One of the ways to soup up a car was to replace the original exhaust manifold with headers. With the introduction of catalytic converters that doesn’t work anymore. You won’t pass the next smog check.
Oh dear!
Can’t it also be a way of getting better food? Lots of people grow tomatoes they claim are tastier than what they sell in the supermarket.
I’d put that firmly in the hobby category. Most people I know with gardens like to eat what they grow.
I kinda got this feeling too. My “people” kept bringing up how “inexpensive” figures & paints were. . .
Hell, my 20 Ton Flea wout toast a company of Space Marines.
Tripler
Yeah, I went there . . .
Oh yes. Shortwave Listening, or SWL. When I was a geeky teenager my hobby was “DXing,” sitting in front of an AM + Shortwave radio from the 40s that I rescued from my grandparents’ attic, picking out international broadcasters from the static and sending them reception reports in the hopes of receiving a QSL card in reply. I still have them, dozens of them, from shortwave stations and AM radio stations around the country and around the world. It was a fun hobby and educational too. I still have the radio, and it still works.
Unfortunately, as you say, many international broadcasters have turned off their transmitters in favor of “broadcasting” on the web. And there’s so much man-made electrical interference nowadays that the AM and SW bands are nothing but noise.
As recently as 20 or so years ago I would get up in the morning, pop on the shortwave radio and listen to the news on the BBC World Service, rolling in like a local from its Canadian relay. Sure, today I can listen to “The Beeb” on-line, and I often do, but it’s just not the same. (Sigh)
When I was a kid, we played Dominoes. Is that still a thing? The last time I heard it mentioned was in Ocean’s 13 (2007).
I’m pretty sure dominoes is still big in the African-American community.
I only know Dominos as the things you knock over in chain reactions, never once IRL seen it played as a game.
It’s fairly popular in the African American community though I can’t attest to it’s popularity among its youth.
I have been mulling over doing a YouTube video on this topic for a few months now; it’s a fun story.
I was a licensed ham at 13, and it was super cool to have an alternate life outside of school: at night I would turn on that big old National NCX3 and start keying in “CQ CQ CQ…” and talk to people a few states away (or even Canada). I had a 40-meter dipole antenna out back, so no chatting with Europe, but at that time Canada was just as distant in my mind.
Meanwhile, unknown to me, dark clouds were forming: There had been a few casual comments of “television interference” from a neighbor, and I suspect other neighbors were soon going to make their objections more concrete.
Apparently it was coming to a head because one random day my mom gave me a brand new Commodore VIC-20 computer, with a catch: “The radio goes.”
So one old-time hobby was unceremoniously shown the door while an up-an-coming one came to the forefront and put food on my table for the past 35 years.
I gotta get around to doing that video. That’s the kind of one that would take a month to glean more than a hundred views, but I still want to do it.
I think dominos are popular in Latin American communities.
I have a cousin a year or two older than me who’s a ham… but yeah, she asked to be assigned our grandfather’s old call sign.
And I think that most of the youngsters who would have been kitbashing models are now doing 3D printing, instead. Which still isn’t a very large share of the population, but then again, kitbashing never was, either (the people who just buy a model and put it together as-is are probably equivalent to the folks who just print the models they download off of Thingiverse).
Really? We played it a lot when I was a kid, ~50 years ago.
Also in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean community (Cubans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans).
Yeah, I remember reading that Fidel Castro early on was known for long games of Dominoes with his comrades.
At my primary FBO, a C172 with ancient avionics is now $185 wet. I believe ground training is $50. The cost for aircraft has also greatly exceeded inflation. A Cirrus SR20 in 2005 started at around $240k (about $400K in today’s money), yet the current crop of SR20s start at around $750K. Some things, such as headsets, don’t seem to have done the same, but some of that could simply be a mental price ceiling, much like computers until recently. The Bose Aviation Headset X was $995 ($1650 in today’s dollars) in 2005 and the A30 is $1,295 today.
So, the relative cost has increased greatly for both renting and owning.
League Bowling has all but disappeared. I miss it. I won’t miss it if the same thing happens to golfing.
Do you know about this book?:
90% of my 40K models are still grey plastic… I’m more interested in the game, so mine are playing pieces, not art projects…