The dirty secret that nobody wants to talk about. Sometimes, stuff equals capability. This is especially true with tools, renovation supplies, and hobby supplies. That old drain snake in the garage? $350 plumber call. Rarely used winter gear in a closet? No $$$ rental on the occasional ski vacation. Sewing machine and supplies? Now you can alter or repair your clothes.

It can also be resiliency. All those extra Christmas candles? Great for a power outage during hurricane season. Buying, preserving, and storing summer produce can save money later in the year. A deep pantry can be a critical safety net for some people with job insecurity.

Of course, there’s still a lot of crap we can get rid of, like old hand-me-downs and things we’ll never use.

It’s really a balancing act between the cost of maintaining capability and the cost of paying for outside services. For me, I basically add an entire room to my house for $150 a month, and still get to keep the ability to do the things I love and have some resiliency in my life.

So true! Whisker stress is a real thing.

I generally listen to a pretty big variety of music, but over the past few years I’ve really been liking jazz and big band music from the 1930s and 1940s. So much so that I made an internet radio station of public domain music from that era so I could listen to it like it was a radio broadcast then.

http://1930sradio.com:8000/WJAZ.m3u

This may be one of the best things I’ve ever seen.

I miss the niche trade subs, like r/electricians, r/construction, and r/machinists. Tons of great content on their subs that just isn’t here on Lemmy since most people on those subs don’t skew as techy as most Lemmy users.

Still not worth supporting Reddit though.

Yeah, most established forums with active user bases have been around for a loooooong time. One of the reasons people are still active on them is because they haven’t made significant changes.

There’s no drama like changes to forum drama.

Yeah, most established forums with active user bases have been around for a loooooong time. One of the reasons people are still active on them is because they haven’t made significant changes.

There’s no drama like changes to forum drama.

Agreed. But Reddit, along with most of the internet, was like that in the early days too. In the days pre-Digg migration, I feel like Reddit was down more than up. After the migration though, there was enough critical mass to encourage bug fixing and improvement.

I’m sure there will be growing pains though no matter the outcome.

This has been a “thing” for a while now. Here’s a Hackaday article on it from 2018:

https://hackaday.com/2018/07/02/using-an-ai-and-wifi-to-see-through-walls/

Lemmy reminds me a lot of the way the internet used to be- smaller, independent communities with more real engagement and less of a content firehose. With so many instances, if you want something, you have to seek it out or start it yourself- with the added benefit of federation keeping everyone connected.

I’m really optimistic that this will get critical mass. I think the concept of federation is great, and I like to think we’re at the forefront of a whole new phase of online community.