I have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of fish from the atlantic basin, specifically in and around the south east US and Carribean.
It freaks people out sometimes when I just start reciting fish facts whenever the rare occasion this comes up.
It's from me living partially on a boat as a child and tearing through books about fish while dreaming of being a marine biologist until the cold hard reality of for-profit education hit me in my early adulthood.
What are your weird topics and skills?
I can put most sedimentary rocks or their dust into my mouth and tell you what they are by how they feel (I am a geologist, this isn’t exactly common but it isn’t rare either)
I can also measure almost anything I am walking next to with solid accuracy because I learned the distance of my stride to make field measurements easier. 33 inches stepping with my left foot (83cm) and 32 inches stepping with my right (81cm). Most people do not take perfectly consistent steps at consistent speed but I trained myself to do so as consistently as possible for this purpose. After a fairly long time of training I can go just about 1km before I start to get more than a step or two off due to natural variation. This has made walking very funny because I know the exact distance between places I travel to and from often.
I also have 6k+ hours logged on EU4 lol
Hey! I'm an environmental science major I just learned the pacing thing too in a geology field methods class.
If you plan on doing fieldwork this will save you hours so learn your body well. It’s worth the hour or two of practice a month
I planned on it. Interviewed for the USGS a while ago but it fell through but field work would be the ideal for me but you know I have to work 40 hours outside of school to make ends meet but I graduate next semester so maybe more options will pop up.
USGS is a great place to start and the experience is diverse in future application but burns people out quickly if they aren’t ready for the workload so be wary. It’s a fantastic field to work in though and as much as I do not dream of labor, geologist has always been the closest thing to a dream job to me.
Unfortunately I don’t see as much of the field now that I’m living in nyc. I miss it a lot but you have the privilege of getting to live and be employed with stability just about anywhere you want with geology
I have been manual laborer for a long time before I went back to school. So the workload I'm used to but it's always been my dream to work outdoors. I just didn't have the programming stuff yet they wanted because I hadn't finished the courses involved. But hey maybe a graduate degree who knows.
It very rewarding to study. I want to go back for my PhD one day and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. In case I do, I have a climatology degree to fall back on which I also recommend looking into! Good luck!
I know someone who spent a summer internship licking animal bones to see if they were fossilized or not
This does work lol but please don’t just go and lick bones
Edit: some bones 😏
I know a lot about hopping freight trains. Where the lines go, what the train is doing, what to look out for. I rode the rails for 5 years but don’t anymore. And probably never will again because I have a kid now.
I kinda want to try it sometime but it's insanely dangerous. Any advice?
The best advice one could give is to ride with someone who’s done it before. Go downtown to the nearest city where the bars are at. find the dirty kids with instruments and dogs and tell them you want to ride and you’re serious. They might say fuck you, pay me. they might take you on a freight train. But it’s cold, dirty, loud, you might wait on a train for up to 4 days. Those kids you asked might be on heroin or passed out drunk when a good train comes. It’s an always strange and sometimes beautiful lifestyle. Beyond that, find one that is stopped on the mainline. Don’t go, “hopping on the fly” (jump on a moving train) for your first time. Keep your head low until you’re out of the city, and when you go through train yards. Bring ear plugs, water, warm clothes and a couple cans of food. Once you’re on a car, don’t go from one to the next unless the train is stopped. And never ever ever ever step on, or touch the knuckle (the bit where the cars connect.) you never know when the train is going to cut the slack out and lots of people have been maimed or died because they fucked around on the knuckle. I could write a short book on the subject but someone already has. I learned from riding with people who had done it before and taught myself a lot before I found the book but it was very helpful. It taught me about what the train is doing by what the air brakes are doing, what the signals mean. How to find the mainline, how they build the trains. It was written a couple decades ago so does have some bad advice in there too. If you’re super interested in it, it’s called ”Hopping freight trains in America” by Duffy Littlejohn. If you’re super interested in actually going and riding freight trains, dm me. The freight hopping community frowns upon people spreading the knowledge on the internet because people get killed, the get caught by the train cops and blow up spots, it’s just not a good deal. I’ve probably already said too much.
I mean that just straight up rules, gtfo of the useless thread and go start a "I'm capable of really cool shit" thread
😘
It’s gotten a little rusty as of late but there was a time in my life where I could label every single country on a map along with most of their capitals. Whenever I was bored and had nothing better to do I’d just stare at maps and shit. Even now I could probably still label like ~80% of a world map from memory
I have a friend that can do that and it is impressive 100% of the time
in college i would get bored and go on Sporcle a lot. I have the specific memory of when i was able to do all the countries. moved on to capitals and flags after.
I know intimately the rules of dungeons and dragons 5th edition, as well as all of the extended class info, the extended race info, but very little of the official lore. I also know how to plan marching band parades.
Same here on the 5e knowledge, I could be like 10th saxophone in your band tho
I was in a southern baptist school through 8th grade, before the boat, and I still remember a lot of bible trivia.
It makes my political views that much more infuriating when I see the right just straight up blaspheme and still act like they are following "the word of God"
I'm not christian left, but I do respect those who are
I was referring to my OP for the thread, but I lived on a boat for part of my childhood
I'm like... aggressively not a christian but I read and studied the bible a lot in a real, not-"Christian" college so I know a lot of church history and 1st century roman history and Muslim/Islamic history.
So I spend a lot of time feeling conflicted because i want to denounce people as heretics but I also don't believe in any of the woo woo magic stuff.
But they're still filthy fucking heretics and it's a shame that the Protestants were allowed to escape to America.
Movies.
All I've ever done in life is watch movies and read theory, and I've watched way more movies.
I know every group has "the movie guy", and I'm not gonna pretend I'm better than all of them, but I'm pretty damn good
If you do work on board games please do play test and look how long people need from 0 to play and how nice the specific mechanics for given problems are. Eg at pen and paper role playing you don't want to have complicated dice rolls that take a while to roll and to read and to interpret.
Memorized and performed this completely nonsensical and structureless monologue from the play Waiting for Godot because they offered it as an alternative to writing an essay in high school. Was the only one to take up the challenge in my year, and the only one to ever make it through from memory alone. My memory was great to have while I was in school, not useful at all anymore.
I am an expert in wierd 17th century Pastoral Operas in a Scots dialect that was already archaic when the pieces were written.
I know more than I should about Minoan infulences in Apulian pottery of the LHciii to the late pre-geometric period.
Please recommend me a 17th century pastoral opera in a Scots dialect. That's way too niche not to be cool.
Well, it's technically early 18th century but in a 17th century style. The Gentle Shepard by Allan Ramsay, Father of Scottish poetry and of his namesake son, noted painter and Stuart supporter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_zkIFldxbs here is the opening song.
A lot of useless knowledge. I used to be part of quiz clubs. Where the currency was useless trivia.
My SO was on a rival trivia team at our regular bar and we ended up bonding on those nights originally.
If I type something and then print it and re-read it I can "see the page" in my head and read off of it for a while, it fades after a couple hours. Memorized lists can last for several hours.
