Reddit is like the restaurant you’ve been going to for several years that was a mom & pop operation with awesome food and atmosphere. It got popular, and the owners made it a chain, so you could get the same food in a lot of different areas. The quality started to go down as they expanded, but it was already very popular. Then the owners started raising the prices, and the atmosphere started to get way less awesome. At some point, you realized that it’s not the restaurant you fell in love with, and it wasn’t a good value anymore, so you started looking for a similar kind of restaurant that was more like that one was early on. But the chain is still really popular, and a lot of people just keep going because it’s what they’re familiar with and they know the menu - they don’t want to go to the work of finding a new place and they’re content with what they’re getting there. The people who have left are a drop in the bucket so far, and the chain restaurant is likely to continue operating for the foreseeable future.

The short answer to why we use it is that we inherited it - base 12 of hours/months from the Egyptians and base 60 of second and minutes from Mesopotamians (who got it from the Sumerians).

Egyptians used base 12 a lot for a similar reason that we use base 10 a lot. We use 10 because we have ten fingers, and they used 12 because one hand has 12 knuckles (they’d count on one hand). But it was handy because there are 12 lunar cycles, so it helped keep things more consistent.

Base 60 is also handy because 60 is first number divisible by the first six counting numbers and by 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. If you use 60, you have options! Note that we also use 60 for angles and dividing up the globe.

I think this is spot on. It’s completely foreseeable that a well funded enterprise could stand up an instance that’s super robust and can handle a lot more traffic than current ones. They could, say, attract celebrities to do AMAs and handle the load. Or maybe they could create some communities that they stock with a giant amount of useful content.

They’d do it for free, and it would just be another instance, but it would become invaluable, with more and more communities hosted there, and more and more users making it their home instance, until the owners felt they were valuable enough that they put their content behind a paywall or they start serving ads. Sure, people could just move to other instances, but the point would be that suddenly doing without them would be painful.

But unlike Reddit or Twitter, it’s not as much as all or nothing situation, and other instances can compete in the same realm.

Eh, I like free software the same way I like free beer - I don’t ever have to pay for it, and no one can compel me to.

Right, and no one is even attempting to compel you to. In my opinion, this is one of those “within your means” kind of thing. If you went to your friends house, hung out, and drank his beer every weekend, month after month, his reaction might depend on your ability to contribute. If he knew you struggled to make ends meet, he might be just fine with it, especially if you tried to help out in other ways. He you make more money than he does, and he was the one scraping by, he might get resentful. Either way, he can’t compel you, but one is kind of shitty.

Some of us have more ability to financially support than others, and that’s fine. Last night I made a donation to the developers and another to my instance admins. I’m thinking about making that automatic monthly, but we’ll see. The point is, I think it’s fine if this is a bit socialistic, with some paying a lot, some paying a little, and others not paying at all, as long as the community is able to thrive. By the same token, some instance owners will likely consider it a hobby and not need/want any donations, while some others won’t be able to support growth without them.

I signed up on the 12th, after spending a little time comparing with the information I had. My thought process was:

• I was uncomfortable with the fact that .ml was hosted in Malaysia
• I thought a larger instance might mean it sticks around longer, but didn’t really want to be on the largest (which .ml was)
• Beehaw seemed otherwise a good fit, but their policies seemed too restrictive
• .world seemed to have liberal policies, allowed NSFW, was large but not largest, and was hosted in a country that didn’t worry me

Kept scrolling to find this one. It was so tiresome to see the same joke repeated in multiple threads a day.

And I really love humor, but I’ll also add that everyone upvoting the joke or pun responses until they’re all at the top, and having to scroll to find the real content, was pretty annoying too.

Yeah, that was my thought as well. This is the type of person who is only going to say something of they think it will impress you. The second possibility is that they will share nothing of themselves, period. In either case, they don’t seem like good relationship material.

I’m not sure I could actually form a complete thought inside that house. Maybe if the thought was, “I need to get out of here!” I thought it was bad at the beginning, thinking these people sure did go with their style, but then there was another style, then another.

The realtor should have made them empty the place for the pics.

Here’s an odd one my wife and I were just talking about. Some years ago, we were redoing our kitchen and the contractor told us to go buy the kitchen faucet we wanted. We went off, looked at several, and picked the one we thought looked the best with what we were doing.

When the contractor went to install it, he opened the box and a battery pack fell out. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why a faucet would need batteries. It turned out that you can turn it on and off by touching it anywhere (handle, faucet itself, whatever), you just leave the physical handle open and set where you want it, then you can touch on and off. I thought it was the dumbest thing ever and we’d never use it.

Flash Forward to now and it’s one of the most used conveniences we’ve ever bought. All those times your hands are covered in raw meat or other cooking mess? Just touch the faucet with your elbow. Rinsing a bunch of veggies one at a time? Tap on, tap off. It works flawlessly, unlike those touchless ones at the airport: no delay and works every time. We will never have a kitchen sink without it - my wife wants them for the bathroom.

Just looked and I have 1100 coins. Not sure what from, I’ve never bought any. Any suggestions for them?

Never mind, I decided I only go to Reddit now for one small, private sub, so I went there and gave awards to posts I thought were good.