A hobby is about fun activity. It allows a social part of yourself to explore and cultivate for relaxation and mental preservation. Participating in hobbies can be considered a form of therapy. it can bring you peace and tranquility. Some people dance, others knit, some write poetry and many people collect obscure items. Many times we discover kindred spirits and groups who join to relish this side of ourselves as a collective. But who knew that something that is suppose to be bringing people peace can wrought drama the likes of "Dynasty?!"

Redditor _Coolguysevensevensev wanted to know... _What drama is currently going down in the world of your hobby that the rest of us probably haven't heard about?

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU'RE TALKING TO?!

I created a club in college that had a Facebook group. I hadn't thought about it in years but posted something the other day I thought they would get a kick out of. Well some beazy who is the new president deleted my post. Of course my immediate reaction was do you know who I am???? I MADE this club. And so I deleted her from the FB group.

A while back in the embroidery community there was a big issue with one of the major Embroidery floss manufacturers (DMC) trying to take artist work for free through a contest. Artists would submit their pattern to the contest and the winner would surrender the rights to the pattern and would receive no money from the company. Resulted in a bunch of artists sending in patterns that said "F you" and "Pay Artists!"

In the Sims community, people are worried about the snow depth in the upcoming Expansion Pack, Seasons.

I paint rocks. Another girl in my rock painting facebook group gets her rocks shiny using a special resin but she wont tell us what kind.

The 1997 Spaceworld Pokemon gold demo was recently leaked online. There's dozens of unused Pokemon, a completely different map, it's pretty crazy. Over 20 years later this thing gets leaked. The entire Pokemon community went berserk.

A board game distributor literally disappeared with thousands of dollars worth of games and income. The Malaysian equivalently to the FBI is involved. It's big.

A super rare sandpiper was sighted in my state (RI) late last week, and the last sightings of it were Monday. It's at the end of a really long sandbar that you have to hike out to see, and the weather's been inconsistent, with some days having heavy rain. People have been going out anyway to see it. I was there yesterday, in the sunshine, but the bird wasn't there. There were people from more than 100 miles away there.

Prismacolor pencils have dropped considerably in quality, to the point that they're no better than the cheapest brands. They're still the same price as always of course. You can look at the cores and see they're not even centered all the time. They're much more waxy too.

Artists seem to be rallying behind Faber Castell as the new king of quality and dependability. I wouldn't know, because I haven't mana.

Paleo and zoology nerd. We don't get a lot of drama other than the media misinterpreting a study. However not to long ago this one piece happened.

There's a guy who is like "dinosaurs were all aquatic. All of them. It's because they're to big to walk on land. T. Rex, ankylosaurus, raptors, stego, all aquatic." This is crazy and wrong, but this guy has a book and lectures with his bad "theory" So one scientist is going around and doing counter lectures to prevent this spread of misinformation.

They then hold a debate which ends with the dude with the aquatic theory getting flustered and then just start throwing insults out. Not only was his science wrong, but he cemented his defeat with them ad hominem attacks.

I'm a firebreather - have been for 20 years - and I belong to a small firebreathing troupe.

The fuel we use for firebreathing normally costs us about $20-$25 per gallon.

I found out last week that it may be available, under a different name, for $4 a gallon.

Essentially, instead of buying lamp oil, I'd be buying Jet A fuel. But at the core, they're both just kerosene refined to have the smell and soot removed from it.

If it's true (I'll be buying and testing the "new" fuel next week), it would easily save my small troupe several hundred dollars a year.

Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell just climbed the Nose of El Capitan in Yosemite in 1 hour 58 minutes and change, a new speed record and the first under 2 hours.

Meanwhile, a few days ago two other very accomplished Yosemite climbers died in a freak accident after falling 1000 feet off a different nearby climb to the ground.

In the world of Lego, they are facing a lot of competition from Chinese companies like Lepin who flat out rip off everything from Lego. The design and artwork on the box look virtually identical to Lego and it's as clear cut an example of piracy and trademark infringement as you can get. As an example, here is a Lego Death Star and here is the Lepin counter part. It's such a blatant infringement it's ridiculous. The Lego set sells for $400. The Lepin set for $150. Lego has been suing them for a long time (as well as other Chinese knock off companies) but not having much luck in shutting them down as Chinese courts aren't all that great at protecting IP.

In the world of ukulele there are also China related problems. Once upon a time you could pay $50 to a company like Kala and get a good beginner quality uke. Now there are Chinese companies flooding Amazon and other online stores with rip off brands like Kaka that look very similar and are just utter garbage. People try to play them and can't. Some beginners give up on the hobby. Other instruments are having the same problem.

My favorite Facebook crochet group is currently going through a lot of drama because the admins allowed someone to post a pattern of a penis shaped pot holder. I've been so amused the last few days.

Not currently going on but there was drama in the Phish scene a while back affectionately know as tarp-gate. Fans were coming to shows early and putting down tarps to "reserve spots" for them and their friends in GA sections and people were getting pretty heated. It was a big to-do at the time but has since died down.

In the Barbie/Fashion doll community there have been Conservative women complaining because people have been posting pictures of their dolls Supporting pride month & all of the sudden these women are Shocked because they didn't know that 99.9% of male doll collectors are Gay men.

On a more local level, there's a Level 40 Mystic playing Pokemon Go in our community who takes almost every gym available. Just got a gym and need the coins? Too bad, he takes it. Want a gym he's in? Too bad, he'll remotely defend the gym at almost all times of the day. Just spent two teams taking down a gym before a raid to make sure you have the best chance available to get a legendary you don't have? He'll take it with no effort for no reason.

A revenge group is forming.

At Computex, Intel just unveiled a 28-core desktop (not server) processor that they had overclocked at 5GHz on all cores (with a full air conditioning unit cooling it)

AMD announced that Threadripper Gen 2 would have a 24 and 32 core option. No mention of clock speeds. But it looks like the beginning of a _"core war," _which is going to lead to ridiculous jumps in CPU core counts.

True competition back in the CPU market - it's going to rapidly push CPUs to new heights, like back in the early 2000s!

The Figure Skating off-season has been like an episode of goddamned Game of Thrones. The top figure skaters of the Olympics have been going back and forth, breaking old alliances and forming new ones, while the top two (or three) coaches in the world attempt to utterly destroy their rivals.

Evgenia Medvedeva (2x World Champion, olympic silver) left her long time coach Eteri Tutberidze to go train in Canada with coach Brian Orser, when Eteri's other student Alina Zagitova won the Olympics over her. Evgenia had been Eteri's favorite student and star skater, and there's a lot of she-said/she-said about whether Evgenia had begged Eteri to keep Alina in juniors one more year and out of the Olympics, or whether Eteri was just smearing an 18 year old girl's name with bad rumors because she was hurt that Evgenia left her.

Lady Tutberidze of House Sambo70 seemed to be on the ropes. Two of her other skaters left her as well, and Alina Zagitova choked at the world championships and failed to medal at all. Given her students' track records, everyone was whispering that Eteri knew how to train 13-16 year old girls to championships, but that like a wicked queen, she discards girls once they become too old, constantly craving young quad-capable flesh. Even the judging seemed to be going against her; the ISU just voted to heavily restrict the bonuses for backloading jumps, a strategy the nearly all of Eteri's skaters rely on (and almost only Eteri's skaters rely on).

Meanwhile, Lord Brian Orser of House Toronto Cricket Club seemed to be on the rise. He coached Yuzuru Hanyu to the men's Olympic gold, and Javier Fernandez to the bronze. In additon to star Evgenia Medvedeva, other top skaters were also flocking to his club: Boyang Jin (4th at Olympics) and Jason Brown (US champion) were coming to train alongside Yuzuru, Javier, and Canadian ladies champion Gabrielle Daleman.

House TCC was truly on the rise ... but House Sambo70 would strike back. Eteri poached one of Brian's longest standing students, Elizabet Tursynbaeva, right out from under his nose.

That's where things stand today. It remains to be seen in the coming season whether House TCC or House Sambo70 will prevail, as Lord Orser and Lady Tutberidze send their armies of champion figure skaters forth to do battle for Total Figure Skating Supremacy.

BEEKEEPING

Most keepers in my region lost more hives than usual this past year, due to a harsh winter and the upward trend of colony collapse. Surprisingly, hive numbers overall are up. This is good news as it seems we are getting a lot more noobs than usual. :)

Use vinegar instead of heavy duty weed killers, please.