Boomer opinions:

• Stop being so loud.
• Get off my lawn and please leave me alone.
• I work in tech, but sometimes tech is added to things needlessly. I just want my washing machine to be a washing machine. I’m tired of being the product.
• Silicon valley’s “disruptors” are usually full of shit. The vast majority of the time: it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
• Don’t tell me what to do with my land if you’re not willing to pay my taxes (or if you don’t have good ecological reasons). I’ll paint my shudders whatever color I want to.
• Bring back the damn knobs, buttons, and switches in my car. I don’t need more touchscreens.

On the other hand…

• I recognize that the way I feel and some of the opinions I have are based on a context I grew up with that may no longer exist - or at least it may not exist in the form it once did. I recognize how I see things may die with me and my peers, and that’s ok. It’s a sad truth, but truth, nonetheless.

I guess that might mean lightsabers are real. You’re welcome, everyone.

As many have said and will say, the recent Reddit changes (at least to an extent). In my case, the announcement really just accelerated my plans. I’ve been interested in the “Fediverse” for a while now, and I’ve been largely convinced it may be one solution to what I see as the malfunction of our modern internet. When I was younger, I was convinced the access to information and the ability to connect with others from across the globe would reap great rewards for all involved. In more recent years, I’ve come to wonder if social media was a mistake and whether the internet as it is will do more harm than good. But the “Fediverse” - decentralization - gives me some hope.

So, I’ve been keeping an eye on ActivityPub projects. I’ve been messing with PeerTube for a while, but not much else. I could never really get into Twitter, so I couldn’t really get into Mastodon (I tried a few times). “Reddit alternatives” were on my to-do list. I kept putting it off, but like I said, the recent announcements finally inspired me to start looking more closely. I was actually surprised to find an alternative as good as Lemmy, even if it isn’t perfect. Kind of kicking myself for failing to find the motivation sooner.

Outstanding. I’ll start reviewing the documentation tonight. Thank you.

Ah, no - I think I just worded it poorly. I realize I could host my own instance for myself, but I meant hosting my own instance for myself and others. You know, to help spread the load. But I assume, then, they’d be able to create new communities on my instance/node.

Ok. I have what might be a strange question. Can you host a server but disable community creation (even if only temporarily)? So, the server would essentially just be a platform from which others could access content published elsewhere in the Fediverse. I’m assuming the load would then be on the database behind my instance, correct?

I’m a Platform/Cloud/DevOps Engineer (the titles are always changing) working in software. I’m reasonably sure I could host an instance to help out without much difficulty. But I’m not sure I’m ready to jump into the moderator role, though I realize I’ll need to deal with those who break some basic rules.

American here. If someone asks, I tend to say “independent”. I think folks usually assume that means “somewhere in the current political center”. What it really means is that I’m more left than the current Democratic Party. I would happily embrace a more left political party, but in the last decade I’ve had no other choice but the Democratic Party (with the exception of some local elections). Regardless, it tends to disarm people a bit. It may lead to a better conversation. I’m entirely convinced our two primary political parties completely fail to accurately represent the nuance in Americans’ political beliefs - and I think that’s true for those on the left and the right.

Anyway, I’m probably a Socialist. Sometimes I wonder if I might be a Communist, but I think I need to read more first. I’m willing to accept that maybe the market has its place, but it should be heavily restricted and completely removed from vast swaths of our society. That might make me a SocDem, but I see that as a milestone, not the end. It’s like a temporary compromise so we can take the time to find better ways to handle the industries the market continues to operate in. I’m convinced that capitalism (especially the unfettered, free market variety) is not efficient and its motives are ethically questionable. Here in the U.S. we have decided it’s ok to allow kids to go hungry because it may interfere with profits. We bail out billionaires because they’re too critical for our economy, but it would seem the more efficient solution would be to nationalize their industries.

On social issues, I’m still generally on the left. But sometimes I think virtue-signaling liberals take it a bit too far. I’m also really tired of this obsession over culture wars. Don’t get me wrong, I think LGBTQ+ rights are currently threatened and we should rightfully focus on preserving them. But at the same time, some liberals react much like emotional conservatives do over really petty shit. Sometimes they become the caricatures conservatives claim all liberals/leftists to be.

If you ask me, the most important part of modern politics is economics and the environment. I realize we can “walk and chew bubblegum” at the same time. But I don’t want to keep feeding this culture war bs. At least that’s how I feel, at the moment.

The last thing I’ll say is, I think our arguments around government budgets often miss the point. I spent time in the U.S. military. I know for some leftist circles this will make my opinions less valid. But I can’t change how a younger me saw the world. So, while in, I saw the ways in which we waste tax payer money. I think we could have a strong military while still reducing the budget. We heavily rely way too much on contractors (as in, privatization). That massive budget rarely made its way to my soldiers’ pockets or to the equipment they used on a daily basis, and that continues to piss me off to this day. The training and the facilities occasionally got better.

But man, we always seemed to get more contractors. We always seemed to get screwed by the fact that the military was limited in how it could negotiate prices for things they needed. I’ll never forget about the artificially inflated cost of printer paper. What a waste. Privatization in our government is helping inflate the costs of governing, and I feel it’s not talked about enough when our “representatives” are pretending to bicker about the military budget.

You know, I actually really like the idea of tags. I don’t currently have an issue with manually subscribing to similar communities on different servers (I’m often just browsing “all” to see all communities and all servers). But being able to subscribe to a tag would be cool. Then I could more easily identify and opt out of the communities I don’t like that match those tags.

You can potentially just use the web app. I know this isn’t for everyone, but if you go to Lemmy in the Safari browser app, you can hit the ‘share’ button. There’s an option there to add it to your desktop. At that point, it’s kind of like a bookmark that goes on your iOS ‘desktop’. It will behave a bit like an app at that point.

Like I said, not perfect, but not as bad as you might think. Just sharing for you and anyone else who may not be aware that this is an option.