____twoism

Ok let's be so real, we've all got one. Neurotypical people it is your time to fucking shine.

Mine is BOC + Gone with the Wind. Weird combo but there is combo of both in my mind

Didn't add, but this is your place to info-dump. Free information is freedom to those who are receptive

I regularly get *A Thing* that I briefly obsess over and want to learn all about... until the next thing comes along.

Currently: The Spanish Civil War.

Trains and synthesisers and dates and numbers.

Gone with the wind? I get that completely

A_Northern_Soul wrote:I regularly get *A Thing* that I briefly obsess over and want to learn all about... until the next thing comes along.

Currently: The Spanish Civil War.

I deeply deeply relate down to my soul.

llydia wrote:Trains and synthesisers and dates and numbers.

Gone with the wind? I get that completely

A true southerner can never resist a lost cause.
Take away the main setting (which is more of a backdrop than anything) and it's honestly a blunt story about the woman condition, both sides of the coin. You are not supposed to root for Scarlett but goddamn it she has drip. You scream at Melanie that her best friend and her sister-in-law is constantly trying to grope her man, but goddamn it she probably knew the whole time regardless, and she still loved, respected, and gave Scarlett another chance anyways. Yea I could go on forever. The book is fucking better.

Also ilydia you CALCULATE? Shit dawg you got my respect, you and the boys got something beautiful in common

I've had these all my life. Often it's some game or other. I had a really boring job for a few years where i was officially required to sit at a desk pretending to work so they could justify paying me until they really needed me for a coding task so I used to reverse engineer games I like. I had more than one well known game which I won't name for... reasons, stripped down and decompiled by hand. Just really like puzzles.

But the evergreen one for me is the musical Wicked. Seen it live so often I've literally lost count but it's in the high teens by now and I'm booked in for their 20th birthday celebration. I know it's everybody's now, because of the movie, but being in the audience of that when I had a particularly bad case of sadbrains cracked my trans egg so it's always gonna be a thing.

I've taken every friend I have that hasn't seen it to kind of vicariously re-experience the discovery of it through them, got art on the walls, have a forever project to make a replica of a particular costume that fits me which currently consists of a bucket of collected fabric samples and the actual sewing plan it was based on. Recreated the entire west end theatre as a 3d model in Blender, you know, that kind of thing. Found out what makeup they use to do the green witch and bought it all. One halloween I'm gonna absolutely rock that look.

Lately, it's speed jigsaw puzzling. I've competed at my first national competition, you're given 2 hours to do a 500 piece jigsaw unseen. But the brand that sponsors it has used the same cutting dies for 50 years so you can buy any 500 piece jigsaw from them and practice. So I've hit up every charity shop within 50 miles and raided their supply of second hand Ravensburger 500s and I have an ikea kallax shelf that looks like a vintage jigsaw shop.

Current top time is 1h25 which is a) cheating because it's by redoing one I've already solved so it doesn't count and b) actually not that competitive for speed jigsawing, it's about twice as much time as it ought to be. But like, that's not the point. It's still hilarious to me that you can take a famously restful, long time activity and turn it into an endurance sport, so I'm doing it.

Why yes, I am diagnosed neurospicy.

Interestingly, they are currently investigating the link between GI disorders and neurodivergency as they share similar pathways in the body. I'm ADHDed out my nut and obviously have similar gut issues to yourself Negamuse. That Vagus Nerve stimulation unit I mentioned in the other thread calms both conditions. While I do often enjoy my ADHD, sometimes it's nice to be less thinky.

Negamuse wrote:Lately, it's speed jigsaw puzzling. I've competed at my first national competition, you're given 2 hours to do a 500 piece jigsaw unseen. But the brand that sponsors it has used the same cutting dies for 50 years so you can buy any 500 piece jigsaw from them and practice. So I've hit up every charity shop within 50 miles and raided their supply of second hand Ravensburger 500s and I have an ikea kallax shelf that looks like a vintage jigsaw shop.

Current top time is 1h25 which is a) cheating because it's by redoing one I've already solved so it doesn't count and b) actually not that competitive for speed jigsawing, it's about twice as much time as it ought to be. But like, that's not the point. It's still hilarious to me that you can take a famously restful, long time activity and turn it into an endurance sport, so I'm doing it.

Why yes, I am diagnosed neurospicy.

Omg same! Love sharpening the brain, awareness and pattern recognition are such important muscles for us. Sudoku has especially been a favorite of mine lately. So strange because I am currently in a similar spot as yourself, I'm stuck at a boring desk-job currently and puzzles are one of the few things keeping me sane. What a smaaall world.

Wildfire wrote:While I do often enjoy my ADHD, sometimes it's nice to be less thinky.

Absolutely agree. Personally I don't find 'turning your brain off' to be healthy at all, however 'quieting the mind' is required. I have been a little hidden about it just because ppl will immediately get the wrong idea about it, but fuck it, I'm diagnosed bipolar II so it is all the more important to/for me. Finding balance on the tightrope and mitigating intensities and extremes are paramount no matter your struggle.

Besides the really obvious music-making stuff (I sing and play a lot of instruments and I love FM synthesis), I have a thing for really sparse code. I love it when code is very short/concise, still does a lot of things (through emergent behavior) but remains readable and maintainable. I can sit in the dark and attempt to write code like that for days on end (I once wrote a simple 3d software renderer in C like this). I also love it when this code runs using very little energy, on very simple hardware, and stays easy to re-implement. Apparently this is called perma-computing which has a pretty neat community of cool people around it. The flip-side of this is I get extremely annoyed at bloated software, or when code becomes long and unwieldy (instead of following unix philosophy), and it is now almost physically painful for me to install and use a modern web-browser like firefox or chromium (among many other such tortures).

Relatedly, I do this thing I call "triangle golf", where I try to create distinct 3d models with as little triangles as possible. What is the least possible amount of triangles to communicate something? And when does its meaning dissolve? You can make a tree by stacking a large tetrahedron on top of a small one. It's infinitely interesting to me. I love retro 3d graphics for mostly this reason. I dream of making an immersive sim with this design principle. I can make pretty convincing humanoids in just a 100 triangles.

I also sculpt a lot of female anatomy in blender (using a lot more triangles or implicit surfaces), in particular the hip/thigh region. I must have sculpted hundreds of these, with no destination for them, over many thousands of hours.

steeldancer-x wrote:Also ilydia you CALCULATE? Shit dawg you got my respect, you and the boys got something beautiful in common

Me and my wife like to play a little game with it sometimes to see exactly how far I can push it. It surprises both of us when I get it correct. I'm usually always spot on, or exactly 2 off. I primarily see the world in patterns. I medicate to this day so the effect is not so strong, when I was younger it was really strong. I would have extremely complex, open eye hallucinations. Go on "thought journeys" which later on in life I would be able to correlate to various religions. These days, I just get synaesthesia. I miss the colours really, they have faded as I have grown up. According to tests which we've done since I was a child, I am the way I am because of a bit of brain damage. I am lucky to be able to live a fairly normal life, other people (such as Rainman) seem to be fully gone into that place I briefly touch.

I have listened to almost every Merzbow release (this was largely before he got into genAI stuff, yes I am very bummed about it, but no I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater on this one personally). We are talking around 500 releases over the course of the past 20 years.

I have notes with an elaborate system for categorizing his releases that's years in the making and that someday I'm going to use to make a guide to his discography, but I need to finish listening to his 20s material and reassess a handful of releases first.

Redd Panderson wrote:I have listened to almost every Merzbow release (this was largely before he got into genAI stuff, yes I am very bummed about it, but no I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater on this one personally). We are talking around 500 releases over the course of the past 20 years.

I have notes with an elaborate system for categorizing his releases that's years in the making and that someday I'm going to use to make a guide to his discography, but I need to finish listening to his 20s material and reassess a handful of releases first.

Can you narrow the 500 or so down to a Top 5? I'd be interested in checking that out.

Josh wrote:

Redd Panderson wrote:I have listened to around 500 Merzbow releases over the course of the past 20 years

Can you narrow the 500 or so down to a Top 5? I'd be interested in checking that out.

Top 5 is a hard call, but here's 5 top-tier Merzbow releases (with flavor text), plus some additional listening choose-your-own-adventure style!

1. "Ambient" recommendations
•Kamadhenu (is this noise raga? ʚɞ )
•Dead Lotus (three short and powerful noise movements, one mournful longform drone piece)

2. Very psychedelic
•Sha Mo 3000 (don't be discouraged by the first track, Hen's Teeth is a bop and Dreaming K-Dog makes my brain ripple)

3. Dive into the best of what he's known for
•Magnesia Nova (a seething electromagnetic tapestry with not a wasted moment. Listen to the linked remaster)

4. Hypnotic 80s camp horror VHS vibes
•Pornoise 1kg & Pornoise Xtra (these are one piece in my view and have been reissued as such, but skip the tracks Penis Art Is Microphone and Neon Swarm; the Merzbox version cut these two for a reason. I acknowledge that this work is 6 cassettes long, so optionally start with Pornoise Xtra for a taste)

***Additional choose-your-own-adventure listening ahead***

If you liked 1, listen to:
•Kaoscitron (weirdly cyberpunk with a heady abstract final track, Flamingo Cloud)
•Merzbuddha (a grounded, cyclical dub meditation beholding noise like colors of the mind. This could be the most important release for understanding Merzbow)
•Marmo (like opening a window to let the summer air in, then some of that air condenses into self-assembling machines)

If you liked 2, listen to:
•Merzzow (one of Merzbow's highest-musicality releases, Inside Looking Out is an ominous drone beauty, the blown-out bass on Elephant Song is dank, and listen for the horse that whinnies in reverse)
•24 Hours - A Day Of Seals (Good Morning Azarashi is a sunbaked lumbering drone slab, Mincle No Uta an exotic headrush dance, and don't sleep on the 4th disc's glittering starlight noise)
•Animal Magnetism (Quiet Man has more blown-out ear candy, Pier 39 is gorgeous, and A Ptarmigan is memorably dreamlike. Listen to the linked remaster)

If you liked 3, listen to:
•Hybrid Noisebloom (so many textures with petal-like round bits and curvy wiggles)
•Rhinogradentia (sadly only released as part of the Merzbox. Satisfying tension between cyclical sound objects and restless machinery, this one tempers a bit of the 90s intensity with an 80s-like atmosphere)

If you liked 4, listen to:
•Lotus Club - Le Sang Et La Rose (this is a surprising one, a fairly surrealistic musical collab from 1983 with Merzbow on tape loops)
•Collection 010 (bizarro jazz. It's three tracks long--don't mix it up with the two-track Collection 001)
•The Lampinak (eerie, entrancing loops and a steamy, swampy atmosphere)

Caveat: there's some impressive sounding 20s material that I haven't gotten quality time with yet (eg, some of the Nine Studies Of Ephemeral Resonance material I dipped into sounds really cool, and people say Sedonis is very good).

PS: not necessary, but if you like to get stoned, IMHO you cannot go wrong with a generous dose of THC any of the 16 albums recommended here!

Enjoy!

Redd Panderson wrote:

Josh wrote:

Redd Panderson wrote:I have listened to around 500 Merzbow releases over the course of the past 20 years

Can you narrow the 500 or so down to a Top 5? I'd be interested in checking that out.

Top 5 is a hard call, but here's 5 top-tier Merzbow releases (with flavor text), plus some additional listening choose-your-own-adventure style!

1. "Ambient" recommendations
•Kamadhenu (is this noise raga? ʚɞ )
•Dead Lotus (three short and powerful noise movements, one mournful longform drone piece)

2. Very psychedelic
•Sha Mo 3000 (don't be discouraged by the first track, Hen's Teeth is a bop and Dreaming K-Dog makes my brain ripple)

3. Dive into the best of what he's known for
•Magnesia Nova (a seething electromagnetic tapestry with not a wasted moment. Listen to the linked remaster)

4. Hypnotic 80s camp horror VHS vibes
•Pornoise 1kg & Pornoise Xtra (these are one piece in my view and have been reissued as such, but skip the tracks Penis Art Is Microphone and Neon Swarm; the Merzbox version cut these two for a reason. I acknowledge that this work is 6 cassettes long, so optionally start with Pornoise Xtra for a taste)

***Additional choose-your-own-adventure listening ahead***

If you liked 1, listen to:
•Kaoscitron (weirdly cyberpunk with a heady abstract final track, Flamingo Cloud)
•Merzbuddha (a grounded, cyclical dub meditation beholding noise like colors of the mind. This could be the most important release for understanding Merzbow)
•Marmo (like opening a window to let the summer air in, then some of that air condenses into self-assembling machines)

If you liked 2, listen to:
•Merzzow (one of Merzbow's highest-musicality releases, Inside Looking Out is an ominous drone beauty, the blown-out bass on Elephant Song is dank, and listen for the horse that whinnies in reverse)
•24 Hours - A Day Of Seals (Good Morning Azarashi is a sunbaked lumbering drone slab, Mincle No Uta an exotic headrush dance, and don't sleep on the 4th disc's glittering starlight noise)
•Animal Magnetism (Quiet Man has more blown-out ear candy, Pier 39 is gorgeous, and A Ptarmigan is memorably dreamlike. Listen to the linked remaster)

If you liked 3, listen to:
•Hybrid Noisebloom (so many textures with petal-like round bits and curvy wiggles)
•Rhinogradentia (sadly only released as part of the Merzbox. Satisfying tension between cyclical sound objects and restless machinery, this one tempers a bit of the 90s intensity with an 80s-like atmosphere)

If you liked 4, listen to:
•Lotus Club - Le Sang Et La Rose (this is a surprising one, a fairly surrealistic musical collab from 1983 with Merzbow on tape loops)
•Collection 010 (bizarro jazz. It's three tracks long--don't mix it up with the two-track Collection 001)
•The Lampinak (eerie, entrancing loops and a steamy, swampy atmosphere)

Caveat: there's some impressive sounding 20s material that I haven't gotten quality time with yet (eg, some of the Nine Studies Of Ephemeral Resonance material I dipped into sounds really cool, and people say Sedonis is very good).

PS: not necessary, but if you like to get stoned, IMHO you cannot go wrong with a generous dose of THC any of the 16 albums recommended here!

Enjoy!

Awesome! Thank you!

I have a stupid pet trick about being able to troubleshoot complex IT systems without as much as the most fragmented information, I guess this explains why I have worked in the field for 30+ years now on 24/7 support of major apps for big corps.

I am sure everyone can do it, but apparently that is not so. Always surprises me, I never thought I was any more than average.