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?
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
Lemmy is like internet jail. We got sent here for breaking the rules on Reddit, but now we’re institutionalised and it feels safe, even if there are some very odd people here with us - they’re mostly nice and just serving their time…
Not all of us…
I came to this thread to mention that I love editing OpenStreetMap, but then again, it really isn’t all that niche. It just isn’t talked about much.
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.
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.
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.
Never hear it spoken of, nor any online comments. We teens were hooked. A serious animated series about young adults?! We called it “japanimation”, maybe we just made that up, never heard the word elsewhere, but we had never heard the word “anime”.
Haven’t revisited as I’m afraid I’d be deeply disappointed.
Yeah, I called it Japanimation, too.
Oh you’re that old. I’m that old.
Ever watched Votoms ?
I don’t recognize the name. I’ll have to watch it and see if it ignites ancient memories.
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.
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.
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.
Skin Thief probably my favorite Nekrogoblikon song
A search has given me the band Summoning (atmospheric black metal) whose theme is Middle Earth and they supposedly have passages in Elvish in their lyrics. I’m not in a spot to listen to them at the moment but it seems to be one I will definitely check.
A second place would be a band called Battlelore, seemingly.
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.
Everytime anyone mentions Blind Guardian, Mirror Mirror starts playing in my head
I mean, demons are a girls best friend
🎸
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 don’t know if I’ve heard one or both. Wife’s real love is for Ghost, but that’s hardly a “nobody else is into this” kind of band. I’ve definitely seen one of these in the Recommended For You feed
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 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.
I’m addicted to buying crappy antique and vintage shotguns and restoring them. Have so many now I can hardly justify another. I know, I’m ruining the antique value by stripping the metal and wood, but they’re ~$150 items, not exactly rare.
Look at this $119 ($160 by the time I get it home) piece of crap!
https://www.guns.com/used-guns/p/companhia-brasileira-de-cartuchos-151?i=571883
Never even heard of that brand, let alone the model. Bet I could make it dance and sing for a week’s worth of evenings. It’s a single-shot, can’t be too fucked up. Probably.
This is the first thing I’ve seen here that feels like it meets the OP’s ask. What a cool hobby!
That’s pretty neat! Can you describe the restoration process more?
It’s a piece by piece thing. First I strip the wood down, assuming that’s needed or wanted. Hella work, many blisters, stain as appropriate. Wish I had pics, but one 60s ERA (Brazilian make) single-shot was stained in what I call Confederate Blue, sort of a blue/gray mix. Girlfriend’s eyes popped when she saw it. “You told me about it, but I didn’t imagine this!” I’d take a pic, but it’s in the shed at camp. :( The single-shot hanging over my door is from the 60s or 70s, deep red, silver metal, nickle sling swivels, $20 buffalo-leather sling from eBay. Took that pic just for you OP!
That last one took over 2-months! Broke a piece fucking with it. Ordered. Waited. Tried again. Lost a spring. Ordered. Waited. Found the original spring, now have two. Refinished the wood after the first clear coat peeled off, dumb mistake, took a week of sanding, staining, drying, coating. Just about my favorite. Long barrel for full force and accuracy, tight pattern, kicks like god’s own mule. Too broke to buy more low-power shells, stuck with the monsters another gun required, bruisers, not fun. But still fun. :)
Back up. First I make sure everything is mechanically safe and sound, actually works, no “oops”, and not interested in “wall hangers”. Parts are an adventure, but Numrich gun parts has loads of old parts for cheap, diagrams for reference. “WTF is this part even called?!” Need a weird spring or piece of metal? They got it. LOL, I’ve used a ball-point pen spring!
Once it’s mechanically sound and the wood is done, time for accessories! That usually means a matching strap and some way to affix shells, maybe a sight or a new bead on the end. I like the “grab and go” way of the gun. Got a solid source for leather wraps if anyone cares, Polish outfit on eBay. I will scream to the heavens about their quality, service and pricing. Got about 6 of those, want more, too broke. When they say “20-gauge”, it ain’t a loose 12-gauge that sorta fits. Left-handed merchandise as well! :)
Not many pics, but here’s a single-shot 20-gauge I gave a dear friend for (FINALLY) graduating high school. He’s now happily married and moving up in the US Air Force! Got to hold it again at his house warming party. Gods I miss that one, want another to fix up.
This one’s new, not exciting, but I wanted a cheap, light, 12-gauge for hiking. Sawed off (legally!), stained, upside down flag nailed on. But ain’t my AR cool!
Not my work, except for adding the shell carrier and rough grip, but very much my style. 1900s (?), double-barreled, side-by-side, 12-gauge, sawed off (legally!). They stripped the blueing (blackening) off all the metal, chopped it, sanded and stained, wonderful. Can’t use modern loads, and both barrels trip at once if cocked, still fun as hell.
Wish I had more pics! Got a 90s Remington, made in Russia. You read that right. A tiny 410 with the most beautiful wood furniture I own. When my FFL handed me the box, and he usually doesn’t comment much on my purchases, “Wait till you see the wood grain.” It shines like amber in the sun.
Anyway, I better go pay attention to my wife, but your triggered my trap card! Be glad to say more!
EDIT: Stumbled on a pic! Confederate Blue shotgun on top. The colors really pop IRL! Next one is a Revelations brand from 70s/80s Western Auto Stores, first thing I ever gunsmithed, got me on this road. It’s a common Remington 500, simply rebranded. Yes, you could buy guns in auto parts stores in the day, no ID. Two Turkish POSes. First one works fine, second one’s going in the swamp. Next up is a Remington 1895, same year as the make, didn’t do much of anything to that one but clean up the wood. And the aforementioned “red”. Love that thing.
And no joke, the bug blaster on the bottom works. It’s a salt shotgun for flies. It works.
EDIT2: Found the Russian 410! Looks better in the sunlight, but you might get the idea.
That’s so cool! I’m not at all into guns, but I love seeing other people’s expertise and the before and after of trashed to treasure, would be amazing to see.
I’ve not done much before and after, and so wish I had. Turned some real junkers into art. My kinda art anyway.
Here’s my comment on the shotguns.
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.
Hell, even Foundation (which Dune is a fan-fiction of) has a show now.
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?
That sounds a bit ambiguous, though I should have prefaced my previous comment with the fact that I am still very much learning about this stuff myself.
More recently, I am trying to wrap my head around containerized VPN connections through WireGuard using gluetun. The idea sounds great, in theory. Figuring out how to make it work will probably be less so.
If you mean just accessing a service through VPN from the outside world, then I might be able to help.
I’ve done it successfully a few times. Most of the issues I have ever had were usually with misconfigured firewall rules around NAT.
I like to contribute to various open-source implimentations of classic games from the 90s
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.
How to use game design for education around political and social issues and complexity science
Edit since a few people asked: I don’t have good answers for this yet, but some thoughts:
- According to C. This Nguyen, games are the art of agency (in the same was as music is the art of sound). Agency is core to politics and activism, and the antidote to apathy and despair. I think (some kinds of) games can make you think in really interesting ways about how you can approach agency, or how it is taken from you.
- Some excellent examples include Wintergreen and Bloc by Bloc. Basically any storygame can, if you want it to.
- Games are basically a voluntary and temporary acceptance of an arbitrary set of rules, with an arbitrary goal that you strive to overcome. They often include metrics that tell you how well you are doing. To some degree, the same can be said about modern bureaucracies (albeit less voluntary and temporary), where the metrics might be KPIs or money.
- Games can satirise this in educational ways, e.g. this was the purpose of The Landlord’s Game (the precursor to monopoly)
- This is another C. Thi Nguyen thing - really worth listening to his podcast episode on the Ezra Klein show.
- Some games show amazing emergent complexity. That is, complexity that isn’t due to underlying complexity of the system parts, but emerges as a result of their many interactions, like turbulent eddies, or bird murmurations.
- Go/Baduk is an extreme example of this. 2 rules that have produced 3000 years of culture surrounding one of the most difficult and engaging games I know.
- Tak is another example that’s a lot easier to learn (because it doesn’t require building up a bank of pattern recognition)
- TTRPGs are also super interesting to me, because narrative is one of the tools that the human brain has developed to help understand complexity. I don’t think they exhibit emergent complexity so much, but they bring in a lot of complexity via the players’ life experience, and via the setting/world.
- Different game mechanics and story tropes provide different affordances - that is, they allow or encourage some behaviours, and disallow others.
- No one ever forments a revolution in monopoly, right? Why not?
- Affordances is an excellent frame for understanding how agency relates to systems, because all systems have attributes with affordances (and constraints). What are the affordances of a capitalist democracy? I think games are an ideal vehicle for explaining affordances easily.
There are probably plenty more links. I’ve been playing some of those games for years, but am still relatively new to some e.g. story games. And I’m just starting out looking in to game design…
edit 2: also, a plug for !complexity@lemmy.world
- According to C. This Nguyen, games are the art of agency (in the same was as music is the art of sound). Agency is core to politics and activism, and the antidote to apathy and despair. I think (some kinds of) games can make you think in really interesting ways about how you can approach agency, or how it is taken from you.
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 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.
