Switching accounts over is a big issue for sure, but even bigger is when entire communities are lost. Those are much harder to switch over, both due to scale and moderation concerns.

I don’t disagree with the sentiments behind these statements, but you’re basically asking a fish to leave their large school to join a smaller school because it will benefit the species as a whole if the species is divided into multiple schools rather than one giant school. While it might be true that the species is safer that way, it’s much more dangerous for the individual fish to be in a smaller school than to stay in the large school.

In other words, it’s safer for the fediverse for users to diversify, but is safer for the individual to join a “too large to fail” instance. If a user’s instance goes belly up and they lose their account and everything associated with it, it’s functionally similar to the entirety of Lemmy going down as far as that individual user is concerned, because unless you’re a serial lurker (in which case it doesn’t even matter what instance you’re on if you’re not contributing) who wants to invest years in a social media site just to lose your account? Most folks are going to leave rather than start all over. And most folks are going to make the decision that is in their best interests over those of some website. I know every time I see another instance get shut down or defederated, I’m relieved I decided to sign up via .world, even if it’s sluggish at times.

“Joining the fediverse isn’t hard bro, your instance doesn’t matter, just pick one.”

“Stop using Lemmy.world, we need to redistribute to smaller instances.”

The number of times I’ve heard these fucking lines when people discuss why Lemmy/the Fediverse isn’t growing like corp-owned alternatives…

Interesting idea, but it would need to be heavily moderated against scams and such that have pervaded other online “handmade” shops.

Do you have a dutch oven? There are a lot of easy yeast bread recipes out there that just require: standard oven, Dutch oven, parchment paper, mixing bowl, yeast, flour, salt. I would highly recommend that for beginners.

I personally would stick with yeast and baking soda/powder recipes at first. Irish soda bread is another beginner-friendly recipe IMO. Save the sourdough for later (unless you really want to do sourdough, but it sounds like you don’t like it much anyway?)

I would also add: the other route is to get a loaf pan (even a disposable one is fine) and a meat thermometer (which you should have on hand anyway, especially if you cook meat), and maybe a large wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk for stirring (but you can also use your hands).

Baking is wonderful because there’s a lot you can do with really basic tools (it’s been around since basically the dawn of civilization!). Of all the hobbies this one is actually pretty equipment-light.

At no point has Gmail ever said “we’re no longer allowing you to send/receive emails to/from Hotmail” or has Yahoo said “we’re maintained by a single volunteer who because of real life stuff can no longer continue so we’re discontinuing our email service.”

But this literally happens with instances all the time.

I’m a fediverse supporter (obviously, that’s why I’m here), however what you’re looking for requires a critical mass of users that the fediverse (at least the Lemmy side of it) will never achieve as long as two very critical problems persist:

1. sign up is confusing. People are used to clicking “create an account,” inputting a user name, password, and maybe an email, and then BAM they’re a user. I realize the whole instance thing is the entire point, but no one wants nor expects to have to do significant research and make a decision about how they want to interact with a social media site before they’ve even started using it.

2. the site (or at least lemmy.world) is sooo slooow. Basic functions like loading images take me back to the dial-up era of “click the image then do something else while it loads,” which is downright ridiculous in the 2020s. Again I’ve stuck with it because I want to support the fediverse, but 99% of users won’t.

And no, these aren’t “features not bugs” unless you want to keep the site small and homogenous.

It’s not a difficult bar (heh) to clear. Keep a stock of frozen pizzas on hand, have a cheap countertop pizza oven, bam, food requirement satisfied.

Enterprise holds a bizarre role as both prequel and sequel, due to time shenanigans being a major ongoing plotline

You’re getting downvotes because you’re citing incel talking points.

And this is in 2015, after we’d recovered from the great recession but before the housing/rental market forced a lot of families back into multi-generational housing situations.

Minnesota is probably the most famous example at the moment, but they’re far from alone!

https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/states-with-universal-free-school-meals-so-far-update/

Red states are not okay, because all they have left in their value system is cruelty toward people they see as not “pulling their weight,” as if we still live in some resource-scarce era of yore where if you don’t work, you don’t eat (and even if you do work, eating is not guaranteed, better work harder!).

Blue states are increasingly providing lunches, and sometimes even breakfast, for all students free of charge. It used to be income-based (you’d get free or half-priced lunch based on your family’s income), but even that system is getting ditched because of the associated stigma and the problem of some needy students falling between the cracks.

The difference is if the primary (sometimes only) admin of your instance loses interest, goes to jail, or gets hit by a truck, your entire instance could be dead in the water, whereas there are way more safeguards to “established” social media like Reddit and Twitter. Plus the issue of “well shit my instance got defederated from most of the fediverse because it turns out the admin is an asshat” is completely nonsensical on platforms without instances. Example: before I knew that Lemmy had a tankie problem, I almost signed up on lemmygrad because I thought it was just a witty pun…

Plus when you say “point them to lem.ee” what scenario are you imagining? Because “you should join reddit” or “our business is on Facebook” or “Twitter is a great resource for artists” are all straightforward and easy pieces of information to convey and pick up. “Join Lemmy, a subset of the fediverse, I signed up via lemmy.world although I hear lem.ee is also good, but don’t let that stop you from picking another instance” is like… Dude, people just want to go to [site].com, click on “sign up”, enter a username and password (and maybe email) and that’s it. Just having to explain to people that “lemmy.com” isn’t a thing is already too complicated for most folks.

Lemmy (or at least lemmy.world) was bonkers levels of buggy last summer during the reddit blackout. Like, literally unusable levels of buggy. Getting the word out that it’s (mostly) bug-free now would probably be good, because I’m sure there were many redditors who tried it and quickly swore it off as a pile of shit.

Otherwise I’m in agreement that the instance-selection part of sign-up is a huge barrier, because what instance you choose is actually really important but it’s overwhelming when you’re just getting started. Plus not being able to migrate your account/communities/posts to another instance if yours goes to shit/shuts down/turns out to not fit your needs makes the fediverse feel really unstable.

There’s a through-wall box fan just outside another shower.

Especially intense for the wave genre! Great find.

I wasn’t able to participate in canvas this year due to real life stuff, but oh wow, I’m so impressed, everyone!

Wow I’d never heard of seapunk, thanks for the link!

I’ll admit, I was on autopilot when making the first round of posts to populate this community and included this channel without thinking it through completely. As you’ve observed it’s an EDM channel, not synthwave. Despite my mistake I’m leaving the post up because 1) there’s a good amount of overlap between fans of synthwave and fans of EDM, and 2) the DJ seems to be trying hard to make good videos despite his lack of audience, and I want to direct more folks to his channel.