I was already no longer posting on reddit through alternative front-ends since around 2018, because I disliked privacy issues with it. I was just lurking via alternate frontends (the precursors to Redlib, there were more before the API fiasco). I was already into the FOSS community and so I forget exactly how I came across Raddle and Lemmy (maybe through /r/piracy or /r/datahoarder, but could have been many other places), and Lemmy was far far far slower then, but when I landed on Lemmy I really wanted it to become a viable alternative to reddit.

RSS feeds. It’s digital so probably not what you’re asking for, but I would often drain time checking tabs or bookmarks for updates each day. Now I just have a specific list of updates from feeds I’ve subscribed to: no ads, no recommendations, no scrolling, no manual refreshing every hour. Just what you ask to see.

Website doesn’t supply one? Luckily some RSS tools let you create one from most websites.

Also, relevant youtube video from Technology Connections about feeds in general.

And, on the topic of digital simplification, learn how to mute specific conversations on your chat apps. Many even have temporary muting (mute for 1 hour). You don’t need constant pings distracting you from life.

All black t-shirts, same pants, same sweaters, same socks, share socks with my wife.

I’ve similarly simplified my wardrobe. It’s been great.

Most of my clothes are made from the same (or at least non-delicate) materials and all my daily wear aren’t light clothes, so they all go in the same wash.

Did this next one with a few things, so for example, socks: Bought one type of daily-wear sock, made sure I liked it and then bulk bought them, so apart from a few special pairs (sports, decorative pattern, other colors), I don’t need to care about pairing socks because they’re all the same. Growing up with 3-pair packs of socks all in different paired-colors, and then socks with the same brand and same colors but different length, was a waste of time.

We saw ICE disarm and shoot a citizen who had a gun. A lesson from this is that a weapon is only threatening if we create an environment where it’s a credible threat, like outnumbering them with armed citizens.

Masks? I could go either way on this. Masks can be protective, and can also be seen as alienating from the community. That alienation is not some unchangeable truth, it’s just a result of how they’re perceived in our cultures (often associated with crime). For a counterexample, look at the Zapatistas who regularly wore masks to protect them from cartel and state violence:

It’s much easier to find organic art in a community, outside the art industries.

Sure, unless you set up a lot of subscriptions it won’t just come on a consumption conveyor belt, and some people might want or expect that, but it’s much better to be in a place where you’re actually interacting with artists.

Though it’s hard to find similar places to early 4ch that aren’t nazi paradises.

Yep. Finding the small scattered imageboards which ban or reject politics and combat spam is difficult, but rewarding. And they tend to be special-interest focused sites, like erischan or lainchan, so they’re not all going to be interesting to everyone. trashch /comfy/ is a possible counter-example.

To oversimplify a complex multifaceted question: money went online. Pre-2000s and early 2000s was dominated by self-hosted community sites, like forums. It was often a personal sacrifice to host them, rather than a business like with modern social media platforms like reddit, YouTube, etc.

I’ve often preferred to stick away from the middle of the internet, the smaller community sites are so much better than for-profit grifter-filled addiction machines. When I see a few people (less of them now) saying “Lemmy is too slow/dead”, I think about the sites I love that get 10 posts a week. One particular board occasionally has some new kiddo arriving to a thread and asking a question to (or getting annoyed at) a post made over 10 years ago. And since these aren’t sites dedicated to sharing things that other people make, they develop their own cultures. Anyone there to advertise and make money will leave dimeless, anyone there to insert political propaganda will be ignored or laughed at and banned.

Lemmy has some shared traits, and some of the benefits are glaringly apparent when we compare to reddit, but it’s still largely a content sharing site more than a creative community.

Not since 3 October 2002 (81 years after Mongolia’s first declaration of independence)

Billionaire-owned mass media is a hell of a drug. It’s easy to forget just how much selective news reporting can distort a person’s worldview.

Except this isn’t a war, congress hasn’t declared authorized it.

What difference does that make?

I think we’re used to the USA and its mass media not bothering to declare war, and simply starting war (bonus points for claiming the other side started the war once they counterattack, as is tradition)

The USA has started a direct military conflict with Venezuela, the state.

I budget my donations so I make an effort to see who I think need it the most. For example, I use Tor daily, but they have huge institutional funding. My to-do list app doesn’t.

There are also some worthy candidates who simply reject donations, like Handbrake.

A few I haven’t seen mentioned:

• Small websites anyone can use for FOSS services, like (e.g. Private.coffee, Disroot, Nadeko, Riseup)
• Any of the 5 remaining Invidious instances, Google has put effort into killing off other instances. Same with other social media alternative frontends.
• Someone mentioned F-Droid, I don’t know what I’d do without the Google Store alternatives like Aurora.
• yt-dlp devs
• Lemmy and various instances
• Your operating systems, incl phones and servers if relevant
• Codeberg
• A few FOSS softwares used for non-fediverse sites I use. Look at all the sites you use and think about which ones are probably underfunded. Don’t be afraid to ask if they haven’t said anything.

Don’t be silly. They posted a list supporting their claim before you made this reply.

Huh, starting a war on Christmas, are we?

Not sure where the number 13 is coming from, but I’m aware of 7, plus the whole doozy of Obama’s regime bombing another recipient of the Nobel Peace prize (Doctors without Borders), a war crime airstrike on a hospital.

Wait, did we all miss a memo?

Speak for yourself. Those who have been on the streets have been seeing police suppression for decades, over a century even. Protest laws have been encroaching all that time.

If there’s no specific use-case (this is a general introduction, not Intro to Operating System Design) and this isn’t academic Computer Science teaching, then certainly a scripting language.

Easy to learn, easy to use, and much more applicable for simple automation that benefits the people learning.

C is dangerous if someone doesn’t take care. Java is verbose and personally I didn’t enjoy it one bit. You said this is a non-technical crowd and you expect them to follow at home.

An end result of liberalist idealism. (plus what others have said)

Some options:

• Hypothetically, […]
• Theoretically, […]
• It’s hypothetically possible
• It’s theoretically possible
• It could be possible
• It’s not impossible

• It’s not mandatory
• It’s optional (only applies to the first example)
• You don’t always need to
• It’s not always necessary
• It might not be necessary

I’m not thinking too hard on this, but since you say each of the words convey distinct meanings, maybe try and find a synonym for each meaning of that word. That could work.

I’m picturing “Affirmative. Dollar 1299 now proceeding to window, over.”