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Infodump about your Special Interests!

Do you like infodumping about your special interests?

  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I don't have a special interest.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    21

SRSAutistic

Active Member
Please reply to this thread.

1. What are your current special interests?

2. If you have a special interest, infodump about it! I love reading about your special interests!
 
Well, uh...

There's video games, board games, cosplay, twisty puzzles, drones, uhh...

Yeah, that's what those are.

I dont really know what to say about them though.
 
1. OK let's think of earth's history.

2. Early life is pretty simple, and living with a reducing atmosphere. Substances like iron were freely soluble in the ocean. Some organisms used bacterial symbionts for energy. Some became mitochondria, others chloroplasts, and life was good for photosynthetic organisms. Vast areas of sea were covered with algal colonies, and they began taking CO2 in and producing Oxygen, toxic to most of the life evolved for a reducing atmosphere. The places I have seen these fossil Stromatolites were in Glacier National Park at the base of Grinnell glacier at 6,500 feet as well as in Morocco, in the Anti-Atlas. Then, the oceans rusted out. I have seen the banded iron deposits in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. There were three pulses of -oxygen - rust-oxygen depletion- and finally after 99.9% of the ancient life died out there was sufficient oxygen to support more complex organisms. It was the Ediacaran and all sorts of segmented creatures with bilateral symmetry were living on the seafloor. The next burst of Oxygen and we are in the Cambrian, first there is the Small Shelly Fauna showing that organisms were making hard structures. And, after that, the Burgess Shale world takes competition up a notch. The top predator, the Anomalocaris, did not like Trilobite armor. In the Wheeler Shale in Utah, one may easily find many Trilobites, and I found one with a small Anomalocaris bite that it evently survived. The shell has taken the profile of the bite mark. I will leave you at the dawn of complex ecosystems while my reverie takes me through the next 450 million years of life coping with a geologically dynamic planet.
 
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At least 90% of my posts are an infodump about my special interests.
This is why people I meet irl either think I’m weird or boring. :oops:

Like Darkkin mentioned, my special interests are also all very niche and I actually made a thread about that before.

Some people can relate to my special interests on a broader scale but at the core they are very uncommon, except for in very specific social circles where people are into those things. Which is who all my close irl friends are.
Irl friends who can’t relate to my interests usually start to dislike and resent me after a while :oops: I’m capable of having conversations about other “normal” topics, like I often do on here, but there is so much of a disconnect when it comes to interests (especially with some non-autistic people) that many of my friendships that were initially great, don’t work out.
 
Mine is akin to speaking a dialect of elvish only I understand...(More people understand the Swedish Chef than my verbiage when I deep speak.)
 
Hmmm... Right now it's canning, loom building, and cross stitching.

I'm really into food preservation right now. It's getting to be high summer, and I am eagerly anticipating the herbs to be at peak production soon. It'll be a fight against the spittlebugs though. They love that stuff.

I have a big bin of apples that need to be canned or chucked out. I will be making applesauce, methinks, starting tomorrow. I'd also like to make two jars of pie filling. I have apples, pears, and rhubarb. I'll boil them all up in a great big pot and then can 'em in pint jars.

I just bought stew beef, and I'm going to braise that and then can it as well. I got two big packs of chicken thighs. Those will get cut up into chunks and thrown just like that into pint jars.

With meat, as it cans, it cooks.

I also have split peas. I plan on making split pea soup and canning that.

Also I have several kinds of dry beans. Those are going to be canned. Mmm you haven't had canned frijoles until you've made them yourself!

I had so much canned food laid up in my old house. I threw it all out in May, because we had to move in a hurry. All my canning jars and equipment too. Oy. We just simply had no room. Sigh.

I am very eager to go to the hawthorn grove, up in the forest, and collect those red berries where 1/8 tsp can tone a heart murmur, raise low blood pressure, and even stop and asthma attack.

Oooooooooh!!!! What if I experimented with canning a coffee concentrate? Like I made perfect jar of coffee and maybe even a couple of chai!!! And canned them for lazy days when I didn't want to brew anything? Omg it'd be heavenly!

And... off topic, I'm really into writing. I am absolutely loving story and poem writing.

Ohhh and I looked so longingly today at acrylic and oil paints. I found my art paper. I thought I threw it away when I moved. Oh my journal is intact! Thank you Jesus!

We are slowly, but surely hacking away at my future art room. I've got the desk almost all set up. I found my paper, my clay, and my electric keyboard. The sewing machine is at the ready. I have drawers full of art and sewing supplies, and a dresser full of yarn and yarn accessories. This will truly be a summer of love!
 
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Statistical Process control, using this you control almost any thing as long as you can measure it. During my working I became a quality engineer. took every course I could find. This is where being an Aspie really paid off. First time in my life I became a straight A student. I really enjoyed every course. Never actually worked as a quality engineer. Just a add on too my other special interest industrial colour control, which in turn was a add on too my main interest industrial painting, which I fell into because it was my first job, as a chemical engineering technologist.
 
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I'm basically here for those infodumps. If someone makes a thread and fills up the first post with something that's a crossover with one of my special interests, it's like christmas (but thankfully more frequent!).

Sometimes, someone will mention one that I forgot was my long-lost special interest (because there are so many of them) and then I'll get warm and fuzzy feelings
 
My special interests are stress and trauma psychology, dogs and horses, martial arts, and learning to speak human more effectively. I've learned not to info dump, but to let conversations occur organically, even thought I STILL tend to teach instead of support in interactions with my friends!
 
1. No, I don't have a special interest; I have several. Unfortunately I ended up being the kind of guy who gets definitely into a bunch of things: some of my longest-lasting interests have been antique hand cranked phonographs and gramophones, but I also like horses, cats, nature, wildflowers (not yet at full infodump level on botany tho), birds, birdwatching, history, machinery, typewriter restoration, antique clocks.

2.
Infodump that could be handy? Some stuff I have found out messing around in my various hobbies. Most of my special interests could be appropriate for boring old normal life at the turn of the century but here is a pile of random stuff I've picked up.



--never use solvents in a kerosene lamp; the flash point is too low. Use only clear pure kerosene or lamp oil.
--if a shotgun has Damascus Twist or laminated steel barrels, do not load it with smokeless powder--they tend to splinter right at the fore-grip. Black powder is the only safe munition. It does burn hot, though, so if you are shooting a double-barreled gun (thin walled barrels & tiny grips) you may wish to wear gloves.
--Singer sewing-machines function OK on plastic bobbins as well as metal ones, if it's the Class 66 bobbin.
--if you're riding a horse & he won't go forwards when asked, don't kick him; ask him for a tight turn to either left or right and when he yields by moving his neck, now -- leg pressure on the inside -- he will disengage at the hind end and make a tight turn. Once he does, ask for him to walk straight on. Repeat if he keeps balking. Now you've tricked him out of balking without making a fool of yourself.
--You can leave the living room Victrola wound up a little bit and it won't hurt it, but if you want to leave it parked for a long time, switch on the motor & allow it to run all the way down.
--Do not wear a mechanical watch near a strong magnetic field.
--To start an older automobile: follow the startup procedure in the manual, but for heaven's sake do not wrap your thumb around the crank handle or you will be sorry if the thing back-fires and tears your hand up.
--Traditional "roadster" bicycles have the same brake arrangement as a motor-cycle. The left hand operates the rear brake, which is the opposite of the American arrangement. But it doesn't matter. Those brakes never worked that well to begin with!
--When type-writing: keep your wrists well off the keyboard and sit straight up, looking at the paper instead of the letters on the keyboard. With practice you will be able to go much faster this way.
--If you wind your watch at the same time every day, it will be more accurate.
--Iron gall ink is indelible, but do not use it in a fountain-pen with a steel nib. It invites corrosion. Use it in a pen with a 14k gold nib instead, or, in your steel pens, use a more conventional writing fluid like Sheaffer's Skrip or Diamine.
--You can sharpen a razor-blade in a glass of water if you wore it out & need to shave.
--To make gramophone records last indefinitely, play them with a bamboo or fiber needle. Check the soundbox on your gramophone: if the needle socket is triangular you can use that. If not? Use a thorn. The thorns of the locust tree, carefully dried, are nearly as good as steel needles.
--Putting a new wick in a lamp: char the wick by lighting just the end of it and letting it burn out, before you ever put kerosene on that wick. Once you have a good charred surface you can put your lamp together & fill it up with oil. Let it stand at least an hour before lighting, preferably longer.
--Every couple years take the telephone apart and, with the tip of a needle, place a drop of oil on the pivots for the dial. It will prevent the dial from giving wrong numbers.
--3-in-One Oil is not good for a clock. Use clock oil. WD-40 cannot be used for cleaning clocks either.
--WD-40 can be used to clean shellac gramophone records. Denatured alcohol cannot.
--You can use Vaseline to fix a creaking door. Rub it on the hinge pins. This is less messy than oiling them as the Vaseline cannot run down the paint or spoil the wall-paper.
--To get more eggs from chickens--make sure there are no snakes in the area; they may take up residence in the chicken house and eat the eggs. You might not see them either. I found a large one hiding under the straw in a chicken nest, where he had been for weeks.
--Opossums will not bite you and are harmless.
--The green snake has two subspecies: rough and smooth. Rough green snakes have keeled scales--the scale has a ridge like the bottom of a rowboat.
--Do not paint a house in the middle of winter. The paint will not stick well & you will be repainting it anyway.
--When you are done playing the organ push all the stops back in. This keeps the mutes from sticking. Only pull out the stops you intend to play, when you intend to play them.
 
I like the term infodump though most of what my rambling comes from is how much fun I find it to put nebulous feelings on subjects into words. Often making up metaphors, concepts or drawing links to other subjects on the spot.
There's not that much actual info on an interest to get from that, I don't care enough about the facts and specifics for it. I just like talking about what I think. So it's a dump for sure, but there's not much info. At least not the kind you'd be better off having. Consider that your warning.

I do it mainly with psychology and anthropology but this could just be because those subjects come up the most when talking with friends. Any interaction you have at work has ties to social dynamics, everything that bothers you has psychological currents.
Sometimes I'll talk about setup-punchline flow in animation cuts, the storyboarding or framing for individual shots, or paneling for comics. I also like talking about game design on the conceptual level, the translation of ideas to mechanics and then from there how the mechanics interact and inform each other and how that mechanical layer impacts the aesthetic layer and vice versa. Music is something I wish I could talk about, but I feel you can only really describe what music does for you by contorting your body rhythmically and maybe making some weird mouth noises. I can't go off without prompt though.

I also haven't studied any of these and only pick up some ideas or terminology from constant internet use. The joy to me is trying to put it in my own words. Figure out why it works for me. It's the same with philosophy, I've read a handful of short paragraphs and know many of the general ideas. But it's not valuable to me until I use the building blocks of my own experience and their extra perspectives to get a solid image that isn't easily swayed and finds no conflicting information, which of course never really happens. You'll only know you're busy with philosophy when you have to start your worldview over from scratch again and again.
This does lead to me saying a lot of conflicting things, like saying out loud what I find in the various alleyways of understanding, paying no heed to someone that may be trying to find a picture of the whole of what I say. Hello if that's you, I'm sorry, I will no make no efforts to become much more coherent. But at least my writings aren't all gathered in the same place so it's probably not as jarring. Just think of it like the weather.

I picked my name around the time of one such reset. I talk and talk and talk like I know anything. But just like that vase crumbling once it's too full of sand, I have to put words to the ideas and hold onto them a while in order to see the structure fall apart. Whenever it happens and I know nothing once more, these days I find myself starting with this fundamental and it's the only fundamental I'm still convinced of is an actual truth among all the smoke and mirrors: I have the capacity for experience.
If this is one day taken away from me too maybe the writings will get a little crazier, could be fun. Perhaps it would require drugs to question even that though hahah.

Anyway, it's all done for mental stimulation to sort of make up for the fact I don't have a job and my hobbies only really engage with the core of my soul through being, emotion and creativity and not as much the analytical wasteland around it. All that thought soup has to go somewhere. If it doesn't, it keeps me up and I don't sleep good. So what's my special interest then, really? Introspection? It's rather annoying if you ask me. It doesn't exactly translate to anything cool or lasting if not a personality with a lot to say (and that will only be considered cool by people with debatable taste). If I could sit here and talk to you about the cambrian explosion and how the opabinia goes snibbedy snab : DD and looks very cool and scary maybe that'd be better for all involved. As it stands contributing small blurbs of thought to subjects other people come up with is the most I can do. I feel embarrassed to post this but there is little more clear a window into the sort of waste that's running in my head 24/7. Perhaps some can relate. Lots of thought and good thought are often distant cousins at best. Good luck with your survey OP.
 
Currently my special interest is posting here. It's helped me greatly in the short time I've been here so I feel a duty to give back to try and help. I also have gardening.

But I've had as major special interests medieval history, Corporate, IP and International Law, political systems and the function of their Organs and many minor ones.
 
Come over to my house, and I'll take you on a tour of select prog rock albums from all over the world from my CD, vinyl and digital collection (but especially Romania and Greece, my speciality), all from the comfort of my living room :) .
 
Statistical Process control, using this you control almost any thing as long as you can measure it. During my working I became a quality engineer. took every course I could find. This is where being an Aspie really paid off. First time in my life I became a straight A student. I really enjoyed every course. Never actually worked as a quality engineer. Just a add on too my other special interest industrial colour control, which in turn was a add on too my main interest industrial painting, which I fell into because it was my first job, as a chemical engineering technologist.
My experience also. I found that I had a facility with statistics which meshed with what I ultimately did in optimizing and testing processes as required by the Code of Federal Regulations for Good Manufacturing Practices for Finished Pharmaceuticals. Hence, my documentation supplied to the FDA was all legal documentation with my name on it.
 
I have a lot of interests/obsessions/hobbies/pastimes or whatever you wish to call them. As it is summertime and I am craving a nice cold soda, I am getting into brewing again.:beermug: I just ordered a pound of birchbark to make some birchbark soda. I have some sarsaparilla on hand and I plan on brewing a batch of that as well. I’m always into the esoteric things. Why can’t I just stick with Diet Coke instead?:cool:
 

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