What are some cools topics one can learn about that aren't software dev related
I'm a software dev and want to learn about different subject areas that aren't CS related, but don't know where to start or what to look at.
What are some good/cool/interesting non-CS subject areas one can learn about and what makes it cool/why do you like it?
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[ 582 ms ] story [ 2927 ms ] threadThis is such an extremely new, contemporary, western interpretation of buddhism. It's not inherently invalid (or maybe it is! I'm not a buddhist) but it's not compatible with how most practitioners globally and through its history would view their beliefs and practices.
If you need to consider it "not a religion" in order to take it seriously you should probably challenge that constraint within yourself rather than ignore half of what the religion says about itself, on its own terms.
In the area where I live, there is a long hot and humid period where we have lots of rain and standing water as a result. Mosquitos can carry disease, they make itchy bumps, and they love to whisper in your ear at night. I have pets that go outside, and there are bugs I dont want to repel, like bees and spiders, so sprays make me feel uneasy, I don't want to hurt something else in the crossfire when all I want to go away are the skeeters.
Mosquitos use standing water to develop the larval stage of their young. Fish love little squiggly things like larvae, and the movement they make triggers this aggression response. I am breeding the fish and selecting for two traits, size of brood, and aggression response. It is not enough that the fish should attempt to eat the larvae, they should kill or maim the rest even when they are not hungry, so this aggression response helps because whether it is digested whole by a fish or in pieces by a cleanup snail is the same result: no whispering in my ear when I'm tending the grill.
I thought it was a fun way to get free food at first, but noted a distinct lack of mosquitos the first year I tried it. The next year I scaled up a little bit, now I took part of the operation indoors during winter to get a jump on the next rainy season.
Poecilla seems to be best for this. The initial assumption was that the big ole dolphin females would be the best eaters, but this seems to only be true when they are imminently pregnant and ready to release fry, they seem to eat or attack anything in sight. Completely by accident, I got a colony of a smaller species, Poecilla Wingei, specifically a flame type variant of the Japanese Blue Endler going in a large enough size to observe their behavior properly. Despite being 1/3 of the size of the other more common Poecilla members (fancy guppy) their speed and aggression response is much higher, as they often kill just for the thrill of it.
Obviously a bunch of dead skeeters will foul the water, so along with a robust bacterial colony and enough botanicals to stave off fungal growth, Ive added cultures of malaysian trumpet snail and pink ramshorn snail. The two are detrivores that eat in alternating shifts so mosquitos that get mangled and touch bottom get eaten and turned into poop fast, which feeds the bacteria, which feeds the plants that export the nitrates out of the water column.
Indicators of a good skeeterfish: upturned mouth, narrow eyes, thicker than normal caudal peduncle, an appropriate gonopodium length for the female they're expected to mate with (some have extremely long gonopodiums that inhibit mating. while aesthetically pleasing, it is an evolutionary dead end), also a behavior that I havent seen written about anywhere, but I call it the zigzag response, which is a sharp increase in activity post water change. The logic behind that is that mosquitos are most active after a rain. a rain brings in fresh water. exacerbated aggression and hunger after the introduction of fresh water typically is a prompt for mating so everyone wants to eat so they can put out the best colors to find the best mate who wants someone who is lively and colorful as possible.
This is a behavior that can be selected for without negatively affecting the colony. I want these things to be pissed off and hungry when it rains. Ive seen this year's skeeterfish snatch a full grown mosquito right off the meniscus without even waiting for it to poop out the eggs, they are that aggressive.
Typically these fish live in estuaries and tributaries, high tide brings in saltwater, and pushes it from the ocean up through the waterways, then rain washes it all back out again. These guys live in either condition, I have them actively tending a high-salinity reef environment right now, keeping algae off the coral and giving the copepods a run for their money. This is a quality known as 'euryhaline', which I guess means they can go from salt to freshwater no problem. What Im trying to say is, wherever you live, you can have...
2 thoughts.
you mentioned anecdotally that you [noted a distinct lack of 'skeeters' in the 1st yr]. have you come up with a more rigerous test to validate the results?
also are you using native fish? it's generally not a great idea to introduce foreign animals to an ecosystem??
The reason why I attribute the lack of mosquitos to the fish is that I've lived here for a few decades now, and as of the latter half of it I've noticed that if I can get a large colony out there when I notice the first mosquitos, they'll be acclimated and multiplying by the time the really bad time hits around april and may, and I notice much less mosquito activity as a result, within a certain radius.
The fish I am using don't exist natively locally or anywhere in their current form as their parents are considered to be endangered in the wild (poecilla wingeii), however, there are native ones that live in the area, they just don't have many of the same characteristics other than size and shape, and being the same species technically. Their behavior and color are somewhat different. Their closest relative is Karen Kooman's Japan Blue Endler, however these are a newer variant known as the flame type, which have a Poecilla reticulata ancestor that added a distinctive hunger and a flame patterned spotted dorsal fin that extends in length beyond the tail.
I suppose this is more of an issue with whoever controls binomial nomenclature and how these designations are made. I'm just a programmer, so unfortunately outside of my own goals I don't have much ambition to pursue my own species name.
Poecilla skeeteii does sound cool though.
edit: One last thing. My next target is my other personal enemy, the brown recluse spider. Attempts at weaponizing the housecat have been frustrating and discouraging.
So if you want to see if it's your thing, try out Supernova in the East as it's still on the free tier.
His paid stuff is definitely worth it, specifically the other series that the other reply said. It's honestly a great deal for the amount of content you get per episode.
It's also fascinating precisely because it isn't all worked out and we don't have a clear picture of how the quantum world gives rise to the Newtonian one.
Classical mechanics, which deals with objects larger than an atom or molecule which are moving far slower than the speed of light.
Relativistic mechanics deals with objects larger than an atom or molecule which are moving at a speed approaching the speed of light.
Quantum mechanics deals with objects smaller than an atom or molecule which are moving at speeds far slower than the speed of light.
Quantum field theory deals with objects smaller than an atom or molecule and moving at speeds approaching the speed of light.
Another good thing to lookup is the Standard Model, which contains 42 subatomic particles and is very different from what I was taught in school as a kid.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_quantum_mechan...
If you prefer free resources, youtube has a lot to offer if you're starting out with DAWs and music production. Just do a quick search about your favorite genre and you'll find some good youtubers explaining how to get started with it.
Last HN discussion I saw on the topic earned software engineers not to test music and music theory like say learning a programming language.
I ask don’t think I have the talent for it. One night over the holidays him and I were up late screwing around with GarageBand and he was composing interested tracks while I struggled to do anything. Granted he played the trump years ago but that can’t give him that much of an advantage?
I have a similar issues with front end web design. I can have everything pictured in my head and even and idea of how to achieve it but somehow it never ends up looking like what my brain envisioned.
- Watching tutorials/following courses on a musical genre you like
- Picking a reference track before you start composing
- Using sample packs, then maybe replacing/recreating sounds you don't particularly like
Exploring tastes from a cuisine/culture you're not that familiar with; figuring out what combinations of flavours do and don't work together; using new "tools" with stuff you're already used to eating (wok versus slow cooker versus pressure cooker versus grill versus barbecue...); experimenting with fermenting; pairing dishes with wine or cheese or whatever. The list goes on.
It's one of my favourite ways to get away from a screen and keyboard.
on a side note: there's a lot of different topics here, the easy ones i can see: - cooking - baking - drinks - cheese and other preservation foods, cured meats, etc... - fermenting: beers, cider, kombucha, sour dough, etc...
The next generation communication systems (e.g. WiFi 7, 6G) will probably utilize this form of signal analysis for higher bandwidth and more efficient communication [3]. The modern biosignal analysis (ECG, EEG, EMG, etc) is already moving toward time-frequency analysis[4].
[1]Higher-Order Spectral Analysis Toolbox for use with Matlab:
https://labcit.ligo.caltech.edu/~rana/mat/HOSA/HOSA.PDF
[2]Time-Frequency Foundations of Communications:Concepts and Tools:
https://www.mins.ee.ethz.ch/pubs/files/SPMAG2013.pdf
[3]The OTFS Interview – Implications of a 6G Candidate Technology:
https://www.6gworld.com/exclusives/the-otfs-interview-implic...
[4]Analyzing Neural Time Series Data: Theory and Practice:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/analyzing-neural-time-series-...
Occult just for fun. Pick an author and go with it. Crowley, Madam Blavatsky, or more ancient texts so one has a purpose to learn Latin.
Cold war geopolitics. Read original documents and newspapers from archives instead of from books which only serve as inspiration unless written by serious researchers. Many materials are not accessible but some are.
The fruit of econometrics hangs higher, but it's even more applicable.
It’s called the human brain
I recommend this MIT lecture series, it’s pretty high level and explains some of the current tools and methods, findings. I don’t have any biology background but found it easy to understand.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP60IKRN_pFptIBxe...
1. Berger 1967 ISBN13:978-0385058988
2. Goffman 1986 ISBN:9780930350918