The official meshtastic app has a map view that shows all known nodes.

Yep, that can be normal. For my city, the local group has a private (but free to join) channel that’s a bit more active.

Do a web search for meshtastic and your city and see if one pops up.

It is cool! The barrier to entry is relatively low. The only thing to really worry about is:

1. What band/frequency is appropriate for you country.
2. Are there others around to which you can connect?

If there’s not a lot of people around it’s not the end of the world. Nodes can connect over the Internet via MQTT servers. Yes, this defeats the purpose of having an offline/decentralized communication platform, but it is a good stop gap until more nodes are put up.

Here’s a sample of what I can see in a somewhat large-ish Midwest City in the US (there’s about 63 nodes I can reach by hopping through relays).

There was a site I found in highschool around 1998 - the paradigm of pessimism.

Full of dark humor and anti-jokes, in glorious web 1.0 - that site had a huge impact on my humor. I’ve never been able to find it again. Just a random site someone hosted somewhere on the Internet - no scams, no paywalls, just a bunch of weird humor.