There was a nicotine + adhd thread today in c/[email protected] and I got to write a few paragraphs about my favorite subject: anything tobacco.
I don’t know particularly what is so cool about it, but I just can’t get enough information on the subject. Old fashioned snuffboxes, cigarette boxes and holders, pipes… And the rich history and culture of each brand and style and how it evolved in every part of the world is just so interesting to me.
So it made me curious about what are some of the other more unconventional special interests around this community
Boiling water.
I am collecting data on various appliances and their water boiling abilities. I measure the temperature before and see when the temperature plateaus due to the state change. I time it. When possible I measure the energy use.
The more time I invest in it the more I think every North American kitchen should have at least one NEMA 6-20R.
lmao this is my favorite so far. May you elaborate on why you find this so interesting?
How much faster is it with the 6-20R?
I guess “faster than what?” is what we need to clarify here, so I’ll give you a few numbers.
The fastest I’ve got a gas stove to boil a litre of water was around 6 minutes using a “Turbo boil” burner. The highest power US spec kettles you typically get are ~1500W, which take around 4m30s to boil the water, pretty similar to what you’ll get with a plug-in induction stove.
With a NEMA 6-20R, you can buy a plug adapter and a cheap British kettle (~3000W), which will boil a litre of water in just over 2 minutes. But those typically have 13 A fuses in the plugs. A NEMA 6-20R would realistically allow a 4500 W kettle which would finish off a litre of water in under 90 seconds.
I don’t know how unconventional my interests are but: TTRPGs, board games, and uhh I guess taking things apart to see how they were made is interesting but only if I can hold the pieces in my hands
For some reason, knowing about programming languages is one of my niche interests. Knowing about, fuck me if I can make even a
hello worldin them.Still, Nim, Crystal, V and LISP just have a weird hold on me
I like languages, I only speak one fluently though
I love non-standard computer rendering methods.
Most games use rasterisation which takes a number of triangles (polygons) and calculates where on the screen it should be.
An alternative that’s becoming more common is ray tracing which starts with the screen coordinates and and calculates what’s in that direction.
Rasterisation is a really clever trick to do more with less powerful computers, and was the only way to do any kind of realtime graphics in the early days of computers.
Ray Tracing takes much more computing power, but allows for interesting things like non-euclidian geometry, 360 degree field of view, and picture-in-picture with no loss of performance (compared to ray tracing without these additions).
Right now it’s using keyboards that don’t have nearly enough keys on them.
I’m convinced the end keeb for enthusiasts is a single mechanical key and learning binary
I think you just invented the telegraph.
What is old is new again.
Apparently my wife and I collecting rocks counts as special interest because most of our friends are baffled by our collection, and the fact that we go out of our way to hunt down rocks + fossils.
Apparently out of all my friends I’m the only one who thinks it’s fucking awesome to hold a 410 million year old seashell in my hands, or an awesome chunk of mica. The highlight from a few wknds back was when I found a wicked hunk of quartz + feldspar with a bunch of garnets in it. Our excitement is our own, and no one else’s
Rocks are cool, I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t appreciate a collection of them.
My mother is trying to downsize her stuff because her health is going downhill, she gave me the best of her rock collection and it’s on the shelf next to me while I type this … they’re really nice rocks.
Any special interest can be uncoventional if you go down the rabbit hole deep enough!
That’s true! These would be welcome contributions to the thread, too. Like “trains, but especially the seats and the history of train sitting layouts” would be so cool
That would very cool. I wish we had better trains here in the US.
Road signs. I can recognise most countries by the road signs and their fonts. Comes in handy for geoguessr
When I was little I memorised the Highway Code book, which is the UK guide to road law and use - it has a really good sign guide. Risk of Falling Rocks was my favourite, while now I live in Spain I’m undecided between the No Motorcycling and Danger of Cattle signs (the Spanish risk of falling rocks sign is lame)
My partner got me a custom engraved snuffbox for our anniversary. It’s hexagonal, both of our favourite shape :3
Edit: it closed with magnets in a way that you can also rotate the lod endlessly and the magnets snap together when the lid and lower part align. It’s a great fidget toy too!
How? I need this
Idk where you live but they ordered it only from schnupfdoesli.ch which I think is pretty location specific
I need to move to Germany or Switzerland so bad. Snuff is just on a different level in that part of the world… A little off topic: Are you aware if Bernard availability in Germany and the rest of the world will change with the McChrystal’s buyout?
Oh nooo I hadn’t heard of the buyout! And McChrystal is my go-to :( so idk what’s gonna happen
Hmm … niche …
One I got from a friend of a friend is a taste in shitty old cars. Whenever I’m out walking the dogs and happen across an obscure or currently rare, but shit, car I’ll take a photo of it.
Everyone loves the “halo” models, the GTIs and Turbos, but I love to see a rusty 1.4 diesel that didn’t even come with carpets when new :-)
I’ve never ever found another woman to nerd out about old cars with, unfortunately, and most guys do the knowledge test thing which is most offputting :-/
Monkeys, for sure.
