Welcome! I’m a new amateur in the States. Like you, I peek in here and find that at the moment, it doesn’t take long. The frog boil has worked quite well in Reddit; the frogs are staying in their pots even as enshittification becomes obvious (pro tip, it’s spelled IPO). Unlike you, I’m new enough that I have nothing worthwhile to contribute yet.

As for Mastodon, I’m on an instance with a 5k character limit. Some instances run modified versions known as glitch or hometown, which allow the admin to set a limit (well) above 500. I didn’t find a handy list of these easily, but a little searching in google or r/Mastodon may turn up ideas.

It’s a very heavy building - multiple stories in earthquake country, and I’m not on the top floor. Everything dies when I leave the nook with the windows. NOAA works literally only on the windowsill, TRACON almost never clears the noise floor once I’m not near the window, and I hear some smaller UHF repeaters away from the window but haven’t yet heard the 2m (it’s not super high traffic, so can’t say I haven’t just been unlucky).

We’re allowed on the roof and I’ve been up there, everything’s peachy. When I’m at the office downtown, I’m on a high floor, so I can pick up the 2m easily even though I’m on the other side of the building.