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.

I have a bizarre and completely unprovable theory Leonardo Divinci was a trans woman based largely on a recognition of my own behaviours and desires as a trans person and the convoluted history of the Mona Lisa.

Many people have posited that the picture, while supposedly a commissioned portrait of a patron, is actually a self portrait of the artist but your run of the mill scholarship tends to be a little stumped why he would do that... But look at the history of the painting and it was in his possession for a very long time "unfinished". Layers of the painting show jewelry had been added and subtracted from the painting over time becoming more austere as both portait and painter aged. The title of the painting originally basically translated to "the happy one" supposedly for that enigmatic smile... but what if this painting was actually "the happy one" smiling at the artist who struggled in their own body gaining what wistful euphoria there was to be had meeting the eyes of his ideal physical form, carried around as a wish and temporary escape from the mirror.

Divinci had a complicated sexuallity as we know it. As best we can figure he was repulsed by heterosexual intercourse but adored the male form sexually. He had a number of very strong friendships with women but he tended to not render their forms sexually in his art preferring to focus on male genetalia... But his art also featured numerous themes of sexes with poses, characteristics and so on intermixed into androgyny or with subversive femininity. He veiwed women as paragons of grace, dignity and quite frankly I think he pined for motherhood.

As a trans person who has decided for reasons not to physically transition I know that wistfulness. Staring at the genderswap snapchat filters of yourself during a moment of low spirits or the pictures of youth where you actually properly passed as your gender and thinking "if only".

At the end of his life the Mona Lisa was not passed on to it's supposed commissioner but instead to Leonardo's long time apprentice and known gay lover. Perhaps a final sentimental bequeathal of a cherished object

The more I read and see of the artist's works and life the more I see a distinct queer identity emerge. Perhaps not worth much to scholarship but the idea that maybe the most popular and highly valued picture in the world could be of a trans woman's encapsulated self conceptualization and the true self portrait of a genius hidden from veiw only by the veil of cis blindness that cannot recognize the distinct behaviour patterns and dearly held desires of trans people... Would be immensely satisfying.

I'm a massive networking nerd. I have literal stacks of old networking hardware, probably enough to connect a small town. It's almost all used and some is damaged and I love the shit out of every scrap circuit board with those glorious ports.

I usually end up ranting about home networking on Lemmy, and the networking subreddits are generally the only reason I go back to that site every now and again.

I've become a wireless expert, and I regularly flex that knowledge at work. It always amazes me how bad some people's wifi is and they just accept it, like, it do be like that sometimes.... But it doesn't have to be like that.

Because of this I often find myself ranting about what to do, or not do, when it comes to home networking projects. I always feel like this falls on deaf ears because I end up repeating the same or similar rants regularly.

this describes all of my interests unfortunately

Pinball

Taking a class right now about fiber arts combined with action/movement arts by a performance artist. I am only two classes in but it has been so much fun! As a plus, most of my classmates are little old ladies who thought it was an ordinary embroidery class lol so that adds to the amusement.

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.