Welcome! Feel free to introduce yourself here in the c/main channel if you’d like.

  • From Chicago. I made the plunge to Mastodon (and here) after the Reddit shenanigans and just seeing the repeated bad-faith policies by Twitter. I have been using redirector and libredirect for the last month or two to actively decide who I give my data to just as a fun experiment into best practices.

    I think it’s slowly starting to be clear that this type of setup will be the way forward for the more tech-savvy, privacy-focused users, and hopefully/eventually it hits the mainstream as well, but otherwise, it’s just self-selecting into the type of people I want to be around, which will probably be better for my mental health anyways.

    I’m into cycling, trading, sci-fi and FOSS. Currently reading The Expanse and taking a sabbatical year from work

    Edit: Just want to encourage people to engage w/ and create content over the next few weeks. Activity and friendly faces are probably the most determining factor in whether someone becomes an active user or just browses for a few minutes

  • Hi, all! I signed up for Lemmy the other day using another instance, but thought this would be a better fit. I’m a 39 year old male who grew up in Ohio and currently resides in Michigan. By day, I’m a Technology & Strategic Project Manager at the University of Michigan. By night, I’m a technology-obsessed, music-loving vegan. I’ve been active on Reddit since 2010 and am disappointed to see the direction it’s going. I’m quite active on Mastodon, so feel free to connect with me there, as well!

  • Hi!

    Ohioan here… I too am a recent reddit refugee… anyone else having digg deja vu?..

    Likes: Nerdy things, Video Games, Animals, Ohio sports teams, Music, Traveling

    Been on Mastodon for a few months (suck it twitter) and with Reddit’s recent money grab figured I’d check out other parts of the fediverse.

  • Sup nerds. I’m Miah, I’m from Western Michigan. I’m a UNIX/Linux nerd, Right to Repair advocate, and transgender woman. I’ve been working on our cars by myself and would love to make some car nerd friends. My wife and I have 24 chickens, and a budding garden.

  • Hi, I’m Corwin! TL;DR: wordy nerd for MN; lotsa kids, cats, GNU vol.

    I’m yet-another-new-user bc Reddit; glad for the mass troop move toward FOSS and federated things, social especially. Over the last few years, I’ve been weaning myself off mass-media social: forgive me, hacker, it’s been (only) three days since my last reddit/twitter/FB post. RE FOSS, I volunteer with some projects like EmacsConf and GNU Savannah. If you are looking to get involved with FOSS volunteering but aren’t sure where you can get started HMU :)

    Ahem. Meanwhile, in the interest of full disclosure. About Emacs…

    Passion for Emacs has been likened (variously derisively or with found amusement) to religious fervor.

    I help with the annual conf, like I mentioned. I make official binaries for Emacs available from GNU FTP servers/mirrors. I help with ERC, one of the IRC clients that ships with Emacs. I’m making an RPG engine for Emacs called dungeon-mode. I feel that this post will be incomplete unless I tell you even more about Emacs right now:

    Emacs is a text editor built around a lisp machine. Most of it is implemented in Emacs Lisp (elisp). It can be customized using menus, like a normal program. Or using code, programs full of code, auto-generated programs, self-modifying programs, and so on… such nonsense for a text editor to be doing any of this, of course.

    Hopefully, you can see where I occasionally get myself in trouble. Every once in a while I need someone to tell me “no”. To say “Corwin. Oh, Corwin. The X forum doesn’t want to hear about how you integrated X into Emacs.” “STFU about Emacs please Corwin”, And so forth.

    TIA if that’s you.

    In conclusion, when you are ready to talk about Emacs, find me on IRC corwin@libera.chat#emacs.

    MN; 48/wm/2 partners 17y/5y, 5kids, 5cats. emacs4evah

  • Are folks from other instances welcome here? Still figuring out etiquette or whatever. I got impatient over the weekend and jumped into Lemmy through sopuli.xyz due to a lower barrier to entry.

    I’m a Minnesota person living in St. Paul. I coordinate graduate programs, which basically means I’m a nanny for graduate students. Movie nerd and sweet tooth haver. 1 dog and 3 cats. I used to be a forklift operator and a freight railroad conductor. Formerly UFCW, BLET, and AFSCME. Now I’m IWW IU620.

  • 55/m from the Downriver Detroit area, Michigan. 17-year R*ddit user, been around forever (started with BBSes, moved on to Usenet). Black Guy on the Internet. a2.mi.social member.

    Used to run a freeform streaming radio station. Apple user since the ][+, love music.

  • Morning everyone. Chicago suburb native of 42 years who doesn’t really feel like leaving. Working at one of the many data centers in the Chicago area, if you can call it work, because I enjoy technology in general. I joined because I’ve been migrating from legacy social media to the Fediverse; Reddit’s API nonsense helped that process along.

    Contrary to what my parents and sisters drilled into my head as I was growing up, I’ve been leaning more and more left as I age. At some point, someone decided that giving our children a better life meant making them suffer. Seems like teaching my kids to be grateful for the opportunities they have, respect others’ beliefs, accept people from all walks of life, stand up for marginalized groups, foster positive mental health outcomes, not expect anything to be handed to them, and just be good people in general makes me a communist in the eyes of many, including my own parents. I’m gonna have to pass on whatever ideology came up with that and work toward dismantling it.

    Beyond that … I’m pretty low key most of the time. I like PC (Linux) gaming, physical computing, 3D printing, video editing, analog media preservation, listening to open source-related podcasts, road trips, dogs, glamping, grilling, beer, grilling while glamping and drinking beer and hanging out with my dogs, etc. I listen to metal but have been on a Sleep Token kick since the newest album was released.

    I don’t speak up often because someone else typically said what I want to say first, posting responses like “This” is annoying, and upvotes are silent. At any rate, nice to meet everyone, hope to be able to contribute something useful at some point.

    • I’m gonna have to pass on whatever ideology came up with that and work toward dismantling it.

      That’s been my outlook for a while too. There’s only so much influence you can have over people are set in their thoughts and ways, but we can help with the larger generational change. For a lot of us, turning a corner for the sake of our kids might end up being our best legacy.

      Also I can appreciate your tendency to read more than you post. Usually that characteristic leads to better quality posts when you do make them, because you are going to tend to read them yourself before submitting! I sometimes feel cheapened when I read “I CAN TYPING” posts that the authors clearly didn’t take the time to read through.

      • Thanks, that means quite a bit. It took me several hours and restarts to type that post.

        I took the shotgun approach back in the ol’ vBulletin/phpBB days and ended up with some stupid post counts on forums but didn’t really feel like I contributed much of anything. Over the past 20 years, keeping my big mouth shut has helped me more than anything else.

  • Hey all, small town Illinoisan here. I’ve been in IT for over a decade, but I’m trying to transition to pretty much anything else at this point.

    I’m also a game developer, solo in my free time. Anybody know of any good gamedev communities here?

  • Hey everyone, started exploring Lemmy the other week and really jumped in after the Apollo news broke.

    I’m gamer/podcaster/dad/wannabe bourbon enthusiast from Michigan.

    I have a tech role in logistics and am just looking for a chill community to be a part of.

    Currently consumed with exploring Hyrule.

  •  Tink   ( @Iamtink@midwest.social ) 
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    Hello! I live in Kalamazoo, MI and grew up in Muskegon, MI. I’m a part of the mass exodus from reddit. So far I’m enjoying the fediverse and was glad to see an instance dedicated to midwesterners. I work in mental health and enjoy cooking/baking, crafting, painting, kayaking, gardening, gaming (DnD, Zelda, board games) and spending time with my loved ones. Excited to be here!

  • Howdy y’all. Central Illinoisan, reddfugee, & night shift worker. They/she.

    Currently glutting on various cyberpunk media in anticipation of DMing a tabletop rpg for a group of friends that I met at the local kink dungeon. Last night I watched a Japanese cyberpunk musical from 1982 called Burst City, which was beautifully chaotic, & then started rereading Neuromancer on audiobook (just finished rereading Altered Carbon.)

    I’d give up a kidney for a sequel to the Return of the Obra Dinn. Just putting that energy into the universe.