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?
the fediverse.
weirdo
Yea, I wouldn’t want to be seen there either.
Yes. That could get embarrassing.
A truly sick and disturbed individual.
That’s a lot of hitmarkers
Needs more jpeg
I’m the only person I know IRL who uses lemmy (lol) and openstreetmap :)
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.
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?
Uh, I don’t think so…
Okay, there just was a review that had pretty much the same content you wrote :)
That reminds me, I need to write a review for the full version, thanks!
This was funny because I went back to see if the review I just read was Sticky Mustache, and it was actually pruwyben!
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 do calligraphy. Sometimes i meet someone who knows someone who does calligraphy. But I’ve never met another person IRL that does calligraphy. And the particular style I like makes it even more rare.
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.
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”.
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.
I really loved the decal he put on his lift to make it seem like the brand name of his one armed car lift was “TIPPI.”
The video or the edible?
Both in their respective departments :)
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?
Now that’s a proper special interest 🤌
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.
It’s kind of cool.
I’d say it’s objectively cool
You’d get along great with my dad. All he’s talked about for the last year is heat pumps.
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…
But this one simulates the refrigeration cycle! It has proper phase changes and everything.
Empire fucking booked it to steam and has been playing it for the past 10 hours, for sure.
I’m sure there’s probably someone out there, but I’m really interested in cool border crossings and how they represent nations on each side. As much as I am no nationalist, I find those projections of strength, friendship, security, etc. all super interesting.
Oh, and fake/fantasy transit maps. Those are always fun to draw up in my spare time.
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 work in a technology field and I’m interested in “not AI” stuff. It’s a wild ride.
I know there are others out there, but I sometimes feel like I am the only person under 50 who loves opera. I have 2 streaming services that I mostly use for watching opera.
I honestly feel like many people would like opera if they gave it a chance. Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cross between Lord of the Rings and The Avengers, but without the 30-min CGI fights (no disrespect to those who like fight scenes, but i get bored). My son and I love Mozart’s The Magic Flute; my wife’s favourite is Bizet’s Carmen.
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.
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?
My experience with DIY home networking and self-hosting has been “This is going to eat up your weekend if you want it to work as intended”.
You can buy premade nodes on AliExpress or Etsy that are easy to use and portable. Pair it to your phone and start war driving.
Ah, well the good thing is its pretty easy to set up. Most nodes are already flashed with recent enough firmware, so you just attach antennas, connect to your phone, do some quick setup for your region and go for a walk.
Then you realize you want a node that stays at home.
Then you want one on your car.
And reachable from work.
Then you see that hill in the distance and think “that’d be a good spot”.
Then you see the mountain on the horizon and wonder if you could hit a node up there.
Then all of a sudden you realize you’ve single handedly set up the infrastructure for your part of the state and are out more cash money than you told your partner and need a side hustle to afford to finish the second mesh you’re building out.
Oh god I feel seen.
(Meshcore rather than meshtastic but tomato tamato)
😮💨
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!
Now that I live in a dense urban city, the number of nodes is wild.
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.
It doesn’t take too long to set one up but hooking into the python can sometimes be a pain. Sounds like an excellent use case!
Finding former Pizza Huts in North America.
Wait, I have a meme for this! (Forgive the lack of crop lol)
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.
Probably more in Edmonton, but this one came to mind. Pretty heavily modified.
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.
Pizza Hut in my hometown is still going. Do you go to operating Pizza Hut restaurants too?
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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.
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.
