Immigration-specific groups. Not in a major way like completely shutting down immigration or install a per-country cap or something. Since Australia does skill-based immigration, my understanding is that they are limiting the types of ppl they allow in. I’d love to be proven wrong though, if I’m not right plz correct me

Maybe try looking up info from governmental websites first? A lot of countries (not US, cough cough) seem to have fairly straightforward immigration guidelines, so they’d probably write up what types of person they are looking for & the standard procedures

Old Reddit posts could be second

And… depending on the country, for some places it may be better to just DIY, some places having a lawyer might be extra helpful

I’m sorry OP I couldn’t answer your questions directly since I am in a same boat, so I can only share my experience trying to get there… Maybe some of this would be useful

Where did you decide to move to, and what were the things you looked at when deciding to move there?

So the only immigration-friendly countries I can find are Canada, Australia, and Germany. Not a big list to begin with, but for US citizens there might be more options with other EU countries. Canada has… issues, someone else in the thread mentioned about their experiences. Australia apparently is closing its doors. Sweden used to be fine but I heard things went really South for them a few months ago.

And if you’re a lurker on Reddit you probably know r/IWantOut? Country-specific wise I know r/Germany has a phenomenal wiki for their stuff, and Canada has r/immigrationcanada. Unfortunately a lot of good information is still on Reddit so yeah

Other countries… I don’t think Asian countries do much immigration at all, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. Maybe some EU countries are fine depending on heritage and/or where you are from. I have no idea what’s going on in Africa, if anyone knows something plz let me know.

Where can I start? How can I realistically make it happen?

For your privacy plz don’t answer in this thread, but 1) how old are you, 2) what type of education do you have, and 3) what type of work do you do? Having a college education and an in-demand career goes a long way, although this is also country-dependent. And yeah under many circumstances your employer could help you with the process. Certain parts of Canada and Germany obviously have language requirements, but a lot of other countries accept English. I heard some places allow investment-based immigration, but 1) it’s expensive AF and 2) not sure if countries that allow this plan are remotely desirable for US citizens…

Also side note: please DO NOT give up US citizenship unless you have a really good reason to / already have something in your bag. I’m not a citizen here, and most US citizens have no idea how excruciating it is to immigrate to this country

Interesting question…

As an overall answer: humans are incredibly adaptable, so as a person living in the US, it almost never subjectively feels bad. For goodness’ sake, I knew people who lived in Chicago’s Hyde Park (one of the most dangerous neighborhoods) and happily biked to work. I personally lived in what people would describe as a “hood” and a “third-world country” for a good year and a half, and honestly felt really safe over there. Because of this, I honestly don’t think anyone can give an objective answer solely from their living experiences.

Objectively, the US is a developed country and is not terrible, but regarding your specific points:

1. Yes, the government passed shitty laws, and chose to not pass a lot of not-shitty laws.
2. Yes, there are more mass shootings than the country should have. I’m not going to say why.
3. Insured healthcare isn’t expensive (correction: some stuff are still too expensive even after insurance). However, uninsured healthcare is incredibly expensive, and unfortunately people without employment/self-employed have to purchase their own insurance… which is also stupidly expensive. Also, a lot of things that should be insured aren’t.
4. The different states are certainly different. US politics is very polarized, so heavy-blue and heavy-red states are quite different in their approaches to… many things in life. Whether they are good or bad is up to you.

I mean, people living in Switzerland complain about their countries all the time, even though almost everyone else in the world envy the way they live… so it is possible that some might be a bit overblown.

Hey OP, I am similar to you in most aspects but I’m a lot younger, so please take it with a grain of salt…

I also live in Texas, and honestly I thought a lot of less privileged folks or ppl with family ties would love to be in your situation and just leave? It’s not just about politics. Even if tomorrow Texas becomes a liberal stronghold, it will still take possibly at least a decade to fix ERCOT, the climate issue, and flooding issues (if you live in Houston)… This clusterfrick alone was enough to prompt me to never live in Texas again once I’m done with grad school

Besides, my understanding is that there are a few left-leaning metro areas which have suburbs (or live in the city!) that don’t cost that much more to live in compared to mid-/upper-mid-class TX suburbs, so there’s probably no financial disincentive to move either

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone does. I mean banks also just shuffle money around and guess who has a bunch of cash lying on hand so… Goes back to the gold rush era, but there are folks who mine the gold and folks who mine the miners

Also some tech companies can be at a loss for years but run on VC money

So… I don’t know, but again I wouldn’t be surprised if they are making something to keep this nonsense going

Ah… so you’re specifically mentioning about the news article in question?

If you repay the loan, [your NFT token] comes back home. If not, [the token] gets a new owner. Simple as that!

I guess this explains everything… Probably just ppl hustling each other lol. And I assume given what types of shady characters are into NFTs, there are probably a lot of them who want to hustle another person out of some cash

Tried it myself with hardened Firefox, can confirm that’s the case. It’s even worse, my first search is “getting run over”…

Probably says more about the type of ppl frequenting YouTube than YT doing some shady stuff. Which honestly sounds more dystopian to me

P.S. Just realized youtube.com blocks Tor Browser, not cool Ytb.

(insert astronaut meme) never has been

Jokes aside… This is my personal philosophy & probably won’t align with everyone’s. As someone who started science quite young, I realized quite early that beyond societal issues, literally nothing is “meaningful”… If Earth itself will be gone in a few billion years, might as well practice some optimistic nihilism and do some stuff with whatever life I have. There’s still stuff to do even if society doesn’t prioritize ppl like me

Second this!

Phones give out a lot of personal information on their own lol. On top of the phone, don’t forget that social media apps like Threads also require you to login… with credentials stored at FB/Meta… that they can derive all the aforementioned information on, as well as other type of things (Amazon purchases? Stuff you watch on youtube.com? Google queries?..) by using some creative tracking technology. You basically gave them a dog tag to identify you whenever you sign up for services after all

For shittier apps like Thread, apparently they also do some weird stuff like forcing the app to be on once the OS boots, so… yeah.

… no, but that could just be me being weird and broke (literally not having enough to buy something dissuades a lot of purchasing behvior). Also… mentally if there is a salesperson involved (who does not have my best interest, obviously) I’d automatically mark the thing as inferior unless proven otherwise

I dunno… if I am too easily swindled maybe grab a nerdy, logical friend to help out or sth? Seems like everyone else on the thread already mentioned how to do proper research on different subject matters so

Theoretically… yes and no? First of all it’s a given that any truly rich person in today’s day and age is a capitalist, no exceptions.

Modern capitalism is based on the assumption that “maximizing profit” leads to the best outcome for everyone… which is not true. So if theoretically a rich person is trying to be 100% rational then they cannot be “good”

On the other hand… also theoretically, rich ppl have a lot more resources to give and support causes they care about, so on this aspect they could be good? I know ppl who donate a ton to social causes but I honestly don’t know how much of their donations can be attributed to tax benefits

In practice… I guess most of what you could call “good” people wouldn’t want to make that much money in the first place? Or it could just be probability, good people and rich people are both quite rare, so good+rich is even rarer (if we assume they are independent).

Surprised no one else mentioned this… the answer is negative many months (or years?), most are Mastodon instances and probably not many people are familiar with most of those instances tho.

There was a fairly serious controversy months back when mastodon.cloud was purchased (if I remember correctly) by the same company that owns pawoo.net and another large Japanese Mastodon instance, the company is for-profit. Several right-wing shithole instances obviously have ads and are for-profit. Also there are a few instances owned/operated by for-profit companies, Medium immediately comes to the top of my mind.

Problem is a fairly significant portion of Mastodon admins I know were so staunchly against anything touching for-profit companies within a 12-ft stick that they immediately defederated from all of the said for-profit company affiliated instances…

To answer the second question… I don’t know. Again, the larger Mastodon instances (over 10,000 users each) I’m aware of seem to do just fine on user donations now, but the concept of profit comes every now and then. Paid moderators/admins was also something to keep in mind for this topic.

I’m in an interesting position on this… I do research as a grad student, my work can be done anywhere with internet but… I have been working in-person for the last year or two, and have been almost doing 80-100% in-person the last few months.

Partly because I feel more productive when being in an office. Partly because I use public transit & don’t have to worry about traffic/parking. Partly because I get to communicate with my boss in-person about project ideas & stuff. Partly at the strong urge of my psychologist to have some human interactions & don’t depress myself at home the whole day

There are a good number of research labs I know who are still doing 100% remote and it worked out fairly well for them too, so to each their own?

So having all the mods quit is actually a viable way to protest? (writes down notes)

Self-hosted SearXNG. Very easy to self-host, and (for the most part) works just fine

Not sure how much of it is “predatory” behavior and how much of it is just a combination of being a masterful salesman + being really, really dumb, “drinking his own Kool-aid”… The dude was piloting the sub on every expedition after all

Excellent read. Have just re-posted this on 'key, thanks for sharing this.
I agree that Meta is doing something very dangerous to the fediverse… hope they could be stopped in their tracks.

Ah so there are some people on the fediverse who believe that any restriction is bad… Like the ppl who think domain blocks are too strict and stuff like that.

Pretty much everyone I’ve seen on Mastodon knows that Meta is bad. However, I’ve seen quite a few people echoing the sentiment that “hey I know Meta is bad but blocking is wrong & they haven’t done anything wrong on the fediverse”. The thought comes across as a bit naive to me but… to each their own.

From my paltry observations it seems like opinions about federating with Meta spread into the following:
1: All for-profit corporations bad, so no federation
2: Meta bad, so no federation
3: Meta bad, but wait & observe first
4: Growing the influence of fediverse is usually preferred
5: Free speech for all

Honestly the article resonates with me a lot. I assume many old-guards of Mastodon are ppl who are fully aware of how federation works & are somewhat left-leaning and anti-capitalist, so they have a tendency to not want to federate with Meta.

So it certainly doesn’t help that a few very influential people signed the NDA to join the Meta meeting, which would almost signal that they are more right-leaning (which is not what most people are like on fedi). Regarding the NDA part: people sign NDAs for too many things in pharma (my undergrad field) so I didn’t realize it was such a big deal… I think it probably rubbed too many people in the wrong way.

Also, for large general instances, I wouldn’t be surprised if many people have ideological differences with their admin or their neighbors, which probably resulted in some “fun” discussions.

Finally, PSA: I know some people hate their admins now but please do not ever send death threats to people, seriously