The death of this engineer for EarthLink at 18 (while he also studied at MIT) and which allegedly involved a religious cult based in Oregon, is a good place to start.
Only about 2.5% of suicides are jumping to ones death also (although the percentage is double for women, and this number is US suicides in 2018 keep in mind).
Those were some fun times as a teenager.
I guess the closest thing I could thing of is my interest / work in certain subsets of retro computing that I don’t typically see from other hobbyists.
I play around with retro telecom and networking stuff and designed (but haven’t yet built sadly) a user mode X.25 stack (along with a kernel version on Windows) and am working on a plan for some ISDN stuff for a custom “PBX” to bridge some old H.320 phones with modern WebRTC stuff. If I ever finish those, there’s a few other “retro” stuff I’d like to look into. I also play with more modern stuff, mostly imagining implementing an 802.11 controller (hopefully a 802.11bb one when released) and a custom DOCSIS modem.
Part of my problem with a lot of this stuff (and why I imagine I don’t see a lot of people doing it) is 1. I generally need a lot of expensive equipment to be able to designed labs for this stuff that I can’t always immediately (or ever) afford and 2. It requires knowledge from several separate and often complex fields. Also it’s a lot of work and time to invest in a niche interest solely out of curiosity.
Pretty much my entire life was filled with friends who do not share my appreciation for it, and even the ones who did like it gave only a passing glance and only ever listened to it when I was around.
Don't see a lot of new guitarists playing neoclassical guitar anymore, but that's okay I guess. Maybe someday Michael Romeo will release a half decent Symphony X record with some neoclassical licks, but I'm not holding my breath.
It's actually one of the most intensely relaxing albums I own. You don't usually expect to hear that in re an 80's shredder. I usually play stuff like this when people who dislike metal (gasp!) are visiting.
PS: Symphony X is pretty great, too. Reminds me of 80's thrash with a neo-classical accent, and has all the prog elements that make the genre great.
In general I find that each one is quite different and the activity reminds me of being a kid and exploring in such a way that everything is a new experience.
I don't know why I put myself through this, but I can say I'm one of the best Solex carburetor tuners in my area. I don't even have a shop, or work in the field at all.