Talk nerdy to me :D
Aperiodic tilings! Just a couple of years ago someone discovered a single tile (down from the set of ~20000 that was first used to prove that aperiodic tiling was even possible) that can completely cover an infinite plane without ever falling into a repeating pattern.
The use of “aperiodic” is somewhat loose here compared to what I would expect. Like… I can instantly see several places with the same pattern just on that small sample…
Aperiodic, in this sense, doesn’t mean that there aren’t any bits that repeat. In fact, if you pick any patch of tiles of any arbitrary size, that patch will be repeated infinitely many times. What it means to be aperiodic is that if you slide the whole tiling over so that one of the patches aligns with the repeated bit, there will still be something outside the patch that doesn’t align. Compare that with, say, a repeating grid of squares, where if you slide one square onto a different square then everything lines up, all the way to infinity; it’s impossible to tell that it’s been slid over.
libraries
shaving as a trans women (both facial and body)
Phillips Oneblade $50
intended for men with a beard, waterproof and lithium battery.
honestly a letdown in literally every way for me. Not a close shave at all and other electric ones do way better in that regard. Also not a lot of area for legs and doesn’t even give the smooth leg feeling >:(
Upside that there’s not really any chance for ingrown hairs, which means it’s pretty good for the pubic area. I don’t shave down there often though. (obligatory I am NOT the intended target for this product)face: 5/10
body: 1/10
pubic: 9/10ladyshave $18
this is intended for women’s leg hair. Not waterproof and takes 2 AA batteries.
pretty good actually. It’s wide and gets close enough for me. As advertised. I use on legs before IPL.
face: 3/10 (works in a pinch)
body: 7/10
pubic: 6/10men’s razors $?
I actually have a permanent scar on my thumb from when I was about 7 and messed with my dads in the shower lol
when I hit puberty I just used my dads old one with new heads, his ‘guidance’ was pretty unhelpful for me because I thought they were for legs too and got a bunch of red dots / nicks because of it especially because I was really shy about shaving and was too scared to ask for shaving cream. works well enough for what it’s intended for, though it’s annoying to setup and use. Use a women’s for body if you can.
face: 7/10 (with cream)
body: 3/10 (w/o cream)
pubic: 0/10 (w/o cream)Women’s razor $?
I don’t love wet shaving but this is pretty good!
also, ALWAYS get the Gillette Venus ones. I’ve tried other ones and they’re not as good and I always go back despite being more expensive.
gets clogged easy though.facial: why/10
body: 9/10
pubic: 7/10 (will get clogged)women’s whatever the fuck
I left the handle part at home but for body this is the BEST, but is pretty clunky and expensive. reallly smooth and is amazing. however I wish the handle part wasn’t just a big knub because it’s difficult to do under the knee and behind the back
facial: no/10
body: 10/10 🥰
pubic: 3/10flat edge razor $5
I got it on a DAMN cheap sale on Amazon, assume it’s like 15. It said it was a “small business” from the US but I really doubt that due to the marketing and and assume it’s just something from China.
Anyways, it works really well, too well. Even if you’re really careful you’ll feel a random stinging somewhere and look down and see blood. I feel like there’s a skill floor I just have to learn but I have better alternatives. REALLY cheap blades though, like 15-50 cents.I also threw it away because I would use the blades to selfharm (7 months clean except for an accident 🎉).
facial: x/10 (too risky for me)
body: 7/10
pubic: 2/10 (wayy too risky, don’t try)Braun 3 epilator $40
I lost it :<
this is a biblically accurate tweezer as my sister called it. She was too wimpy to use it and gave it to me. Lemme just say it HURTS the first time. Like on the floor crying hurts. Second time too. After a couple rounds it gets way better. However this one particularly doesn’t ways pull out the hairs and can if you push down too hard you’ll stop it which can be really annoying when you one hair that just won’t get out. It will also
also sometimes you’ll find ingrown hairs that you can’t get because it’s underneath the skin so I’ll get a craft razor blade and ever so slightly hook it and go in with tweezers to pull it out. This is where the self harm accident earlier came from lolbut in return 3 WEEKS OF NO HAIR!!
exfoliate before, then use, then rinse with cold water and use unscented moisturizer, next day use TendSkin.
if you don’t follow this to a T you’ll get hella ingrown hairs.face: no
body: 9/10
pubic: ok story time. one of my afab epilated their pubic area before having sex with their s/o and oh my God they regretted it SO bad. it hurt a TON. I imagine if you’re into pain it’ll work I guess??braun 5 IPL $300
got this for Christmas and was essentially my only product. You use it after shaving (not epilation) I haven’t been consistently using it because epilate mostly. Can’t give a good review.
Braun Epilator (iirc v7 or v8?) $80
still in mail 🥲
Nair
use mens. women’s ones suck and hardly do anything on amab hair. Also mens suck too, but it’s better.
Phillips 5d electric
(I have it IRL, my cats just laying down next to me and id wake her up) for me it’s the GOAT of facial hair. Used it for years and absolutely love it. It just works. My use case for facial hair is pretty odd because I just have long sideburns that go down to the jawbone and some random ones under my chin. For my pretty uncommon use case it is AMAZING. Can’t really recommend it for others but if you just have long sideburns get this 100%
in conclusion
I epilate and as it’s growing in I use the chunky one for now the back to the Gillette Venus once my heads are gone.
If I’m IPL-ing I either use a Gillette Venus or ladyshave.if anyone else has done this with skincare products let me know, I have some questions :)
Impressive deep dive!
Mixology and movies are probably the top 2 for me. But unfortunately both of these things can be deceptive in conversation. So if I start talking to someone about either one, the enjoyment of the conversation will depend on how deep down the rabbit hole the other person is. But in those rare moments when they seem to be on the same page, I could talk for hours!!
Some things that have been exciting recently: I wandered into a Binny’s and saw a whole shelf full of Chartreuse which I have not seen in many years!!! On the movie side of things, I’m very excited for Yorgos Lanthimos latest upcoming film! The trailer looked great and he always makes highly interesting films!
Weather! It’s just so interesting. I love clouds and adore thunderstorms (although unfortunately I live somewhere where they’re rare).
Watches bro!
Digital watches are fine & the battery operated ones are cool too, God speed to them, but I’m talking about the Analogue ones.
Specifically Automatic ones.
Fucking piece of assembled metal parts and it will go all tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick on its own from the moment you put it on your wrist.
It’ll continue to show you the proper time. Some will also tell you what day of the week it is or what’s the date. Heck, I’ve got one that tells me the day, date, month AND the moon phase!
On top of this, these nuggets are built such, that they will last longer than your poor ass on this planet, still blingy and going tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
You know those make Seikos and Citizen? Those mfs put bloody gps AND solar IN.A.FUCKING.WRIST.WATCH!
Why you ask?
So that when your dumb ass gives up on adjusting to the local time after you get off the plane in a different time zone, it will do it for you. That shit is too posh for your fumbly fingers to try to set the correct time, so it says, “Hold on, let me look at the sky real quick and I will set the day,date & time myself, you are too dazed and hungover. Please save your filthy fingers for your disgusting Doritos.”
You know the best part? They look more gorgeous than Kate Winslet’s porcelain titties embellished with a diamond neck piece.
It’ll cost less than your monthly groceries. Don’t miss out bro, get one.\Several things, but for a while it’s been stand pipes. They’re everywhere, and fun to find and point out on buildings. On vacations I like to get my picture by them and my kids laugh when I stop to check them out. Eventually I want to make a parody song about them.
As in plumbing vents or piezometers?
As in wet/dry systems to get water into builds for firefighting.
Just came here to say that I love how engaged people are with their hobbies. Keep going!
I feel like I’ve found ✨️my people✨️
I’ve come to the conclusion that if you’re buying tools, you should go for the sets. Take a socket set, for example. Realistically, you’re probably using the ratchet, an extension, and three to four sockets the most. At some point the cheap ratchet breaks and you replace it with a high-quality one. You may also lose or break a few of the most commonly used sockets and replace them with high-quality ones. In ten years you’ll have a set with a high-quality wrench and a few high-quality sockets that you commonly use, plus the rest of the other sizes you’ll only touch once every few years.
Had you gone for the high-quality set right away, you would have paid even more - and now you’d have a 4mm made-in-Japan socket you spent 10 euros on that you’ll never use.
I’ve stood by the philosophy of buying cheap tools and replacing what breaks with better quality.
The proliferation of 10000 different battery standards has made this a little more difficult recently, but it still works most of the time.
Pick one of the battery ecosystems and carry on. I bought a Ryobi starter set about 20 years ago when they were still using NiCad batteries. They switched to lithium ion batteries but kept the connector the same. I bought the new style batteries when my old batteries died. All the old tools work the same.
I believe Makita and DeWalt follow the same philosophy.
Harbor freight does not.
This is antithetical to the original proposition.
I bought a Ryobi sander with its battery and charger for $20 at a garage sale to do one small job, I have a bunch of Makita tools and batteries but it would be completely foolish to buy a new Makita sander for one job.
I have a greenworks battery system and love my electric lawn mower, but when the stupid edger finally broke, I didn’t buy the same stupid tool that takes a giant 4AH battery because I’m tied into the system, I bought a lightweight Makita edger that shares the battery with my drill driver.
When I need cheap battery tools for one job, I buy Ryobi. When I’m upgrading, it’s probably Makita.
When I needed to cut down a few damaged trees, I bought a wired chainsaw and a long extension cable.
If I just stuck to Makita because I have that battery system, I’d be sitting on thousands of dollars in Makita tools I’ll use once a year at most.
Do you follow me from the 9/11 post?
I guess I am a tool nerd as well. Currently live in a tiny studio and have no driveway. Have a tool box as tall as me plus a LOT of cordless tools.
My socket sets and wrench sets are old USA made Craftsman stuff I’ve had for over at least 30 years.
I still have a few of the old Craftsman USA screwdrivers. Most have disappeared.
Characters. I love designing characters and doing a deep dive into who they are and why they’re designed the way they are. For example, I did one recently about a girl who is a mechanist in my Victorian modern world who works on robots and airship but likes to go to a dance club at night. She keeps her goggles from work since they’re seen as fashion in this world and wears a distinctive hair clip that was given as a gift to her from someone dear to her before the war. And, then there’s another guy I did that is basic rich kid egotistical. Looks like and ultra Chad and has the dance moves to show for it. Basically, he’s like the ultra Chad meme in this world.
Radio transmitting. Its a quite large rabbit hole. Right now i upload some data of ships i receive with a small setup and earn a test crypto currency.
But you can do loads and loads of things, rtl-sdr.com is a nice cheap start.
Oh and locally running AI models. (Via GPT4All) Insane how far we are.
Locally running AI models is interesting to me - do you have any recommended links or tutorials where to start?
(I looked into radio transmitting a couple month ago but it was way too overwhelming and I settled for a different hobby lol)
Like i said, look into GPT4All. At least for text gen. Open source and really simple. Download, install, choose a model (for mediocre laptops 4-8B ones are a good size) and chat.
For radios, there are some cheap beginner devices as starting point. Look for the rtl-sdr blog v4 usb dongle for about 40€. You can receive ~1-1700mHz with it, which are loads of interesting frequencies. You can buy a 30€ quansheng uv k5 or uv k6 (which is the same model somehow) with custom rom for a great handheld vhf/uhf radio. You can buy a 30€ SI4732 based ATS-Mini as “world receiver” also with custom roms like hjberndt’s.
You could invest some more and get a flipper zero for around 250€ which is a neat tamagochi like IT-Swiss-Army-Knife.
Or a portapack H4M (the new cliffort heath version for the best hackrf one clone) for about 200€. Its the “big brother” of the flipper zero with fascinating capabilities like scanning surrounding ships and planes.
Dont forget proper antennas which can escalate quickly.
ollama is the usual one, they have install instructions on their GitHub i think, and a model repository, etc
You can run something on your cpu if you don’t care about speed, or on your gpu although you can’t run any more intelligent model without a decent amount of vram
For models to use, I recommend checking out the qwen distilled versions of deepseek r1
Ice, ice, baby! I love fancy ice. Have gear to make crystal clear big ice for whiskey, and also a countertop ice maker for what the kids call “the good ice”.
It’s just such a cheap upgrade to any drink.
I recently got a clear big ice maker and read into directional freezing. It’s pretty cool (pun intended) and nice that little waste and if something doesn’t work, you can just try again right away.
Rucking, lifting, Wing Chun, Star Citizen, Stoicism (the og version). I try not to monologue too much on them but it takes restraint.
I feel like this would be an appropriate place to monologue a bit.
Western philosophy/existentialism and Scripture, but the former makes people feel insecure/bored and the latter is a sensitive topic. I’ll nerd out about Dune too, and whoever has read the series will understand my interest. 😅
Pens
Its such a common thing that we’ve all used and have opinions. And the rabbit hole goes as deep as you want.
You’re good with a Bic and shitty notebook paper? Cool. You have a $3,000 custom built fountain pen that’s been handcrafted to fit your grip and is based on a sketch you made from a dream with a 21k gold nib? Also cool.
I have a tin box full of very old nibs which still look pristine. I bought them on impulse at a flea market dirt cheap. I have no idea what to do with them.
Once I found the plethora of good but >$10 pens, I had a lot of fun. The Precise V5 is one of my fav, and at the job I had where people would frequently need to borrow my pen, that received steady unprompted compliments.
100% the best off the shelf rollerball. I use one often.
Honestly, regarding ballpoint pens, I’ve never used anything that beats bic. They write so smoothly and they just work on anything. I even use them to write my name on the plastic labels of water bottles at my job
Ya ballpoints are really the workhorse of the pen world. Even with all the advancements in writing tech, a standard ballpoint will always get the job done. I have Fisher space pen refills in a few of my work pens because I know they will always write whenever and wherever I need them.
These days there is a pretty good consensus around the Uni Jetstream as the “best writing” ballpoint ink. Its a hybrid oil-based ink formulation with lubricants that really flows. Other brands have started to get on the hybrid wagon too so it’s been great for budget pens all around.
If one is only going to have one pen, any model of Jetstream ballpoint is a nice cheap upgrade you won’t be too upset to lose.
