Everyone has something they can’t stop themselves from nerding out over - but often it’s hard to find people to talk to about it. So go ahead, share your interests, and tell us about them!
The idea of time. It’s insane to me to think about events happening at different times in different places. Or for the same event to take different amounts of time depending on your reference points.
The sun is 8 minutes away from us, so we are looking at it 8 minutes in the past. If it were to suddenly disappear, it would take 8 minutes for us to find out. That’s mine-blowing to me! It’s like the past, present, and future are all happening at the same time.
Nobody cares to humor me when I bring the topic up lol
So facinating, even gravity is affected by those 8 minutes. Iow we would rotate around a missing sun, for 8 minutes, same as with light.
This is all also related to relativity, that someone else wanted to talk about in this post, i am just saying ;)deleted by creator
It is also very weird that gravity is affected the same way!
I’ll humour you! Time is fascinating and malleable and really quite intangible.
So, if you want, fire away with anything you find fascinating about the concept of time!
Sometimes I feel like we’re living inside a firework. Like we’re just on an infinitesimally tiny fragment of an explosion that happened billions of years ago. Perhaps in another scale the entire universe is created and destroyed in the blink of an eye.
If a being were the size of a galaxy, how would our solar system appear to them? Would it look debris swirling around in air? Yet it spans countless lifetimes in a few seconds.
I love this.
It’s so weird that we exist at all.
Like, what even is the universe? Why do we happen to exist within this bubble of chemistry and physics?
One thing that always struck me is how anyone can act in selfishness given how lucky we are to exist in the first place. Why squander this opportunity to do something amazing? We should all be living in idyllic peace and comfort. Otherwise, what’s the point?
We might be the only ones to ever be aware of our existence. Like you said, in another scale we might appear and be snuffed out in an instant. Why condemn our already uncertain legacy?
I’ve thought about something related.
In one point of view, time traveling to the past can create paradoxes since it alters events after that moment in the past, which could cause you to never time travel to the past after.
After some thinking, I got the feeling that the fixed-point theorem was connected to this. As long as whatever you do in the past causes you to time travel to the past again and do the same thing in the future, the paradox doesn’t happen. What you do when you time travel is like the input, and what you do when you time travel again in the resulting future is like the output.
When the input and output are the same, everything works out.
After searching about this on the internet, I saw other people have thought about and discussed this.
At the risk of sounding edgy: Sex.
I live in the US. Sex, even just plain boring vanilla sex, is such a taboo topic. Everyone’s uncomfortable about it, and that sucks. I think it’s interesting, and fun, and there’s so many things to talk about from actual activities to social constructs and more.
Whenever it comes up, I nerd out the same way I would when talking about a game I am currently obsessing over.
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Same! I have bad ADHD and my hyperfixations are often sex related.
Have you read ‘Bonk’?
I have been summoned.
Sex? Is that some type of cake?
Cake is involved is you subscribe to the slang term referring to butts. Love eating cake. Especially if it’s frosted. 😋
Honestly? Myself. No one in my life asks how I’m doing, what I’m doing, if there’s anything new… Then again I’m too much of a pushover anyway.
How are you doing?
Awful! Thanks though.
:/
It is what it is. Nothing is really going to change it or make a difference. I’ve learned to just… live with it.
I’m an American who has been living abroad for 7ish years now. I often read comments from people who say they would do it “but the taxes are brutal.” Absolutely not the case. I dug deep into tax programs when I left and can comfortably say I am better off financially now than at any time I ever lived in the States… A major part of that is my tax strategy.
I love talking about this but most people don’t really care or realize how significantly it can change their lives… Eyes just tend to glaze over.
I’d honestly be interested in listening if we lived in the same area. I’m a total noob when it comes to anything beyond basic money management. I hope you find people who appreciate your insights!
Please share. This is knowledge I would very much like to have.
As in, you’re still in some way paying U.S. taxes as well as those where you are abroad, or that the taxes abroad are brutal…? I’m not sure I follow which way you mean, mainly as I’ve never had the opportunity to live in another country.
As a US citizen you are technically always responsible for paying taxes no matter where you live. The US has a citizenship-based tax system (you owe on worldwide income regardless of where you live). Most other countries in the world have only a residency-based system (you owe only if you are actively living in that particular country). You are still required to file every year and you’re going to need someone more sophisticated than the dude at H&R Block or a free Quickbooks whatever. You need someone who is comfortable working with expats.
“Doesn’t that mean I have to pay taxes for both the US and my new country then?” No. The US has dual taxation agreements with most countries. That means that, basically, the US will not charge you taxes for things you’ve already been taxed for.
The main goal of paying less in taxes is to reduce your taxable income. The biggest chunk of this will happen with the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. That essentially says that the first $120k you earn in a year is tax free. You can qualify for it by staying out of America for 330 days per year. There is no requirement to have residency anywhere else… You just have to be outside of the US.
That $120k rises every year. When you make more than that and do start to owe taxes, you will start to owe from the lowest tax bracket as well.
If you make $120k and do this, you just got a $30k raise in the form of taxes you no longer owe… You can pretty much travel the world for free using this money.
Now, I said that most non-US countries have a residency-based taxation system. That generally only starts to kick in after living in that country for 181 days. If you stay there for less time, you don’t owe them any money.
There are also countries who don’t have income tax or do but actively tell you not to pay it.
Living in a combination of these places, and bouncing around every few months you avoid any real responsibility to anyone.
If you do earn more than $120k per year, you can reduce your taxable income even further by doing things like maxing out your 401k contribution… That gets you to $142500 or so tax free. And again, you’d start paying taxes at the lowest rate above that.
Any other thing you mention in your US filing that can reduce your taxable income also contributes… Getting married, depreciation value on a home (US or not), investment losses, etc…
Working remotely from the US also gets you a higher salary than if you had just taken a job in the UK or Germany or Japan or something… So you can have the higher salary and the higher quality of live at the same time. You give up some employment protections and European style summer vacations but I’m personally ok with it.
Also, if you are working for a US company remotely, you can add these expected deductions to you W4 and never get charged for them in the first place… You’d have a MUCH higher weekly salary and wouldn’t have to wait for your tax return every year to take advantage of these benefits.
So spend summers in Italy, autumn in Japan, winter in New Zealand, and spring in Mexico. You earn an American salary, take advantage of lower cost of living, travel the world, and its all basically free… Good luck trying to get me to move back to the US.
There’s more but these are the major points.
My uncle did this in retirement. Dual citizenship US - Italy. Moving to southern Italy village of less than 20k population means 7% flat tax for 10 years. He’s probably saving 100k per year in taxes. Which pays a lot toward a nice villa, a sailboat, dinners out, and travel money.
I don’t know all the details (yet). I also have US/Italian/EU citizenship, so it’s something I thing about. I think about living in a sailboat in the Mediterranean often.
It’s all very interesting. Your method is even more intriguing.
Have any good resources in the topic you can share?
For what it’s worth, I haven’t paid more than ~1% effective tax rate in years. This past year I owed like $50 total… For the whole year. Something like 0.03% of my actual income.
If you want to stay stationary, 7% is pretty decent but you can do better bouncing around.
I’d really love to see some starting point information I can digest on this subject. If you have any please share.
Care to elaborate further maybe with some figures and generalities?
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Since you’re mentioning both linguistics and music theory - did you know that the music of Avatar was originally supposed to be completely different, essentially an alien counterpart to tribal music? I’d love to hear what they started producing, but afaik nothing was ever released. Still, there are some interesting videos on this topic!
I don’t know if “rarely” is quite the right description, but I foster kittens. I meet lots of people who are excited to hear about it on a surface level and see pictures/videos/play with them, but it’s been challenging to connect with other people who also foster. I’m desperate to trade stories, learn from, and teach other foster parents. I even started a community on Kbin and have posted there a few times, but haven’t gotten any engagement (other than votes) so far.
In case anyone is curious, I’m still confused about how to properly link cross platform, but it’s at fosteranimals@kbin.socialInstead of complaining about the public educational system. How to improve on existing methods to spread ideas of curiosity and learning methods/mechanisms through FOSS means.
Lots of things I’m really interested in are looked down on by other adults I know. I love animation but it’s seen as something for kids. I love video games, but that’s for teens, incels and nerds. And I love birdwatching, but that’s for boring old people. Oh and also whatever my ADHD is making me hyperfocus on at any given moment. I could talk about any of those topics for ages, but more often than not people aren’t interested, so I keep it to myself.
Null models for weighted bipartite networks, and why people choose dumb network summary stats because they are lazy
Linguistics and the prescriptive bias of assuming a word’s meaning based on its blatant etymology
How skill makes games less fun and we need to embrace more chance in board games and video games
How cool it would be if we wrapped copper wire around the moon and used the earth-moon system as a huge electrical generator
Trains are awesome and we should have more of them
Well, you can’t mention all those interesting topics and not talk about them more!
I can really only talk about:
How cool it would be if we wrapped copper wire around the moon and used the earth-moon system as a huge electrical generator
You’re referring to induction from the magnetic field of earth, right?
I love linguistics too. I like to make up new words and assign them meaning based on blatant etymological rules. Then I drop them in a sentence like it’s no big deal.
Metal.
Soil.
Metals in soil.
What do you want to know?
What are metals people wouldn’t expect to find in their local soil?
Are there processes to extract most/all metal from soil?
What are the coolest properties of metals that you know?
What are the coolest properties of metals that you know?
Hah. I see my mantrap caught someone. I’m talking about metal bands in my first bullet (lmao), but elemental metals in my other two.
Metals are generally rough to remediate because they are inherent to the soil parent material (rock) that the soil developed on and the geochemistry of that rock. It’s kind of like trying to take carbon dioxide out of the air; you can do it, but it’s not easy and there is a chance your changes will be short lived.
Typically removal is done through phytoremediation, or by trying to stabilize soil metals in situ so they are in non-bioavailable forms.
Generally the ones most people (public) don’t expect to see are lead, arsenic, copper and molybdenum. There is a mineral called Galena that can be common sometimes and a large source of the first two metals.
Symphonic black metal or melodic death metal? Which one do you prefer?
Power metal, IMO. Can’t do growling vocals no matter how hard I try
What would chelate the iron out of soil in Utah?
Why are you trying to remove iron? Make sure you’re correctly identifying the symptoms of toxicity if you suspect Iron toxicity in plants, as this is relativity rare.
To reduce soil iron availability to plants, you need to add a liming agent and target a pH of 7 to 7.5
More like prevent it. This was a problem faced by little farming commune back in the 70s, that I recently heard someone talking about.
Would that liming agent be a natural thing or would it have been pesticides or something? Could that happen from fertilizer?
Ok, hold on to your hat for a second.
Iron is naturally occurring in the soil and you don’t usually get toxicity issues unless there’s a source such as mining, tailings or a junkyard or something like I suppose.
The liming agent depends on what you want to use. Typically it’s something with a higher pH such as wood ash (careful), bonemeal, or lime (CaO)
By adding the Liming agent you increase the soil pH and reduce the availability of iron in the soil. The total amount of iron will still be there but it will be in unavailable form
Preventing the loss of iron. Preventing chelation. The problem was chelation of iron. Goal was to prevent it.
Sorry, I missed the boat on that one.
You want to lower pH and use humic acid which will make iron more plant available
Smacking children and how it literally has no benefit to the child whatsoever, and makes you a bad parent if you still do it.
I used to be a strong supporter of smacking kids, I even signed a government petition to revoke the NZ anti-smacking bill, but after studying it at uni and then keeping abreast of the research afterwards, it has only negative effects, and yet bad parents still defend it.
Hard to talk about because people get weirdly defensive even when there’s NO evidence that smacking kids is either beneficial or effective.
What is the appropriate way to parent children? All my friends who try the “gentle parenting” approach have horrible children. They don’t listen and their only gear is shrieking banshee. Most children I’ve witnessed don’t listen to logic or reason so how do you discipline? I don’t have nor do I ever want children, I’m just curious. I also dislike children so my perspective may be slightly jaded.
I’ll start with the wholly negative effects of hitting children, specifically the section on Effects on Behaviour and Development. Time and time again, scientific studies prove there is literally no benefit to hitting children, with only poor outcomes.
My understanding is the most effective means of punishment involve first establishing an environment of rich support and love for the child. Then when there’s poor behaviour, short time outs.
You remember that episode of The Simpsons when Bart steals the game cartridge, and what upsets him most is Marge’s total loss of attention?
A secondary strong punishment is removal of positives, like revoking video game access etc.
It’s hard to critique whatever parents you mention without knowing specifics, but it often comes down to:
- Poor follow through, with parents threatening punishment but rarely enacting
- Limited positive attention given to the child, likely due to “no time”
- Poor communication of reward/punishment system, or poorly established system.
Finally, sometimes children and just little shits with bad temperament. It’s vital to understand that countless studies show physical abuse does not result in corrective behaviour, with only negative developmental outcomes.
That was a great response! Thanks for being so thorough. I’d love to see this in action and see what kind of thriving adults it produces. I’m not knocking my friends because I’m not a parent so maybe they are doing great but their kids just have crazy personalities. I try not to judge them as parents since I don’t know what it’s like.
Honestly I get where you’re coming from with the gentle parenting approach, and I think some people use it as an excuse to not engage with crappy behaviour. But I think kids whining and behaving a bit crappy is normal, and they’re often expressing complex feelings that they haven’t learned to understand and manage, and that they don’t know how to explain. Maybe kids that learn to suppress that behaviour at a young age, through fear of punishment, or being shunned and isolated (eg ‘go to your room’) may go on to be adults who supress their feelings and don’t express and advocate for their needs and. I guess we’ll see won’t we, as this generation of kids gets older. And some other parenting style will be the ‘correct’ one by the time they have kids. My niece is going through a really annoying whiney and whingey phase and it makes her very exhausting to be around at the moment, so I do sympathise with where you’re coming from!
benefits of ritual and separating them from superstition.
I think it’s interesting to explore different frames of mind. I used to be christian, but then I read the bible. afterwards, I embraced paganism which has a more positive and welcoming community generally. eventually, the seeds of reason became rooted in my mind and I grew to be the atheist I am today. I still appreciate the experience of group ritual, as it feels good to explore different aspects of my personality. I guess the roleplaying is therapeutic. mixing that with my interests in mythology makes for plenty of content to examine. what encourages different rituals to develop? what are the notable effects of ritual in general? is superstition somehow beneficial to the community? I find that digging around to explore these questions can keep me busy for hours, which I enjoy thoroughly. unfortunately, no one I know shares the same interests. most folks seem to be superstitious about it, lol.
I’ve always been an atheist but I come from a Catholic culture and have thought about this a lot. I feel that religion is kind of like ancient group therapy and the practices have a positive social impact. Gathering once a week with everyone in your community, singing songs and talking about how to be better people just seems like a good idea
I think having community can be integral to personal and social development. In my opinion, superstition can be a hindrance to that development.
Those are very interesting thoughts. Do you write about it anywhere? Or do you have any good resources that give an overview over some of your questions?
I don’t write about them, but that’s a great idea. there’s a number of papers I’ve read and some academic YouTube channels I’ve found informative. I don’t have access to them conveniently right now as I am on mobile. (I’m still pretty new to Lemmy and don’t know if there’s a way to DM when I find those resources)
This is a very, very cool topic. Ritual too often gets dismissed as just hokum/superstition, but if you think about ritual activities as means of creating different perceptual states (imagination+ IMO) or as means of creating/strengthening certain interpersonal bonds or reinforcing certain group norms, it gets VERY interesting.
It’s kind of why I like a chaos magick maxim I’ve heard before - “Belief is a tool”. It’s very easy to cross over into woo-woo territory, but if you’re able to keep your head on straight while also being able to temporarily suspend disbelief for a bit, you can have some pretty neat experiences.
I couldn’t of said that better! some of my favorite symbols to integrate in ritual are Baphomet and Santa Muerte. Throwing a healthy dose of sexual activities in the mix can really make for a good time! After all, “Nothing is true, everything permitted.”
Cryptography, because it’s not fleshed out enough in many peoples’ minds for them to have the same interest.
The theory of relativity (special and general).
It is more that 100 years now, and it is perfectly true according to all current physicists, but still hardly anybody (outside of physicists) knows it. What a shame.
For example, GPS wouldn’t work without it - your position would be wrong by a few miles all the time.
My mind was blown when I learned that a difference of just a few centimeters in height is enough to detect time dilation. I always thought the effect was so subtle that it could only be detected on a galactic scale, but it turns out we deal with it every day!
It’s so weird to think about, time is one of the few “constants” we have in life, but it’s really not so solid.
a difference of just a few centimeters in height is enough to detect time dilation
I’m sorry, what?
Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and the original edition of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG - the lore, the artwork and tracking down the books missing from my collection!
