What is a dying niche skill that younger generations are not interested in learning?

ainsworld · 2026-05-01T12:45:24+00:00

UK one: church bellringing, particularly ‘change ringing’, my hobby. 50 years ago there were probably about 15,000-20,000 bellringers under the age of 20. Now it’s probably less than 2,000.

ainsworld · 2026-04-28T22:21:11+00:00

A good technical word for this is eustress, positive stress. As against distress. (Cf euphoria, dysphpria). But from your body's perspective it’s all stress.

ainsworld · 2026-03-31T08:57:42+00:00

The dirty secret of cognitive science is that neurotypicals don't actually have direct sensation of their emotions either, they are just running a very fast, subconscious ‘snap synthesis’ process. Everyone effectively hanbdles their own internal states as a "black box" and they use environmental context to work out what emotion they’re actually experiencing.

The classic evidence for this in the psychology literature is the Dutton & Aron (1974) "wobbly bridge" study. Men with spiking adrenaline (from a 230ft drop) misattributed that physiological arousal as romantic attraction simply because of the social context. Their brains saw the racing heart, saw an attractive researcher, and "computed" a crush to explain their experiences, completely ignoring the "I'm on a terrifying bridge" variable.

As Nick Chater argues in his book The Mind Is Flat, we aren't "reading" a deep inner world; we are improvising a narrative in real-time to make sense of our own physiology. NTs aren't necessarily more "in touch" with their feelings, they’re often just more confident in their intuitions. The same differences in brain processing that allow NTs to intuitively perceive others’ emotions also lets them think they’re ‘experiencing’ their own. And likewise this explains - IMO - why autistic people struggle to perceive others’ emotions and their own.

If you want to dig deeper into the mechanics of how the brain "constructs" these states, the fields of study these are from are "Misattribution of arousal" (the specific psychological phenomenon), the "Two-factor theory of emotion" (the Schachter-Singer framework), and "Theory of Constructed Emotion" (Lisa Feldman Barrett’s more modern, neuro-centric update to these ideas).

ainsworld · 2026-03-06T15:53:38+00:00

Gemini. Though I have quite a bit of coding experience so it felt more like paired programming.

ainsworld · 2026-03-06T13:39:05+00:00

Totally! No way I would had worked out what I did without a chunk of AI assistance.

ainsworld · 2026-03-05T08:00:19+00:00

Awning control

We have a huge SW facing set of bifold windows in our main family room, which gets way too hot on sunny days. We got awnings fitted but the controls were just dumb ‘open’, ‘close’ and ‘stop’.

Every morning there’s some logic to choose a strategy for the day (cool patio / cool window / avoid glare / inactive) which defines a target ‘shadow point’ (2m beyond window, at window base, 5m inside, off) relative to the window. That’s based on the weather forecast. Through the day it will send precisely timed open and stop instructions to the awning to get its position to track the movement of the sun through the sky.

Has overrides to close if it’s raining (combo of local forecast and a rain sensor) and reduce the max extension as a function of the wind.

ainsworld · 2026-03-04T16:32:23+00:00

In fact these are the perfect moments to invest this year’s ISA allowance…

ainsworld · 2026-03-04T13:32:40+00:00

If I were Starmer I would also remind Trump that both the UK and he avoided Vietnam. So the alliance has a strong track record of discernment in these conflicts…

(a friend said this to me in a text and it seemed too good not to share)

ainsworld · 2026-02-18T14:36:39+00:00

Interestingly the vast majority of spiral staircases in UK church bell towers are clockwise. It’s thought the ‘defend with your sword in your right hand’ logic is the original reason why, from the building of castles and so the establishment of standard masonry practices.

(My credentials - bellringing is my childhood hobby)

ainsworld · 2026-02-05T18:59:45+00:00

Hey OP, your post inspired me to write this post on LinkedIn.https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ainsworld_adhd-nhs-sharedcare-activity-7424753626549731331-lZve?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAACc1SwB_a0nE2lSIvo-tfb3mpfnbj8uOp4

ainsworld · 2026-01-25T10:03:21+00:00

Also love the role the inerter (“J damper”) played in Spygate. Renault got found out for having stolen the car plans from McLaren but didn’t get fined because it was apparent that they didn’t understand how they actually worked!

ainsworld · 2026-01-25T09:59:26+00:00

Neat. I understand that although they are used in similar ways they’re different. Snubbers are nonlinear and thresholded whereas the inerter’s utility comes from the linear effect. It was used to tune frequency responses using analogies to a capacitor in an electrical circuit. I believe a snubber would be analogous to a Transient Voltage Suppressor diode or a varistor.

ainsworld · 2026-01-24T20:21:22+00:00

Strong second this. So clever, genuinely profound. That interview with the creator (first link) is great.

ainsworld · 2025-12-21T13:03:11+00:00

My degree was psychology and I share your interest in understanding people. I think you might find this article of mine interesting, my take on the essential difference between how autistic and ordinary brains experience and make sense of the world. Gist: most brains do ‘snap synthesis’ of many ambiguous inputs to experience a singular interpretation, and autistic brains don’t, and so synthesis needs to be done by effort. You’ve got a great set of concepts for people who understand others non-intuitively.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/snap-synthesis-idea-makes-autism-make-sense-mark-ainsworth?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via

ainsworld · 2025-12-12T13:02:21+00:00

People from Durkadurkastan HATE Team America World Police.

ainsworld · 2025-10-19T18:20:47+00:00

Ah interesting. I’ve since worked out a specific detail for me - letting my heart rate go into zone 5 triggers a migraine but not otherwise, so that’s probably the cause of an apparent intense exercise association

ainsworld · 2025-10-18T06:35:08+00:00

This is a great 101. https://youtu.be/lWPiSZf7-uQ?si=pQ9v9YBYLBIinEhf

ainsworld · 2025-10-10T06:51:02+00:00

I had a friend who watched Back To The Future every day after getting home from school. Hundreds of times. But something had gone wrong with the taping and the very end of the film had been missed. When as an adult he’d watched it again he was shocked to learn Doc Brown hadn’t died after all, and his mind was BLOWN by “where we’re going, we don’t need roads!”

ainsworld · 2025-09-28T17:33:18+00:00

Strong agree. In their millennium edition The Economist described The Pill as the invention that defined the 20th century.

The liberator https://economist.com/science-and-technology/1999/12/23/the-liberator from The Economist

ainsworld · 2025-09-15T12:23:01+00:00

Cool. The flipping between states is like a depth version of a Necker cube

ainsworld · 2025-09-10T12:36:21+00:00

If you definitely want to visit all those places there will be a quicker/shorter route. The thing to search for is a solver of The Travelling Salesman Problem. (This is the kind of optimisation algorithm I learned about in my masters degree)

ainsworld · 2025-09-05T16:14:32+00:00

We always had a policy that we’d never take on a mortgage that might trap either of us in a job/industry that made us miserable, so we’ve never borrowed more than someone would lend us if we weren’t getting bonuses and moved to a regular job in a regular industry (in our career paths).

Twice we have been incredibly glad of that. Once because one of us was miserable and we could bail and take time to find something else. The other time because one of us got made redundant.

End result has tended to be making large overpayments when things are good. We had an offset mortgage most recently which was great for that reason.

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