This is the photographic equivalent of Lewis Black’s “if it wasn’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.”

It doesn’t make sense at first, but your brain has to rationalize it so it comes up with a plausible explanation. It doesn’t have the context to know if that’s the right explanation, so while you’re driving to work and going about your day it’s still trying to process this in the background, quietly pushing you toward an aneurism years later.

Finally ditching Apple’s “Music” player for MOC after watching Apple dismantle/bury basic features over the last decade.

Merlin is amazing. I heard birds outside my new apartment and thought of them as nice background noise. Within days of installing Merlin, I could tell sparrows, cardinals and robins apart without seeing them. Whenever I heard a new bird, I’d grab my phone and open Merlin.

One day it sounded like a robin and a cardinal were having and argument while both simultaneously having a stroke. Merlin figured out it was a catbird, a relative of the mockingbird that learns the songs of other birds then strings pieces of them together in a disorganized song to impress the ladies. Basically, the male catbird who can sing the weirdest songs using the most species signals that he has “been around” for enough seasons to learn all those songs and therefore must have good genes the females want to pass on. It’s mind blowing to learn all this about things that are going on outside your window.

Uno, dos, meow, meow, tres, cuatro!

Pretty little kitty chased a thing she saw.

Had a pouch of catnip and a feather boa

Furry purry, furry purry.

I’ve been to three state fairs, a Trump speech, and a rodeo and I can’t believe that’s the first debate I’ve heard about appropriate usage of butter.

As someone who worked at a major U.S. newspaper in the late 90s, I think the world needs more people who think the way you have just expressed… valuing local information, empathizing with people outside your circle, and considering how your words will be received. I hope you find Lemmy to be a place where you feel comfortable contributing.

I’m going to miss r/datasets, r/selfhosted and other subreddits that allowed me to tap into accessible niche knowledge. I’m sure there are subs I had not yet discovered, but a lot of the information they collected over the years may be gone. I hope those communities will find their way to Lemmy and rebuild.

FWIW, selfhosted does have a sort of “best of” list on GitHub at: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted