lemmygrad.ml might actually be China. But each instance gives a list of the instances it federates with, so it should be easy for China to block them all. Lemmy has no features specifically for evading state censorship.

Yes, caching. When you ask for a remote community it doesn’t go fetch it right then. In fact, it doesn’t fetch at all. The remote community pushes when there is new data.

I was told contaminated hot meant that you couldn’t have a single tap to mix the two safely. That makes washing your hands unpleasant as you can’t adjust the temperature.

A brit I knew was was appalled to find out in the US mixed the hot and cold in the same tap. He was disgusted and figured that made even the cold un drinkable. With US plumbing the hot is mostly safe, just the fact that hot water may leach more minerals from the pipes, or your old water heater might be gunked up. Whereas, in the uk they were actually doing something really bad with the hot, so it had to be stricktly kept separate.

Something special about the way they did the plumbing, I don’t remember

Just ignore it, you’re not missing any functionality. Just some kind of bug.

In the UK they had separate taps for hot and cold because the cold was safe to drink and the hot was not.

Borax tablets. Just hide them around on the floor. Don’t do this if you have loose pets that might eat them.