Ask Lemmy

As someone with ADHD, there is no end to the number of things that fascinate me in life, and as such, I tend to obssess and nerd out on a lot of things. Probably my biggest nerd things are this:

Sonic the Hedgehog: I was gifted a SEGA Game Gear with Sonic 2 for my 9th birthday (30 years ago) and I loved everything about the world and characters. I've been a loyal fan ever since. I own every American comic book that's been released, I've seen all the various shows and movies, and I've played most of the games (minus the rare arcade games and games on consoles I never owned, e.g. the Nintendo DS). I even built a website to keep a logical reading order of all the main comic series that have been released. It's a few months out of date right now; my personal life got super busy these past few months, but I'm finally free to update it again. It's considered a valuable resource in the Sonic fandom, as the comics can get really confusing without a reading order to guide you. Especially the old "Archie Comics" Sonic series. They had so many miniseries and spinoff comics that it gets confusing really fast.

James Bond: I dunno why, but I really got into spies back in jr high school. Back then, I loved the movie Harriet the Spy and enjoyed the film GoldenEye. The video game GoldenEye 007 came out for the Nintendo 64 and my friends and I were obsessed with it. Then my dad bought me two VHS collections (yes, I'm old) of all the James Bond films and I spent my summer vacation nerding out over all the old films, from the '60s and onward. I learned James Bond was the origin of so many action/spy tropes I had seen parodied in cartoons and movies. The bald villain with a scar and a Persian kitty in his lap. The gadgets, the cars, the well-dressed gentleman spy, plots to rule the world, etc. All pay homage to James Bond films. I really got into it.

I especially loved learning about Ian Fleming, the original author of the James Bond books, and how he was a British Naval Commander during WWII and worked Intelligence for the allies. His work was more boring desk work than save-the-world action, and his original novel version of Bond definitely had more desk work than his movie counterpart. I actually did a whole James Bond movie marathon, including all the official and non-official films, and reviewed them in depth on my movie review blog. I even compared them a little to the books they're based on, where it was applicable. Most of the movies are completely independent of the books. Some only share a book title and nothing else, e.g. Moonraker. The books and movies are very different from each other.

Movies/TV shows: As you may have guessed from my last link, I also nerd out about movies and TV shows. I've watched thousands of films in my life and hundreds of TV shows. I still consider it a fun hobby; I haven't gotten to the point of learning about filmmaking techniques, obsessing over actors or directors, watching awards shows, etc. But I really enjoy getting lost in a good story for an hour or two, and I started a review blog to analyze and break down just what is so good (or bad) about the storytelling in movies and TV shows.

My last movie marathon (a Studio Ghibli marathon) was interrupted by an Internet outage and I haven't had time to pick it back up in a long while. But I finally find myself with loads of free time again, so I might finally complete that marathon in the coming months.

There are so many other things I'd consider myself a nerd of, but these are a sample of the larger nerdom topics I enjoy.

Boardgames! I used to be more into trading card games like Magic, but got tired of the cost and constant churn, and then spent the last couple years delving deeper into boardgames, including hosting a weekly game night that regularly has 8-10 people :)

I like me some Tolkien. Not just the LOTR stuff, though that’s the bulk of it, but I’ve read some of his other books as well as the unfinished works as well. I really enjoy his worldbuilding and the old school storytelling where the hero doesn’t always do so well, mythical creatures aren’t so kind and cute, and dangerous thing lurk, waiting for you off the beaten path.

Comic Books

I'm a nerd about translation, translation choices, and differences in cultures. I find it fascinating that the tiniest details in your language choice are capable of changing the meaning entirely. I also happen to be a Russian, so maybe this example for the Russian-English language pair would be interesting to you:

Given: комната = room мальчик = boy одна из = a (one of) эта/этот = the (that) в = in вошел = walked

В одну из комнат вошел мальчик. A boy walked in a room.

Этот мальчик вошел в эту комнату. The boy walked in the room.

В эту комнату вошел мальчик. A boy walked in the room.

Этот мальчик вошел в одну из комнат. The boy walked in a room.

English uses a/the to define what's known/unknown, and Russian doesn't have a similar tool but it can change word order and add some extra words for more precision. Russian also uses a lot of cases to define who does what and when, and English just doesn't need that, the word order does it all.

Looking at all that makes me feel like I'm watching something beautiful. Like I find solace in the fact that there is more than one way to see things.

It's got to be DnD- I don't just play it, I don't just DM it, I've actively studied how it's designed and balanced in order to make content that is better than the official stuff. I've found and ironed out critical flaws in how the game is set up and I've made pieces of homebrew content that are larger than entire books.

This is a hell of a bold claim to make, but I believe that I have come to understand the game better than its own Dev Team.

I do astrophotography as a hobby. It's frustrating, expensive, incredibly taxing since you're up all night. And then there's always pictures from things like the JWST people will compare your comparatively crappy images to. But I like doing it and will talk the ear off of anyone that asks.

You're asking on Lemmy? Star Trek.

I love IoT and home automation stuff. A lot of folks think it’s still to have everything connected, but I like the fact that I can walk around the house like I’m on the Enterprise. If I could replicate food my life would be complete.

Well, about the typical things. I write software. I play TTRPGs and video games and watch Star Trek and Star Wars. (Hell. I've been watching Red Dwarf lately and it's amazing. There's a niche thing for you.)

But aside from the more stereotypical nerd things, I've been really studying the fuck out of U.S. (because that's where I live) intellectual property and contract law lately. I've been watching law school study aids kind of content and reading this book that's mostly just the text of tons of legal rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and federal circuit courts on the subject of intellectual property.

The most interesting things to me in that space at the moment are:

• The history of the duration of copyright in the U.S., the 1998 "Sonny Bono" Copyright Term Extension Act and the case "Eldred v. Ashcroft" which (unsuccessfully 🙁) challendged its constitutionality.
• The case "Software Freedom Conservancy v. Vizio, Inc." and how the courts are agreeing to interpret the GNU GPL not just as a copyright license but also as a contract and the strategic benefits that could offer for GPL-enforcement cases moving forward.

Phase 1 MCU, but specifically Civil War. I have and will write essays about my feelings on that whole deal and I still have resentment toward Tony stans who spent literal years cluttering up Ao3 with their dumb fics about how he never did anything wrong in his life. I think it mostly just got to me so much because what they were fundamentally defending is the existence of human registries for anyone meeting certain criteria, regardless of their actions (right as we had conservatives supporting Muslim registries in real life) and stuff like secret prisons with no trial (like an even worse Guantanamo), and it was really fucking concerning.

Oh, see, I'm doing it again.

I'm definitely the stereotypical nerd in a lot of ways. I'm hugely into Star Trek, D&D (and TTRPGs in general), Pokemon, and sci-fi/fantasy novels, especially Brandon Sanderson and Becky Chambers. I'm running a Pokemon TTRPG campaign.

I'm probably equally nerdy about alcohol though, which is fun, and can augment all the other hobbies. I like to make specialty cocktails for premiers, and events in general, as well as thematic drinks for TTRPG sessions. We don't have a dining room at my house, we have a bar.

Isn't this post a bit backwards, most of us on Lemmy are nerds, and probably in multiple ways, this post should be the opposite, where the nerds highlight all of the ways that they're "cool" or whatever.

I've been a nerd all my life.

I always think I'm a nerd about video games until I come across someone who's played more than me. But I'll go on and on about certain games and franchises if someone lets me.

i'm a nerd about still thinking being a nerd should refer to intellectual pursuits and not just about liking something a lot...

My friends would all tell you how tired they are of hearing me go on and on about urban planning and infrastructure.

The ways in which our communities are built have such a large and profound impact on our lives, yet most people give little thought to it. IMO a great deal of the social woes we're dealing with (at least in North America) are caused or made worse by our lack of sensible city-planning, from carbon emissions to social isolation.

There exists so many cool and interesting ways to build solid, sustainable communities! It's really exciting! Sadly I have to live that excitement by researching other countries. The only form of city-planning that seems to exist here in Canada is "highway going through a parking lot interspaced with strip malls and encircled by single-family housing suburbs".

I'm a bit of a nerd about longboarding and also building Commander decks in Magic the Gathering.

I wouldn't say I'm an expert in either case, but I'm really interested in trying different setups and also seeing people discuss their own experiences and builds.

By nerd, do you mean expert or enthusiast?

Mate, love a bit of Russian lore and all that. If you want to have a bit of an eye opener, give The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn a read. It's funny but you'll feel guilty laughing.

I used to be a huge nerd about the Elder Scrolls universe but I admit it's been a hot minute since I've played Skyrim so my overall interest has waned a bit.

I maybe partial to some Lord of the Rings.

I am a bit nerdy about programming language and a lot less nerdy about hardware.