Mastadon is to Twitter as Lemmy is to Reddit. So you don’t really follow topics, but you can follow people if you want (I never have) and you can join communities on the topics you’re interested in. Some of the things you’ve mentioned, like Linux, are very popular/prolific here.

My advice is to set your browsing by All (and whichever of the other one makes sense to you; I usually do New, but sometimes one of the Top ones), then when you see something posted in a community that you’re interested in, instead of clicking on the post, click on the community name. In the sidebar, you can subscribe to the community. After you’ve been doing that a while, if you want you can change your browsing to Subscribed.

There’s also a Lemmy Explorer, and you can set it to Communities at the top and find the ones that are the most active or are on the subjects you’re looking for.

Having your posts seen is mostly a matter of posting to active communities with engaging topics.

Welcome and good luck!

There are how many people on that list, and you’re picking one of them? What about Gates, who was the top four a long time? Dell? Buffet?

You have a preconceived notion, and you’re sticking to it, regardless of data.

It’s not a good comparison. You can also say that a PhD doesn’t help you at all to be a fast food worker.

For a given profession, if you’re looking to hire an entry level person at an entry level salary, and someone applies who has decades of experience in that profession, it makes a difficult situation for the organization. When it’s time for raises, how do you fairly compare that person to the actual entry level people? If the person could legitimately get double their salary, are they going to stay on your team for the lower salary? Stuff like that makes it problematic.

That’s what it is at my work. I had a req opened for an early/mid career position (say a BS plus 6 to 10 years of experience). I had a number of applicants who had 30+ years of experience. They’d qualify for two or three job codes higher than the position I had, with significantly higher salary. It just doesn’t make sense to hire like that.

You’re going to take a single counter example and throw out everything else? I also mentioned there are different types, and some are like Christy Walton, who haven’t worked at all. But neither of those examples means that there aren’t a bunch of workaholics on the list.

Look, at least most of us agree that the wealth inequality is grotesque, but I’m not sure why you have a hard time with the concept that a lot of people get rich by focusing on making money and working very hard at it. I have a hard time with the concept of a CEO making orders of magnitude more than the average worker’s salary, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work a lot.

Famous song by Gordon Lightfoot.

No, she/we didn’t eat it all at once, but none of the rest of it made it into the oven, either.

Thanks for sharing that. I was repeating things trans people in my personal life have said, but as you point out, there’s no single universal experience.

Really glad to hear you’re happier now. It very much sucks that society (and individuals in society) made you feel badly for being who you are.

A week or two ago, I made my wife some peanut butter cookies, because she really likes those. I decided to keep half the dough in the fridge so I could make more fresh. The next day I grabbed a nice dark chocolate square from a bowl we keep on the counter and thought, “I wonder how the league butter dough would be on this.” Oh my god, it was like the best Reese’s peanut butter cup you’ve ever had. Truly amazing.

However I feel in no way that I am in the wrong body.

I’m not trans, but I believe that’s the key. You said “turn out trans,” but I believe most trans folks never really felt like they were in the right body, ever, though they might not have realized what it was that was wrong earlier. It’s not like people wake up one day and think, “oh shit, I’m trans!”

Oh, well, that’s pretty well documented. Most of those guys started companies and worked giant amounts of time.

What are you disagreeing with?

And I in no way was saying that the wealth inequity wasn’t absurd.

What are you basing that on? Here’s a list - most are workaholics.

Yeah, that’s mostly the case. There’s a lot of people here just making a lot of assumptions, but there’s quite a bit of information on billionaires as individuals. For instance, there’s this Forbes list, where you can click each one to get a summary of how they got rich.

I think you’re overreacting. He’s far from assured, but also far from out of the race.

There isn’t one type. There are the ones like Bezos and Dell, who got rich by growing one or more businesses, and are still at it. They likely don’t work normal hours, but they likely work more than 40. Some of those, like Gates, get older and move on to other things like foundation work, but not an actual job. Hard to say what kind of hours they work. Then there are the ones like Christy Walton, who inherited their wealth and don’t really ever work.

I know quite a number of them. My company is overall pretty conservative, with lots of ex military. Many folks are lifelong Republicans but have adamantly said they won’t vote for Trump.

I completely agree, which was more or less my point.

I can’t think of a Democrat who has a better chance from this juncture, sadly.

Like who are you thinking?