Is there anything you're into that no one or basically nobody is into?
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Slinging. Like David and Goliath, but I’m better with the over the shoulder method than the spin it in circles method. Based on discord and other sites, there are dozens of slingers worldwide.
I've really wanted to try getting into this sometime! I just love nifty ways of hitting distant things with other things.
I've heard of people fashioning them outta paracord and using tennis balls to start with and thought that sounded cool.
Plus, something that looks like a weird belt could potentially hurl any old rock at dangerous velocities, and that's gotta be worth something in this dangerous world.
How'd you first get into it?
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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.
Ha! COOL! I thought I was alone in this! Whenever I'm visiting a new place I love to examine and photograph the sticker bombs on the backs of signs and utility boxes and what have you.
I love that weird sense of culture and mystery wondering who placed it and what they're about.
I remember while visiting the Pacific Northwest I kept seeing "Dingus" everywhere, and got a giggle out of one that said "Sorry I chazzed your banger." Whatever that means LOL.
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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
That is really cool! I too, miss when the bulk of the web was self expression rather than dollar-rustling.
The "indie web" is making a small but vibrant resurgence and I'm all for it!
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Oh man, Second Life! I remember being absolutely wowed by it even though I never made an account. Its heyday was very much before I'd be able or brave enough to use real money in a virtual social game like that. (That wasn't WoW lol)
I always fondly remember the lovable antics of the legendary troll: Esteban Winsmore!
Gaia Online reminds me a lot of Ragnarok, visually. That's cool it's still around! I remember hopping around F2P MMOs like crazy just trying to find something me and my long distance partner could interact together and vibe with. There were a lot of oddball ones that are shockingly still around!
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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.
This sounds like the entire premise behind the manga/anime Dr. Stone.
All humans on earth get turned to stone, and a young scientific supergenius teaches survivors how to essentially restart civilization from scratch.
It's an absolute joy to watch. Maybe you'd dig it?
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Slinging. Like David and Goliath, but I’m better with the over the shoulder method than the spin it in circles method. Based on discord and other sites, there are dozens of slingers worldwide.
So, I've always lowkey wondered if that meteor hammer guy's techniques would translate to slinging at all
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I have a lot of obscure interests, but not as obscure as yours.
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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.
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Meshtastic
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John le Carré novels. He was huge decades ago, but basically nobody knows the name now besides Boomers and genre fans.
Finding former Pizza Huts in North America.
Wait, I have a meme for this! (Forgive the lack of crop lol)
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There's an Aztec city building game called Tlatoani. It's in early access, but has enough meat on the bone that it's one of my goto games.
Out of curiosity I checked Steam DB for active player numbers. I have discovered at any given point I am 10% to 25% of the given player base BY MYSELF. I am 1 of 4 people playing this game right now in the world. With the prevalence of the internet I always assume whatever weird bullshit you're into there's at least a thousand people talking about it; making memes outsiders could never comprehend. It's actually novel to fly under the radar for once.
What do you do that doesn't have a community associated with it?
Thanks! I know not what you asked but I just picked up the game. I guess my thing is I love trying out indi games
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Dune was my go to scifi...now it's popular and I feel like a hipster.
My dad got me into hard scifi, d&d, Tolkien...if I feel like a hipster, can't imagine what he feels like.
Same! I got into the books after listening to the Iron Maiden song
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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.
Bring back the sneakernet!
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I’m the only person I know IRL who uses lemmy (lol) and openstreetmap
Ha, I actually know quite a lot of people who use Lemmy (and OSM) IRL, but I met all of those people on Lemmy.
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I recently switched to CoMaps, performs so much better than OSMAnd on cheap hardware
I can only recommend Organic maps for OSM
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I really like killing invasive plants. I think that's probably my most niche passion. Like when I have some free time I'll just go into the woods behind my house and cut down wisteria, ivy, Chinese holly.... I just find it extremely satisfying idk. I love the idea that I'm clearing out space for native plants (and in turn native animals) to grow.
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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
Sounds awesome! A site to make us proud to Internet
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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.
Hol up did he die skydiving?
Because instruction…
Stay safe!
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I'm not into gaming. I think I'm the only adult male I know of comparable age that isn't. I don't really know why. I think it's a mental block. I was big into 16-bit Atari/Amiga games in the early 90s. Then I just hit like 16/17 and got into music and drinking to fit in. The gaming scene at the time (pre-internet) was social kryptonite, and I lived in rural Scotland so I left it all behind.
Oddly, I returned to general computing in my early 20s as the internet was blowing up and now work in the IT sector.
But still not a gamer, which ironically is quite isolating.
That does bug me. When i was a kid I was teased for using the Internet and playing computer games because "get a life omg".
Now, you know.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]It's kind of cool.
I'd say it's objectively cool
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I haven't. I'm less interested in videogames, because I find I prefer the social interactions of physical games more, and I also suspect that videogames fall into more of a one-to-many style communication, rather than many-to-many (I have played them a lot in the past, just not so much these days).
I had a quick skim of the wikipedia page, but it mostly seems pretty focused on the narrative (aside from the dice pool mechanic, which sounds a lot like Psi*Run dice mechanic discussed on this podcast). Was there something in particular about it that I'd be interested in?
Mostly the fact that it's very class and socially conscious, and is using games as a way of teaching deeper truths. The mechanics aren't super interesting, though they are solid. It is definitely a one-to-many thing, though
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Mostly the fact that it's very class and socially conscious, and is using games as a way of teaching deeper truths. The mechanics aren't super interesting, though they are solid. It is definitely a one-to-many thing, though
Oh yeah. I see that kind of teaching as fairly similar to what you would get from movies or books. Definitely useful, and with lots to explore (I want to write some SciFi eventually). But I think it's fundamentally different to when the game structure teaches things.
Of course, there are table top games that have those elements too, though probably less than videogames, since they usually depend on the players creating the story on the fly.
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I really like killing invasive plants. I think that's probably my most niche passion. Like when I have some free time I'll just go into the woods behind my house and cut down wisteria, ivy, Chinese holly.... I just find it extremely satisfying idk. I love the idea that I'm clearing out space for native plants (and in turn native animals) to grow.
Are you anywhere near Connecticut? I have a 50-60 foot tree in my yard that's been completely incased by a kudzu vine.
