1. Started a small mutual fund and retirement fund when I was just starting out and still in undergrad. I did not have much and was fully self sufficient. But someone came to my job and showed us how retirement plans worked and convinced me to start one. Same with a mutual fund. I never put more than $20-$40 in each because I didn’t have much but boy did that pay off.

2. I purchased a small condo in the city with some of the money I put away in #1. Just sold it recently (20 years after purchasing it; lived in it for 5 years, rented it out for a profit for 15 years). I made a lot of money off that sale. More money than I’ve ever seen at once.

3. My spouse and I have always lived below our means. Now we’re not frugal - we go out for nice dinners, travel, have kids. We also have good jobs. But, when we purchased a house we could have afforded to get one that was $600k and instead opted for a smaller townhome in a nice neighborhood for almost half the price. Living this way has paid off more than I could have ever imagined. Both of us don’t have to work. We travel whenever we want. We could technically both stop working in our 40s/50s and probably be fine. It’s a feeling of freedom. We’ve never over-extended ourselves. When our colleagues and friends were buying expensive homes and expensive cars and extending themselves, we just didn’t do that.

Yes, I have observed this and it is very frustrating. In many cases, these “articles” are opinion pieces being circulated by those with a financial interest in commercial real estate (or someone carrying the water of someone who has such an interest). Those who have any sort of financial interest in commercial real estate are going to be against remote work for obvious reasons.

Cities and real estate moguls arguing that people have to engage in an absolutely fruitless, draining, exhausting, expensive commute to keep a handful of people rich. They want to punish you to keep some elite people rich.

What needs to happen is workers need to fight back as much as possible. If your job can be done remotely, make it a priority to work for a company that allows you to do your job remotely. There’s NOTHING about my job that requires me to go into an office. I have worked successfully at home for many years and if my organization required me to come in, I would do everything I could to leave and find something else that allowed me to telework. If you’re looking for a job and have the luxury of being a little bit choosy, let recruiters know you will ONLY consider remote options.

Anecdotally, I think these opinion pieces are way overblown. My spouse was recently contacted by a recruiter about a job. The job was not remote and my spouse told the recruiter they would only consider remote-only options. The recruiter sighed and said, “That is what I keep getting told.”

I starting using Reddit in 2010 or so when I was going through health issues and was looking for information. I became very active on Reddit over the years, occasionally helping to mod a couple of communities. I am not a hugely “online” person, but I loved Reddit as a source of information and advice from actual real people. Particularly for those of us living with chronic health conditions, Reddit in particular was hugely important.

But I don’t use Reddit anymore. The whole API fiasco was the last straw for me, and I also just didn’t see it remaining a vibrant place full of valuable information. So I deleted my accounts and left. Haven’t been back since.

This is what gets me. Christian Selig pointed out in a number of interviews that Reddit could have easily made this work without alienating a huge segment of their user base. I get this vague feeling lately like CEOs are intentionally trying to tank their products, because no one so well paid could actually act so dumb.

Memmy has more customization options and I’ve found it to work a bit better than WefWef. For me, WefWef has been very sporadic in its functionality, with it sometimes just generating errors and requiring me to refresh.

I can’t imagine not using a password manager. I am a long-time user of 1Password and have been very happy with the service and apps. I recommend it to everyone. Worth every penny and then some IMO.

And I hope it fails as miserably as Twitter is failing. I’m so tired of these companies doing the crap they’re doing simply to earn a buck from people. It’s pure greed and I hope they all go under and end up failing.

Here’s my hope as a 40-something who came of age when the internet was just taking off.

I REALLY HOPE this is the push we need to move away from corporate-owned social media. I have high hopes for federated platforms and forums that are much more like what the internet was when it started (but better because now we have mobile devices).

I realize a lot of people see social media as being some evil thing, but we also fail to realize how much good it has done. Marginalized communities have come together online and formed real movements. People living with health conditions have been connected to one another for support and also life-changing resources and care. People who were isolated because of disability found communities.

I would like to see old-fashioned blogs and RSS make a comeback. I’d like to see forums and federated sites like Lemmy take off. I’d like to see social media sites that have been given way too much weight in society collapse. I don’t think government or reputable media outlets should ever be using a corporate for-profit entity as a means for distributing information.

Yes these are exactly the kinds of communities I’m hoping will get replicated on Lemmy.

Don’t know if that’s possible but what I do is create a note for a person - for example [[Jane Doe]].

Then I add the #people hashtag in the note which, thanks to the auto note mover plugin, sends the note directly to a specific “People” folder.

I then go in and add to the person’s note any info I want to save for them, such as where they work, email, etc.

This system had proven to be very helpful for work. Has helped me so many times recall where and in what context I talked with someone.

Health-related communities, particularly those for specific medical conditions. Those are the communities that really become a lifeline for people, help them through diagnoses or just difficult times, and can serve as an excellent resource. I was active on r/diabetes_t1 on Reddit and am trying to get a community started here on Lenny.world (!T1diabetes).

I use Reeder and like it. I also have Reader by Readwise and tried to use the RSS feature in that, but it didn’t work as well as Reeder last I tried it.

I don’t recall the specifics of the one article I read about this, but yes, I think being able to declare bankruptcy gives an out for at least some of the debt. I believe there was also some way that doing so protected Tesla but can’t recall exactly how that worked.

This just doesn’t seem like a “he’s just bad at running a company” situation. A company of Twitter’s age and maturity could have run itself for quite some time if Elon just let it continue on. He’s doing this intentionally for some self-serving reason.

That’s exactly why. He didn’t want to go through with JT and I think devaluing the company might be a way for him to get out of it via bankruptcy. I remember reading that somewhere and thought it made the most sense. He’s a dude with a lot of money (at least on paper) and I’m sure he has people with a decent amount of financial acumen advising him what to do or at least trying to steer him in the right direction. I don’t think it’s any 6D chess or anything, just finance and tech bros playing finance and tech bro games.

IIRC, causing its value to plummet is the easiest way for him to get out of this whole fiasco via bankruptcy (remember, he was basically forced into buying it). He played a stupid game and won a stupid prize and now he’s desperately trying to find a way out.

This only makes sense when you understand that he’s intentionally trying to destroy Twitter.

I prefer Memmy the most because it’s the most feature complete. But WefWef is also really nice and I use that sometimes too.

If the content gets great enough, that will happen. Going to take time, but it will absolutely happen. Especially with so many people deleting their comments and Reddit having their feet held to the fire with people making complaints about them violating GDPR.

Lemmy, Mastodon, and the entire Fediverse are really what the internet was supposed to be. I am glad to see the pendulum swinging back and I hope it continues. I am mostly really excited about the mobile apps being developed for Lemmy. Those are coming along at lightening speed and I those will be THE THING that makes Lemmy happen.

Oh wow. This is really nice! Thanks for sharing!

I would love this! At least for Mastodon and Lemmy, which I consider somewhat similar. I use Mona for Mastodon and would love have a separate tab within that app for accessing Lemmy. I just really like the design and feature set of the app and having it extended to Lemmy would be so nice.