Proper Belgian waffles. I have seen two US supermarkets selling proper Liege waffles that you can take home and microwave yourself, and they taste phenomenal

I hope the ones properly made in Liege would be even better, but yeah the supermarket version is still good

I left town the entire day yesterday and my parent was watching the cats for me. Apparently both kitties were staring at the apartment door from 6 pm onwards until late at night for me to come back…

I had to leave again earlier today and Tommy (one of the cats) seems to not really want me to leave. Poor Tommy is really bonded with me but is scared of just about any other human so…

Autumn. All the places I’ve stayed the past few years have hot & humid summers and cold frigid winters… and Spring has pollens. So yeah Autumn/Fall seems to be the one with the fewest issues for me

Making two final trips to visit friends/grad school before I leave US for good! A bit exhausting… but good

Also there has been a bunch of massive shitstorms in different gacha games and it has now hit the game I main… Highly suspect it has something to do with Tencent. Don’t judge me for this I just want an outlet from all the politics and stuff

I actually have something fun planned! My now-former employer offers public short-courses in various hobbyist topics. These usually fill up quickly so I registered for a dining etiquette course this Saturday a month or so back. Not an employee at this uni anymore but I am still allowed to attend the course so

I’m so sorry to hear… I have just recently left a job with a shitty supervisor and I’m still in recovery mode even after 2-3 weeks, so I feel it. I don’t know how but I hope situation on your end improves

Short answer is yes, long answer is I’m conflicted… I’ve already decided to get everything that could be affected by tariffs back in November/December… but things changed, I already have job & stuff lined up out of the US, and I might not ever coming back. On one hand I really want to make some splurges on experiences (restaurants, concerts, things to do), but on the other hand I really need all the money I have, and I don’t have a salary at the moment…

Yup… I had a suspicion that the Belgian system will somehow be different, so thankfully I didn’t find this out the hard way. I could have almost bricked my laptop login password that way…

Also it’s the first time I had to use my right hand to type the Alt key which is so trippy

Moving to Belgium for a new job so…

Apparently my case is uncommon… I haven’t voted in any serious elections yet. I’m still relatively young, the country where I have citizenship doesn’t allow elections, and I have never been a permanent resident anywhere else that allows elections so…

I’m talking about PRC btw

Oh… OH

Their advice is good in this very specific context as the PRC is a bit… special, see other comments. They don’t limit their reach to just Chinese citizens either, my interpretation of what has happened in Canada with the secret police stations is that they might consider all ethnically Chinese people fair game

For most instances though, methinks valid constructive criticisms toward the government is a good way to keep democracy going, and unfortunately this process sometimes involve protesting. I can’t make decisions for others when a social cause is more important than their own safety, but to each their own at that point so…

This might not apply to people who are not Autistic or somewhat neurodivergent but… my therapist literally just pointed out to me a few weeks ago that I have Alexithymia (emotional blindness)

I have been much more in tune with my emotions afterwards and realized I was actually quite satisfied/content with life a lot of the times, it’s just that way too often I would not have known I was happy. So I guess if anyone’s also neurodivergent in some way it might be a good thing to look into

Giving. It’s not that I particular like doing so, since I don’t have too many ppl I could give stuff to… It’s more that I really don’t desire any gifts. Up until this point in life I basically had to move every 1-2 years. Receiving something I don’t like/want means that I’ll have to throw or donate it away so… And the things I actually want are all several hundred dollars and above, since I have gotten basically everything I want that is below that price point

Northwestern’s president sent an official email at 9 pm last night on this topic while being as sarcastic as ever

On the other R site there have been researchers at Cornell stating that they received stop-work orders

Shit is hitting the fan

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My interpretation is that visitors don’t have specific rights to criticize a government per-se. However! In most non-authoritarian countries, everyone has the unequivocal rights to criticize a government as long as they are not intending on disobeying other harassment/discrimination laws, regardless of their status. Since visitors are also included in “everyone”, they can criticize a government too

Of course this only applies to non-authoritarian countries. Authoritarian countries don’t have that right even for their citizens, so visitors are not excluded either

(I hate where this train of thought is going but whatever…)

Had a serious car crash that would have gone fatal if I was just a bit unlucky… That was one month after I got my first car. I think after that I quickly became an insanely good & safe driver

For my immediate family I’ve made a small self-hosted Matrix server before, although it has its own bundle of issues… if I were to do it again maybe I would choose Signal. But yeah from a pure technical standpoint there are lots of viable insta-messaging alternatives

Sadly you hit the nail on the head regarding the social media “network effect”… I also came from a non-US country that has been dominated by an instachat app that doesn’t respect privacy whatsoever, but good luck convincing a group of ppl to switch to a different software. Sooo… most likely even if you really do get permabanned from Whatsapp, ppl you know in real life might just keep using Whatsapp without you anyway

But anyways, if you don’t mind giving a bit of a white lie… the excuse you gave (“permabanned from Whatsapp”) actually doesn’t sound to bad to me IMO

So to get the obvious out of the way… Becoming an American or a Canadien citizen are both difficult and highly demanding tasks during normal times. We are not in normal times… so I wouldn’t exactly advise it. But:

I don’t believe the communities have migrated out of Reddit yet, but you might have some luck going through Reddit’s r/immigration and r/immigrationcanada first. They both have pretty well-documented wikis and are both reasonably active, can try to register a burner account to ask if you have any questions not answered by anyone else

Cost is probably not an issue since it’s borderline impossible to immigrate to either US or Canada without some type of familial relationship or highly-demanded professional skills. If it is the latter, fairly certain it will be possible to save up to $10k for immigration processing so… And if I do not have familial ties or in-demand skills, it would be close to impossible to immigrate to these two countries in the first place

IMO if I have no affiliations with US/Canada whatsoever, I might try my luck with Europe first… a lot of European countries have a policy of 5 years legal residence -> permanent residence/green card. Canada does have a fast-track points system but it is quite competitive now; US immigration is quite nightmarish, and the country is not very welcoming due to recent developments

Edit: as mentioned below… Eurozone is not a single country. The 5 year thing is just what I observed several (not all) countries in EU adhere to, but yeah please do check the specific rules! Also Switzerland’s immigration policy is somewhat uniquely restrictive by EU standards if it helps.

Welcome to the Google DeepMind Minecraft SMP server : ) (/s)