this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
413 points (94.6% liked)

Showerthoughts

30395 readers
793 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
    • If you feel strongly that you want politics back, please volunteer as a mod.
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report the message goes away and you never worry about it.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Since it seems to be a common question for many new users.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] eddanja 29 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Think of instances (lemmy.world, kbin.social, sh.itjust.works, etc.) like planets. Each planet contains cities (or ~~subreddits~~ communities). Most of these planets are federated meaning that if you were born on one planet (have a login) then you can travel and participate the galaxy of cities and planets. If a planet defederates, then you can no longer travel there if you were not from there.

[–] SulaymanF 10 points 2 years ago

I think that still confuses people. It may be simpler to relate it to email. You are on one email domain like gmail.com or yahoo.com and can email other servers. Bad servers that are sending spam or hate speech can be blocked.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What is the major difference between something like Lemmy vs Kbin, etc., compared to just two different Lemmy "planets"?

Also, how do other platforms in the fediverse fit into this analogy? Something like Mastodon, would that be considered another galaxy? Is there any travel between these or do they require the birth of a new fedinaut within that galaxy to interact with those worlds?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Mastadon is like a galaxy of federated planets that can speak/travel to Lemmy planets when they want to, but lemmy can't really understand anything they say to each other and can't really travel to their planets (mastadon is 'people' based like twitter, whereas lemmy is 'subject' based like reddit)

I dont know how kbin fits into this analogy. I think it basically is the same as lemmy and can talk/travel to lemmy but also only understands some mastadon

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

What is the difference between the All view and the Local view?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Local shows posts posted on your planet, All shows the entire federation (galaxy).

[–] DontTreadOnBigfoot 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If I understand correctly, local only shows your planet and you can participate fully.

All shows the entire galactic federation (though you may only get to sightsee other planets, but not talk to the locals without getting a visa (login credentials for that planet))

[–] jcg 6 points 2 years ago

Not quite right. All would be the entire galactic federation that allows free entry with your planet, like the countries in the EU. There is no way currently to see the entire galactic federation, and probably never really will be because of the enormous amount of data that would need to be kept on a single instance.

[–] jcg 3 points 2 years ago

Not quite right. All would be the entire galactic federation that allows free entry with your planet, like the countries in the EU. There is no way currently to see the entire galactic federation, and probably never really will be because of the enormous amount of data that would need to be kept on a single instance.

[–] ThatGuyFromMichigan 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Local view only shows posts hosted on this instance (planet). So only communities hosted on lemmy.world for example.

All view would include posts from other instances as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So should I have accounts on more than one instance? Which instance has the most communities?

[–] TeaHands 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No, where did you get that idea? If you want to view as much random content from everywhere as you can just browse by All. If you want a more curated experience, stick to your subscriptions. Local is sort of a weird limbo unless you're on an instance that has a dedicated topic (like the Star Trek instance, for example).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ok got it.

One interesting thing I found is I have a reddthat.com account and also a lemmy.world account. Using Jerboa, somehow browsing with the reddthat.com account is faster than using the lemmy.world account even if I'm browsing lemmy.world communities.

[–] TeaHands 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah as far as I understand it, reddthat will have a local-but-regularly-updated copy of the community and that's what you're seeing when you view it from there. So makes sense that it would load a lot faster. The problem is that with all the strain .world has been under, we had some issues federating new posts and comments out so they weren't actually making it to other servers local copies.

I know this recent upgrade was supposed to help with that part. Lots of growing pains at the moment!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

All shows communities on all planets. Local shows only the communities on your planet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Can you decide to change your "home" planet?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

The best you can do right now is recreate it on another planet. Hopefully someday there will be a way to migrate (or a way to export/import).

[–] MargotRobbie 2 points 2 years ago

Sign up for a new account at a different instance. While you can transfer your account to another instance in Mastodon, you can't do it for Lemmy right now.

[–] MarshReaper 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

What if they defederate so my visa expires and now I am stuck in the spaceport limbo?