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sunsets not lasting long enough. fuck. I need more time for my brain to enjoy my favorite cosmic thing before going back to “screen and need more food” mode.

Nice try FBI.

Every time I see a wacky internet fight over some niche science adjacent topic, I think of a better, cleaner, more controlled test that could plausibly settle the matter, then do nothing with that information.

The most recent one was Sugarologie vs. How To Cook That on the topic of blending meringue based buttercream frostings in order to darken the color. Sugar believes that the important difference blending makes is causing the dye to fully mix with the water droplets in suspension in the butter. HTCT believes that the important difference blending makes is removing a significant portion of the air from the icing.

My proposed test is to make three icings. In all icings, the butter will be blended before addition. In the control icing, dye will be added to the finished icing, then stirred in. In the butter theory icing, the coloring will be added to the butter before blending. In the counter butter theory icing, the dye will be added to the meringue, before the butter is added.

If air theory is correct, all icings will be a similar shade. If butter theory is correct, only the butter theory icing will be significantly darker. If something else happens, I think that implies neither theory is supported by the test, but I’d also be confused, so I’d probably think about it a lot more.

https://www.c82.net/euclid/en/book1/

The absolute beauty of geometry - I dream of working with an artist and coder one day to explore hyperbolic geometry in this format.

I’ve been working for months on transcribing Green River Suite from Robbie Basho into TAB. It’s a wickedly difficult piece of music and I can hardly play it.

Anime figures.

I understand how it seems like a weird and uninteresting thing but i could tell a little story about every single one i own. Sadly i decided in the beginning on a rather lewd theme for my collection so its extra hard to share.

Actually my self esteem increased this past few years but I won’t pass up an ADHD infodump opportunity. DDR is, IMO, the most efficient path for videogamer enthusiasts to transition to healthy exercise.

DanceDanceRevolution (DDR) is an arcade rhythm game that is certainly not dead, much to your surprise perhaps. The Japanese arcade scene is a whole, far more in depth iceberg to chip at, but trust me when I say Konami focusing on machines did not (only) mean pachinko machines, it also meant their multiple arcade rhythm games under the Bemani brand.

I am not kidding when I say there was a DDR setup in my middle school in southern USA. I started a bit there, but I never got real dedicated gameplay until there was a new DDR cabinet installed at both Dave and Busters and a local arcade joint. Having access to a machine can be substituted by a home pad. Please, buy the L-TEK pad without the bar. Cheapest exercise equipment out there at 250 + shipping from Poland.

You start off just browsing the songs in the roster until you find ones you like. There’s some token English licensed songs, but the bulk come from Konami original songs and a selection from the massive library that is the Rhythm Game Song Genre™. Most weebs get their beginnings from anime OPs and TouHou and Vocaloid, so if you have early YouTube nostalgia jump right into Bad Apple and Night of Nights. Later on you get addicted to the super high BPM (400+) techno mixes of the “Boss” songs (more on that later).

So how is gameplay? Visually, four lanes of arrows travel from the bottom to the top, indicating when you have to step and in what direction on the four directional pads at your feet. You should learn quickly that keeping your feet on the arrows and never stepping in the center is the key to actual gameplay. The song’s patterns are designed to lead one into another. It’s far from dancing, but you transition from paying attention to each arrow to just stepping to the beat. You internalize patterns and you get better, right?

But then, there’s a hurdle. Some songs demand you turn your hips and move your right foot on the left pad and vice versa. Difficulty is based on number 1 to 19, so you keep track that you can pass 11s, but not 12s. Each new song introduces new patterns in ordering and timing. Your old highest level becomes your warmups as you get better and better. You start to take a liking to faster, more complex rhythms like triplets, syncopated notes, and more sounds that a drummer doing prog rock would grok. One particular song has you galloping like a horse to Japanese festival music. If you know, you know.

But there’s a catch, a limitation: your own body. Nearing difficulty 12 and 13, you’re doing the equivalent of a decent jog for around two minutes, right? You might start needing some time between songs to take a break and drink some water. At 14 and 15, you’re going for something called High Intensity Interval Training. That is, you go at your MAXIMUM SPEED for as long as the song demands you go. You don’t give up because that means losing and you paid for this arcade game, right? You push and push and sometimes fall over, but eventually you’re running ragged at 600 steps per minute begging that your life bar doesn’t sink anymore. You need more training. The next song is 440 BPM with 880 steps per minute.

You want it. You want to play the harder songs in the difficulty ranking. You start to jog outside of the game on treadmills and otherwise. You put on the same heartrending songs and you find yourself sprinting desperately for 2 minute bursts because it’s impossible to stop while the song is playing. I’m running for almost an hour straight, and I get a head start at running progress because of my DDR experience! It pays off and you can play up to 15s, but there’s still 4 more levels until you get to 19. Over 4 years (at college, see?) I bike to the arcade, I play my heart out, I bike back. My blood pressure decreases, I breathe slower and deeper, and my snacking habits are at least counteracted. Best videogame of my life.

Only downside? I can’t convince anyone outside of the rhythm gamers at the arcade that the music is good. The rhythms of those “Boss” songs are etched into your soul by the end. I can namedrop MAX 300 and everyone in the scene can practically play the song out in their heads. It’s literally a lifestyle hobby, and a rather healthy one at that.

I like lore dumping on people who have some understanding of what I’m talking about.

I don’t have much interest in explaining everything to someone who knows *nothingď about it, but if they have a vague understanding/interest in the topic, enough that I know they can understand what I’m talking about, I could talk for hours. And have.

Once while playing Halo, a friend of a friend asked the group why something was the way it was. I told him I can give him the short answer in about 30 seconds, or the long answer which will be very long. He wanted long answer.

Three hours later only two other people were still listening, he knew the entire context of his answer, and he knew never to ask for the long answer again.

I’ve done tye same for star trek multiple times.

But give me someone who doesn’t know the first thing about either and they would have to be super interested to learn for me to keep going. I don’t do well with blank stares.

The funny thing is it isn’t any specific thing either. It’s not just halo or star trek or even Sci fi or games. Its anything I have interest in and know a lot about.

It’s that a “weird niche thing” or just a “weird quirk about weird niche things”?

I work in Tech but I dislike most tech products. They are not repairable, are spyware, abandonware, shiteware and overall not a win-win situation that it is supposed to be. To be away from screens, I got into woodworking. To make things to old-fashioned way. To be repairable, to be sustainable and mostly to be imperfect. And yes, the imperfections are not on-purpose. I am doing my best to buy the old ‘Quality’ stuff that wont break and restore them to working order.

With shoes I buy second-hand Leather, Goodyear welted shoes and I splurged on Darntough socks. My feet are so happy. Currently I am seeking the best jeans, and almost all cotton seems to the trick.

So not the most niche per se, but I like it.

The Free Software movement. So the idea that people deserve certain rights when using computers, so that they can control their own devices.

Bad cult movies and documentaries.

Rayon is the best fabric. It’s softer and often more durable than cotton, more biodegradable, and these days can be made without using or resulting in toxic pollutants like the original process needed.

I can barely find any 100% rayon clothing and it frustrates me greatly.

I like to 3D print, mostly functional things like shelving and hose coupling for venting.

Rabbits. Rabbits are fuckin’ awesome. Did you know they don’t have paw pads like cats and dogs? There’s just fur there, which means they have less traction on slick surfaces. They can be taught to use a litterbox, too !

They also have such different personalities from cats and dogs. Netherland dwarf bunnies are twenty pounds of bunny in a 2 pound body. They’re crazy energetic and need plenty of space even though they’re tiny. The bigger a bunny gets the more chill they generally are, but the bigger the bun the more likely there will be issues with their back or other joints as they get older.