Fired and unfired pistol, rifle and shotgun ammo. I think I could give an interesting talk on the differences and the history of various cartridges, no fine details, only a broad overview. To keep it fun, I’d sprinkle in lots of things most people probably don’t know.

For example, did you know an AR-15 round is actually kinda wimpy, especially compared to a typical hunting round? In some states, ARs are illegal to hunt with because the bullet is deemed too small to make a clean kill. It’s basically a hauling ass .22.

And .22s are a neat topic by themselves. There’s crazy variety out there, even tracers!

I would bring a bunch of fossil rocks & Petoskey stones!

Or my enormous collection of rare (not gonna say the brand) plushies! I’m one of the handful of people who have a special “good community citizen” plush from them!

Or my dumb lizard who was born without scales. I like to educate folks on why they should never get one.

My board game prototypes! Can always use more playtesters :)

Depends, is it a casual thing or more serious? If it’s casual I’d probably just bring a Trading Card Game deck (MTG, YuGiOh, Pokémon). If it’s more serious, I’d bring in some of my junk like a broken microwave magnetron, to simultaneously bring attention to the problem of short product cycles, explain a bit about how what most people see as a magic appliance functions, and show that even complex things can be broken down into simple parts.

My papercrafts.

cat

I can think of three options:

My crossbow. I am not a hunter but I thought it would be super cool to learn how to use one. SO got it as an anniversary gift for me.

My horse hair embroidery sculpture things… I am not sure what to call them yet, but I like unusual art and these fit the bill.

My succulent collection . I have many different kinds and love propagating them.

Ps. I don’t know how to upload pics to lemmy. Everytime I try an error pops up.

My Bad Dragon collection!

Wait, how adult are we talking?

I have a couple ideas though I’m not sure how good they would actually be. I guess anything you use for a hobby or are interested in could be used.

A 3D printer was already mentioned but would probably be the most fascinating (and bulky) thing I could bring. In that case I would probably talk about the workflow that goes into making a part, what to look out for when printing and how a print is actually made.

For simpler stuff I have 2 ideas. Firstly, I am kind of fascinated by pocket watches and have one that belonged to my great grandfather or something and is probably ~100 years old at this point. My grandmother gave it to me on my 18th birthday. The scale of the parts inside such a watch and how they work really interests me but I don’t dare take any of the watches I have apart since the parts are so small (though still larger than modern mechanical wrist watches). Did you know there are so called “railroad grade” pocket watches? They were used by train conductors and had to have a certain minimum accuracy since time differences in planning could otherwise lead to train collissions.

The second small thing I could talk a bit about are fountain pens. For that I also have an older pen (A Pelikan 140 which was manufactured some time in the 50s or 60s) which is a piston filler pen, meaning it requires using ink bottles to refill. This allows usage of some really nice looking inks. Interestingly, the color of the ink on the paper can vary greatly depending on various parts of the pen (Nib thickness or the feed of the pen impacting the wetness) and the paper which may be more or less absorbant. I have a nice green ink which will have a red shimmer on wetter line parts if I use the correct paper. On other paper types it is just green.

I was about to answer that I don’t really have anything to bring, but the many pointy bits of metal I’ve stuck in keyways and the many hours I’ve spent watching defcon talks actually has me ready to give a whole presentation on security

I’m bringing my lockpicks and showing how easy it is for someone to rake a standard kwikset lock. Be aware of your security’s limitations. Even if you have the best lock on the world, you do not have plexiglass windows. If you don’t have a security system beyond a simple lock, and there are a lot of break-ins in your area, it’s time to invest in an electronic security system, and then put a sign out front advertising a different system.

I have a jar of tar sand from the BP oil spill

I have a fair amount of crap, but not a lot of it is of much interest to most people.

Unless someone out there wants me to show up with a laundry basket full of Fumos and subject them to an unsolicited three hour lecture on Touhou lore…

This little bronze orc:

It was a gift from my father, who in turn received it from its sculptor, Sterling Lanier. Lanier was a family friend and an editor at Chilton Books, where he insisted that a book he had read in Analog Magazine be published despite it having been turned down by a score of other publishing companies. The book was initially such a commercial failure that Lanier was ousted from Chilton–a grievous injustice, as the book in question is Frank Herbert’s Dune.

My gitlab repos. There are over 100. Most of which are useless, but those are the fun ones. One of my favorites is called grubbed grub. It’s a bash script that adds a picture of a hollow knight grub to your bootloader.

I used to paint back in college but I haven’t touched the brush ever since. I just don’t have the drive for it I guess.