Meanwhile, the US recommended against prosecuting Trump for insurrection because he wasn’t yet out of government, he was trying to retain control and not take control.
Good job South Korea, happy to see a country with a “justice” system that isn’t feckless.
Beautiful! Congrats on your escape :-)
Welcome! North or South island?
Absolutely. It’s not a utopia, but it’s a huge step up from the US.
New Zealand! It’s not perfect, but with a population of only 5 million, we do a lot better taking care of each other. I live on the south island, so it’s even smaller. We have a fairly conservative govt right now, just like most places the economic downturn encouraged a right shift, but the culture here has been very progressive historically, and the people still are. I feel much more hopeful pushing back on hate here than I did in Texas, and it feels like it’s impactful as opposed to in the US where it feels like pushing back against a river.
I would suggest you look into it, at the very least! Leaving was the best decision I ever made.
You’ve done right by your daughter. Good luck on the job search!
Looks fun, I’ll give the demo a try with my kids 😆
Find community. Meet in person regularly if you can. Just existing in community is huge, if for nothing else than your own emotional, mental, and physical health. We are thinking of you all from outside the US 🫂
There are no males.
Wise move. I did the same years ago. Prepare for some serious survivors guilt. The best way to handle it is to know you made the best decision for your child.
The Starbucks 3rd space idea has been dead since 2015-2018. It was a conscious choice.
Don’t tell them they’re taking the wrong action, tell them they’re taking the right action at the wrong time.
The key to getting more 3rd party support is to start 4 years ago, right after the last major election. The second best time to start is today, right after a major election. The WORST time to start supporting a third party candidate is right before a major election in a swing state with no party presence. Tell them to get to work. They won’t get to be another major party, and they won’t change the electoral system, but they can scare a major party into adopting one, maybe two of their policy positions. Sorry but that’s just the best you can hope for if you’re trying to change the system by voting.
Biden does not want a nuclear war. If he did, we would have had one, he’s had plenty of opportunity to start or allow one, and instead he has actively worked to avoid it. I also would contest the idea he wants to die to get to heaven earlier.
Maybe not the Christers (Christmas and Easter church goers) but the weekly+ faithful do. It’s way more common than you’d think… unless you are one of them, and then it’s exactly as often as you’d think, and I was one of them. The number of them there multiple times a week who not only believe the end of days is a good thing but actively pray and donate and vote for it to come faster is significant.
Not the person you’re responding to but I did the same thing for in part the same reasons.
We had significant fiscal privilege in that we were old enough and willing to go into debt enough early in our lives to purchase a house before things got stupid, and each time we moved we sold the house for a profit. We are renting again in our new country (New Zealand) until we build back up and get at least permanent residency (can’t buy a house here unless you’re a PR). Buying a home was the most stressful and most impactful thing financially, but that’s not feasible now for most people.
We got lucky enough, and purposefully saved for escape for 10 years by living with things that weren’t comfortable (concrete floors for years rather than replace water damage, going above and beyond to keep electricity and gas prices low even at the cost of comfort, working too much to put money into savings and neglecting family, no eating out and limiting grocery budget for last two years, pulling out ALL investments like 401k to make the final push and starting from scratch in our new home, etc.).
I can tell you it was all worth it. Live below your means (while increasing your means incrementally), beans and rice rather than packaged foods (balanced with how much your time is worth), make every sacrifice with a clear goal in mind. Like I said, it takes years, and you’re operating at a disadvantage just because we did this starting 12-13 years ago when prices were significantly different, and average wages haven’t compensated. We have kids, so the other benefits were things like the child tax credit increase in 2021, which gave us unexpected increases.
I’ve seen people do all this just to have to go back to the US because they didn’t scope out their landing enough: make sure you know how much you need to survive in your new country, know the cost of visas, limits on what you can earn in your job, know what jobs you can even fill based on visa and qualification restrictions… and then plan for having 5-10% more in total liquidity than you think you need. Things change, accidents happen… in our case our kid had to have emergency surgery the week before our flight, that same day our car died so we couldn’t sell it for as much as we wanted, and a year after arriving they increased the cost of visa renewal by over 100%. Luckily we had planned for things going haywire so we were still able to escape.
It’s not easy. I wish you all the luck in the world. Sorry for the novel and basically saying “be born earlier and get lucky” 👀
Exactly my thoughts. 80+ is already a horrific number, it’s not going to make people more likely to act to artificially balloon the number 3x. There could be 1000 school shootings in one year and I doubt the US people or Govt would do a thing. They actively choose this every day.
I was pretty sure I knew what a general strike was… wouldn’t any strike be more expensive than 2-4 hours of protest, and wouldn’t a general strike involve much more planning than a normal strike due to the scale and breadth?
Also I was worried that generalstrikeus.com was too soon. The UAW general strike is planned for 2028 to get time to plan, because a general strike isn’t something you can just do successfully at the drop of a hat.