Where I’m from cities like Boston are the norm. When I was in a grid city for the first time, I immediately got lost on the roads because everything just looks the same.

On the other hand, Americans seem to have a more intuitive sense of the cardinal directions than Europeans do from my experience. Which makes sense if you’re used to roads aligned with them.

And Mercator means merchant in Latin. I thought that was because of the projection’s purpose, but turns out that the inventer’s name was actually Mercator, which was a latinisation of his Flemish birthname Kremer (meaning grocer or merchant).

Kinda like we have Shirts with nonsensical Chinese characters.

Same. Plenty of free hobbies exist though. Hiking, learning a language, identifying plants (check your local weather service if you can contribute your findings), geocaching, streetcomplete, attending a communal board game night or gardening group. Libraries hold all kind of events for all walks of life.

Some sort of political engagement can also be fun and additionally help find friends. There’s cryptoparty to teach about privacy. Some environmental groups host day trips with volunteers to clear or repopulate strips of land. You can ask your library if you can offer a workshop of some skill you possess.

There is honestly so much free stuff that I didn’t know about yet a couple of years ago.

Not sure about Lemmy, but I have noticed an influx in loops.video content recently, especially in my native language. That’s probably because Loops is starting to be usable now. There’s some YouTubers I already followed and even some local progressive politicians. This year a project named “digital day of independence” started, that educates people every month about how to switch from big tech, which probably also has something to do with it.

Absolutely this. I banned the big platforms from my phone and only use Fediverse apps now. When I opened Instagram it kinda felt like when I had a relapse and became flooded with sadness, rage and Weltschmerz. Here I check for a couple of minutes, still my conditioning to reach for scrolling and move on with my day.

And whenever I write a comment here I’m not scared to regret it soon after.