I've actually never seen this format before and I must say I quite like it.

Pfft, rest of the world should start following Finns on this and call everyone and everything 'it'! Except pets for some reason.

I do this to myself and then get disappointed 20min later.

"Nah, surely they wouldn't make it that obvious, that would be downright bad writing... More clues, they must be trying to lead me astray and then surprise me with a better twist! Oh, it really was just the obvious one... Hmm."

I think it's worth mentioning the amount of instances full of bots as well. I just started hosting my own instance and decided to check other instances' block lists to defederate from at least some bot instances. I now have about 50 blocked instances. (instances with 60k or so users each with no posts)

Is this how cyborgs are made?

I very much agree. Learning English as a foreign language, it feels very wrong to use plural for a single person. I'm still not quite used to it! Although, had I been taught that early on, I doubt it would feel any weirder than using "you are" for a single person.

My useless skill is being a RuneScape lore repository. There's very little that I don't know about that subject.

The package managers are actually a huge upgrade, at least in my opinion. I was always annoyed having to hunt for the right site for the right installer, now I can just search and install with a command without even opening a browser. But the biggest benefit is the updating. One command to update everything is so handy, one command and all my applications and drivers are updated just like that. But there is the issue of many programs simply not supporting Linux. For those you'll sadly have to find replacements or workarounds.

If you want to get rid of Grub instead of what others have suggested, you could try booting into Windows and look for "advanced startup" and do a startup repair from there. That might destroy Grub and replace it with Windows bootloader again. If it works, your Linux stuff will remain on the drive, but Windows will boot like before. (you can easily reformat the HDD drive from Windows afterwards to use it for storage)

Some of my personal tips for moving to Linux:

1. It's not Windows. Don't expect things to work the same way. Trying to force Windows approach often leads to a lot of problems.
2. Watch Youtube videos about Linux. (terminal, package managers, desktop environments, distros, gaming, program replacements, whatever) This will help a ton to get a better grasp on why things work the way they do and what the benefits are.
3. Remember that in Linux you have a lot of options. Distro hopping can be useful early on to see different options/customizations. Then you can pick the things you like later.
4. Avoid graphical appstores. I've yet to have a positive experience with them. Terminal is much more reliable and simple.
5. Try out Arch Linux too, if you have the patience. It's not as difficult as people often make it seem, and installing it yourself is very educational compared to the easier automated installers. AUR for installing programs might also be to your liking more than how Debian based distros do things.
6. Learn how to troubleshoot yourself. Learn to search the web for solutions. If you're having an issue, it's likely someone else has had the same issue before.

I was going to say I haven't had any issues, but then remembered I only sort by New and Top...

This is easy though. The amount of times I've kicked my toe into something on the way to the kitchen and ended up in 12th plane of torment is innumerable.

I tried setting up an instance for my personal use today out of curiosity. So far the most notable personal benefits have been much more responsive site and easier time curating what I seeon my feed. The latter is easy enough since my feed only includes posts from communities people on my instance have subscribed to... which is also quite a downside since I'm the only one on the instance...

Oh and I'm able to federate with whomever I want, compared to if I were on lemmy.world, I couldn't see posts from beehaw.org and vice versa. I'll also sleep soundly knowing that the stupid pictures I'll be uploading (too lazy to upload them on external site) won't be filling up someone else's precious servers.

but it's Monday... and I'm not quite sure what conclusion to draw from that.

One thing that might not be obvious is that the All feed is different too, as it only shows posts from communities someone on the instance has subscribed to. But since there are ways to search communities across instances, it isn't really a big deal. Unless you're on an instance of one or two people maybe.

Federation and moderation are probably where the instance matters most. Also, the matter of who runs the instance is kind of important considering stability and longevity of the instance. (mine for example will probably be gone within a month once I break something)

I'm still waiting for the promised new can that isn't impossible to recycle...

En nyt ole aikoihin asiaa seurannut, mutta enköhän jotain muista...

Noh, johdosta tietenkin kaikenlaisia kyseenalaisia keskusteluita kaivettu esiin, jotain podcastin tyyppisiä. Lucien Greavesilta hyvin rasistisia kommentteja löytyy runsaasti, joskus kävin kuuntelemassa niitä ja melko inhottavaa tavaraa kyllä ovat. Toinen perustaja Malcolm Jarry sen sijaan yritti aiemmin tehdä itsestään messiaan jollekin kargokultille Vanuatussa, ja sitten tehdä siitä dokumenttia. Eettisesti hieman arveluttavaa.

Toiminnasta muistuu mieleen ainakin ne SLAPP oikeusjutut, joilla ex-jäseniä yms. ovat yrittäneet hiljentää. Rahat näihin hyvinkin mahdollisesti tullut lahjoituksista, kun eivät erityisen hyvin kerro mihin ne rahat oikeastaan menevät. TST oli voittoa tavoittelematon, mutta siellä on toinen voittoa tekevä firmamikälie taustalla, johon lahjoituksia on myös ohjattu. Aika iso osuus on varmasti päätynyt perustajien taskuun (veteraanipatsaan tapauksessa Greaves muistaakseni otti neljäsosan rahoista ja kolmasosan kohdetta ei kerrottu, mutten nyt pikaisella haulla löydä siitä juttua joten saatan muistaa väärinkin). Niin ja kaikenlaisia harhaanjohtavia väitteitä siitä miten he muka voivat auttaa ihmisiä saamaan abortteja, tai siitä miten he mukamas voittivat jotain oikeudessa ja ottavat siitä kunnian, vaikka oikeusjutun oli hoitanut ja voittanut muu taho. Vähemmän vakavia valheellisia väitteitä ovat julkaisseet myös Church of Satanista, mutta se nyt menee enemmän satanistien sisäisen riitelyn puolelle.

QueerSatanic on koonnut kaikenlaista artikkeleihin. Oli ollut jotain seksuaalista häirintää, josta tehdyt kantelut oli jätetty huomiotta. Sitten, kun siitä oli yritetty julkisesti puhua, potkittiin ulos TST:stä ja SLAPP oikeusjuttu käyntiin. Asian huonosti käsittelemisessä ei nyt ole mitään uutta, sitähän tekee isot organisaatiot/kirkot/firmat kaiken aikaa, mutta nuo oikeusjutut on aika inhottavia. Church of Satanillahan oli kans aikoinaan paikallisia seurakuntia (grottoja), mutta luopuivat niistä sukkelaan, kun niistä oli enemmän harmia ja vaivaa kuin hyötyä.

When I was using Mastodon, the local timeline was almost exclusively what I was paying attention to. It was a really nice small community of people.

Probably belongs to the Long Long Man.

I'm aware it's a thing and not really a plural. What I was trying to say is that it looks plural and since I didn't learn about this part of English until several years into my studies as a kid, it isn't as well established in my mind as "you are" is (that also looks like a plural, but I'm used to it).

"They are" for a single person catches my mental error filter the same way as "I are" or "you is" would, which is highly annoying.

I'd say what's intuitive is very subjective. Most of a language tends to be intuitive to its native speakers, no matter how unintuitive it seems to someone else.

To me the intuitive genderless option for "he/she" would be "it". Coming from Finnish, it seems much more natural to have "it" include people instead of using "they" for both singular and plural. Or if using "they", it would feel intuitive to say "they is" instead of "they are".

It was... a project. I'm guessing if one has more experience in hosting it would be easier to figure out. I kept running into error after error, but eventually after spending most of the day on it I did somehow get it working... for now.

After all that I open Lemmy and see a post about easy deploy (linked by squid in response to your comment)... So I decided to give it a try and instance was up in minutes without any errors or issues. That was both very nice and very painful to see!