How im also raising my little guy

Hey, not extinct! There are dozens of us

Also don’t forget MST3K and Lord of the Rings!

Cosmos (the original)
Connections with James Burke
Secret Life of Machines
All of David MacAulay’s books
- Connections 1 and 2. Maybe not 3.
- Man, Connections was such a good show. I gotta rewatch that sometime.
- The way things work is one of my favourite books. I still have the copy I got as a kid!
- QI when he’s older Taskmaster too, though there is a bit too much joke mystery at times.
Its never to early to read The Hobbit to get someone a lifelong addiction to the LoTR. I was trying for in-utero but my wife was not interested.
- I’m starting to read the Hobbit to my wife’s pregnant belly. My daughter is due in September so hopefully I’ll have read the full book by then. I’ll then read the Hobbit to her again when she’s old enough to retain it
Lotr is overrated, there i said it
- Even if you dislike the story, its impact on the fantasy genre is hard to argue against. I personally dislike the series too, but I refuse to call it overrated because it influences basically every aspect of modern fantasy writing.
- Youre very welcome to hold your incorrect opinion but please do not try to ruin other peoples fun. You could also tell us why you have your still very wrong opinion
- Have to say I agree.
- Doesn't matter, it's not on the list for quality. It's an important piece.
- If you want to put a little note saying 'the movies are overrated' sure, we can have a debate about that. Fantasy films really aren't for everyone, and adapting LotR is definitely not an easy task.
  If you genuinely mean the books as well, idk what to tell you. The history of the fantasy genre after LotR proves you're wrong.
- I agree. I enjoy it, but I'm not desperate for more. (I feel the same about the original Star Wars as well)
- Perhaps define "overrated" first or else I am not following your point.
- BOOOOOOOOO

Don't forget futurama and star trek

Star Trek is a difficult one. The oldest stuff is very dated, even TNG has some things that are very weird for a modern audience. But, some of the modern stuff is basically unwatchable.
- Yea there's some dated episodes but there's also measure of a man, past tense and a bunch of others that still absolutely slap
Specifically Star Trek: Elite Force and Futurama (Video Game)

Life of Brian is arguably better for a ensmuggening Python based education.

Nah, Life of Brian was just decent commentary. Holy Grail was silly in a pointless way that resonated with Nerd Boys in the 2000s.
- Does Holy Grail not resonate with Nerd Boys now?
- We grew up to appreciate Life of Brian more but you're right
Yeah but fewer people get the references
- If they don't get the references, they're just casuals.
- They didn't get most references in the 80s/90s either... this is the reason why nerds seemed weird...
- Really? Maybe I have been missing them my whole life.

My son wants to "game" like most other kids at his class. So I got an old laptop, installed linux mint on it with dosbox. He loves lemmings, the incredible machine 2 and rollercoaster tycoon

I fear that he won’t get many friends this way
Mainstream might be boring but it’s an easy way to connect with people
- That's the trouble with gamers these days, they're only in it for the friendship. Fucking posers.
- This was the argument I used in high school when I wanted an Xbox 360. My parents were super reluctant given the cost, and then I told them I have nothing to talk about with friends in the hallways and I'm left out of conversations (I was). They reconsidered and eventually folded, and I was very appreciative
- I didn't get many friends the old fashioned way and I turned out fine in the end.
- Column A, Column B
  The trick is to introduce your kid to your taste in gaming while they're young
  And then when they are in their tweens and want to game online with their mates, you set them up for it (with proper supervision and such, of course)
  And they WILL develop their own taste in gaming -- But they will have some common ground with you still.
  .... It worked for me and my dad (avid PC gamer, mostly plays strategy games and management sims though) anyway. Years later I convinced him to get Civ V and he completely destroyed me in it.
Omg the Incredible Machine!!!! Where can I play it, its been so long!
- I think the copyright expired and you can just download it for free, maybe its even on the internet archive. I got mine from abandonware or something like that.
Worms/Scorched Earth/Liero (pixel physics!)
That era had so many good Gorilla clones.
- Somehow this unlocked a child memory, when I found out there was a plain text file with the "insults" and I added my own. I felt like a true hacker..
Gotta get Jill of the Jungle on that bad boy

And the music of Weird Al

you don't need to try so hard, just don't let him have weird ideas about gender and hope he befriends at least one girl. that'll be enough. all these idiots need is a female friend going "don't be an idiot that's not how things work".

Or a sister, or any woman who has the standing to tell you "your teeth are blotchy and your breath is bad, that's why people won't kiss you, go to the dentist"
- I always wonder where are the mothers of these shitty young men?
  Like.
  If I even thought of going into a misogynistic phase during my younger years, my mother would have put me in my place, yanno?
  Are anglo mothers less sprited than latin american mothers?
We won the lottery on this. Had twins, 1 boy 1 girl at birth. They're too young to know if they're gonna be friends, enemies, (probably both?)
- Gotta get two nintendo DS then.

Thia feels like the Powerpuff Girls intro, but replace Chemical X with Young Sheldon.

I would add Kids in the Hall.

Throwing Discworld into the mix

Needs more BattleBots.

Robot Wars.
- ...grant imahara should've been cast as reed richards... =(

I'm not ~~dead~~ extinct yet!

I'm making a note here: Huge success

Extinct??!?

We're not dead yet, just old!

I rewatched Mythbusters recently. It's pretty disturbing, especially in the early seasons, how often they use actual human remains for what is essentially light entertainment. Like, they'll destroy an actual human skull for shits and giggles. They had disproved the myth on setting off an airbag with a slim jim and firing it into the head of a would be car jacker, but still had to replicate the results, so just shot a slim jim into an actual human skull, cheering and laughing as it's decimated. That was an actual person's skull. How they sourced it, and where the source acquired it, who knows. I'm fairly certain there is a family somewhere though that would be mortified.

Maybe, in the far future, I elected to have my skull sent back in time for that purpose.
Because I totally would.
- Oh yeah, totally! When I die, if the mythbusters need my corpse to test a myth, they're welcome to it! If I could, I'd choose the "cleaning the decaying corpse smell out of a car" myth; remembered forever as an unforgettable stench. Or one of the giant explosions, so I could rest in pieces.
I would be psyched as hell for my remains to be used on one of the most influential educational science shows of the era (plus like, that is a metal AF use for my skull). IDK, I know I'm not one of those people that venerates remains but even if I was, this seems like a grander memorial and contribution to science than having your remains parted out to then sit for years in a box in a closet, waiting for the physical anthro undergrads to do the "reassemble the original hands from this mixed up pile of phalanges" exercise for the umpteenth time.
- The key distinction here is your will. The will of these people is unkown. Their consent is unkown. If you're looking at the skulls for sale on the bone room for example, they don't even know the specific age of most of the skulls and are forced to guess within a range. If they don't even know how old they are how can they know with any certainty the circumstances of their death? Where in the world can you just find an unclaimed skull to sell? What are the chances that these skulls aren't the skulls of poor people, or otherwise disenfranchised people? It doesn't take much imagination to draw the conclusion that the ethics surrounding the buying and selling of human skulls, and then destroying them for no other reason than the momentary entertainment of of the global 1% is at the very best a grey area.
Jamie personally sourced it. That's all you need to know.
I'm fine with that. I mean, bodies aren't really people anymore. The people part flickers out to nothingness, leaving the meat husk.
Do they say they're actual human remains? They make realistic facsimiles specifically for testing things like they test.
- They do. They even go to a specific shop in one of the episodes: The Bone Room.
  The Bone Room was famous - within its niche - around the world. Featured on Mythbusters, as well as having several appearances on local news magazines, written up in articles in local and nationwide publications, and listed in guidebooks, The Bone Room was a destination for travelers and one of the must-see places for locals to bring their visiting friends and relatives.
I personally don’t give a fuck but yea others might not like it
I don't see what's disturbing about that. As long as the bodies come from a legal, reputable source, what's the big deal?

Portal the game, or Portal the TV series from TechTV?

Do you stan Leo or Patrick?
- Patrick. Leo was waaaay too pompous.
Or Portal the Australian death metal band?

This is the ritual to create a Tom Scott.

It’s funny. I’m definitely a nerd and neuro-something-or-other, and I have really good friends who are into all this stuff, Linux, Terry Pratchett etc - all of it - but I absolutely bounced off this smug nerd culture and grind my teeth if a group all start yelling “Ni!” or make me listen to the “hilarious” Portal song. Possibly I’m just trying too hard to be an arch, diffident outsider, this is my tribe, and I’m just the tribe jerk.

I feel you. I often hate things because too many people annoy me by liking them too much but ya know that's nebulous and stupid. As I've gotten older I've just kinda stopped letting that happen and try to give things a chance

I would recommend introducin the son to a literal lemon in real life prior to playing Portal 2.

... probably goes the same for a p0taTo.

That's why you introduce LOTR before Portal 2 -
PO-TAY-TOES: Boil 'em, Mash 'em, Stick 'em in a stew.
Make sure it's not a lemon party.

I don’t like being so seen.

I dunno. I grew up on He-Man, Transformers and G.I. Joe, and I think I turned out OK. I suppose I also grew up on Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, and The Neverending Story, which may have been just as formative in my nerdiness and are leagues ahead of those first three in terms of quality.

I grew up on all of those exact same things and I’m not a nerd, so it’s basically a crapshoot anyhoot.

This is what I mean when I say I'm teaching my kids Python

Click a picture of the little guy each and every day to show them later how things were when they were growing up. You can use something like DD-DigitalDiary Otherwise these memories will be lost forever. And it has better privacy than all other google slop

Also i would suggest Audiobooks. Lots o them available for Free. In Youtube or Pitrats software. To learn how to act and live in life

Cool. Like Ed Kemper.

Nice. Very cool.

You’ll also want to become a hippie parent for accuracy

Ah, trying to bring back old nerdus obnoxious, eh?

Good old times.

I could've created the parody OSS license "Programmers of Ni License", nowadays some people would like to expand that word to the hard-R N-word, with an 80+% chance that those people's account are littered with actual nazi shit, not just "liking edgy jokes".

Don't hate us cuz you ain't us