Now here's the $18.78 question (my last Medium paycheck)? Why does Francesco's article earn so little and Umair's articles earn so much? Especially when we could interchange the author's names and no one would know the difference?

Well, we would have to take away the Umair references. But other than that, things are the same.

At least Umair is cashing in before the lights go out. Kind of hard to figure out why the other guy is writing about the lights going out.