Kirk

The LinkedIn-styled writing here is hard for me to get through, but I think the general gist is that for profit platforms are easier to onboard which I agree with. This line stands out:

And what do we get in return? A worse experience than cloud-based services.

I have to disagree somewhat, it's a different experience that is absolutely more difficult in many ways, but for those of us who value privacy, control over our data, and don't like ads, the trade-off is worth it. Also it goes without saying that the usability of selfhosted apps has exploded in the past few years and it will likely become less and less of an issue.

Fortunately "groupthink" on the fediverse isn't a structural problem since nobody controls all instances and every instance has different moderation styles.

I love the idea of an instance for a whole metro area, then each neighborhood could have it's own community.

Big if true!

Always preferred Mason/Ball to Weck because the Weck rubber rims can be finicky and little metal clips tend to go missing.

That's great! I have been using ClearURLs with varied success. Nice to see it built in .

Paper is always preferred but as others have said, ebooks don't take up any space so I end up owning a lot more of them.

I also noticed that when Lemmy links do appear it's often to a random federated instance, not the original source.

TNG is the gateway drug

There is some back story needed with that one... but maybe it's tangential enough to make the viewer want to know more?

Devil’s Due

If this was the only episode of Star Trek I'd ever seen I'd have no interest in continuing 😅

I actually think "Inner Light" is a good option for OP because is a "side quest" that doesn't require much backstory, while still being thematically aligned with what to expect with TNG.

Eh, I would have agreed a few years ago. But now default Ubuntu boots up basically looking like MacOS with the browser (firefox by default, not Chrome) right there in your face ready to launch. For someone truly not aware how to use a computer beyond a browser it couldn't be much easier (except booting directly into the browser). The only thing preventing that from catching on is that those people don't even know what an operating system is, let alone that it could be changed.