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Used to have an interest in exploring the land where I lived, map-making, and looking for edible plants to gather and eat purely for the fun of it. Also kept a journal detailing every new plant and animal species I came across, but then I moved closer to the city and that sadly killed the budding hobby. :'I
Nowadays, the only unusual interest I can think of at the top of my head is maybe my music tastes. Not that what I listen to is especially crazy or niche, but that I listen to such a wide range of stuff and genres. I'll listen to jazz, hiphop, pop, country, electronic, lofi, opera, rock, metal, psychedelic trance, citypop, and reggae in one sitting, in a bunch of different languages from different decades.
I like to be surprised by what my randomized playlists throw at me next, and sometimes make a game of it by challenging myself to see how long I can listen to music without having any one language (or other category) come up more than once in the list. I strongly associate songs with memories and feelings and like to imagine a different dreamscape or story scenario for each song.
Sometimes music is a background thing, but can often be a pastime in-and-of itself for me.
Might not be such an unusual thing to the creators I interact with over the internet, but among my irl family and acquaintances it's something I've resolved to keep to myself after being called weird one too many times. 
- Splitting paper in half
- Anti-ligature architecture
- Doing a no-home run in Outside
- Oh, oh, also, one of my favourite pastimes in high school was to enter Chinese/English words/phrases into Google Translate and laugh at the English/Chinese translation it gives XD
I am strangely into old Americana music from 100+ years ago and I like reading up history of where folk songs and children school songs come from. And I love finding YouTube vids of old recording for songs that seem almost lost to time.
I also tend to sometime get obsessed with random things and fall down strange rabbitholes. Like I got sort of curious about Bazooka Joe comics and went through and read all of them from each decade. They are so weird.
I also tend to fall down rabbitholes about medical conditions. I guess I most read up on skin conditions, mental illness, and developmental disorders. Yeah, I am a weirdo who will look up skin rashes...I don't know why.
I'm absolutely fascinated by color (like, the history of colors and color theory and such), poisons (especially poisonous plants) and, appropriately, poisonous colors. I've read every book I can get my hands on about both topics, and have seriously considered writing my own book about poisonous colors.
I don;t consider my interests as unusual (unless of course watching documentaries on serial killers and asylums is unusual at this day and age) but! My wife collects bus and train tickets for over 10 years now! She sees a ticket laying around? She grabs it, puts it in her collection box and every six month she counts them, making notes on the serial numbers etc...
2 years later
Harry Houdini and thinking he’s super cute. 
That later part… well. Not a lot people knew he was so good looking. 
️
Alright what’s another weird interest? I collect metal objects I find on the sidewalk, the road, anywhere. For no reason. I just really like shiny metal objects! 🤣 I still have the pot of my collection of shiny metal objects.
Steam locomotives. They fascinate me. Also, airplanes, specifically WW2-era fighters and bombers. I can watch youtube videos on steam locomotives or read about airplanes for hours. What makes this so unusual, you ask? I have never laid eyes on a steam locomotive in person, and I have never been on an airplane, though I've read enough about them and understand how they work well enough that with a minimum of training I could probably fly one.
I drew this image of my MC, Daecon, driving UP-4014 "Big Boy", the world's largest-ever steam locomotive. Big Boy has been restored and is still in operation in the midwestern USA. Some day I will ride on it. This forum will strip the image of all of its detail (the original is 10,000 pixels wide), but you can see how big this thing is by looking at how tiny Daecon looks way back in the cab (this is drawn to scale).
Ok so I’m very autistic, that’s important to know. So just know there is honestly and truly a laundry list of things.
- Reptiles, just anything about them
- The ability to tell you a strange fact about any animal you give me off the top of my head. Any animal ever. Try me.
- History in general, recent and ancient
- Fun useless facts
- Picking 1 video game and only playing it for years
- Trying to get bitten by as many (non harmful) wild animals as possible. It’s not that I can’t stop them from biting me because I’m trained in the field, however I think it’s cute and the bite marks can look cool (I mainly catch snakes, I don’t hurt them or move them, I put them where I found them unharmed. The bites also don’t hurt and they don’t scar.)
This is a very very small sample of the crap I’m interested in, but these are the main ones?
Did you say… history?
And fun useless facts?
YAAAAAAY! ME TOO!
And Minecraft! Minecraft is the only game I ever played for 10 years!!
Helllll yeah! You get it.
Did you know that the phrase “you can’t have your cake and eat it” isn’t a nonsense phrase, the linguistics around it have just changed.
Back when this phrase was made, the words “have” and “keep” meant the same thing.
So, in the modern day, the phrase is actually “you can’t keep your cake and eat it”.
Hope this useless fact was as useless to you as it was to me!
Every "unusual" interest of mine has somehow been injected into /or inspired an entire story
My current interests
-Chickens...and birbs in general. Facts, classifications, diseases, etc
-Mythology - various cultures, sacrificial rituals and such, and how chickens/birds (if any) are involved. Balinese cockfighting is an example
-USDA and FDA food safety/regulations, HAACP, WHO, and org stuff like that
-how chickens are "processed", yeesh
-Bugs, various kinds - really wanna do an anthro bug story some time
In the past:
-Poisons, at one point (wrote an unfinished medieval murder mystery), medieval serfdom/lords/feudal system and rules/conduct, etc.
-Penguins! (yep, wrote another book, historical fiction)
-History - particularly WW1 to pre-WW2 India as it gained independence from British rule
I also collect globes, metal/shiny objects, rocks...pet hair (I got 7 dogs XD)
has a notepad ready to write about food safety and regulations
Info dump! This is for my character Wellington!
Lol, okay! Here are the principles of HAACP in the poultry industry:
HAACP (Hazard Analysis and Control Point)
Principle 1: Conduct a Hazard Analysis, list steps in the process and all potential risks and describe preventive measures
Principle 2: Identify Critical Control Points (CCP) in the process.
Principle 3: Establish Critical limits for preventative measures associated with each CCP.
Principle 4: Monitoring. Using results to adjust process and maintain control.
Principle 5: Corrective Action
Principle 6: Recordkeeping that documents HACCP
Principle 7: Verification that HACCP is working properly (testing samples, lesser instances of contamination)
For chicken slaughter:
-example of CCPs are places where workers may cross-contaminate raw and RTE(Ready to Eat) areas, so traffic flow must minimize risk.
-solutions: different colored frocks/utensils for raw vs cooked, implement gloves/handwashing, foot baths to employee areas such as rest areas and to outside (they put their shoes in a chemical bath for 20 minutes, fun)
-Sanitation: microbiological monitoring, environmental testing for listeria species, visual inspections
-zero tolerance policy of feces on carcass (or eggs, I imagine)
That's the very tip of the iceberg cause I don't want to type too much XD I have a whole slideshow with a lot more crap. Wonder how egg-washing is done.