Great read!! I still have my N900, my favorite smartphone of all time!

Where did I say the opposite of anything you are talking about?

Yup I get it, just don’t like marketing speak and downplaying what we are talking about - it takes a ton of joules to get water that hot and it’s dangerous.

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with water that’s roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit

barely warm enough to brew a cup of tea

That is scalding hot water brother LOL

I want the fediverse to be a place to communicate with real people in good faith

It’s a popularity problem. Once a ‘social network’ gets big enough to spread information to a decent user base, it will be astroturfed. Building a better mousetrap and all that jazz, they will still get through, it doesn’t matter the mitigation strategy you use. The best defense is to engage with others who are respectful, and not engage with those that are clearly rage baiting, circle jerking, promoting a narrative, etc. You will never not see it, the trick is to realize it doesn’t matter at all. Just do you.

IRC is still around and nothing has really surpassed it yet imho. We keep re-inventing the wheel.

Yeah not bad, I’m sure you could use federated login to allow the users’ personal google acct to hit the maps api and pull reviews. But yelp/google/amzn/etc all manipulate ratings and reviews behind the scenes without any transparency which is a deeper problem and why I am always critical of reviews in general. But like I said, if you and I created an OSS review plugin/service for use in OSS maps, it wouldn’t be long before it was corrupted in some regard… somehow. Cynical I know but the review data is just so damn JUICY to everyone.

No let me apologize I was overly harsh on that criticism.

yeah there really isn’t a way around reviews

I think it’s just too valuable to stay open and free, someone will always want to monetize (from the business, the reviewers, the ‘pop up’ order on the map, etc)

I too have found myself in the same boat, especially because Google Maps is probably (for my life) their best product. I was in the early contributor beta and have been pretty consistent in leaving reviews over the last 10+ years (although the offers for comp’d dinners have disappeared) - I’ve made an effort to be better, I have CoMaps on my phone, and I’ve started contributing to OSM. I think what would really seal the deal for me to shift completely would be integrated reviews. As you said, google and yelp have the market cornered for that, but there is no transparency.

edit: that transit app website is the worst marketer crap I have ever stepped in, scrolled so many fucking pages of artistic empty-words and vision speak and still have NO FUCKING CLUE what the app does. JFC.

• Bowling
• Darts
• Boccia Balls
• Shuffleboard
• Golf
• Disc Golf (way better than regualr golf imho)
• Canoeing/Kayaking if you take it easy

I get it, I often daydream about life as a member of the lucky sperm club lol

I’m sorry you have had bad experiences and they’ve stuck with you. I wish you the best in the future!

Damn I would be so down to socialize fiber like that!!!

You’re going to love it - I can tell. Enjoy it!!

That’s awesome! I am supposed to get fiber in 6 months but with them neutering the rural broadband fund it might not happen, color me jealous!

How small are we talking? I moved from a large city (Ft. Lauderdale, FL 185k people) to an insanley large city (Brooklyn, NY 2.6 million) then as a sort of whip lash decided I wanted rural living so I took my RV to an area I was thinking of buying a few acres in (Mossyrock, WA ~1000 people) and plopped for a few months. It was not for me. Real “one coffee shop, one restaraunt, one bar” type place and while I loved it initially, the pain-in-the ass of day to day living was too much. Think 20 min drives to the closest gas station, 45 min drives to the nearest large grocer.

After moving around the area quite a bit, I landed on a place with ~35k people and to me, after two years, I am still loving it. Feels like small town rural living but downtown is a 10 min drive away with a bunch of eateries, bars, nightlife, etc.

Pros of ‘smaller’ town living (after trying a few areas that passed the vibe check):

• Community. With everything going on in the world right now it feels like you are powerless. Shrinking the scope of your action to your neighbors and your immediate area empowers you to make change in a way you’ve never felt before. You can participate and have direct impact in all sorts of ways, from city council meetings, to improvement projects, to just participating in a local farmers market.
• Safety. Some people may see this as a negative, and I guess it could be depending on how invasive your direct neighbors are lol, but for me on 5 acres it’s been incredible. Everyone knows if something is amiss and are not afraid to ‘ring the alarm’ as it were. When I first bought the property I was parking along the road as it was very overgrown, countless people stopped and asked if I needed help with the car (assuming I had broken down) then proceeded to introduce themselves and have met a ton of people in this way.
• Affordability. Land and housing is cheaper, groceries stay the same (assuming you are near a main interstate). You can buy a house for the price of an apartment in a large city.
• Quiet. Being in a large city is being in the belly of the beast. The gears are turning all night long. With smaller city living, it’s the opposite, peace and quiet, take a deep breath and relax. Night life and night owls still exist, but you have to go hunt them down.
• Less Police Presence. Crime rates drop inordinately as the population decreases, and with that, you see a lot less “boys in blue” - furthermore, because it’s usually just a few people, you get to know them and have less anxiety with interactions.
• Gardens and Greenery. Speaks for itself, less population density == less concrete paradise == more biodiversity.

Cons:

• Commute. If you don’t have a WFH gig, most smaller cities will not have an abundance of the type of work you do. You’ll most likely have a commute so somewhere with light rail might be awesome for you if that’s the case.
• Gentrification. Depending on where you come from and where you are moving to, you might be seen as a sort of ‘colonizer.’ I don’t get that sneer but I did get several people making sure I was not coming from California LOL.
• Slower Pace. In FL it’s known colloquially as “Cuban Time” basically meaning that time estimates should be taken with a grain of salt. The pace of the life is slower in a small town and you might find services taking forever to be completed. If you can relax and go with the flow though, it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Ok this turned into an essay, this new coffee bean smacks. Best of luck!

Showed all of Charlie Murphy’s real hollywood stories to my s/o who had never seen them. They hold up, we were crying laughing.