User:Xenonts
Hello! I'm Xenonts. I have been using Wikipedia for as long as I can remember,[citation needed] but I created my account in 2018. I wanted my user page to include various interests of mine, and I think it has essentially become a compendium of subjects I find intriguing. The main body of this page is under the "Wikipedia articles I find interesting" heading.
I am originally from Morris County, New Jersey (which falls in the region of North Jersey), in the United States, but am currently attending college in Ohio.
A bit more about me
[edit]If you're reading this far then you'd seemingly like to know a bit more about me as a person, but I don't wish to go too in depth on my personal life for presumably unsurprising reasons. However, below are some more general things (in no particular order) which I don't mind sharing. Also, please note that I’m not one to subscribe to labels of identity as a primary point to get to know someone and that I generally describe myself more by my interests.
- I am a cisgender man, so if you wish to refer to me for whatever reason, please do so using the pronouns he, him, etc.
- I'm currently studying environmental science in college
- My dream job would be to conduct research in the field of planetary geology
- I am almost always a visual editor of Wikipedia, as I'm not someone who is great with coding or similar conventions
- I am bisexual
- Sto studiando un po' l'italiano, ma non sono ancora fluente nella lingua!
- I consider myself an agnostic atheist
- I am a humanist and very much an optimist (or, more specifically, a secular agathist)
- My personal philosophy is, in a very basic sense, that society always trends towards good.
If you want to know about some more specific interests of mine, feel free to read some of the sections below.
Some of my central interests
[edit]- Americana
- Astronomy
- Baseball, as a fan of the New York Yankees
- Carl Sagan's works, including my favorite book, Pale Blue Dot
- Cartography/Geography
- The band Chicago
- Environmental science, as mentioned above
- Film photography; I mainly shoot with 35mm on an early 1950s Kodak Retina Ia
- Hiking
- History in general, but right now, particularly American history in the latter half of the 19th century (i.e., the Civil War and Gilded Age periods)
- Listening to music; I listen to many genres of music, but my favorite is probably classic rock
- Playing instruments; I play several saxophones, and main the soprano saxophone, as well as low clarinets, my favorite of which being the alto clarinet
- Seinfeld
- Time as a concept
- Statistics
- Vexillology
Specific interests of mine
[edit]Some of my favorite books
[edit]- If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan (as mentioned above)
- The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
- What If? by Randall Monroe (I'm a big fan of his webcomic, xkcd, as well!)
Some of my favorite movies
[edit]- Bonnie and Clyde, 1967
- The General, 1926
- The Godfather, 1972
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 1966
- Stand by Me, 1986
Some of my favorite music albums
[edit]- 1984, Van Halen, 1984
- Abbey Road, the Beatles, 1969
- Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses, 1987
- Blood, Sweat & Tears, Blood, Sweat & Tears, 1968
- Chicago Transit Authority, the Chicago Transit Authority, 1969
- Chicago II, Chicago, 1970
- Revolver, The Beatles, 1966
- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles, 1967
- Time Out, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, 1959
- Wings at the Speed of Sound, Paul McCartney and Wings, 1976
Some of my favorite video games
[edit]- Deliver Us the Moon
- The Forgotten City
- L.A. Noire
- Minecraft
- Okami
- Railway Empire
- Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II
- The Wii series, with Wii Sports Resort being my favorite game in the series
Quotes I find memorable
[edit]- "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." —William Shakespeare (c.1599)
- "The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture." —Joseph Addison (1711)
- “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.” —Jonas Salk (1960s?)
- "And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." —Paul McCartney (1969)
- "It isn’t all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.” —Gene Roddenberry (1975?)
Wikipedia articles I find interesting
[edit]Lastly, since this is Wikipedia, I think it's fitting for me to include a (very) long list of articles on various topics I've found intriguing over the years, not including ones I've already mentioned; essentially, the following is a list of articles I find cool and would recommend reading at some point either because they're very well written or explain particularly interesting concepts:
- 1 - 2 + 3 - 4 + ⋯
- 46 BC
- 51st state
- 1639 transit of Venus
- 1973 Concorde eclipse flight
- Abiogenesis
- Absaroka (proposed state)
- Actuality film
- Adak, Alaska
- Adaptation (eye)
- Aeolian harp
- Aerobot
- Aeronomy
- Aestheticism
- Airborne observatory
- Albedo
- Albino redwood
- Alert, Nunavut
- Aleutian Islands World War II National Monument
- All the world's a stage
- Altissimo
- American frontier
- American march music
- Ampersand
- Anadrome
- And yet it moves
- Anglo-Frisian languages
- Anidolic lighting
- Antarctica during World War II
- Antiqua–Fraktur dispute
- Ars subtilior
- Atka B-24D Liberator
- Atlantic coastal pine barrens
- Atlanticism
- Atmosphere of Earth
- Atmosphere of the Moon
- Atmosphere of Pluto
- Atomic clock
- Aviation in the pioneer era
- Banana paper
- Battle for Mexico City
- Battle of Cuddalore (1783)
- Belle Époque
- Bioregionalism
- Blake Plateau
- Blood Falls
- Blowhole (geology)
- Boeing YAL-1
- A Boy and His Atom
- Brackish water
- Breviograph
- The Brick Moon
- Caffenol
- Calque
- Canadian raising
- Canyon de Chelly National Monument
- Cape to Cairo Railway
- Cat organ
- Central Park be-ins
- Chess annotation symbols
- Childlore
- Chirality
- Christmas truce
- City-state
- Cold seep
- Color temperature
- Common heritage of humanity
- Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir
- Connecticut Western Reserve
- Cool S
- Core Four
- Corrido
- Cottage Gardens
- Creole architecture in the United States
- Cryptic (geology)
- Cultural impact of the Beatles
- Cyprus mutiny
- Dagen H
- Data and information visualization
- De Stijl
- Death from laughter
- Decipherment of cuneiform
- Deckle
- Delmarva Peninsula
- Deus vult
- Disrupted planet
- Dream argument
- Earthlight (astronomy)
- Eggnog riot
- Environmental portrait
- Escape attempts and victims of the inner German border
- Eskaleut languages
- Eureka, Nunavut
- Exploration of Pluto
- Extreme ironing
- Extreme trans-Neptunian object
- Extremes on Earth
- Eye music
- Fairy chess piece
- Fallingwater
- Feynman diagram
- Firelands
- Flag of Earth
- Flag of the Green Mountain Boys
- Fleuron (typography)
- Fort Ross, California
- Franco-British Union
- Freedom to roam
- Freedom Riders
- Freezing level
- French Aerostatic Corps
- Friendship, New Jersey
- Frutiger Aero
- Fulgurite
- Gay Nineties
- Geologic time scale
- Geology of Antarctica
- Geology of the Moon
- Geology of Socotra
- Ghoti
- Glossary of environmental science
- Glossary of jazz and popular music
- Glossary of music terminology
- Gravettian
- Green Revolution
- Haibun
- Hertzsprung–Russell diagram
- High-altitude nuclear explosion
- Highly composite number
- History of Antarctica
- History of timekeeping devices
- History of the United States (1789–1815)
- History of the United States (1865–1917)
- History of the United States (1964–1980)
- Hoba meteorite
- Holocene calendar
- Human–canine bond
- Human outpost
- Humanism
- Hypercomplex number
- Indian reunification
- Ink wash painting
- Intercalation (timekeeping)
- Interesting number paradox
- Intertidal zone
- Irony punctuation
- Island of stability
- Jackson Hole
- Jersey Dutch language
- Jesus bloodline
- Jim Bridger
- Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania
- Julie d'Aubigny
- Just Room Enough Island
- Královec Region
- L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat
- Language change
- Language family
- LaTeX
- Latin influence in English
- Libertas
- Lichtenburg figure
- Ligature (writing)
- Liminal space (aesthetic)
- Lincoln Highway
- List of artificial objects on the Moon
- List of artificial radiation belts
- List of chemical compounds with unusual names
- List of classical music concerts with an unruly audience response
- List of European tropical cyclones
- List of ghost towns in Alaska
- List of ghost towns in Hawaii
- List of historical unrecognized states
- List of language regulators
- List of map projections
- List of medieval abbreviations
- List of musical symbols
- List of musical works in unusual time signatures
- List of non-standard dates
- List of regions of the United States
- List of state partition proposals in the United States
- List of sundial mottos
- List of tautological place names
- List of tectonic plates
- List of unsolved problems in physics
- Listenbourg
- Long s
- Longyearbyen
- Lost Dakota
- Louisiana Creole
- Lunar geologic timescale
- Manhattanization
- Margaret Brown
- Meng Po
- Mensural notation
- Meroë
- Mesosphere
- Metric prefix
- Middle English
- Milankovitch cycles
- Mir-2
- Molecular vibration
- Moonbase
- Mots d'Heures
- Mummy brown
- Murderer's Row
- My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love
- M&M Boys
- Nacirema
- Nag Hammadi library
- Names of the American Civil War
- Nang Tani
- Native Esperanto speakers
- Naqada culture
- Neapolitan language
- Neume
- Neutral Moresnet
- New Ireland (Maine)
- New York – New Jersey Line War
- Nickajack
- Noctilucent cloud
- Nok culture
- Non-numerical words for quantities
- Non-place
- North American X-15
- Northeast megalopolis
- Nostratic languages
- Nuclear close calls
- Nullification Crisis
- Obelus
- Oceanic dispersal
- Oikophobia
- Ombre
- Ong's Hat, New Jersey
- Oort cloud
- Operation Highjump
- Orders of magnitude (length)
- Outer Lands
- Outline of meals
- Panhumanism
- Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
- Parity of zero
- Paul Gauguin
- Peconic County, New York
- Per sign
- Percy Grainger
- Perfect number
- Petrichor
- Phantom island
- Phases of ice
- Phlegethon
- Phosphene
- Photographers of the American Civil War
- Phrygian cap
- Physics beyond the Standard Model
- Planetary geology
- Political geography of Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Post-theism
- Progress M-34
- Project Mohole
- Proto-cuneiform
- Proton decay
- Provisional government
- Pyramiden
- Pyrography
- Quartz clock
- R (programming language)
- Rag-and-bone man
- Republic of Formosa
- Republic of Indian Stream
- Republic of Pirates
- Retail apocalypse
- Revolutions of 1848
- Ribs (recordings)
- Río Rico, Tamaulipas
- Rodney, Mississippi
- Roof and tunnel hacking
- Roundhay Garden Scene
- Rubber room (bunker)
- Rubble pile
- Running Fence
- Russian Fort Elizabeth
- .su
- S. R. Crown Hall
- Sable Island
- Salt marsh
- Satellite tornado
- Saybrook Colony
- The School of Athens
- Serapis flag
- Shaftment
- Shooting an apple off one's child's head
- Shorthand
- Sixth borough
- Sky lobby
- Sokal affair
- Solar eclipse of July 28, 1851
- Solid oxygen
- Solipsism
- Solomon Perel
- South Atlantic tropical cyclone
- Space advocacy
- Space Station Freedom
- Spacetime
- Spanish expeditions to the Pacific Northwest
- Spanish Main
- Spencerian script
- Spilling water for luck
- Sprocket hole photography
- St Michael's Mount
- Stardust (spacecraft)
- Starfish Prime
- Stede Bonnet
- Sumerian religion
- Summer of Love
- Sun dog
- Superseded theories in science
- Swinging Sixties
- Swiss Style (design)
- Table of nuclides
- Tanais
- TAU (spacecraft)
- Terza rima
- Tetration
- Thermopause
- Thimble Islands
- Timbre
- Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana
- Timeline of the far future
- Todd Beamer
- Tracy’s Rock
- Tutankhamun's trumpets
- Tuvan People's Republic
- Union Carbide Building
- Unit of time
- United Nations laissez-passer
- United States Antarctic Program
- Upper-atmospheric lightning
- Urban prairie
- Valles Marineris
- Venera
- Venus snow
- Vinicunca
- Voltaire
- Vulcan (hypothetical planet)
- Wanderlust
- Warming stripes
- Waybury Inn
- Wetland
- Wilmer McLean
- World Federalism
- Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
- York Factory
- Young Man at His Window
- Zhuangzi (book)
External links
[edit]Firstly, here's the link to my user page on Wikimedia Commons, but please note that it currently only links back to this page.
Here are some other websites outside of Wikipedia that I find interesting. Please note that I have no affiliation with any of them.
- earth.nullschool.net—a real-time visualization of certain climate data on Earth
- isitfridayyet.net—I’ll let you figure out this one yourself
In closing
[edit]Thank you for reading this far! I'd like to leave you with a quote from Carl Sagan, which also happened to be my senior yearbook quote in high school:
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." (1980)
~~~
Cent'anni!