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.

The "Earthrise" photograph, taken on December 24, 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission. — *Earthrise*, taken by astronaut Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission—possibly my favorite photograph.

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

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

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

Some of my favorite books

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

Some of my favorite music albums

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

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

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." —Jaques, (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)
”Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.” —Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892)
"Because it's there." —George Mallory in response to being asked why he wanted to summit Mount Everest (1923)
“Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.” —Jonas Salk (1960s?)
"Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right." —Martin Luther King Jr. (1968)
"And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." —Paul McCartney (1969)
"The People of Washington DC are sophisticated enough to accept the occasional four-letter word in context, and not become sexually aroused, offended, or upset." —Ken Sleeman (1973)
"It isn’t all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.” —Gene Roddenberry (1975?)
"Lack of something to feel important about is almost the greatest tragedy a man may have." —Arthur Morgan (Red Dead Redemption II, 2018)
“You either have a mass spectrometer or you have a spouse.” —An environmental science professor of mine (c. 2022)

Wikipedia articles I find interesting

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:

External links

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

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!