, because most don’t want to take the time to learn the math behind something like Bell’s theorem (it’s honestly not that hard, just a bit of linear algebra). So as a topic it’s pretty niche but I have a weird autistic obsession over it for some reason. Reading books and papers on these debates contributes nothing at all practically beneficial to my life and there isn’t a single person I know outside of online contacts who even knows wtf I’m talking about but I still find it fascinating for some reason.
- I am a beast at movie and tv themes
- I’m very good at guessing boardgames from just very few clues (bu i think that part of that skill is that people who ask usually don’t ask for the deep knowledge)
- I have a triggerable wealth of knowledge about random trivia facts. During some conversations i will just randomly remember something related to the current topic and then spout it. My goto fact when someone asks me to give some random trivia is that alpaccas have a set of razor sharp teeth between their molars that they use mainly to bite off other alpaccas testicles
I’m very good at guessing boardgames from just very few clues (bu i think that part of that skill is that people who ask usually don’t ask for the deep knowledge)
Antique collectors stealing from other antique collectors. Go!
Oh hey i just discovered my lemmy app has notifications.
Uhm maybe “Hoity Toity” aka “Adel verpflichtet” in my native language and the name Tom Vasel prefers?
Haha spot on!
Its not a blessing, ITS A CURSE
I stumbled into an optics development project over a decade ago. Today I develop multiple systems a year and know the math behind it pretty well, although I use the dedicated software. I’ve also worked on the manufacturing of lenses. I’ve always been into photography and hope to start a niche camera lens company in the US just like MS optics in Japan.
I’m a professional fire/sideshow performer and certified freak. I know a lot about things that are weird, morbid, or dangerous. I also have a split tongue and love to show it off. I’m fun at parties :)
Ask me anything I guess?
I also have a split tongue and love to show it off. I’m fun at parties :)
Is this your way of flirting?
I have a partner so not really? If anything it made dating harder because people are scared of it and I was always upfront about it. Other freaks love it however, as do dentists lol
Why do dentists love it?
It’s unusual but rather harmless. They see the same shit day after day, so they’re fascinated by it.
Who certifies freaks and what does the certificate entitle you to?
That was a joke, there’s no certification. But I’m part of the longest running permanent sideshow in the US and have a forked tongue
