• El_Scapacabra@lemmy.zip
    8·
    11 hours ago

    There is/was this guy who would make really intricate linoleum tiles with meticulously cut out texts describing his delusional ideas about conspiracies around resurrecting dead people. It’s seriously wild stuff.

    He made it his life’s mission to spread this idea by distributing those tiles across a large area around Philadelphia but eventually covering a large part of the east coast. He covered the back of the tiles in tar and found an ingenious way of depositing them on busy roads, where other cars would then drive over them and firmly imbed them in the asphalt.

    While that in and of itself would probably be classified more as a mental illness than a hobby, it did sprout a community of people who went to spot these tiles on the streets to document and map them. It is also believed that some copycats have emerged over the years.

    There’s an amazing documentary about it called “Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles”. I highly recommend it.

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.caEnglish
    20·
    20 hours ago

    For a bit of maybe context, she was a paleontologist…but

    Friend of mine from university was always ready to scoop up roadkill into her trunk when she passed it by so that she could render it down to the bones so she would have a skeleton to study/draw.

  • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
    23·
    22 hours ago

    If there’s one thing I learned from being a siren enthusiast, it’s that if it exists, there’s a community and hobby formed around it. Neurodivergence is a helluva drug.

      • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
        6·
        15 hours ago

        BNCO Mobil Directo (variant with a Wisconsin gas engine), a Federal Signal model 500-SHTT, and a B&M 20-AR-10.

        Of course, this being a deserted island and all, the latter two wouldn’t be able to function and I’d probably only have limited fuel for the Directo, but they’re my favourites so it’s better than nothing lmao

    • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
      3·
      16 hours ago

      chicago used to have a lake front airport such that you could go to a beach. Sun, swim, and watch the small aircraft take off and land.

        • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          2 hours ago

          ugh. I love my city but I so wish I lived in toronto. its so like mine but like with sprinkles. can travel with your dog on train, still has lakefront airport beach with nudity.

  • Widdershins@lemmy.world
    17·
    1 day ago

    One time I was at a bonfire and a friend of a friend, looking like he was up all night, said he was up all night watching tornado siren videos on youtube

    • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
      12·
      22 hours ago

      Siren enthusiast here, it’s a surprisingly large community that’s really started to blow up these past few years. There are so many models and sounds that there’s always something interesting to find and I find them pleasant to listen to. Sirens are very powerful machines that move a ton of air, and they’re capable of shaking the ground and rumbling your chest when you’re near one. We have an annual Sirencon in Wisconsin every year where we bring our privately owned sirens (usually bought for cheap after they’ve been retired from service) and have a good time firing them up.

      I personally enjoy learning the history of the sirens themselves and finding surviving units of rare historical models, especially those from between 1910-1950 when they were still trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t. There was a ton of innovation and cool designs. A lot of people associate sirens with air raids, but their original primary purpose was to replace bells, air horns and whistles at fire departments that needed an audible signal to summon volunteer firefighters to the station upon a fire call. Being electric, the siren didn’t need air pressure or steam which could run out, and couldn’t be confused with church bells.

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
        5·
        20 hours ago

        I tested a military handcranked one once, it sure is a very special thing, the slow buildup, the sound and the wrrrrr vibrations.

        • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
          3·
          18 hours ago

          Hand crank sirens are pretty fun! I’ve got one from China, an LK-100. It’s especially satisfying hearing the pops at low RPMs.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
      4·
      15 hours ago

      Ok from the name I would have assumed an artist who works specifically with flat sheets of metal and a rounded hammer.

    • Davy Jones@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      5·
      19 hours ago

      You must have made that up, there’s not even a definition on Urban Dictionary.

      Also, is this a hobby or a kink, because it reminds me of kinks like chastity, plapping and such.

  • ssillyssadass@lemmy.world
    20·
    1 day ago

    I dunno if it’s really a hobby, but one time I heard about bug collectors. They’re not people who go around catching insects, instead they’re people who go around catching STDs. On purpose.

    • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Oh, yeah. I remember reading the celebratory posts about the first person to contract HIV despite taking the anti-catching-HIV-drugs (yes, I know the word prophylactic, I just think my words are funnier).

      • ssillyssadass@lemmy.world
        6·
        1 day ago

        Actually, from what little I recall about it, I think they do alert their partners about it, or maybe they just stuck with fellow bug collectors.

        • Nikls94@lemmy.world
          7·
          18 hours ago

          There’s a few who have a kink of spreading those parasites to unknowing people. Back when the internet was a village I made a wrong turn and can’t un-know this now…

  • Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca
    101·
    1 day ago

    I don’t know that this even counts, but one of the most strange but wildly interesting things I used to do years back was randomly exploring defunct teleporters in Habbo Hotel.

    For those who don’t know about teleporters/teles in Habbo Hotel, there are probably tens of thousands of pairs of teleports that exist in the game, each of them connecting only to its pair. Since trading furniture is pretty much a currency in Habbo, a lot of individual teleporters get traded off or lost throughout the years, and often end up being parked in random rooms and vast furniture junkyards.

    So I would often lay down several random teles from my inventory, or enter my own furniture junkyard, and try every tele in there until I got a live one. This would Bill & Ted me to fuck knows where. If I’m unlucky, it’s just a dead end room. If I’m lucky, it’s a room with even more teles. That’s where the rabbit hole begins. Pretty soon you’re ten teles deep into the weirdest, most liminal Back Rooms spaces you can imagine. Sometimes you even find a back door into other players’ private rooms and get to explore like a cat burglar. The sky was the limit.

    I haven’t logged in for a decade or more, but I still miss doing that sometimes.

    I included the best pic I could find online of what a tele goldmine looked like, except there would typically be a wide variety of styles and not all portapotties like these.