3 other cool nerds to play board games with consistently.
Are you calling yourself cool? That’s so not cool.
Self confidence is in fact very cool. And I’ll convince you over a game of Agricola.
I like your moxie. Very cool of you to be so graceful towards an unkind comment
Oooh, hey!! I have that game but haven’t played it yet. It looks freaking dope. Any suggestions? If I can’t convince my family to play I was just going to try it solo
It’s the “revised edition” if that matters
It’s a fantastic game. If you’re playing with less experienced gamers I would probably leave the occupation/improvement cards out at first.
And seconding what Cile said. You show up to a gaming meetup with Agricola and I can pretty much guarantee someone is going to want to play. It’s a classic for a reason. Way easier to convince someone that already likes board games.
-
organize a “games night” and see if people are interested: “Hey, on Friday night I’m inviting people over to play Agricola. Do you want to come?”
Board Games, in particular Euros that take can take over 2 hours to play are not something that get pulled out on a whim during social gatherings. -
find a board game meetup near you (try meetup.com for example). It’s easier to turn board gamers into friends than friends into board gamers.
-
Maybe he already has one cool nerd and is looking for a few more.
In amateur radio, making an Earth-Moon-Earth contact. That means bouncing your signal off of the moon, basically using it as a satellite. You generally need a big antenna array to do it. Also you need a very high quality amplifier to receive since the signal you get back from the mood is very weak. You can hear an echo of yourself delayed about 2.6 seconds, since the moon is about 1.3 light seconds away.
That’s dope
Dude that sounds amazing and would be crazy to demo to someone.
Well, my hobby is searching for historical religious artifacts, so…
Your Holy Grail is the Holy Grail
The Lost Ark of the Covenant actually 😁
Are you sure?
Woodworking: An entire log of American Chestnut.
About a century ago, the species was all but wiped out by a blight that came from Japanese chestnut. Some three billion trees died. The blight actually survives in the forest living on but not damaging oak trees, so American chestnuts are struggling to reclaim their historic habitats. The species is critically endangered and efforts to rehabilitate the population are underway, including trying to breed large surviving individuals or to genetically engineer blight resistant trees. Logging is of course completely out of the question.
American Chestnut is an excellent lumber, with many of the properties of white oak in a faster growing tree. It is straight grained, hard and strong, easy to saw and split, rot resistant due to tannins. A fantastic choice for indoor and outdoor furniture, structural timber, even telephone poles. Reclaimed chestnut timber from old buildings is highly prized, and what woodworker wouldn’t love access to a few hundred board feet of freshly kiln dried American chestnut…if it was possible to ethically source.
A couple more things about American Chestnuts:
-Chestnut forests used to cover a shitton of the northeast before being reduced to basically nothing
-“Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire” is about the tradition of eating American Chestnuts in the winter…
-… Because for some, it was a treat. And for others, it was practically a staple food! They were an extremely abundant resource
-Seriously, look at the size of the original American Chestnut forest:
Farmers used to just let their critters loose into the forests to eat the chestnuts off the forest floor because there were just so many. Now I think every American chestnut tree alive has a name.
If I could time travel, I’d go see the chestnut forests first. I only learned about them a few years ago but I think about it a weird amount (maybe because I have a huge elm tree in my yard)
Like can you imagine entire states covered in them? I don’t think they were quite the size of redwoods but they were ancient and well-established forests. And it makes me sad that most people don’t even know what we lost because some rich asshole just HAD to have foreign trees on their estates.
Christ, it’s ALWAYS the fucking rich assholes!
because some rich asshole just HAD to have foreign trees on their estates.
Blight would have happened at some point. Global travel made it inevitable.
This made me immediately sad
This is really interesting. A few years ago I bought this American Chestnut salt and pepper set. The guy who made it did tell me that he got the wood from a beam out of a barn built before the Civil War but I didn’t realize why. I just thought it was a really good looking salt Shaker and pepper grinder…
Thanks, now I want one too. Is there any feasible way to start trying to grown some of these myself, while obviously attempting to prevent infection of my crop?
This would be an excellent question to ask The American Chestnut Foundation.
Why can’t they just be grown here instead of japan?
Because the disease has become endemic to American forests.
The American Chestnut was the dominant tree in the ecosystem of the forests of Eastern North America. Per Wikipedia, “it was said that a squirrel could walk from New England to Georgia solely on the branches of American chestnuts.” In the late 19th century, Japanese chestnut trees were imported, and they brought with them Asian Bark Fungus. American Chestnuts are quite susceptible to this fungus, and it largely wiped out the population.
The fungus infects the above ground portion of the tree, killing it. New shoots will emerge from the stump as the below ground portion of the tree isn’t affected by the fungus, but the new growth doesn’t get very far before the fungus kills it off again. We have no hope of eliminating the fungus from the forests.
So we’ve got these zombie tree stumps that will grow enough of a plant to keep the fungus alive and running (it also survives on other species of tree), but not enough to grow large and reproduce. There are some remaining adult trees here and there but the species is considered functionally extinct in the wild as it really isn’t able to thrive because this fungus is among us. So unless we can hybridize or otherwise breed fungus resistant chestnut trees, we ain’t got no American Chestnuts.
American chestnuts are also susceptible to ink disease and the Chinese Gall Wasp.
A lot of problems were caused by importing plants to North America; tumbleweeds aren’t indigenous, they’re Russian, and a massive fucking problem.
An extra upvote for “fungus is among us”.
I am untethered, and my rage knows no bounds
We should engineer a virus to attack the fungus. I’m certain it won’t lead to a Last Of Us scenario.
For example, in the headphone world, the Sennheiser HE-1 headphones are said to be like the pinnacle of headphones and most expensive, costing $59000 for a pair.
Edit: added image
The irony with those is that once you’re at a stage of life where you can afford those, you probably can’t hear anything over 14kHz anyway. At least there’s that sweet midrange!
Out of curiosity, what would you plug those into to get the best use of them? I couldn’t imagine the headphone jack on my motherboard would be able to take full advantage of them.
You’d use a dedicated audio setup with it, yeah. I don’t know if the 59k is the headphones only or if it includes an amplifier, but a hi range amplifier can cost thousands too.
I’m not an audiophile tho, ain’t got the money, and even if I did my setup would at most cost €1000. So if anyone wants to post some real numbers go ahead.
In the typewriter community, the “holy grail” differs from person to person, but for me it was a 1930s Royal P equipped with a rare typeface called Vogue. Very, very rarely they’ll pop up from people who don’t know how significant that is, and that’s the only way to get one at a reasonable price - because those who do know what it is will ask thousands of dollars for it.
Eventually I found one for a comparatively cheap price (sub 1k), and the only reason someone else didn’t snap it up before I saw it was because the guy refused to ship it. Local pickup only. So I took the chance to drive the 10 hours round trip to snag it, and it sits proudly as the crown jewel of my collection:
Hells to the yeah
Your actions were the only correct option. This is the same way I snagged my Onix Reference 3 floor speakers. Someone on Facebook marketplace was giving them away for free because they belonged to the previous owner of their new house, and the speakers were taking up too much space in the theater room the new owner wanted to use for Netflix and yoga. I only had to drive 2 hours, but I got immediately into my truck. They also included a Velodyne DLS-3750R Powered Subwoofer, and an Onix Rocket RSC200 Center-Channel Speaker.
Any serious guitarists will let you know their holy grail.
It’s not any guitar; it’s another guitar.
I bought mine for $100!
I got it new back in the early 2000s but it had a flaw in the fretboard. I returned it for exchange but they discontinued it so refunded me instead. Telling this story to someone a decade later, they suggested eBay. I looked and there it was, bought it on the spot and had it in my hands a week later.
I have enough guitars but am now looking at other instruments. A cello is high on the list.
I don’t care what the other nerds say. This is the Holy Grail for me:
White border tho…
The Imperator-Class Titan is the largest mini in Warhammer 40k.
I have fantasized about using one of these in an actual game ever since I learned of their existence in 8th grade.
My hobby is (or rather was) collecting Seiko watches.
I stopped buying watches, but my holy Grail would be “The” Pogue. The original 6139-6005 yellow face automatic chronograph worn by Col. William Pogue on the Skylab mission.
Other than the NASA issued Omegas, this was his personal watch that he just took with him into space, as NASA didn’t want the Astronauts to take their Speedmasters home and so they couldn’t train as much with them.
This also was the first automatic chronograph in space, as no one had tried before if they would work without gravity (surprise, they did, as momentum is still very much a thing in space).
Here is a very nice write up by a very knowledgeable guy:
https://www.plus9time.com/blog/2017/12/24/the-true-seiko-pogue-chronograph-6139-6005
Heard also gshocks were one of the few space rated watches for astronauts
Mmm love a good space watch. Personal grail for me would be an Omega Skywalker X-33.
To clarify, would you consider this specific individual watch the holy grail, or one of that make, model and spec?
Well, the ultimate holy Grail would be this individual watch
Second would be a “true Pogue” of the same spec and very close in serial number, although that would have to compete with a few other nice Seikos… There are so many out there. A platinum first Grand Seiko. A Seiko Spacewalk. A working and complete Seiko TV Watch (as seen in James Bond - Octopussy) 😉.
I do own a fine 6139-6002 yellow dial. However, that’s a later “rest of the world” model, with a more golden dial and different wording. Still nice, though. 😊
For me with gaming (both playing and dev), a Steam Deck. Never wanted anything more in my life, seeing people have them and barely use them hurts. But I’m on long-term sick leave and live paycheck to paycheck, not able to save anything and it doesn’t look like that’ll change anytime soon. And it’s more than just wanting a cool thing, all I have is a shitty laptop from 2010 that barely plays 1080p video, and a TV I found outside that gets so warm that it’s hard to sit in front of for longer than two hours at a time. The laptop has no battery so it has to be used with the charger connected all the time and it’s too heavy to comfortably use anywhere but at a desk. I also have back and knee problems and having something like a Steam Deck would allow me to play and develop in bed or on my sofa and save me some pain.
Oh man that sucks
Can I ask you how old are you and why are you on sick leave? Your family can’t help you?
I like collecting games, nothing crazy like graded games (graded anything is a scam) or like I have to have every game ever made for a specific console, I just like having a big shelf of games.
I really want a like new, in box green Halo edition original Xbox. People want stupid money for them but I just want to have one. I’ve got a good condition boxed regular black console and a boxed Halo 3 Xbox 360 but I reeeeally want the green OG.
Here’s what people are trying to sell a NIB version for
Hell yeah. If I had space and money this is what I’d be doing. I have some PS1 games (and of course my fav Halo 1-3) from my childhood that are stored away somewhere at my mother’s… might have been thrown away by now it’s been so long :^(
In the world of synthesisers, I’m going to say the Yamaha CS-80. Anyone who was introduced to synthesised music by listening to the Blade Runner soundtrack will recognise it. With its many tactile modulation options, it’s arguably the pinnacle of the synth as a performance instrument.
came to say original arp 2600. or an og tr-808/909
The 2600 is definitely a worthy nomination. The 2500 is even more grail-ish.
there’s one on reverb for $280k o.O
I’d like a prophet 5 or minimood model d.
I finally saw a Baltimore Oriole (bird) in real life at my feeder. Its was beautiful and vibrant and now I need to find another cool bird to look at.
have you already seen a scarlet tanager or rose breasted grosbeak?
Grosbeak yes, Tanager no. But it is on the list.
