I wish there were more normal people who play magic. Going to any shop to play is always a gamble, half the time the people you end up playing with smell bad or are socially inept, sometimes both. It’s a fun game if you have actual good people to play with.
I don’t play Magic, but that issue definitely overlaps with tabletop gaming. Early into my start into the hobby, I played in a public campaign at my FLGS and the whole table was kind of sad stereotypes. Thankfully on my way out that night, I met some other folks who were looking for another player in their private game and they were all more socially adept, sanitary, and welcoming.
I unfortunately had to stop going to our local board gaming meetup because of this.
Most people were fine but there was this one creep who kept making weird comments if I did something like, you know, be a woman and dare to bend over to get something from a bag. And then a guy who smelled like pretty much the worst thing I’ve ever smelled and always wanted to be in the same games as me.
I was so excited to find the group but I did not last long there.
I feel ya man. I refuse to play with “my mat is literal Hentai” people and “I don’t shower ever and think it’s okay to subject other people to that” people. Don’t show me your weird fetish porn when we are playing games, and don’t gas me out with your filth, because I will absolutely say something and you won’t like it.
Reading math books, Linux, Lemmy, and Extreme metal. I have nothing to talk about with people IRL other than the fucking weather (that I actually want to talk about).
Death, Black, Grindcore, Slam, blackened deathmetal, shoegaze, Deathgaze…hit me up :D
The overlap between math and death metal fans is larger than im comfortable with.
That’s why we have Mathcore. Also if this is you, please check out this programming themed prog album.
Learning languages. It’d be nice if I could meet people irl who are interested in learning different languages and it’d probably keep my motivation up as I’ve been slacking.
Taking classes would basically put you in the perfect situation.
A few years ago I was in some discord servers for language exchange, but I had to put it all on the back burner to focus on job hunting and I lost motivation ever since, but I’m trying to reignite the flame.
I’ve recently been trying to focus on this! A few years ago I looked at my collection of various things I don’t really need and realized how little I know about maintaining them properly; I just bought things with no regard to how long it would be around. If I were to actually do the recommended weekly maintenance on everything including home, it’d probably be a full time job. I’ve since taken a step back and slowly worked one thing at a time into my weekly schedule while minimizing, and it feels pretty rewarding. It changed the way I value things, both at their peak of function and that have a small issue I wouldn’t have considered fixing before.
This has inspired me. My Instant Pot has been throwing a lot of errors lately, I bet I can rig something up…
You know, of all the things to fix, an instant pot would make me nervous. Don’t mess with the safety valve.
Not claiming that there aren’t a ton of people who are into RC trucks,but no one I know is into them. Bought one about a year ago and had a blast bashing it around on the beach. It’s always cool to see others with similar interests and all the times I took it out, never saw anyone else into it.
Yeah thats good. Its an expensive hobby to get into tbf. Not like going online and playing a game of chess.
Yeah it is expensive, but like a lot of things, it is as expensive as yiu want it to be. Can you go hog wild and spend many thousands? Absolutely. Do yiu need to? No, definitely not.
Maybe this isn’t a hobby but just hanging out. Video games, movies, road trips, or any type of activity without it being a big deal. No agenda or expectations. Just being social. I miss that from my younger years. Now everyone is busy, tired, and getting together takes a lot of prep.
Once a year, my friends from high school and I go up to a cabin and do just that. Play games (board and video), D&d, watch movies etc. Now that we’re older we also throw some nice cuts of meat onto the smoker and eat fancier. But the nice part is being isolated from our responsibilities. We’ve been doing now for 25 years.
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Privacy
Protects one of your fundamental rights, or nearly all of them if you think about it, as well.
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ham radio
Getting certified is super easy in many places and there are many hobbies within, such as electronics, building antennas, etc.
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poetry
This hobby has to be the cheapest of all. Go to the park with a pen and paper, bonus points if you leave your phone at home, and let your mind wander :)
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Add me to the list of people who dont know what that is
This makes me sad, 85% of my job is c# haha
I feel you. I have some friends interested but they don’t want to actually do the work. I’ll submit ideas for games and actually implement those ideas (even if they suck). But my friends feign interest and just give creative thoughts without rolling up their sleeves and learning the engine or doing any work. Even though they are programmers for their day job.
I have one friend who seemed interested, and I showed him around the software for about 15 min and he was like “that’s good enough for the day I think”. I facepalmed and was just like… “yeah… we can do more later” knowing full well that wouldn’t happen.
It sucks.
I’d love to get into learning game development but I’m poor and all the software on HumbleBundle and Itch.io seem to cost money. Know any good free options?
Thanks! But where would I even download those two things? I could search “download unity” but I wouldn’t even know what to look for.
https://unity.com/download this is the link. It downloads the Unity hub where you can access your projects and different builds of the engine. I think under installs on the hub you can download the engine itself
That’s awesome! Thanks, friend! You rock!
Look for some good Game Dev discords and you might be surprised
Guess i’m the first to say it, sewing. Not necessarily making things from scratch but just fixing what you got and adding features. Fairly affordable hobby, easy to get into and plenty of tutorials.
I learned sewing as a way to bond with my mum, who is a sewist. Im a 35 year old man for context.
I bought an old 2nd hand machine, fixed it after realizing it was broken, and started sewing for under $300
I learned how to make hats and stuff. Now we spend weekends upcycling fabrics from the thrift store into handbags, hats, toolkits, all sorts of things. She wants to start an etsy store, but only after we have made a few hundred items to photograph and list
I am also a 35 year old man trying to learn sewing on a partially busted vintage machine. But i’ve been hand sewing small repairs for years.
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Thinking.
Okay what is your answer then?
Best answer here lol
Surely that’s not uncommon, is it? The more obscure games I suppose but people play stuff like pokemon and mario kart etc all the time.
I havent played anything beyond black and white and dont care to.
Ham Radio
Some aren’t even aware the hobby still exists.
Easy to get licenced in most places, ham radios are cool pieces of clever tech. So many sub hobbies within. Digital modes, long distance, electronics, antenna design and building.
I agree. Also, hello there fellow ham. 73.
Honestly I can’t narrow it down to less than 2:
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Australian Stingless Bee “farming”: as the hobby is niche, even in Australia, there isn’t much publicly available advancement in hive designs, propogation methods and care techniques for native bees. This makes the barrier for entry high, and the chances of losing a hive when inexperienced is moderately high too. More people in the hobby would hopefully bring in more discussion and experimentation, and make the hobby more accessible to others by hopefully bringing the price of hives down.
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TTRPGs/Wargaming outside of the big 2 games: if its not 40k or D&D, you are unlikely to find anyone that knows of alternate systems, let alone wants to play them. Makes it a lot harder to find a group outside of a game over discord or similar
Can you elaborate how much is stingless-bee-keeping different from apis-mellifera-beekeeping?
Honestly, they are extremely different, and while there are transferable skills from apis beekeeping to stingless beekeeping, it is different enough to be a separate hobby entirely.
Apis bees use a wax based honeycomb structure for brood, pollen and honey, whereas stingless bees around the world use tree or plant resins based structures for brood and different resin structures for honey/pollen, and keep them totally separated. As these structures are not as orderly as apis bee frames tend to be, it is much harder to harvest the honey from stingless bees (in Brazil where the honey pots are larger, they use a syringe system to vacuum the honey out of the pots. In Australia where the pots are much smaller, we use a piece of wood with nails sticking out of it to smash all the pots and drain the honey). It is also harder to clone hives due to these structures, as in apis bees you can just take some frames with a queen cell or two and put them in an empty hive and they will hatch into a new hive. In Australia, the most popular method is to literally rip the hive in half and hope both halves survive. You also have to monitor the temperature, because stingless bees have less bees to cool or warm up the hive, and may need help during heat waves or cold snaps to survive.
Having said this, stingless bees are great pollinators, and are totally immune to varroa mites. Their honey is totally different to apis honey due to the flavour contributed by the resin pots the bees store it in and it is extremely interesting (totally worth the extra work to get at). The hives are also much smaller in comparison to an apis hive, so combining their stingless nature into the mix you have a perfect beehive for beekeepers in more urban areas or with younger families.
If you are interested in beekeeping, but not fussed with honey or monitoring for varroa or are worried about getting yourself or people nearby stung by bees, stingless bees native to your region might be be best thing - if maintained, their hives can live longer than we do, and will make you and everyone within half a km of you have great gardens as they go around pollinating everything nearby. Once you have the first hive, you can easily make a second one (the Australian hive design is the OATH and designs for this and upgrades to the standard can be found easily online) and start making your one hive into a ton of hives.
TIL varroas have been found in Australia, I’m sorry for that.
And thank you for the explanation.The outbreak we have of varroa is being contained but it looks like we may have it spreading to the larger apis community of Australia now as it has been found many kms away from the initial outbreak. Unfortunately, the baits used are just sugar syrup laced with insecticide, so this is currently wiping out stingless bees alongside the varroa infected apis hives. Many stingless beekeepers have started moving their hives out of the containment zone and giving them to friends and family until the baiting process is complete.
If you have any social bees in your area, consider getting yourself a hive! As said its a bit more work than apis bees, but that’s because the community for non-apis beekeeping is much smaller. The more people in the community, the more knowledge and the more native beekeeping will advance!
I’m from Europe, so there are only apes, and I don’t want to keep theses, as the area aound me is heavilly overbeed. However, I consider keeping/supporting nonsocial bees (or bumblebees), but I haven’t started yet.
If you’re looking for a TTRPG and not wanting to worry about the lfg hassle, check out Ironsworn! Grimdark low fantasy, playable in solo or co-op. Just takes some getting used to, and reading lots of player advice, but playing solo become very easy if you already have that rpg brain leading the way. Also free materials online, but I bought the core rules and the “dungeon” expansion hardcopies for about $50 (USD).
I’ve since converted a couple of things and am solo playing to beef up the plot of a book I’m writing in a world I’ve been working on for about 5 years. Makes that process engaging for the gamer side of me!
Can’t help you with the bees, I’m afraid…
I’ll have a look into this! I’ve been playing solo OPR to get the wargaming itch, but I haven’t found anything for TTRPGs so Ironsworn might fill that hole nicely.
It did just that for me, gets those creative juices flowing!
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