you’d be shocked at how easy it is to grow most edible mushrooms. all you need to grow oysters is a syringe full of spores and some uncle bens pre-cooked vacuum sealed rice. If you want to do lion’s mane or other more complex growing cycles like that, just add a rubbermade tub half full of vermiculite and coconut coir. You can be in this hobby for like $100 up front and then like $30/batch. And yes you can grow those mushrooms, where legal of course. I haven’t tried it but it seems to be no more difficult than the ones I’ve successfully grown, and the rice trick actually comes from that community (google “uncle ben tek” for more info)

I’ve been getting into primitive technology lately. It all started when I looked at my back yard and thought hey, if we call it red clay, then I should be able to make it into pottery. I take dirt from my yard, levigate it, add grog and wedge, hand-build pots, and fire them in my fire pit. Been making sharpening stones from river rocks. Crafting replicas of Roman machines. That sort of thing.

I haven’t done much with it in a while, but I’m also not giving up on it, so I suppose it’s still valid lol.

I collect LaserDiscs

I got started with the format around 2010, and it was super neat to delve into this old, but strangely good, format. I found that most players and films were super cheap, and as a poor family with really no ability to move to HD yet, the SD format picture was clearly worse than DVD, but not so much so that it was unwatchable or anything.

I spent a lot of time collecting new films, looking at players, etc. etc., but I took a break while in college. Turns out that in that time everything went wild, and now the format is expensive to collect for. So much so that I’ve basically stopped at the moment. It’s still a super neat format though, and I’m not about to offload all my kit just yet.

For anyone looking for info about the format, I’d recommend Techmoan on YouTube. Matt does a lot of interesting tech videos, and the handful he’s done on LaserDisc are quite good.

Posting on Lemmy the pictures I take, the nice thing is that people have @ me saying how they like my pictures

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I’m pretty into conlanging, which is basically making up languages. There are tons of different approaches and ways people can go about it, but like probably most (or at least a plurality of) other conlangers, I generally go for something as naturalistic as possible. I’m also into linguistics so it serves as kind of an interesting way to explore different features and grasp them better, as well as just an excuse to do more research to find out more about something.

I build custom mechanical keyboards. Got into it because of the Pandemic and now I have built 6 of them. /r/mk and /r/emk used to be some of my most visited subs on the other site. I’m now known as the goto for keyboard questions in my circles of friends.

I started getting into fidgeting more lately and took a liking to magnetic sliders and now have a few that I pretty much always have with me.

And that extended into me learning about begleri beads somehow so now I am attempting to learn that. I can do slips and 2 finger wraps and occasiaonal one finger or thumb wraps but not much else yet. I accidentally learned a stall because I messed up. I need to really learn transfers since that is one of the main things you do a lot of.

I think I am also amongst the hyperfixator group in this thread. I was previously into speedsolving Rubik’s cubes and roasting coffee so I feel a lot of these answers lol.

I’m really into calligraphy and snowboarding. Luckily there’s a snowboarding presence here on lemmy, but I have not the time to start a calligraphy one.

Brickfilming! I make films with Lego using stop motion animation. Takes a lot of patience and my perfectionism is my worst enemy, but it’s super rewarding, and there’s a really cool community online around it. And yes, my profile picture is from my most recent Brickfilm!

I’ve been on a hiatus due to some medical stuff making it hard for me to concentrate, but I’m a lock nerd. I collect cool locks (“cool” being very subjective here 😅) and pick / manipulate them.

edit: here’s a tiny part of my collection. I’d upload more but I’m having a hard time with the mobile site and image uploads

I love mapping on openstreetmap.org

Some more niche than others but basically…making stuff. Cross stitch, yarn crafts, sewing, needle felting, dicemaking, 3d printing, very occasional cosplay, I’m about to try my first macrame kit and a friend is planning for us to learn punch needle together.

There’s something just so satisfying about making real stuff you can use, or wear, or wash yourself with or whatever (I also briefly got into soapmaking).

If you want to chat about basically any craft (or just lurk and look at pretty projects, that’s ok too), I’ve been keeping a megalist of relevant communities and magazines here https://lemm.ee/post/224890. And if anyone reading this runs a related one that should be on the list please DM me to be added!

Ham radio! It’s relaxing. My favorite activity is to take my portable gear to parks and operate Parks on the Air.

I build guitar pedals! I don’t design them, but I order the PCBs and solder the components myself. It’s significantly cheaper than buying them premade, and how many people can say they made their own pedalboard?

I’m also an amateur Fossil Hunter. The area I live in is filled with fossils from the Ordovincian.

Looking for and archiving recordings of old and modern announcements in commercial and industrial settings. Like mind the gap on trains or there has been a broadcast tower failure in your area or Pan Am boarding call welcome and instructions. these can be on reel to reel or 8 track tape.