What are you an "expert" on?
I like to think I have broad interests. Part of what I like about Tildes at this stage in its growth is that I'll probably encounter folks who are highly knowledgeable about areas I'm totally ignorant in, simply because the userbase isn't too fragmented into niche groups quite yet, but the convo won't necessarily be too esoteric for me to follow. I like encountering tangential references that lead me into entirely unfamiliar topics, especially when I can learn from the people who are particularly interested in it. I tend not to post very often myself though (primarily because I'm a painfully slow and/or bad writer)... but I wondered how many other tilderinos are like me.
So, in an effort to contribute to the site, what topic or field could you talk about for hours at Tildes level of discussion, whether by education or interest? Mine would undoubtedly be soccer. I've played and followed it for 30+ years, and could easily bore you with all sorts of minutiae of the on-field side of things, but it's the world's game, so there are all sorts of tie-ins to culture, language, politics, etc. that help inform my non-sport conversations as well.
Engine, chassis, general racecar engineering and dynamics: I've spent more miles racing a car than some people have spent in their commuter. Built more cars from spare parts and bare chassis than I can care to remember. Lots of armchair car guys that spout far too much info they've "heard" and argue with people that have turned wrenches. Other builders and I occasionally discuss how much we despise forums and other social platforms because there's inevitably "experts" there that credit their high post count as experience despite passing on more misinformation than flat earthers or anti-vaxxers.
What did you race, and what class? I'm a huge race fan. I've been to hundreds of races, from Indycar to F1 to karting and stock cars. I was at every Indy 500 from '79 to the early 2000s, when my father got ill and could no longer attend.
Started with my uncle's shop under a car and turning wrenches (even if it was just to tighten the oil drain bolt or what have you) from about 6 or so. The whole family either raced or supported the racing. It's where I learned to build them up and tear them down, diagnose, fix, improve, and get them back out. We started with dirt track, I am in the south, and drag racing. Did some local level stock car racing as well.
Built and kinda raced dwarf, midget, sprints, late model, and modified. I say kinda as I've put in the laps, driven in anger, and been behind the wheel from green flag to checker, but I was never a "driver" so to speak. We ran a shop to have fun and pay the bills, drivers are almost exclusively the customer. We build it, they buy it, they drive it, they break it, they give it back, we fix it, rinse, repeat. Very rarely do drivers take their cars home. We're the "team" they're the pocketbook. I'd get behind the wheel if we had a car that needed running instead of sitting in the shop and extra tires to run on. None of us were rich, there were times when it didn't pay the bills, but if we could put the shop name on the side, no real reason not to have it going. Especially since this was before litigation and hardcore insurance rules and so a teenager didn't have to stay in the "junior" classes. I ended up becoming the test driver for just about everything we built. Have to run them hard to know they'll stay together on the weekend. Don't know if you count that as racing per se, but it's still miles behind the wheel and a smile on my face while I'm doing it. I've only done one lap of a figure 8 "race" and that was enough for me, not a fan of crashing, especially since it's designed to do so.
Dirt seasons were shorter back then, especially on the local and state level that we were at, so if we weren't in the dirt we'd be building for the drag strip. Only ever had one back half car as they're just stupid expensive, and I've never driven it, but lots of normal 10" tire drags and a dialed in automatic will own any bracket racing night. There's a lot of carry over in engines from dirt track to drag and I'd even say it's better to have a dirt track engine in your car. They're made to be tough and powerful, on and off full throttle runs are more extreme than a simple run down the quarter mile. We were rarely/never the fastest out there, but we had a nasty habit of never breaking. And as we've all heard before, to finish first, first you must finish. Many a trophy and prize check taken home by not putting a window in the block on the start line. There's fewer driver/customers in drag racing, so I got to be the actual driver here. Right up until my aunt jumped in a car and blew everyone away...
I wasn't there one night and if I couldn't or if there was big money on the line my uncle would drive. This night he tripped in the pits and tore his ankle up, couldn't work the clutch to race let alone put it on the trailer, so he tells his wife to do so and she hands him the baby. Few minutes later as he's getting packed up he hears his car doing a burn out. It was the final and she wasn't going to just let it go like that. So she got in the car, put it on the tree, and left the guy in the dust with a reaction time that put jaws on the floor. She was the driver now, I ran the backup car if we had one, she's still one of the fastest female drivers I know of. Soft spoken and downright ladylike, you'd never think she'd know how to change a tire let alone whip your ass down the strip. It's no surprise though, my entire family has always been matriarchal. Men worked, but the women always ran things. My aunt may not have been greasy all the time like the rest of us, but she knew more about what goes into our cars than the people that were buying them from us. She ran the business, we built the cars.
Uncle eventually got too old to do enough work to pay the bills, sold the shop, started a landscaping and plumbing company where he could just tell people what to do and if they screwed up it was just some pipe and concrete, not a racecar. I moved onto "real" jobs doing car stuff on the side to fund my own projects. Always the test driver, never the driver, but while driving is fun, problem solving and getting that last little bit out is better. I know what I do well and I know that others are better drivers, so I just drive my own cars and let others pay me to build theirs. Engine, chassis, and suspension building and tuning. Right now I build whatever people want me to build. Finished a pro-am drift car over the winter. The guys and I are thinking of building a fun little rallycross car soon though and otherwise I just build my projects for fun.
My brother-in-law drives a McColl built Late Model here in Ontario (in the APC Series), and my cousin is Crew Chief for Alex Tagliani (NASCAR Pinty's). Good to see some more motorsport enthusiasts on Tildes. And thanks for sharing your story, too... Your aunt rocks! :)
Cheers for the story. I have so much respect for people who are involved in grassroots motorsport - it's famously difficult to make money out of it, and I guess that's why everyone involved seems to be in it for the love of the sport. I aspire to work in motorsport myself - even though I'm not sure how I'm going to find my way into the industry it's something I'm very passionate about.
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. Your aunt reminds me of Denise McCluggage, but she's even before my time, and I'm old. Whooping ass on the men who otherwise dominate the sport and surprising everyone. I very much miss attending multiple races every year, but it just doesn't feel right without dad, even though he made me promise I'd never stop. I'm supposed to be pushing him around the pits in a wheelchair (his words), not going alone or with others.
That sounds rad man, also interested in what @frickindeal asked you.
As far as stock produced road legal vehicles goes, what's your dream daily commuter/weekend joyride car?
I'm no expert at all in the subject of actual mechanics, best i ever did once i had opened my car's hood was changing its battery, but while not being a technician or a mechanic i've always loved driving and cars in general.
https://tildes.net/~talk/bpo/what_are_you_an_expert_on#comment-2wnq
Any Aston Martin V12, nothing I've heard on the street sounds or looks anything like them. I'd end someone else to have a Valkyrie, good god it's pornographic to listen to.
Really cool to see other motorsport enthusiasts on tildes. I too would be really interested in hearing about what you race.
https://tildes.net/~talk/bpo/what_are_you_an_expert_on#comment-2wnq
Similarly interested as the others - I just spent the weekend working at VIR. Can't wait until June when I get back on track (Summit Point). I'm unsure what I want to pursue in that direction since I'm just a beginner, but I'd like to get into racing in some fashion.
https://tildes.net/~talk/bpo/what_are_you_an_expert_on#comment-2wnq
As for wanting to get into it, all I can say is to start somewhere, but just start. Even if you're dead last, it's more fun than sitting in the stands.
Three things come to mind.
SpaceX. The company. Followed some of their early launches, became super invested in their mission, ended up becoming a moderator for the corresponding Reddit community, went to Mexico to watch Elon unveil (then) ITS, received two SpaceX HQ tours. Amazing people & place. Reddit became a net-negative on my life in 2015 so I quit that, but still heavily enthused by the company.
Paragliding. Recently graduated with my P2 license, so I'm now free to fly at many spots of my choosing under a paraglider wing. This is one of those hobbies where you never stop learning, however. So "expert" compared to others in the field? Not one bit, but outwardly to others, some people find it interesting.
Overcomplicated clientside stacks written in massive Javascript frameworks. Oh yes. Did you know that in addition to being a professional software dev, I'm a masochist too?
Apart from that, not really much. I think many experts in their respective fields don't outwardly identify as such precisely because you soon come to appreciate how large & complex your chosen field of optimization is; and as such, it's a paradox in many ways. I don't consider myself an expert in software development, for example.
I found r/spacex not too long after you left, and I'd like to let you know how much I appreciate your work in helping to create and maintain such a great community. That sub, along with a SpaceX employee that I met, helped to launch my current passion for space exploration and astronomy. I love visiting the subreddit before and after launches and announcements to check out all of the awesome, and, by reddit standards, extremely civil discussion/analysis that goes on (plus all of the pretty pictures).
Thank you for the work you did while you were a mod :)
No problem. I'm glad you managed to find both SpaceX and the reddit community inspirational—at the end of the day, that was really all anyone wanted to accomplish.
Purely out of curiosity, may I ask you what your opinion towards SpaceX and Musk's other companies is at the present time?
His companies are fantastic, I think if you're enthused about the mission & enjoy STEM, then you'll love SpaceX or Tesla. However, Musk has a reputation for poor leadership, and even poorer employee management. I think he has the right intentions a lot of the time, but his Twitter shitposting & childish weasel word claims (which have now landed him in trouble with the SEC), show his real personality quite well. I wouldn't want to work for the man.
I'd have to agree, his initiatives are very charismatic and extremely captivating but his personality this past year or so has seemed to leek out and amass quite an amount of negativity of people towards his works, which is quite a shame honestly. On top of that employees seemed to have quite a bit to complain about, which throws quite a shade towards his companies as well.
I'd like to say that his greatest achievement in my opinion was actually bringing something truly enticing in fields that really deserved some attention from the mainstream media at a time when nobody really cared.
Is this like React work? How do you get into this? I'll have lots of free time May-Sep and I'll need to fund my Master's with some freelance work (I may get a scholarship but won't be enuff), but I've not been programming for a few years and I can't know what to pick up. Back-end, mobile, front end, so many frameworks and libraries and languages and frameworks that wrap frameworks. Front end and clientside is among the most daunting to me, because I stopped following anything JS near when NPM became a thing. If you know a couple good intros, I'd really appreciate.
Yeah. Not specifically React, but usually Vue, Angular, and general clientside work like UI & UX. In previous jobs where I was working on smaller applications, I'd be in charge of the server & API surface as well, but I recently shifted jobs to a larger company, so now it's purely clientside.
Honestly the frontend world is a whole lotta' churn where a good part of my job is spent merely keeping up with the latest techniques, and it took me a good 2-3 years worth of learning to progress to the bleeding edge where I was using state management tools (redux, rxjs), modern design techniques (PostCSS, anything CSS Level 4), and bleeding edge web standards. It's a massive surface that takes a while to learn, because while there's lots of serverside languages, each with a couple of web server frameworks (C# with ASP.NET Core, Python with Django, etc); in the client side world, everything is Javascript, and there's an inordinate amount of choice (although this is changing slowly with wasm).
If I had to start all over again, right now I'd probably just focus on learning Vue. You don't have to install it with NPM, in fact, you can just include it as a <script> tag from a web CDN, and it doesn't demand your entire website be one monolithic SPA like Angular. But, you can totally do that with Vue too, and you can climb your way up that complexity tree as you grow as a developer. https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/
This is really stupid compared to everyone's non-geek answers, but my expertise is in video games, video games culture, and video game drama. There are a few games (Pokemon comes to mind predominantly) where I have played every single mainline game and almost every spinoff, and Pokemon is rife with all sorts of small details and I've made it a point to memorize every single pokemon by picture alone. Seriously. You could give me a picture of any pokemon from Gen 5 or prior and I could flawlessly name it. My memory gets fuzzier for Gen 6 and 7 but not terribly so.
I know, extensively, how video games culture is/was/will be simply through being immersed in many communities that highly discuss them. I've frequented 4chan, Reddit, DIscords, and all sorts of smaller forums over the years in an attempt to learn these different cultures and gather opinions about certain habits of game devs/publishers. I keep up with all kinds of video games, regardless of whether or not I plan to play them. I find it very interesting how different circles attach to certain mechanics and develop opinions specifically for those.
Will this completely useless skill net me a job? Hell no. But it's all info I've collected and parsed over years of being completely immersed in this environment. I consider myself to be an expert on the video games "ecosystem", if you will, because I've been a part of it for a long time
Find a job where you can use this! Consider The Pokemon Company or Nintendo, or anything—these companies are large enough that they're looking to fill dedicated people in nearly any job role. Find and land at a place where you're passionate, it's possible.
I appreciate the help and guiding hand! Unfortunately, I don't live in any state where there are openings, and in no way am I able to move/live on my own. I'm kinda stuck where nothing goes on 😅
Which state do you live in? And are you open to moving one day?
There's a lot of job openings out there that seek out people like how you describe yourself. There's a lot of openings in community management, content authoring, etc. If you want to get started as a hobbyist, you can try to make some video content on YouTube, or start streaming on Twitch. Those rarely turn into actual jobs but they can be very useful to get noticed by a particular community.
If you actually want some tips to break into the industry, hit me up and let me know what other skills you have / what you study / etc.
I'm currently living a little west of Phoenix, Arizona. I'm not opposed to moving but that does strike a tiny (read: enormous) amount of anxiety within me. I've lived in the same area for 21 of my 21 years here so it'd be a bit scary haha.
I have streamed but anxiety got in the way of that, too. I'll probably start it up again but the whole "open steam, look at 300+ games, close steam" thing happens with streaming, too. I've always wanted to get into that industry because nothing is more wholesome/fun to me than a community that laughs/laments together. Sadly, I have no idea how to build a portfolio for that kind of stuff, considering I've worked food service/retail exclusively. Not a lot of applicable skills there, haha
Phoenix actually has a few game studios IIRC!
So with experience in the service industry that means you can deal with people. Community Manager is a decent opening into the industry. It's basically social media management nowadays; most studios seek out people who can represent them, are good with people and can forward bugs etc.
This is also why I would say Twitch/YouTube is good. If you apply as a CM it's a great thing to put on your CV and your employer can immediately see how you deal with a community (even if it's a community of 3 viewers).
As for how… start :) As with all things, you just gotta start. Google what software you need and just do it.
QA is another common entry point. It's very easy to get into, and also a bit of a grind once you're in it. But that's how some people who are now directors, designers, engineers etc get started. There's usually very few requirements other than a passion for gaming.
And the third common entry point is through the creative side. If you're an artist and can draw, write fan fiction, etc you can get noticed through there. It's often easy for large studios to bring in some "guest content" as a trial (there's very little commitment required).
I've definitely tried looking for QA positions around phoenix, but google results are suuuper over-saturated with bullshit listings for non-applicable things. Just searching Community Manager VIdeo Game studio and Video Games QA doesn't give great results, but you've inspired me to dig a bit deeper for a while. I have no idea where is best to look but it sure isn't indeed.com, monster.com, or the like. I'll see if Bing brings some stuff up.
I wish I had more creative skills but all I can do creatively is play bass, and that's not very helpful haha
Investigate a list of studios/businesses in your area, look into their games, play a bit of them and then apply (regardless of whether they have open positions, just look for a jobs@ or careers@ email and give it a shot, with a cv and cover letter).
But don't be too afraid to move if possible. At least within the state. 21 is pretty young and if you get opportunities to move, you gotta take them. It's a lot harder to decide to move once you're married / have kids.
I guess I'm in this bucket too. I've been involved with the hobby and industry for over 20 years now, in various capacities. I still have guides that get thousands of views up on GameFAQs, I used to moderate a fairly notable and large gaming subreddit, I've jumped between forums and magazines and sites for years, writing some articles for one or two along the way.
But it hasn't been a source of pride for me in recent years. I'm honestly embarrassed to admit how into video games I am these days because of the "gamer" stereotype that has come into its own since the rise of GamerGate and Twitter, really.
So I stay away. I love video games, and I am very fond of the industry, but I dread video game culture. Even on YouTube, out of all the gaming related channels, I can count the number I genuinely enjoy on one hand.
I follow the gaming industry very casually. There was an article I found a few days ago where Jonathan Blow said, “If every movie were a porn movie, most people wouldn’t see movies. The majority of games are basically porn—the onus is on us to make more things that are worth a reasonable person’s time.” That metaphor goes such a long way in explaining so much of the so-called hardcore gaming culture.
Community Manager is a real job at plenty of video game publishers that seems like a good fit for you.
And, if you really understand the market that well, there are plenty of marketing research type positions.
The challenge is remaining passionate when it turns from hobby to job. When you have to apply some scientific rigor rather than just gut feeling and when you have to do "work" rather than just follow your own interest, it can turn from fun to suck.
Same! I'm not so sure I'd say an expert, but I also invested way too much time into learning about Pokemon, including the competitive side a few years ago. I often ask myself how I'm supposed to memorize related rates, until I remember I know 809 unique Pokemon and the roughly the 5 base stats for most of them, 728 Pokemon moves, ~150ish abilities iirc, all 324 type interactions, and I have quite a bit of experience understanding how they fit together in battling. It's actually pretty crazy what you can do when you're genuinely interested in something!
music production. i'm an audio engineer, so figuring out how an artist got a certain sound, hearing things no ear has heard before, the magic of music... so i'd say that.
Very interesting. I've played guitar, banjo and ukulele, with a minor dash of piano, for going on forty years. I had a stint with recording a few years ago and got pretty into it, but not so much lately. I'd love to get back into it and get a real engineer (not random people on the internet who think they know what they're doing) to give advice, or even just a thumbs-up or -down.
What is your "beginning" story into music production? I've been making music for a while now through MIDI devices/keyboards and DAWs but despite practice I've never really gotten anywhere that I would consider good. As such, I've been considering shifting my place in the music production realm to the audio engineering side of things since it seems interesting. I'm in a different though tangentially related profession at the moment but think I'd like to start learning some of the nitty gritty audio engineering on the side. Any pointers or thoughts on someone in this position?
Despite someone on Tildes recently saying that I am "one of the few people [they have] encountered - probably anywhere - whose depth of knowledge matches his breadth of knowledge", I don't consider myself an expert in anything. I'm a dilettante, a dabbler, a jack-of-all-trades. I know a little bit about a lot of things.
However, my knowledge in a few areas is slightly deeper than a puddle:
Australian federation. I've read a bit about how the various British colonies in Australia federated and became the Commonwealth of Australia.
The Golden Age of science fiction. With my obvious like for Isaac Asimov, I've read a lot about him - and that reading has spilled over into the broader environment in which he got his start as a writer. So I know something about 1930s & 1940s science fiction.
The end of the Roman Republic. I've studied the life and times of Julius Caesar and his grand-nephew Octavian/Augustus - reading various texts, ranging from historical fiction through non-fiction to classic histories.
Star Trek. This is the one area where I suppose I'm closest to being an expert. You don't moderate a discussion forum about Star Trek for over 5 years without picking up a thing or two along the way!
So my question might probably send a shiver down your spine, but if someone came to you and said 'yo dawg, i don't know nothing about Star Trek and honestly the sheer amount of material that's out there kinda throws me off in where to start' where would you direct him? Asking for a friend of course.
Jokes aside, I have to admit that while I'm decently well versed in cinema on other fields, I really don't have any expertise in classic sci-fi (vaguely remember Star Wars and seen anything Star Trek related to give you an idea) and frankly I'd like to give it a go one of these days...
Ever been to Rome, Pompeii or Ercolano (btw if not prioritise Ercolano as it is a vastly superior site)?
I've never seen that question before! ;)
I will say this is the first time I've seen Star Trek described as "classic" sci-fi. But I suppose, even though it's still being made today, it did start over 50 years ago.
As for where to start... there are a few different answers, depending on your preferences.
If you're a completist, you start with the first episode of the original 'Star Trek' (TOS) and work your way forward.
If you don't want to deal with 1960s cheesiness and casual sexism, you start with the first episode of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' (TNG).
If you like a good long-form series incorporating a little bit of drama and with some battle scenes along the way, you jump in at the start of the 4th season of 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' (DS9).
If you want to see some plain old episodic science fiction adventures, you start with the first episode of 'Star Trek: Voyager' (VOY).
If you can't handle happy-clappy unrealistic utopianism, and want to see "real" people on screen, you start with the first episode of 'Star Trek: Enterprise' (ENT). This also applies for chronological completists, who want to start the story at the earliest point in its internal chronology.
If you like your science fiction dark and gritty and modern, and don't want all that old-fashioned crap, you start with the first episode of 'Star Trek: Discovery' (DSC).
Under no circumstances should you start with a movie. Star Trek has always been more suited to the small screen. Anyway, the TOS and TNG movies lean heavily on you being familiar with the characters from having watched their respective television series, while the rebooted movies are very different to the rest of the franchise and aren't a good representation.
I've never been to Italy. I'm not much of a traveller.
Knock knock, it's Code of Honor.
Most of S01 TNG is the same style as TOS, just with a lot more beige. I'd strongly recommend skipping the majority of it.
And, yet, for most Star Trek fans, TNG is the epitome of Star Trek, the benchmark against which all other Star Trek series are measured. It is definitely the most popular of all Star Trek series.
It's not all 'Code of Honor'. Some of it is 'The Inner Light' and 'Best of Both Worlds' and 'The Drumhead'.
I think you misunderstood me. I'm saying that Season 1 specifically is... less than perfect. To the point where you're better off skipping it until you've watched everything else. Once Riker grows his beard out TNG becomes peak scifi, imo.
For the sake of argument though, I can't help but notice that all the episodes you mentioned are in the later seasons.
I did misunderstand you. I thought you were writing off the whole of TNG. Yes, Season 1 is not so good, and much of it can be skipped.
As a semi-casual Star Trek fan, I would also say The Oreville could be considered a suitable companion to the classic treks.
While it is certainly more comedy focused than most trek episodes, I would say the fans of it or Trek can find a lot of common ground.
I've been pretty obsessed with Next Gen the last month or two - and I'm not sure if I like it or not. Like, what's the deal with the constant reference to American culture from the 50s and 60s. Were the writers really so convinced of that era's cultural supremacy that they thought that this is what Dr. Crusher would teach Data when he asked to learn dancing? 300 years from now? AFTER a nuclear holocaust?
The show is just chock-a-block with these idiosyncratic moments. My question for your Star Trek expertise, then, is how intentional do you think this is? Is this sort of like when someone is speaking thru an interpreter and can't stop using idioms? So, a product of how much more work would have had to be done to really think past this sort of issue? Or is there a modicum of intention on the part of the writers at play?
Even though TNG is set in the 2360s/70s, it was written by writers living in the 1980s/90s for an audience watching in the 1980s/90s. Even if the writers had inserted some futuristic music or art into the show, would their audience have related to it?
I've recently been watching some old 1970s science fiction shows, and they tried to create futuristic music for the characters to listen to - but it all sounded like a 1970s version of techno. And it sounded awful.
If you're writing a show, you need to make it relatable to your audience - and when your primary audience is 20th century Americans, you're going to use 20th century American culture.
Star Trek was never about realism. It's a fictional setting for morality plays. Everything else is just decoration.
Do people in the 80s and 90s need their cultural pastiche reproduced for them in order to relate? I would say no. But I take your premise to be sure. I guess my real gripe is not that the universe contain culture continuity. It's that the way these cultural artifacts are represented more or less rote. I guess my appetite for world building is a little more than Star Trek is up to is all.
They lampshade this a little in Voyager - one of the crew is presented as a 20th century history enthusiast, and there are a few scenes where he's left to explain references to an otherwise oblivious crew.
Your critique of Heinlein's --All You Zombies-- was scouring but fair.
Let me know if you think another thread is a better place to discuss this; what is a Golden Age author or book that you think others should read, but haven't?
The best answer I can give to that question (the answer I usually give to that question) is 'The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume One, 1929-1964'. It's a sampler of the best of the best from the Golden Age of science fiction, as chosen by science fiction writers themselves. If you like science fiction at all, you're guaranteed to find at least one story in this anthology that you'll love. And, if not... there's no hope for you! :P
Added to my "to-buy" list on Amazon and I'll be checking my library as well. Thanks!
I hope you find something in there to enjoy.
What's a good starting point for reading about Sulla? I see his name pop up a lot when talking about the final days of the Republic, and in broad strokes I can tell that he was instrumental in laying the foundations for Caesar's civil war, but beyond that I know nothing about him.
There's actually not a lot out there about Sulla - nowhere near as much as Caesar and Octavian. The classic historians tended to focus on the material they had, a lot of which is contemporaneous with Gaius Julius Caesar, rather than Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
That said, Plutarch wrote a "Life of Sulla" as part of his 'Parallel Lives' series, which is quite informative. And, if you like historical fiction, Sulla features heavily in the first two books in Colleen McCullough's Master of Rome series ('The First Man in Rome' and 'The Grass Crown').
Thanks for the recommendations, I'll definitely follow up on those! I've always wanted to get a feel for what the Republic was like during its height, but damn near everybody focuses on the post-Sulla era when everything was in shambles.
Putting aside my (hopefully irrational) concern that if I post anything here then a real expert will appear and show that I know nothing by comparison, and speaking very broadly:
Food: I absolutely love to eat, and in a lot of ways I'm a classic nerd with a strong obsessive streak. Combine the two and you get a person who has read everything from Roman banquet menus to Modernist Cuisine cover to cover and plans holidays primarily around restaurants and cuisines. By extension, cooking has become something of a meditation for me - I'm not actually as good as I'd like to be, but it's one of the very few things that reliably calms and focuses my mind - which in turn encourages practice, learning, and experimentation. To pin down what I actually know in a field that covers a huge swathe of culture, history, health, literature, symbolism, and so forth: I think for me it mostly revolves around the underlying science - the how and why of different techniques, composition of ingredients, textures, flavours. I'm also trying to learn more about health and nutrition specifically, but that's more a pragmatic need than a passion right now.
Software: Of all the academic and professional fields I've dabbled in, this is the one that never stopped being intuitive to me. It's the one I read and talk about in my free time even though I spend all day writing code for a living. Again, a vast field that would take many lifetimes to cover fully; my job revolves around end-to-end building of user facing applications, and that has given me a lot of depth in performant API and database design, but it's always tempered by pragmatism (and deadlines). Performance in general fascinates me, though - finding and circumventing the theoretical limits of how something can be done, and building tools to make that happen, is one of the most interesting repeated themes that I see.
Oh boy. I'm jealous of you—I just can't find it in me to spend the money on Modernist Cuisine. And now Modernist Bread is out. I have neither the free cash nor the open bookshelf space to get it.
Your take on cooking seems like one I'd be interested in, because you sort of nail that the how and the why matters so much. Too much cooking content on the internet these days is things like mommy bloggers and instagram influencers, and not enough of diving into the science.
Similarly, I've been big into bread this year, and have been cultivating a starter I brought home from a recent trip to New Zealand, and have been taking detailed notes on every bake (expect for when I've been too lazy).
I was extremely lucky to receive my copy as a gift, and it means all the more to me for that! The amount of detail and research that clearly went into writing it is astonishing, although you do have to laugh at the uncompromising nature sometimes: the "recommended equipment" that it opens with would easily come with a five-figure price tag.
It's quite possible that you follow him already, but J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's Food Lab is a brilliant antidote to this! He's even done a couple of collaboration videos with Adam Savage, which really made me smile. I enjoy Great British Menu and the UK version of Masterchef as well - not really about the science, but a strong focus on the cookery and who does it best, with very little else to get in the way.
That sounds fascinating - bread is a whole world that I haven't really even scratched the surface of, and I know it's one that people dive into with both feet. Best of luck on successful and tasty experimentation!
Modernist cuisine also has a smaller tome - Modernist cuisine at Home - that is great! I own the big set of books (got them off kijiji for ONE HUNDRED DOLLARRRSS), but I cook a little more often out of the Home version because it's less of a chore to bust out the book, and its expectation of the equipment I have access to is way more realistic!
This is pretty niche, but I'd consider myself an expert in the realm of wiki editing. I've been an administrator on a fairly large wiki for about four years now and have a solid grasp on the general operation of the site: a content review system, detailed staff and community management processes, automatic and semi-automatic bots (using pre-existing frameworks like AutoWikiBrowser sometimes, but also hooking up custom scripts to a bot account), etc. None of this is really back-end MediaWiki stuff, since the site is hosted by a wiki farm, but I do also have some experience with the API from my bot work.
On my home wiki, I'm familiar enough with the style guidelines to be able to look at pretty much any article and know by sight whether or not it's formatted correctly, down to fairly minute details. If a friend looks over my shoulder while I happen to be editing, they might see me glance at a page for a second or two, make an edit of my own, and save, then repeat that process ten more times in a minute.
The question I get is consistently, "But how do you know what to edit?" As far as formatting is concerned, it's just pattern recognition! This stuff has simply been drilled into my brain after spending four years of my life staring at that website. And we have pretty advanced organizational systems in place to keep track of what actual content needs to be added or improved, so it's not like I have to memorize huge swaths of information. You just have to know where to look and which processes to apply, and then you can do anything!
That's really cool. I always wonder who keeps wikis in top condition. Good on ya.
Early 20th century progressive Muslim intellectuals from Russian Central Asia. Yeah...
I don't think I'm an expert at anything, which—honestly—gives me crippling anxiety on most days. But, I honestly think I'm still doing okay:
Do you think there is a future for Apple beyond its present era of stock buy backs and uninspired new products? What has stalled the company's living up to its cutting edge pedigree?
I've found it hard to succinctly answer this question, so I'm going to answer it the way I want to:
Patience, particularly a lack thereof. One of the biggest problems with Apple today is announcing products and OS features before they're ready to ship. This happened twice in the Jobs era (iPhone, which went well, and Apple TV, which was a preview so they could make TV deals, but was delayed a bit to be finished.) To be clear, this isn't the problem, but the leadership and culture that allows this to happen is the cause.
This just seems to be the SOP for the Cook-era of Apple. Nearly every macOS and iOS release has features announced at WWDC that have no (realistic) hope of shipping on time, and when they do, they usually need another pass or two to smooth out the last bugs. Hardware: Mac Pro, AirPower, Apple Watch, and HomePod were all announced before they were anywhere near done, and they either had less-than-very-smooth launches, or have not yet launched. (Jesus Christ, this next Mac Pro iteration was announced April 2017.) The "services" keynote was particularly terrible: of the five things announced, only two things shipped. All of the other announcements are coming well after this year's WWDC.
(In fairness, a non-zero amount of this is because Apple is constantly scrambling to meet the unrealistic pressure of continued excessive stock market expectations, rather than maintain its own product integrity. Apple has always been better at being an underdog, and the late-iPhone-era clearly demonstrates its discomfort at being a "leader".)
Yes. The next CEO must not be Tim Cook, or a Tim Cook-alike. Give the reins to a Steve-era product-focused leader, please.
Thanks for your answer! I liked it much better than reading the business press. What do you think will underpin a transition from profit-focus to product focus? Does the board have too much power? The designers too little?
Do you use Apple products? Might seem like an obvious question, but while I love Tesla and love closely following all the work they are doing, I would never even consider buying their products.
Yes, I own far too many Apple products, and have used them for the majority of my life. At a minimum, I own at least one of each product from each hardware category they're in, and refresh them regularly.
While I'm unsure where Tesla ties into my comment (unless you are also referencing my previous semi-related comment), I do own a Model 3, and highly recommend it. The Model 3 is an early vision of what production cars will be like in 2025 (not unlike how future forward the iPhone was in 2007), despite its flaws. If it is a realistic car for you to own, get one and enjoy the ride.
Oh I wasnt referencing that comment. I was just giving an example of a company that I enjoy following, like you do with Apple, but might not use their products. I appreciate the tip, but I think I will pass. I would rather go for a 2nd or 3rd gen mainstream car brand.
I'm pretty experienced in mental health. I always had an interest in the mind, from my readings of philosophy and neurology. And for some reason, life gave me the opportunity of being near people suffering from many brain-related issues, such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, autism, schizophrenia (more than once), psychosis, addiction etc. In fact, one of my best friends and next door neighbor is schizophrenic. He's a great guy, well treated and totally stable. Nowadays he worries more with my well being than I do with his.
While I don't have a degree in health care, I learned quite a bit on the subject both by studying and from experience. This topic is very important to me because about 15 years ago I lost a friend to suicide. He was depressive and addicted to cocaine.
Have you read Hannah Arendt's Life of the Mind?
I didn't know Hanna Arendt wrote about the philosophy of the mind. Thanks.
If you can make heads or tails of it, let me know.
Robotics / self-driving cars: This is where I work professionally. I've spent several years studying the algorithmic side of robotics at an advanced level and did my PhD on them. My PhD was focused on localization and sensor fusion, but I've also spent considerable time on Perception, and ML-based approaches to prediction and low-level planning. I'm currently working on self-driving cars (which are practicly robots).
Sports: I love all kinds of exercise. I played competitive basketball all the way through college and I've been passionate about soccer all along as well. I follow the NBA (not so closely anymore since my favorite players have retired) and the English Premier League. I also love snowboarding and rock climbing. Swimming and tennis are also up there but to a lesser degree.
I more or less fell off the NBA myself after Jordan retired, only catching a game here and there. In the past five years or so I've tried to pay attention again, and as much as I don't want to be a grumpy old "back in my day" type, the game looks so soft now. It feels like the changes to defense have taken a lot of edge out of things. Steph Curry though, good grief. That man's ridiculous.
I started following the NBA toward the end of Jordan's career and I became a fan of Kobe as rookie. In general I loved the era that followed with a lot of high flying shooting guards. T-Mac was also one of my favorites. I started losing interest around the time LeBron moved to Miami. Now it's kind of hard for me to root for any team. Steph Curry is amazing but I just can't bring myself to root for a "super-team". I also liked it more when everything was out on the floor. Now-a-days, it all continues onto social media.
I think maybe ... poetry ? I have an MFA, so probably that counts. I don't feel like an expert, though. Never have.
You're trapped on a desert island with 3 poets, alive or dead, for 9 months; who do you choose and why?
Hmmm..... right now, I'd go with Jack Gilbert, Anne Carson, and ... maybe Sappho? I don't know. That's an interesting question! Those are like the first three I could think of?
It'd be interesting to do Shelley, Byron, and like, Keats, too -- since at least Shelley and Byron had that crazy drug-fueled night and I bet they'd party well.
(EDIT: also thank you for asking!)
I don't know the first three! Any suggestions of what to read?
And my pleasure to ask!
Jack Gilbert's The Great Fires and
Carson's Autobiography of Red are both really really good.
I actually haven't read any Sappho -- she's just someone I thought of as a third person. There are only fragments of her poems in existence -- I think Carson might've translated them (she's a classicist).
BMX riding and skimboarding. And then I have a minor in every other action/extreme sport basically.
But for most of my life expert is not a word that comes to mind, I took the jack of all trades thing a little too seriously and now I have almost no impressive, applicable skills for a resume. Meanwhile my friend who just studied mechanical engineering for 4 years and got a job out of college can definitely be described as an expert in some shape or form. I mean, I've been riding bikes and skimboards longer than he's been an engineer but there's 0 demand for either of those talents lol
I know a guy who made a fair living off of putting up with turists and teaching them how to properly downhill down the ski slopes in the hotter seasons and teaching how to ski during the winter ones. To start everything up he just needed to get the national training license as a ski instructor; depending on where you live you might be able to start something up with your talents, who knows?
I reckon younger kids/teens might be interested in such lessons...
My friend did ski lessons at Mammoth. It's always something that interested me. I was basically a BMX instructor at Camp Woodward one summer.
Among other potential issues, the biggest issue is co-workers are fuckin retarded. Basically, the lazy stoners in their 20s who want to get paid to ride stereotype is real lol.
I actually applied and did an interview for a skatepark today. So... Cross dem fingers
I have two things that I could talk about for hours on a very in-depth level, though I don't know if I'd use the word "expert":
Engineering side of game development. I've been working in the games industry since 2008 and have experience with QA, build engineering, and tools engineering. I could definitely talk about various aspects of game dev for hours. Everything from automated testing to SCM to working with huge codebases to engine upgrades and divergence and best practices.
Skincare. I am not a dermatologist and have no professional experience here, so I would definitely not label myself an expert, but I could talk for hours about various skincare ingredients, balancing a skincare routine, how to manage acids, etc etc.
Nothing really, unfortunately. I've had a wide range of jobs and a huge range of hobbies and interests, most of which I know a decent enough amount about, definitely more than the average person, but I wouldn't consider myself an expert in anything
Here's my list:
Those are probably the big ones. Not an expert in any of them, and I honestly don't have the drive, focus, or will to become an expert in any one thing. I like just being mediocre at a wide swath of stuff.
Top 5% in anything disqualifies you from mediocrity, so there's that.
Go Programming. Go is by far my favourite programming language. I have over 20,000 points of karma on the English-language StackOverflow alone, with additional 5,000 on the Russian-language one, and most of it is from answering questions about Go. I am also quite fond of finding ways to solve problems using only POSIX features in makefiles, editors, and shells.
The Maker Movement - I've been interested in electronics since I was a kid, got heavy into it while in college as a computer engineer, and eventually started a company around it. I love all the arts and crafts, the electronics, the punk vibe, and the hacker and DIY culture that's built up around it. Even though it is now my job, I still love it.
US (particularly NY state) Public Education - More of an expert-in-training on this one, but over the past 5 years, I've built up my understanding of public education policy, research, funding, pedagogy, labor, administration, business, etc - as much of it as I can study. I would very much hesitate to call myself an "expert", particularly because it is such a broad field, but I have tried to build up a very practical and deep understanding of how our public education system works and breaks. It's fascinating and frightening and inspiring and depressing all at the same time.
A bit of a rant: One thing I absolutely believe needs to change if we want any chance of equity is to change the funding model for education in the US away from property taxes. It's a tough one because there is still value in community involvement and ownership of education, but I think we have to find a different funding model. I felt the same way when I worked for large companies like Intel and IBM. There's nothing more unnecessary than bring your kid to work day. I totally get the goal is family/employee engagement, but those kids already have plenty of opportunity to learn about what you do. We should have bring the disadvantaged kid to work day - the kids that wouldn't otherwise get a chance to learn how technology is developed. Meritocracy was coined as a pejorative in satire and there's great irony in politicians using it as if education (under the current funding model) has any chance to even the playing field.
I still have tons to learn, but I will say the overall vibe I get from the education industry is one of overwhelming optimism for the future of education that I don't think has been there since the space race.
I would love to hear more of your insights on public education in the United States. What have been some of your biggest takeaways from your research?
Here's a stream of consciousness list:
Thanks for your reply! It was really interesting to hear your perspectives, and it's clear you've done a lot of research into this. Is it part of your profession, or simply an interest of yours?
Also, I'd love to hear you expand your thinking on charter schools. For context, I'm a public school teacher who worked at one for several years. That experience, along with aggregated experiences from other colleagues and other charter schools in the area, soured my view of them significantly. I would love to hear your take on them, as I struggle to find positives for them.
Part of my profession in that schools are one of the customers of my business, part of my passion/interest in that I care about education.
Charter schools have done good things in areas where they're most needed (school districts that have been failing for a long time). If I think about why those institutions fail (obviously, this is just my opinion) - it's usually community/family problems that beat the "spark" out of teachers. That, combined with poor resources for the school result in increased stresses on administrators, in turn resulting in high turnover (or worse - apathy). New teachers come in and have limited resources to work with - so it is a daily battle for them to care or even be able to make a difference in the lives of their students. All of that results in a failing institution which can allow for bad players to take advantage (corruption, unqualified labor, etc.).
That environment is what resulted in the idea of Charter schools that provide an opportunity to build a new institution with staff "that cares" and gives them the ability to perform without institutional barriers - often times, they even have wide freedom in curriculum, instructional methods, all of it. They can be an amazing model if everyone in the school is motivated for achievement-based outcomes. That is a requirement of their charter, but even so, it is a model that can still be abused due to tax incentives and the like. Charter schools aren't some silver bullet, and I have seen multiple charter schools with good intentions (and less good intentions) that result in poor experiences all around - lower pay/benefits for teachers, fewer resources for teachers/students/administrators, poor achievement outcomes. There's one charter school in particular that I've worked with that has some great staff, great admins, great resources, etc - but the community they're serving has so many other compounding factors that I think the school will end up losing its charter. In opposition to that, another I've worked with has poor administration, ok teachers, and poor resources. They will meet their objectives and ultimately serve as a slightly better alternative to the public school district for the students, and a worse alternative for the teachers. However, the majority of the charter schools I have worked with are well managed and I think will result in better outcomes all around than the public school buildings they are drawing their students from. But, that's because those buildings had serious institutional problems to start with.
I'll echo @kfwyre, and also want to know if you personally are optimistic for US public education? It seems a forgotten/neglected story by the powers that be.
I am cautiously optimistic. Some of the educational technology is amazing. Look at something as "simple" as code.org and Khan Academy and the real impact both have achieved. OpenEDX and the College Board have made all AP courses available to anyone that wants to take them - for free!!
At the same time, the promised of flipped classrooms has some teachers and their unions showing resistance. So - will those types of experimental school environments ever reach the masses?
Studying the history of public education, I do think things are always getting better, but it is very frustrating to see so many great ideas take so long to roll out. John Dewey had awesome ideas around experiential learning that were never widely adopted and, where they were adopted, very much scrapped in favor of theoretical science and engineering during the cold war. It's funny to me that the modern resurgence of "STEM" education is picking back up his ideas and integrating making - much like the arts and crafts movements of the 70s that put art and shop classes back into the curriculum in the first place.
It's also frustrating that every school district believes they have unique challenges that demand unique solutions when the reality is they have far more in common than they care to admit. Common Core, for all its flaws, has been successful in helping to battle that point. The next major (and ongoing) battle ahead of public education policy is squaring teacher union concerns with performance based assessments. Charter Schools represent to me a significant move in that battle, but it is too early to tell what the overall effectiveness will be. Unions are powerful and I do believe they enjoy some of that power for very legitimate reasons.
The other major challenge I see in education that I haven't seen enough discussion about or enough proposed solutions to is how to overcome community and family problems in failing districts. Some school districts, like the one in the city where I live, can't get proficient attendance from their populations. They have no chance of achievement-based outcomes if the kids can't even show up to school. Social workers and guidance counselors can only do so much, and they are far underpaid for what they already do.
I think it's more or less commonly accepted the changes in the labor market that are the horizon due to continual advances in AI are going to require more advanced qualifications, but beyond that, there should potentially a rethink on what education itself should be and mean. The current system is, IMO, primarily a combination holdover of the days of mass-production factory jobs and keeping minors out of the workforce. Is that discussion happening today in the public education sphere? How do you see it going?
That conversation is happening, but not in a massive public discourse kind of way.
One kind of sticking point I have - the idea of education as a holdover from mass-production factory jobs is an oversimplification. It is an idea that comes from the historians of the 1960s arguing that public education existed as a means to suppress the middle class. The progressives of the Progressive Era that created the expanding public education system, however, had noble motives its expansion - so this interpretation, I think, is misguided. It certainly was the social elite in the Progressive Era pushing for reform of public schools, but for the purposes of wrangling back political party control of education - not expanding it. America has had tax-supported public education since before its founding (as colonies). Compulsory education began in 1852, with every state requiring elementary education by 1918. Some of the curriculum was, still is, and always will be focused on training for the industrial skills of the time, and (because of the complexities of training teachers) it will always be a little bit behind the industry, but I think that the common hand wave of education as "daycare for factory employees so their kids can be trained to follow in their footsteps" disagrees with the reality.
I also think people are being disingenuous with the history of the industrial revolution when it comes to new technologies like AI. Standardizing industrial processes has always had a goal of eliminating human labor - it is often the most costly line item for any category of industry - manufacturing, information, entertainment, etc. So, yes, jobs will be eliminated with AI, and people will have to be retrained, but the idea of a post scarcity economy happening seems silly and even if it does happen, that resulting in a change in the values of public education seems misguided. I think the values of the education system are constantly evolving and improving, so I do not see the need to treat it as a crisis.
That said - AI instruction and assessment will give much better results for individual students, and there is much discussion of how AI should be deployed in education. With the amount of data collected and processed through these systems, we may be able to evolve past "standardized testing" that everyone loves to hate. We haven't really found a better, practical solution than standardized testing yet, but I think we may be able to through machine learning and AI.
Even more interesting - pedagogy research has been rapidly adopting breakthroughs in neuroscience (things like fMRI, eye movement, etc) and we will see lots more interesting studies on what neuroscience can teach us about and how it can improve the way we learn. One concrete example of this - there's been much debate over the importance of syntax when learning computer science (should we use block based systems with simple syntax rules or textual programming languages with complex, strict syntax rules - which of these result in better programmers and/or more programmers). Neuroscience research techniques lets these researchers quantify things like cognitive load and will allow them to potentially perform longitudinal studies on students as they learn computer science to ultimately answer these types of questions.
Only thing l'm remotely expertish at is electronics(kitchen appliances, vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens) repair. Or honestly anything that breaks, l'm willing to have a go at it if l'm confident it can be fixed.
Definitely LGBT+ topics, with a focus on transgender issues. I'm trans myself, and since I discovered the existence of this concept, four years ago, I skimmed and saved hundreds of papers, annotated dozens, spent quite possibly days arguing and wrote the equivalent of a book or two on it (but then, I'm generally verbose).
I'm not exactly a slouch when it comes to programming, either, but my knowledge is much less theoretical and in-depth - I just know how to bash out a mean bash pipeline (and awk, and python, and some other random language that I'm using because it is arcane and/or old).
For the rest, I'm a generalist. I have picked up a lot of stuff in the last few years - biology, chemistry, emacs, a smattering of German and toki pona, troff, the basics of design and typography - but always in a somewhat shallow manner and with a focus on the esoteric.
Pros: it makes my thread of thought next to impossible to follow, and my humour tends to cause BSODs because of the excessive context switching.
Cons: sometimes I don't want BSODs.
Music, mostly new music in old styles. Sysadmin work as a career. Gardening communities like Tildes as a kind of hobby. Roleplaying games. Scifi and fantasy media. Those topics tend to get me rambling.
New music in old styles? Such as?
I've got a few sets of my faves on mixcloud.
I was born in 1986, so i was at the age of being able to use the internet and computers when it got popular. I have always loved to learn, as soon as something peaks my interest i study it for a week or longer, feel like i understand the basics, and move on, and sometimes back to a subject. Because of this i`m no expert at anything really, other then my hobbies and interests. but i have basic knowledge of everything i like.
I have studied electronics for 3 years, so i know some of that.
I also did a 1 year course to become a excavator and wheel loader driver, it went really well, so i can say that i can handle both of those pretty well. This is the thing i plan to work with for the near future, it`s fun, no expert yet though. There is an insane amount of knowledge and skill so i have quite a bit of time ahead of me satisfying that longing to become good, no, great at something.
I am also in the exact same situation as @mrbig. I have had bipolar disorder since i was 16, And have been studying mental health both scientifically, but also old traditional healing, mental training, etc. It is not often i meet others sick that have spent the amount of the time i have learning about mental health. I sometimes know more then the professionals i get help from(excluding actual doctors). I think i have developed a very strong mindset from this which carries on with everything i do. I am also a clean addict, grew up with a alcoholic father(drugs to), and a older sister with addiction as well, she has used everything there is. I know more about this then anyone should have to. It`s helpful though, in a sense that i can help others, and i do.
My biggest hobby and, i would say passion, is gaming. I wont go into specifics, but i know a fair bit about everything related. I have played a few on semi high level, which means 1-5% of the games population or so. The drive to learn and become better at something came a long with this. Or it`s just my nature.
The game i have had most success in is Hearthstone, this game i would say i am an expert at where i was in the 0.5% group of people. Many would say it is an easy game, but the more you learn you understand that
s its not that easy as it seems. I ended reaching top 200 on the EU server a few times. Funny thing about card games like these have similar hidden rules, math`s and so forth. So i would probably have a much easier time if i would like to go into magic for example in the future, which is nice. I stopped playing HS a couple of year ago though.My mental health studies combined with gaming have made me quite an expert when it comes to mental training within e-sports. Something i would like to work with as well i guess. I have done some courses for free and my "clients" have shown huge progress. At the top 0.1% everyone knows the mechanics, the next big step is working on your mentality so that emotions wont be in the way of an important match.
I also grew up around music, family, friends, most of them being in the field in some way. Because of this i have become a bit of an modern DJ curating playlists on my free time with some "success". The music i love is a bit niche, so the people who listen to it are pretty nerdy about it. And those same people appreciate my ability to seek out music and sharing it, which i think is pretty cool.
I think any expert at anything would say that, they are no expert. The more you learn the more you realize how little you know.
I would say that, if you don`t see yourself as an expert yet, you are on your way to become one.
I love doing or getting involved with some niche things. But I don't consider myslef a expert on anything yet because when I scrape surface of something I would get so much excited and get that feeling it would be so much interesting to get into. when I really get into the rabbit hole I would feel overwhelmed and I would stop on the halfway.
At my younger ages I found mathematics so much interesting and my peers used to see me as somekind of genious even though I was not that good at everyother subjects. I absolutely made a stupid decision by not taking mathematics for my Bachelor's. Im now doing Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering in which I have to take mathematical subjects and I find so much pleasure solving mathematical problems. I don't know how I would react to more abstract concepts and application of maths but I love doing stuffs like integration. So even though I like mathematics Im no expert in that.
I had a very good knowledge about contemporary android phones and available custom roms. That's one of the things that dragged me into reddit and eventually into tildes. I used to research about every new phone's specification, its custom rom developments and specific tweaks you can do in it. Even now I can educate someone about difference between kernels and roms.I know what are the important specification of a smartphone also I know how to make a android phone more privacy centric but I dont know how to fix a bug or any issue but I know where to lookup about it lol. So not an expert in that either.
pardon my grammar :))
Pharma and pharmacology. A fair amount of pharmacokinetics but I’m a bit rusty. I wish I could get back into organic chem hobby synthesis but the most I do outside my work these days is redoxing rusty parts with electrolysis.
I am an expert at being an idiot. I'm a serious polymath. Suddenly I started loving everything (probably way too much), and therefore I feel I must get to know everything, which makes me an idiot ─ and I love it!
I've yet to complete high-school so I haven't really had the time to become a proper expert in anything, though I dunno where that places me when it comes to my idiocy.
However that and whatever may be, therein ─ in the idiocy ─ my expertise lies.
Same! I was gonna say I'm an expert in spotting when I'm falling victim to the Dunning-Kreuger effect
Well, doesn’t that make it: not the Dunning-Kreuger effect?
Healthcare data analytics, as it's my job and has been for the last 5+ years.
I wouldn't say I'm an expert but I have a degree in neurobiology and I read a bunch of neuro journals regularly. Been lifting for 10+ years and read way too many physical fitness, diet, etc. journals as well.
oh and I'm definitely a meme and shitposting expert
I guess occupational safety for general industry in the United States? Not very exciting!
Electronic music. Production, writing, history of it as a practice and techniques for making it, whatever. Want to make a style? I can probably get close to it after some reference tracks. It's the one thing I have been most passionate about for a decade because there is so much to do with it.
Cryptography.
Maybe not completely an expert, but I know a whole lot about the field, including knowing about subfields in it you probably didn't even wouldn't think was possible. Did you for example know Zero-knowledge proofs is a thing?
Much of the knowledge comes from a mix of my interest in the field with being a moderator of reddit's /r/crypto (which means I keep up with new submissions), as well as being a subscriber to the good old cryptography mailing list metzdowd. I read a whole lot about it, simply put. So I know a ton about protocols, algorithms and attack models, etc.
I'm late to the party here, but:
Illustration has been my Day Job for the last 12 years. Mainly comics/webcomics, but also band art/album covers, medical illustrations and even some advertising/promo stuff. I always enjoy talking about brush inking, composition, color theory and stuff like that. And writing, too. Specifically fiction, but also poetry, songwriting, and conlang.
Some domains of biology, scientific programming (Julia mainly nowadays), some domains of statistics and physics, a few subjects in philosophy. I know well some genres of music and some aspects of music production.
I don't know if 'expert' is really the correct term in my case since I'm always finding that there's more to learn, but I can wax poetic for several hours/days about three things:
I see "Jazz", I must respond: Jan Johanssons "Jazz på Svenska" ─ it's amazing!
Listening now -- really digging it a lot! Thanks for the suggestion
You’re welcome, while you’re at it I can recommend «Jazz på Ryska» by the same guy as well.
I’ll also just mention «Jazz på Svenska» and «Jazz på Ryska» is swedish for respectively «Jazz in Swedish» and «Jazz in Russian»
Game of Thrones. I've seen the series about 6 or 7 times from start to end. I've read the books twice. I know a lot more about the show than the books. My knowledge of the show is pretty damn good, and I normally ace any quizzes etc that I do on the subject. Probably a bit of an odd one, but I love it. In fact my username is a hybrid of something to do with Game of thrones, and something from Borderlands 2, my favourite game.
Think you could be the person to convince me to watch it? I don't watch very much TV and I usually let the must-see show du jour (Lost, The Sopranos, Oz, The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc. etc.) pass me by without any regret.
I mean I can give it a shot. What do you want to know? There's a reason it's the biggest show on right now, and it's also the most pirated lol.
Let me know if you want to know anything and I can reply.
I mean, just generally speaking, why I should bother... just giving you a chance to go to bat for it, really.
The actual story is amazing and layered. There's a lot of political intrigue, fantastic characters who grow and develop. The acting and dialogue is brilliant, the sets and costumes are stunning, the twists and turns are unexpected. There's a bit of a change in quality after they run out of book material, but the show is still fantastic. It's got something for everyone. Anything else, just ask.