The RNA world! It's a theory that before there were proteins or DNA, there was what is commonly thought of as the intermediary stage between the two - RNA. It's a theory of abiogenisis by which life came about in a primordial soup animated by lightning strikes until an organic molecule occurred. Then, by time one molecule began to replicate itself, it was the most likely to occur over time and the rest is history. I'm always very thankful that I took a detour in my degree in MKUltra-ing to take a virology class. I learned about RNA in depth before I got exposed to people talking about mRNA in the context of being anti-vaxx like they know shit about fuck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world

ANTS

ALL LEFTIES SHOULD LEARN THE WAYS OF THE ANT

Unironically, they make for an incredible model of societies and their moving parts, even down to how they recruit one another for group tasks and how labor is divided up (most of them don't do shit most of the time and it's a good thing)

AntWiki has the full text of EO Wilson's famous book, good place to dip your toes in https://antwiki.org/wiki/The_Ants

Read about Plan 9 from Bell Labs

https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/

https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/9

https://9front.org/

Plan 9 continues Unix

Communism is soviet power plus the connection of the whole country via the social operating system

Learn about some real math (proofs) instead of pi ~= 3 ~= e

Here are some 101 courses from schools

https://richardhammack.github.io/BookOfProof/

https://docslib.org/doc/3920024/language-and-proofs-in-algebra-an-introduction-version-1-0

You should learn about antiquated astronomy tools

Graph theory! Ramsey theory is also very cool!

Learn Power BI and get a well paying job doing advanced spreadsheets

Hello fellow mechanical engineer. You can search jobs about power distribution equipment. Relatively niche job market but also comes with benefits of being a niche market. It's not petroleum product, it's not weapon so that is good. An interesting subject I can think of is super conductors. Did you know they have absolute 0 ohm resistance? Not 1/10000000000 ohm or something but perfect 0. Such examples of perfect 0 is quite rare in engineering.

All short form content but here: https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/kawaii.6474/

https://computer.rip/2024-07-20-minuteman-missile-communications.html

https://roitman.io/blog/91

Braid theory, homology theories (both are algebraic topology topics)

Ecodefense.

Biological wastewater treatment is interesting, and not just cause I went to school for it. I remember reading and doing a report on this peer reviewed paper on methods of abbaitor waste treatment. Fascinating stuff.