Wren

This one is too slow :(

I didn't use reddit much outside of a few niche communities, it had a repetitive brand of humor and weird dogpiling I didn't jive with. Here, I find people genuinely want to engage, with moderation suited to a more mature crowd, at least in the communities I hang around.

There are culture shifts between instances and communities, so I try to have a look around before I speak up. Some places you gotta lurk to get a feel, others are a free for all. I stepped on a few toes while I got my footing — just read the sidebars if you want to avoid that.

Browsing by subscribed is the best experience, in my opinion. I see every instance so ALL is a cacophony of back alley circus heretics if I don't tailor my feed.

Here are some useful tools I picked up in my time here:

Check defederated instances: https://federation-checker.vercel.app/

Fediverse Observer: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list

Comparison of Lemmy instances: https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

Lemmy apps and discussion (2 years old): https://lemmy.world/post/465785

The Lemmy Rat: https://lemvotes.org/

Wait, THIS is what people are talking about when they say the devs are transphobic?

The dev admitting he said stupid shit in private, supports human rights for everyone, and his personal views should have nothing to do with his work?

Consider the first rule of the Lemmy code of Conduct is:

We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.

Edit: Just checked, Lemmy.Today isn't blocked by any instances.

~~Last I checked .today was defederated by one instance, don't know why.~~ I'm open to more info.

The description and the rules are boilerplate, no bigotry or transphobia kind of thing. The admins have been helpful and responsive. I can see why conservatives would join an instance like this, but there's nothing inherently conservative about it.

When I joined the most-visited local community was conservative, but they're pretty tame by right wing standards. A couple of the mods posted left-leaning articles to my community, too.

I don't pay attention to a lot of Lemmy drama unless it crosses my feed, so I could be wrong.

I joined Lemmy.today to see all the instances, they don't block anyone. I expected chaos, but it's richer. To be fair, I rarely browse 'All,' instead sticking to subscribed coms where the backwards-speaking wanderers from hexbear are more of a feature than a bug.

Now it's my main account.

PR Edit: I meant no offense to the good people of hexbear, I'm just confused by your ways.

The whole gluten thing is pretty interesting.

Low carb diets led to commercial production on non-wheat breads in the western world, creating more options for people with celiacs and increasing public awareness of gluten allergies. With more bread options some people noticed they felt better after chowing non-wheat bread.

Without a lot of health info and bullshit american healthcare, they figured they had gluten allergies or celiacs and adjusted their diet accordingly.

A widely publicized study on non-celiacs gluten allergies found no gluten allergy, media took it out of context and implied those people were full of shit. This polarized the public against anyone claiming a gluten allergy.

But! More and more people self-diagnosed gluten allergies, and more study led to discoveries on how fermentation helps digestion (like with sourdough), that parts of grains contain enzymes that aid digestion, found industry-wide problems with undercooked grains, and allergies to different classes of grains.

So it was healthier for a lot of people, they just didn't know why.