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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Satire is a necessary way to call out impropriety in Democratic society. The humor softens the blow of the reality of horrible acts and makes less horrible but still bad acts easier to understand. As long as it’s not saying things that are just totally without merit or using it purely to spread hate, it should be staunchly defended regardless of who is offended by it.

    Example of bad satire is something like a cartoon of an LGBTQ+ person going to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist saying it’s a mental illness and their head explodes. This is pushing the narrative that being gay is something to be cured and that gay people just can’t accept it. This can be considered satire, but like any type of speech it’s stating something designed to harm others. Satire is meant to over-exaggerate a problem, not make up a problem that doesn’t actually exist for the express purpose of hate.



  • I’m still not entirely sure what you’re asking, but you are responsible for BOTH the cars in front of you AND not changing lanes with someone in your blind spot. Both accidents would be your fault if you hit someone from behind OR changed lanes while someone is already occupying it.

    If there’s not enough time to look over your shoulder before you would be too close to the person in front of you, then you should slow down to maintain a safe distance from the person in front of you, THEN check your blond spot over your shoulder, THEN change lanes and re-accelerate. It sounds like this person was too close to the person in front of them and/or approaching them at too high of a speed differential to safely check their blind spot over their shoulder AND return their head to forward facing before getting too close.


  • It’s not quite that easy. You need the job and lease first. Finding a job without speaking the language that well is a lot. And honestly, even as someone who makes a moderately high salary compared to the majority in my country, I still am not middle class and don’t have the ability to rent an apartment in France and pay up front for health insurance in addition to my mortgage and living costs. The number of work visas are also limited depending on the country.

    And it’s risky. What if the job doesn’t work out and ends too close to the Visa renewal time to find another. Not to mention you have to leave the country for some time to get the new visa. I’d have to have the ability to move back to the US until I could find new employment while still maintaining the apartment in France or wherever. That might be OK for someone with a big family to support them back home, but most of us don’t have that. It’s not part of our culture.

    And finally, work visas are a system designed for employers to abuse foreign employees with the threat of being deported if the employer decides not to renew. In most countries (including the US most of which has lax employment laws anyway) the employer doesn’t even need to technically fire the employee, just decide not to renew their visa.


  • Yes, let’s trade…lol

    Language would be a problem, but I could survive with Spanish, so probably Spain. I could learn other Latin or Germanic languages pretty easily though if needed. I know a little Dutch from a job I had that sent me there a few times and Portuguese or Italian is close enough to Spanish that combined with the English similarities I could pick up eventually. But work requires more than a basic grasp of language, especially if I have to start in the service industry or something. So Spain would probably be the quickest.

    The biggest barrier is the requirements for having housing already and having to pay for it while not being in the country while waiting for the Visa. Housing in the US takes half or more of most people’s salary. For me it’s more and I am a software architect in my late 40s, though I do live on the west coast in a major city which is more expensive. But I don’t have a car payment because of public transportation which has allowed me to keep my older cars a lot longer, which doesn’t exist in most of the US.


  • I wouldn’t want my ability to keep my home to depend on the fleeting whim of a service industry job. And I am a software architect/engineer with nearly 20 years of technical experience. No service industry is going to want me and no company wants to sponsor short term employees.

    The other issue is that in order to get a lot of the visas you can’t be in the country, but you have to have a lease or purchased property. Without knowing anyone, that’s difficult. I can’t afford two homes even temporarily. And I can’t afford to break a lease if the visa is denied. If I could go, stay in a long-term hotel for a couple of months, get basic help finding a job just to understand the differences in employment culture, and then get permanent housing and move all my stuff, I know I could thrive. I just can’t afford the $4,000/month mortgage for the tiny house I have plus a lease on an apartment in another country.

    Then there’s the language barrier. It’s not like the US teaches languages to kids, and although I could probably survive with Spanish because I have been studying it on my own for a long time and can communicate basically, it might take me some time to get better at communicating in Spain Spanish vs Latin American Spanish not to mention to pick up the tech jargon.

    There are just a lot of barriers that governments could easily make fairly simple to overcome, but the policies are instead designed to make it difficult.


  • Many of us I the US want to come there, and we’re willing to contribute, but the barriers of entry are too high. I likely won’t be able to until after retirement and that probably won’t be until I’m too old to move. And I have a lot to contribute if I could find a way to get on my feet. The US doesn’t allow for building enough wealth to start a business right out of the gate, unless you’re already born wealthy or get lucky and are willing to be exploitative, and in that case I could use a different visa to get in. Immigration isn’t all welfare cases and even with those who do need that help having a system in place to allow then to contribute while they get on their feet would benefit everyone. Dump the idea that you need to be extreme capitalists like the US and start embracing the people who need help to get started and most of them will contribute significantly as they will be so prideful of the place that took them in.