What Is Your Oddest Current Hobby or Interest That You Have Never Mentioned on This Forum

[AustinTheory18]

The forum has various boards for established hobby categories but everyone has something that does not fit neatly into any of them. The thing you would not necessarily lead with in conversation but that takes up a surprising amount of your mental bandwidth.

Could be genuinely strange, could just be specific in a way that does not have a community around it. The point is things that are not represented in the existing boards.

Post the thing you have been reluctant to mention.

[Golden Tara]

Collecting vintage weather instruments. Barometers, thermometers, hygrometers from the 19th and early 20th century. The engineering is beautiful and every one has a history you can usually only partly recover

[Shane95]

Watching obscure 1970s British public information films on YouTube. The production values are terrible and they are unintentionally hilarious but they are also a genuine document of a social anxiety moment in British history

[Joel5]

Learning to read Ottoman Turkish. I have no practical use for this. The script is beautiful and the grammar is unlike anything else I know. I am probably three years away from being able to read anything properly

[Mason0]

Cataloguing the graffiti in a particular tunnel near where I live. I have been photographing it monthly for four years. The layers and the conversation between taggers over time is a real thing that nobody else notices

[CarlosBuddle]

Following competitive cup stacking. The world record times are absurd and the motor control required is genuinely extraordinary. There is also a surprisingly large online community

[Liam71]

I make miniature furniture for a dollhouse that I will never own a dollhouse for. The scale work and the finishing is satisfying in a way I cannot fully explain. The pieces live in a box

[GlobalBob37]

Mapping historical pubs that no longer exist in my city using insurance maps from the 1890s. I have found about 200 that you can pinpoint to a specific building that is now something else entirely

[GreenEcho]

Watching competitive speed typing competitions. Not for the speed itself but for the technique differences between the fastest typists and what that tells you about how humans interface with keyboards