Is there anything you're into that no one or basically nobody is into?

I play single player video games and I roleplay and tell stories about my characters. I’ve done it with BG3, Elden Ring, Skyrim, Oblivion, Fire Emblem, and Pokemon. I take notes and write little stories for myself. I cultivate a little headcanon universe for each game, and I even let my roleplay alter my gameplay in meaningful ways. I don’t know if anyone else plays these games like this but I haven’t found much community for it.

I’m the only person I know IRL who uses lemmy (lol) and openstreetmap :)

I've tried telling a few friends about Lemmy but they give no fucks. Sad face yo

I code Csound. It's still sort-of being maintained, but otherwise the community is super dead. It's a shame because it's very versatile and fun, but realistically there are quite a few more modern alternatives for coding sound synthesis these days.

I strap GoPros on to hand built FPV Freestyle quadcopters and make videos out of it. When I lived in Orlando there were a few of us doing it. Lately I know of 0 in my area.

I make games that are a mix of physical and digital mediums. I found some other people doing similar stuff but nothing exactly the same. A lot of escape room creators use similar technologies though so I find myself talking to those people a lot.

I like retro programming, in particular Windows 2000.

Now I'm making a little 3D toy now that works with OpenGL on Windows with WGL and on X11 with GLX (also on Cygwin). No third party abstractions!

I want to keep adding backends, like DX 7, 9, Vulkan, WebGL, bare Linux KMS, and then stuff like screen space reflections, shadows, materials, ray tracing where possible, maybe get it running on a console or two too.

I have been thinking about getting into retroprogramming for a long time! Except with even older stuff than windows 2000. Stuff like MS-DOS or even c64 programs.
That's a cool hobby!

I still love Garry’s Mod animations. Basically using stop-motion-style tools to make low-effort animations with familiar characters on Source engine maps.

They don’t fit the YouTube algorithm now though; creators can’t just put up a new animation every few weeks. It was at its best when the whole community was just posting stuff in leapfrog formation, rather than competing for their audience every day.

kitty0706 was all I watched in high school, as a now 25+yo dude I still crack up at them.
Used to love the gmod collabs people would do too

In some games, I tried to play the role of a black smith and was heavily into crafting items.

I tried to go all renewables in a nation game.

I work in a technology field and I'm interested in "not AI" stuff. It's a wild ride.

I'm right there with you. Unfortunately I'm looking for work so I might HAVE to do A.I. something.

Bash scripting, firewall config, vpn tunnelling, and containerization ( rootless Podman ).

I’m into combining these in interesting ways.

While it could be argued that there are tons of communities for these, combining them to run secure apps or automate their setups don’t seem to be as popular.

It’s a hot topic at social events, as you can imagine.

hmmm... I'm having some issues with VPN tunneling in my docker config. I wonder if you might have some advice?

I really love Japanese jazz fusion. None of my friends understand my excitement about the EWI solos, they just say it sounds like Mario Kart music lol. I'm also into Buddhism, but dont have anyone else with this interest.

sounds Juicy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVYgvrvL4k8
Any specific recommendations? I've been into prog/jazz/funk for the last few years (thanks to Louis Cole's various projects for opening that door) and I know Japan has a strong scene.
- Absolutely! These are the obvious ones, maybe you already know them:
  T-Square
  "TRUTH" is an absolute classic, just like "サーキットの放浪者", and "Travellers"
  Casiopea
  I think "Be" is my favourite Album, but all are solid
  Masayoshi Takanaka
  the rainbow goblin album is my favourite, I think
  I watch this one when I'm sad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDK5Bluh5A
  And then also some that are maybe lesser known (no particular order):
  Katsumi Horii Project
  They have quite a lot of songs. "Way to morning" or "Flashback" are good examples. I also like "Jungle of Heaven"
  Trix
  "ECCENTRIX" is really nice, just like "An Index"
  Dimension
  Himiko Kikuchi
  Naniwa Express
  Yuji Toriyama
  Chikara Ueda & The Power Station
  Toshiki Kadomatsu
  The Gran Turismo soundtrack also has some hidden Gems here and there
  I think what I like about this genre is that it combines very catchy melodies/riffs and chord progressions with really creative jazzy solos. I have not really found much recent stuff (>2010), though. But I can recommend SOIL & Pimp Sessions. They are more recent and more traditional-jazz-oriented.
  Bonus if you like light prog/math rock: Check out Elephant Gym. Spring Rain (春雨) is one of my favourite songs.

In real life, I know all couple people who are also interested in watches, but mostly nobody wears a watch at all anymore, let alone is interested in them as a hobby.

Also, fountain pens. I love pens. I love finding them at antique stores and restoring them. There's a little bit of a community here, not like there was on reddit though.

Calculators. I think I'm alone there. Vintage TI, HP, and modern Casio.

Staplers. Especially Ace.

As for games, probably Battlezone II. Such fun multi-player, now I have nobody to play with. So many good mods, and I can't get any of them to work in Mint. One reason I still have an XP machine.

When you do meet a fellow watch enthusiast though it can spark up a lasting friendship. Generally not Rolex owners though, in my experience the majority of them aren't into timepieces so much as image.
- You want to be watch friends? You like Seiko mods?
- This is true. You know, for a long time I thought i really wanted an Explorer 36mm. Tried one on, and it did absolutely nothing for me. So I tried the 39mm. Same thing, I was completely uninspired. Plus, the salesman was the worst I've ever dealt with. Completely uninterested in chatting, or talking up the merchandise. Probably because they don't have to. People buy them just because it's Rolex. That very same day, I bought a Breitling instead. They were so friendly, they brought us champagne and fresh fruit. We chatted around an hour. And, they threw in some extra hats and an extra strap.
  I'll never buy a Rolex.

Oh yes, definitely ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

At school, I seem to be one of the very few people who use Linux so there's that

I'm into making a blog about tech and art. The tech side being about teaching normies how to circumvent censorship and be anonymous or private, how to escape algorithms, and a personalized resource wiki and archive.

The art side is about the intersection between tech and art, AI art appropriation, raves and social justice, and some light electronica blogging.

I know of no one else irl that is fascinated by this stuff, let alone both simultaneously. None of my artsy friends are into the tech stuff, and the one tech friend I have knows nothing about this stuff. It gets lonely as both a tech and art nerd but I'm so filled with passion making this from scratch. Also the landing page will pull from a collection of liminal spaces, political cartoons, Y2K imagery and have the logo rotating back and forth. I think its pretty cool, very rigorous and time consuming to build though.

it will be called zoracle.life

I like to analyse stickers stuck on traffic lights and road signs.

I plan on making an app someday where people can contribute to a database of stickers and compare the sticker culture of different regions.

look into infoe! dude posts literally everywhere I had to track him down on insta and ask the meaning lol. He's from Miami but he goes all over the US (i think the world too)

Skydiving. The number of people that sign up for the training is tiny and only about ten percent of them make it through ground school, all the tested jumps, the written test and the oral test to get licensed.

But, it is surprisingly addictive and fun.

It also is a small enough community that when I say my instructor died this summer, I bet that others funjumpers reading this knew him or of him.

I miss you Frog.

Yeah it's too scary for me

I've been trying to find cool stuff on PeerTube. Sometimes it feels like wandering in the wilderness. I guess people really only do post cool stuff to YouTube for the money. I found this, though it was pretty cool. https://video.mycrowd.ca/w/8wu8fRidkbjQ1FK3zqo1Mp

I like to contribute to various open-source implimentations of classic games from the 90s

It's true that barely anyone is into actually contributing, but I assure you a fair amount of people are into the actual open source implementations and are thankful for your efforts!
Any game in particular you contributed to that you want to share?
- Sorry, I use different accounts and hence nicknames for each project; letting one loose would dox me too much for my liking. Thanks, though!

Wold Newtonry

I like to rescue dogs. I just rescued one last week that I'm taking to get groomed. He's sleeping in his crate right now. It's not ideal, as I live in a small house with two cats, three people, and two dogs. But holy shit is it rewarding. Most of the time they just scamper away, although blessedly it's usually to their home. Every once in a while you get a friend for a while, and someone else gets a friend for life. Dogs are lovely animals, and they exist as they do because of humans. It is our duty to take care of them.

This little guy needs to be housetrained and neutered but then he's off to live a life on the open road as my trucker friend's road companion. Or at least that's the plan!

Idk how to attach pictures on this app so you'll have to imagine a very sweet Yorkshire terrier who only has a few dreads left to snip! When I found him he had a dread that was legit like two feet long. Poor baby.

You're a very good person!
My mother's dog was a dog we gave "temporary" shelter to... Five years ago. She's 10 now and we couldn't be happier. She came to us from a very difficult home situation (her previous owner had just escaped from a violent marriage, and we think the dog might have been a victim too, but nobody was ever able to prove anything). She's still a little monster and she's still very afraid of everything, but there's no comparing how she was when we adopted her and how she is now.
I had an ex who lived somewhere where people often went to to abandon their dogs once they grew too old, too big or too aggressive. Her family also took in as many as they could: when we broke up, they had something along the lines of 10 dogs. It was very rewarding, too, as she got a good friend in each and every one of them. But it really hurts my heart to imagine that someone could be so cruel as to just abandon a dog like that, even hurt them.
- I have a friend who does temporary shelter for animals of people leaving abusive situations. It's a very cool organization she's part of and I kind of wish there was one around me. That said, I have too many pets as is to foster more.

I'm still on Second Life, which is a virtual world social platform. It has ~45,000 given active people on it, which is a piss squirt compared to other online platforms like MMOs and MMORPGs. But, nobody I know are into it save for about 5 people at least.

And I still somehow am bothering with Gaia Online which has even less users, from 1,500 ~ 4,400 on a good day and only know 2 friends on there.

Every so often I go through a phase:
"Second Life was fun. Why did I stop using it?"
Recreate account, log in.
Watch FPS drop to a fraction with a lot of zeroes at the start of it as all the adverts struggle to load.
"Oh, yeah. That was why."
Gaia Online still exists??
I was just thinking about second life the other day when someone brought up meta and its push for the 'metaverse.' I still remember the old pranks of making it rain dildos in someone's area, or enclosing their head in a box.

I don't know anyone else who likes horror films.

I have a more particular niche, where I like comedy-horror and grossout-horror; flicks that can effectively embrace the tropes of B movie horror.
Drag me to Hell is one that I enjoyed. The protagonist is pretty resilient in spite of the over-the-top effects of the curse.
Ironically; I really DON’T like depictions of misery. Somehow my favorite form of action follows the vein of Wile E Coyote getting squished by an anvil; everyone laughs and the appeal is more in the shock unexpectedness than the raw emotional pain that horror often reveals in.
Hi 👋
I'm 1hitsong. Now you know me.
What are your favorite horror movies?
Some of my favs are Nightmare on Elm Street, Trick r Treat, Shaun of the Dead, Evil Dead.
- Hello, My favorites are Session 9, The Mothman Prophecies, Paranormal Activity, and White Noise. I'm more into psychological and supernatural horror. Session 9 is a masterpiece if you haven't seen it. I would highly recommended it.
Dude, I just want the internet group of people who like horror films to somehow materialize in my life. Like, I want to throw popcorn at bad ones while giggling and clutch the arm of my seat neighbor during the good ones.
...like, I know they're out there. Hollywood companies don't repeatedly make horror films because of hollywood accounting every time.

I'm really, really into what I can only call technological bootstrapping. Like, we started out on this planet with nothing, and then built everything. How did that happen? Primitive tech is another name, but the emphasis is usually on the very first stages.

That itself has gotten me into obscure things like metrology, greenwood working and small-scale semiconductor fabrication.

Wait, I work in cleanrooms professionally. Fabricating my own semiconductors at home always seemed like a cool idea, but really out of reach. I kind of always wanted to keep old machines from the labs I worked at, but with such expensive things they never threw anything away (of course)!
Isn't it prohibitively expensive and/or noisy? What type of projects do you do?
- Have you seen the Sam Zeloof videos? He's the main person I've seen actually build a chip in a garage.
  He buys his wafers, which is critical. Given a hot furnace you could refine your own metallurgical silicon in a crucible, but cleaning it will be a whole thing. The machine needed would probably be based on spinning band distillation, which you could make in a pre-existing machine shop. To avoid toxic gases and explosion hazards - which are the two things chemists have told me not to mess with - you'd want to use SiCl4, which is a bit different from the standard approach which uses hydrogenated species. The Siemens process back to silicon and monocrystalline casting is all that's left, and I wonder if they could be combined in a step if scalability isn't a concern.
  What type of projects do you do?
  If only I had space for a workshop, so it's all theoretical ATM.
  Which machines are noisy? Polishers?
That's cool! Can you recommend any resources on this? I've thought a lot about this sort of thing. I'm guessing semiconductor fabrication requires a lot of complex upstream tasks and isn't the sort of thing that's feasible at home. Would love to be wrong!
- Depends where you're starting. If it's sticks and stones, yeah, you're going to spend a lot of time building up. Even getting to the prerequisites for the Gingery-esque machine shop will be a trick, and you definitely need machining first.
  Sam Zeloof is the guy that actually did the semiconductors bit. He makes a transistor in the linked video series starting with a commercial wafer, some basic chemicals, a spinning piece of tape and an electric furnace. I read papers and just Wikipedia to get ideas for the parts he doesn't cover. The standard ways of doing things are heavily constrained by scalability, which as an artisan you don't care about, but will breeze past other things you really do, like ability to work in a small space. And, if you're starting from scratch, using only common, locally available elements.
- "The Book", is a book that uses illustrations to explain how to recreate civilization. Dunno if it is good. That said, you can also try "How Things Work", which explains the workings of many inventions, with many wooly mammoths interspersed throughout.

I try to curate zines from around the world into local exhibitions, do hand translating alongside if need be, imitate the original paper best I can.

It's kinda fun lol. That and kinda similarly, but I love♡ spending time on online software radio sites, just listening into different channels like I was there myself.

the fediverse.

weirdo
- Yea, I wouldn't want to be seen there either.
- A truly sick and disturbed individual.

"space music" -- I played Mass Effect 1 long ago and got hooked on the idea of musicians trying (and often failing) to make music for futuristic settings. This is like Star Trek episodes that reference classical music but some person has to predict what classical music will sound like in 2300. So they go with with future retro stuff and it just tickles me. So I seek out these sorts of experimental musical pre-trend predictions cause they're often hilarious.

I curate about 90 cartoons and almost as many indie animation channels to create a weekly block of Saturday morning cartoon programming for my wife and kid.

I edit it together in kdenlive from files on my media server, and we stream it to my mini projector each weekend. Been going over a year now, only missing weeks when we're traveling. I would love to be able to share it with a wider audience, but I'm still not sure how, given it's all pirated.

What are the indie channels?
- Can I be lazy and not write it all out?
  Not all of it is for my kid, not all of it is even very good, but it's a good bit of variety.
Living every good dad's dream
- It's the highlight of my week. It's great to have culture in common with my kid and to get each others references. I also like to cook big breakfasts that day, lots of waffles, bellinis, fancy stuff, fresh fruits. Real bougie with it.

Earlier this year I tried out a Steam demo of a game called "That Time I Found a Box" and got hooked on it. It's a very unique card game where you create and enhance the cards as you play. I played it for days and eventually beat the demo - the devs told me I was the first person to beat it.

The full version just came out on Steam - I'd recommend taking a look. It's a bit janky and not for everybody, but it does something unique that really clicked for me.

Sticky Mustache, is that you?
- This was funny because I went back to see if the review I just read was Sticky Mustache, and it was actually pruwyben!
- Uh, I don't think so...

Thermodynamics, specifically refrigeration cycles.

Its probably my autism showing but the fact that we can just move funny fluid around and make heat move is absolutely fascinating. I can spend a lot of time making theoretical refrigeration cycles with different fluids, thermoelectrics, heat capacities, repurposing car junkyard AC systems, etc.

Millions of people do it for work, sure. I doubt any of them are "into it".

If you haven't before, you should play Stationeers. It sounds like you'd love it.
- Oh god I already play both Space Engineers and Factorio, don't give me another 500 hour logistics game time sink...
What’s your favorite refrigerant
- I touch r134a the most in my day to day life, cuz i fix a lot of people's car AC... But I have a soft spot for propane (R290) or propane/butane blends. Yes it's flammable to a degree but it's naturally provided, cheap as hell, zero ozone depletion and very low GWP. It has usable pressure/temperature curves that are easy for compressors to handle and can produce temperatures as low as -30C.
  I've refilled old farm trucks with propane from a BBQ can and gotten good AC out of them. It's kind of cool.
Now that's a proper special interest 🤌
I bet you also enjoy Technology Connections.
:)
- Gee, what gave it away?
  I popped an edible and watched his entire catalytic converter video last night. Shit's great.
- Ohh yeah! Though I do wonder: Why limit themselves to the guy who is evangelizing (and rightly so!) when he could also hang out with crazy swamp guy HyperspacePirate who not only thinks of the crazy cycles but actually builds some as well?
You'd get along great with my dad. All he's talked about for the last year is heat pumps.

My favorite thing in the whole world is dropping LSD, and listening to obscure music or watching weird shit...

Dude I can't find ANYONE to hang out with me... I wave that flag in every social situation I find myself in. I really thought there would be more people into it.

Well, that or I'm completely unbearable to hang out with. If that's the case I just wish people would tell me.

As someone who has never done LSD, but loves watching weird shit... I recommend checking out Aze Alter's videos on the Capitol of Conformity. I think it starts with "Eyes for Sale" but don't quote me. Might be a good time!
- I'm hip. Thanks for the recco!
Watch Scavengers Reign and Common Side Effects - they're absolutely terrific tv shows that should be right up your allley.
- Already watched and re-watched. Lol.
You should try a festival. You'll find something fun to do and plenty of people go alone.
Oh, that’s just a risky proposition, that’s all!
I would wager most people don’t know themselves well enough on psychedelics to trust watching weird shit with someone who is also on psychedelics.
I am big into old obscure media, love ubuweb, but I would still hesitate to join a kind of unknown person for an activity like that. It’s just a big plunge.
Keep waving that flag. If we were at the same baptism reception I'd drop acid with you.
I mean that's a giant leap for any new friend. Lsd isnt so common that the average person has experience with it. So how to have a good trip and trip safely is a necessary starting point. It's also a multi hour to days long thing. Thats a heck of a lot of time for most People to spend not working, no family obligations, and no other needs/wants. Basically its a rare population who's willing to trip and of those willing it'd probably be a once a year thing at best. That said of people willing to trip I would think the music and videos would be about par.
- yeah taking psychedelics with someone else is like entering a relationship - you really gotta know the person and have good rapport built up, make sure all parties are prepared and on the same page, etc etc to guarantee you have a good time
  or you could just roll the bones and risk having a very unpleasant 4-12 hours

I might just join you in that game, it looks cool.

I've been playing starbound again and feels like the game has been abandoned for the last 10 years, but steam db says there's still about ~800 players so that's not so bad.

... Half of the rhythm games I play I've either never run into anyone else or like 1-2 random kids playing them. I've legitimately never met another person playing CHRONO CIRCLE, and only 3-5 year olds playing DANCE aROUND. Could just be an issue with Round 1 exclusive games though... also new arcade games are typically not that popular outside of Japan

On unrelated note, a slight flex... Backpack Hero is an inventory management roguelike that has been in early access for a while & was regarded pretty highly. When the game first came out of early access, I remember 100%ing the game in like 2-3 days, and Steam achievements suggest that 0.0% others have had the end-game achievements. I still think about that sometimes... (They do have a community now I think)

I was intrigued by backpack hero, but couldn't justify adding it to my already large backlog.

I have a lot of obscure interests, but not as obscure as yours.

Finding former Pizza Huts in North America. It's just such an iconic building design. There's a documentary out now on them, but I've been fascinated for almost a decade now.
Meshtastic
John le Carré novels. He was huge decades ago, but basically nobody knows the name now besides Boomers and genre fans.

Pizza Hut in my hometown is still going. Do you go to operating Pizza Hut restaurants too?
I've seen a bunch of old Pizza huts turned into Chinese food restaurants and I saw two that became small used car offices. They are always so easy to pick out. I legit loved old Pizza Huts with the sit down pacman machines being a common fixture when I was a kid.
Meshtastic
If someone could find an extra 8 hours a week, I would so make this one of my hobbies.
- What do you need 8 extra hours for? Affording the 8 other nodes you buy after your first one?
We started a meetup group in my local area. Someone put a node on the mountain now the entire city gets longfast. Its so cool.
!meshtastic@mander.xyz in case anyone else is interested!
- I was going to ask if you were in my area, because we recently got some nodes on mountains, but I figure at this point if there's a mountain, it's got a node on it at this point.
- I’ve been thinking of setting up a node at my local ski area, both for others to use, but also to make custom timing equipment that can send start and finish messages to the timing computer and keep us from having to haul wires up icy race courses all winter.
  I’ve never actually set one up or used one yet though, so it’s probably a few years off.
The amount of Pizza Hut buildings I've seen turned into Lions Den adult stores is too damn high. In second place, is the local wing place Jerk N Go.
- Jerk 'n Go sounds like the adult store. Just sayin'.
- In my area every single one is a Mexican restaurant and I'm not mad about it.

Theologie studies

The design and building of authorization policy systems. And crypto (as in cryptography as the word originally meant) but that one tends to be slightly more common.

Shoot, this has been on my brain a lot lately. I've been thinking about a modern one-time pad scheme that uses USB drives. Wanna send your friend 16GB of encrypted messages? Next time you hang out, give them a cheap USB drive. Or, possibly have your phones generate and share a one-time pad using NFC.
Unfortunately, I think phones and USB drives are too vulnerable, but it would be a fun little project to build.
- Actually yeah, that sounds rad af

One year on Spotify I was in the top I think 1% of lou reed listeners.

I was in the top 1% for Beatles listeners a few years back. That was shocking, but it was a deep-dive I did over like 6 months, so I guess it makes sense. Still, given their popularity it really surprised me an made me question Spotify's metrics

I am the only person I know IRL who reccomends browsers to people in-person

Ok, I'll bite. Which one's your favorite?
- If I was an Apple user it would be the Orion browser. There's just no downsides to it other than it being only available for Mac and Iphones.
  Everything else i have to add disclaimers when talking about them. For example, I use Brave as my daily driver and I've had an easier time getting other people to switch to Brave than any other browser becuase having an awesome adbocker integrated into the browser itself is just that good. However, Brave is run by crypto bros, so it comes packaged with a crypto wallet and some AI bloatware. Thankfully there's a setting to turn the integrated crypto ads off, but the fact that those things are there at all is a BIG red flag. But it's an easier sell to normies because it's built on Chromium and works with the Google ecosystem in a way that Firefox-based browsers don't.
  I would love to push Librewolf more, but it doesn't have a mobile version, and apparently installing UBlock Origin on your own is just too scary for the normies. So now wherever I meet a person and see they have an IPhone, the next words out of my mouth are "Have you heard of the Orion browser?"

I really like this one MUD. I’m super casual. I guess about 200 people play. Which in the grand scheme of things is almost no one.

What is a mud?
- A MUD is a Multi User Dungeon - imagine a fully text-based MMO. They've been around since the late 70s.
200 is a lot of people for a mud. The only one I know of that's that big is aardwolf. Which do you play?
- I play aardwolf. :)

I tried to find an in-person calligraphy meetup around my area and mind you, I live in one of the bigger metro areas in the country. Couldn't find squat. Don't know if my Google Fu was weak or I just don't know what to actually look up but there's nothing specifically for calligraphy as far as I can tell. Also, I don't count online spaces.

I'm into calligraphy! You on the east coast? been looking for a group as well
I've actually met a few people who are into calligraphy but they don't strike me as the "meet-up" type of people.
If only you were an Arab or Chinese. I don't think calligraphy ever had mass appeal the same way in the West.

Well.. I'm using an instance that has 10 active users according to https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list :)

I wanted to move from Lemmy to PieFed, because its development is faster than that of Lemmy's and because its maintainers have values I have nothing against and because I want to help a cool project grow.

And then I had a bunch of criteria that I wanted my instance to fulfill, and piefed.ee was the only PieFed instance that fulfilled all of my wishes. So, now I'm apparently one out of ten :)

You're one in a million to me
- i.e., there are approximately 1,400 people in China just like you.
Glad you found a happy cozy home. Appreciative that I can reply to you from heart of the old beast!
Relative to all the well known commercial social media platforms though aren't we all into something here hardly anyone else knows about, whether 10 users or a few thousand?
What was your criteria?
nice!

Whenever I'm going abroad within Europe, for a bit over month before that, I start buying stuff only with banknotes. I put all of the coins made in Finland or (other) Baltic countries in a separate pocket and then make sure to use those during my travel.

It feels nice that people get to see coins that they don't see that often. And at the same time, I'm increasing the relative amount of non-Finnish coins in Finland, which I also think is good, as that helps people here notice that there's more to the EU than just Finland :)

I would guess it's unlikely that all that many other people do the same.

This is a great topic! I have more than one kinda odd hobby.

I got a bunch of old newspaper comic strips of Mary Worth from 1947 and 1951 (almost two full years’ worth) that I’m putting into ~3”x12” poly bags so I can read them more easily. I need to put them into a book of some sort.

I also got some color Sunday strips from 1951 but they’re a crazy size so I may need to put those in a separate book.

I think they’re so cool though! The strips have ads on the back from the time period.

I ended up flipping through a bunch of Punch magazines from the 20's a bit ago, albeit just digitally. It was fascinating. You get a perspective that way that reading curated highlights and stories compiled afterwards just can't give you.
Edit: I guess you actually have to specify 1920's now.
- I have a habit of looking at archive.org’s recently uploaded magazines because it is always cool to look at periodicals from a different time.
  Even things that seem unrelated to my interests at all end up being a riveting window into something unfamiliar!

There’s a lot of Robotech/Macross stuff out there, but I rarely see anyone post online about it, and I’ve never met anyone in person who even knows what it is.

Man, the gamecube version of it was a lot of fun. Definitely not the most polished game, but it got me into the actual show.
I can't even fanthom this but it was pretty popular in the 90's. Maybe not as much anymore.
and I’ve never met anyone in person who even knows what it is.
I guess it doesn't exactly come up randomly in conversation.
But I intend to be the change I want to see in the world.
- I usually mention it fairly soon after spending any amount of time with anyone. I’ve even got a nice big RDF roundel pin on my shoulder bag.

FoundryVTT, baby! Somewhere north of 70,000 downloads for a very feature rich virtual tabletop that you'd think more D&D / Computer Nerds would be into.

If you want to get even more bespoke, I'm the proud owner of a version 2 box of "Kingdom Death", a $400 boardgame designed in the spirit of Monster Hunter or Dark Souls. You play a primitive band of survivalists, hunting horrifying monsters for their body parts, in order to slowly claw your civilization's way out of a Lovecraftian dark age.

My wife loves Foundry for her virtual tabletop needs. All of her free time is spent playing games with friends from around the world in some kind of VTT. :)
I thin my friend group is on our 6th run of Kingdom Death. Such a great game
I’m right with you on both of those things. I just spent more time than is reasonable on a gatehouse over a chasm in foundry, and have a screaming antelope on the shelf next to me that I’m reasonably proud of.

Death metal. I’m pretty clean cut and tat free so people are really taken aback when I tell them one of my favorite acts is called Cattle Decapitation.

The only positive things I can say about Death and Black metal is that, the instrumentals go hard. It's always the vocals that I can't ever get used to.
- I hit a similar wall back in high school but the instrumentation was just too good to stop listening. Now I love harsh vocals
My wife discovered "Powerwolf" recently. Not death metal, per say, but I've yet to meet anyone else whose heard of it. Worse still, this lead her down a rabbit hole to Dwarf Metal and the accursed song Diggy Diggy Hole which has bored its way into my brain.
- I love singing powerwolf at dive bar karaoke. Resurrection by erection always gets people going.
- Blind Guardian is another good one that makes songs inspired by fantasy. Their Wheel of Time album is pretty great. My personal favorite is Ride Into Obsession, which is sung from the point of view of one of the series' main antagonists, though the last section of the eponymous "Wheel of Time" is also a banger.
- I mean, demons are a girls best friend
- Powerwolf is German Power-Metal and they're not a bad band, I've heard lots of tracks from them. I'm into Sabaton which is another power-metal band who sing about historical subjects and figures. Oden Organ is another power-metal band.
  The best part about Wind Rose is all of their songs are based off from Middle-Earth legendarium.
- The fact that Diggy Diggy Hole exists is such a wonderful thing. It was fun to watch the original, and then various evolutions of it. Its what the internet should be instead of the corporate, pay to play garbage we have ended up with.
  Also Powerwolf and Wind Rose are just fun bands to listen to. Metal that doesn't take itself too seriously of great.
- I got sent down a weird musical rabbit hole that started by letting my kid play some k-pop on my Spotify account. The AI DJ added "foreign music" to the list of tags I guess, and after finding a couple k-pop songs I liked, it bronched out into other genres & Landed on Melodic Mexican Metal, which I didn't even know was a thing.
- Ah yes power metal is quite a thing in and of itself! Feel free to do whatever you want with this knowledge, but there’s also Goblin Metal, my most favorite being a band called Necrogoblikon. There’s no doubt some band singing in Tolkien Elvish to round out the trinity.
- Depending on what she's into, there's tons of fun power metal bands that I feel are kinda like Powerwolf. Gloryhammer and aramanthe are two that I really like that are in the same genre

I love listening to political music in languages I dont speak, I have music saved from 74 languages (so far).

Guix, there are dozens of us! Dozens!

Crypto, LLMs, and cars.

Yeah they're popular outside of Lemmy, but mentioning that your a fan of any of those things on here is a great way to get your inbox flooded with hate. Everybody on here hates those three things with a burning passion.

Only reason why I still have a reddit account is so that I can talk about these things without getting berated for my hobbies.

All three of those things you've mentioned, are causing a lot of problems right now for people.
- They cause problems for me too. But I invest in crypto cause it made me $60K. It saved me from losing everything. FWIW I only invest in proof of stake coins, so I'm not destroying the environment.
  I use LLMs mainly because Google is complete trash at providing relevant results compared to 10-20 years ago. At least if you use an AI that cites it's sources, you can filter out the slop from the truth.
  And I'm into cars because I am of the opinion that if I'm going to have to drive everywhere anyway due to lacking public transport infrastructure, I might as well do it in a vehicle that is actually fun to drive. Why drive a big ugly 4 door crossover, and make driving even more of a chore than it already is? That's why I like tiny nimble sports cars. If I didn't have to drive everywhere, I wouldn't own a car.
It's interesting this is upvoted, because yes, Lemmy hates all those things.
You can at least find devils advocates for crypto and LLMs, I guess. Cars are right out.
Its fine as hobbies if you dont force it on others really. I hate llms but I also hate pop and rap music, as long as im not forced to use it im fine.
Everything shoving llms in my face (that really dont work at all) is the equivalent of a car driving by blaring rap at 110 db. Instant anger.
Im into cars as well, I think lemmy is more hating that we are forced into having to use cars, and assholes who drive unneeded trucks. I dont think anyone on here cares about people who are mechanics or tinkerer. Its more the system that forced us to be reliant on cars.
- It's totally understandable why people think AI is slop, the stuff that isn't is unnoticeable. And because most of it is slop. Even the "good" stuff sucks most of the time. But you can get gold out of them there hills. But you gotta mine it. Which means a lot of shoveling dirt. These companies don't give a fuck. They'll feed you dirt happily.
There are dedicated communities on Lemmy to these things -- and they're pretty quiet. Post new content there and engage in conversations and be the change you want to see.
- Already tried. No community exists for my car. So I created one and tried to convince some redditors to join me and they basically gave me the finger (and then a mod deleted my post.) Gave up and abandoned the community. I don't want to waste time screaming into the void. There aren't enough 350Z owners on Lemmy to even get a basic conversation started.
  Same reason why my radio station, !radiolemmy@lemmy.blahaj.zone is failing before I've even launched it. There aren't enough DJs on Lemmy, so I have no staff, which means there's no one to play something on air. I've been reaching out via PMs to anyone I can find. It's been a 3 month search to no avail. I was supposed to launch yesterday.
  Lemmy is just too small, plain and simple.

I’m an avid reader, and I like reading in original language. That has brought me in a variety of rabbit holes, including trying to learn Russian, then Japanese. Unfortunately, I forgot most of it. I also forgot most of my ancient Greek, but my Latin is still vaguely useful. My German and Spanish never reached the “I can read anything” level, that is a shame because I really want to read the Don Quixote and Goethe... But I’m proud to easily read in 3 languages, struggling in 2-3 others (depending how much dictionary use is allowed).

I haven’t been able to find a community of people that like this. Most like a specific culture and go deep into a single language.

I'm currently reading in 3 languages, but a bit more narrowly than you.
When I was a young teen, and reading SF&F books voraciously (sometimes a book a day, or more if I had them), I ran across the Perry Rhodan series.
Finally something I wouldn't run out of! It started in Germany in 1961, and published a novella weekly since. (They haven't missed a week, and are currently past issue 3,000.)
The first 150 or so were translated into English and I scoured used book stores until I had all of them.
Now, 50 years later, I spent a week in Germany and bought issue 3323 in a railway station bookstore. My German was never great, and is now worse, so Google Lens has helped me get through it.
When I came home I did some searching and found all the English translations as e-books. I've read a couple dozen of the early ones and they are pretty dreadful. My 14-year-old self was not very discerning.
I also found e-versions of the German originals up to about #2000, which I could read laboriously, and French translations of the first 1,000.
The latter is a game changer because my French is good enough to read with only occasional dictionary lookups. Reading with Google books allows me to tap as word and see the English instantly, so it's quite convenient.
Let me know if you find or start a group.
- There are two of us??

Freestyle GunZ (fgunz.net) its an old game but it checks out.

BallisticNG maybe. Its like wipeout but very few players on steam, maybe 100 concurrent.

How to use game design for education around political and social issues and complexity science

Please tell me more
I want to know more. Part of my job involves teaching lessons on climate change in schools. I have often wondered how I could incorporate games like Minecraft into this.
Woah. That sounds interesting. Care to elaborate?

One of the very first mud games, mud2 by Richard Bartle.

http://www.mudii.co.uk/

I remember MUDs! I played Achaea!
I grew up playing AvatarMUD

Pure math, finite automata, math rock, analog synthesis, knitting (in my demographic), video games from before we knew modern UI and game design... to be fair, none of these communities are non-existent, but they're pretty niche even among my weirdo friends.

A vehicle building/combat game called From The Depths is my current obsession, well past 1000 hours in it.

When watching incest porn, I try to figure out how everybody can be in a step-relationship with everybody else there. How is it possible for step-mom, step-dad, step-bro and step-sis to all live in the same house with no one else?

I still remember the brain flash when someone mentioned their thoughts on why they do that: once they're a few minutes in, they stop saying "step" so it just becomes "daddy" and they can capture the weirdos who are into the 'illegal' incest.
I am pretty sure they are just roles to play for people.
"Okay you'll be the hot step-sister and you'll take the dick of your hot step-father coming in about this time." sort of deal.
It's just roles to get those seeking the content watching.
That's just porn with extra steps!

B. Fleischmann

Maybe ambient funk, a sub genre of São Paulo's funk bruxaria that is a sub genre of Brazilian funk.

Bet all the views on this song are mine putting it on repeat

https://youtube.com/watch?v=G1UoyoFBb0o

There are like only 3 producers of this genre of music.

This is pretty sweet

I really like the souped up versions of mom cars that they make before there's a model year redesign.

My dream car is Mercedes R 63 AMG.

Also a big fan of Station Wagons, but that's not that rare among enthusiasts.

I low-key want a Toyota Previa so I can tell people I drive a manual transmission, AWD, turbocharged, mid-engine car... and then show up in a minivan.
(Although all of those features were available in various combinations, no individual car came actually came from the factory with all four of them at once. Unfortunately, you'd have to swap either the engine or the drivetrain to make such a super-Previa.)
you know. That reminds me that I like minivans when essentially no one does. I mean actively like them and prefer them to other motor vehicles (although im not a big fan of motor vehicles)
- I have a friend who has used minivans for 50 years. She started with them for her kids, and now uses them for everything you can imagine on a ranch. She's got trucks for some stuff, but a minivan can haul anything that won't kill you with its smell or stains.
- Yo a fellow minivan fan. I wish there were ev versions already. It should be one of the main vehicles for that where it's just running errands and kids but suvs have seemingly chomped that part of the market up.
- Minivans are basically spaceships now, and everyone sleeps on them.
  I love me a good Odyssey.

I have a fair amount of things that are not exactly popular but its not like zero people are into it.

Probably not rare in general but rare where I'm from. Racing, asphalt circle track stuff. Like NASCAR but much smaller, cheaper, and local tracks.

I'm building a decentralised file system.

It works, is FOSS and all.

Not really.

A long forgotten game called Fear Equation. I still enjoy firing it up for a run at least once a month or so. I don't think anyone has even been on it's forums for a long time.

Sumo wrestling. OK, it definitely has more fans than "basically nobody," although it's not exactly popular in the west. I have noticed a couple of people talking about it on Mastodon, and there's a community at !sumo@lemmy.world.

A while ago I stumbled upon a TV broadcast one night when I couldn't sleep, and immediately found it interesting. Now I intentionally watch them live when I can, and otherwise catch replays the next day. A very exciting tournament just wrapped up a few days ago. The next one is in November.

I'm not into it but now and then I will check out a channel on twitch called midnightsumo. The guy plays videos all of the time and has quite a following! He will talk to chat about what is going on and all. Really cool stuff! Some of the viewers are really into the sport as well so it keeps chat alive.
I was lucky enough to be watching Sumo back in the days when Chiyonofuji was at his peak. Seeing him pick up and carry Konishiki out of the dohyō was something else.
Not seen any for years though.
- Oh nice! I only got into it a little more than a year ago, but I've seen highlight clips of him.
  If you're interested, NHK has replays of current matches in a youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwq27hqSiIM&list=PLFEzXnIQVwV9JgQkOMJZM23G8g-wBBWKf