Just because two sides are fighting doesn’t mean one side is good (something along this line)

… I don’t think it is that profound, but I think about it a lot

Option 2

Not that I dislike 1, but between me being on the spectrum and having experience living alone in a foreign country w/o family for close to 10 years (and literally could only talk with family using video chats), I think I would be much more competent than the average person on living in the latter… Which also helps free out more space for ppl in option 1

Oh boy I do have some hilarious career-related stories! But yeah, I very seriously considered taking a job in Germany at one point (didn’t end up happening). Maybe I’ll chat a bit more about it somewhere else

Four. English, Chinese, Japanese, German.

Among these German is the only one where I’m not confident in my language capacities… So I almost beat OP in the bet :P I just happened to have learned German up until ~A2 for career reasons but dropped it since my plans changed. Other three I’m all very fluent in. I am also learning French but ironically I only know 1/2/3 because I’m a complete newbie…

I spent the last 10 years in the US so my internal monolog is a bit messed up… I primarily count in English which is not my native language. If it is a long number I’ll use Chinese since it is more efficient (one syllable each for 0-10)

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

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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.

The Chinese language doesn’t quite work that way as it is based almost solely on distinct characters…

I guess you can just keep compounding characters together. Just as a quick example, “[the] People’s Republic of China” is a 7-character word in Chinese with no breaks… it can go much, much longer as necessary, but I’m not sure if that counts, since it’s essentially just three words joined together (“China”, “People”, “Republic”)

Otherwise, the closest thing might be some of the longer Chinese idioms (“Chengyu”), although most Chengyus are only 4 characters long

Learning a language where you need to know how to write thousands of differently squiggles (with almost no rules whatsoever) to even communicate is difficult in its own way though

It’s also called Burma, the political situation there isn’t exactly stable, and I’ve known one (but only one) Burmese guy in the US before. That’s… probably it

Ideologically, I thought the “least bad” for me would be academic research. One year at an institution with a really toxic research culture later, and I’m thinking of either a local small-business or employee co-op or running a small business based on my special interest so… yeah.

This French university made the news on scientific news sources a week or so ago when they announced this, I thought it was a fluke… glad to see they are getting applicants

Of course, I am fully aware that this is just one isolated case since US-based academics would never think of applying for European positions. Most US-based academics would never know resources such as EURAXESS which hosts many academic positions in Eurozone and beyond, or jobrxiv dot org which also includes lots of European academic positions. This is not mentioning country-specific resources such as when I was lurking on jobbnorge dot no for Norwegian jobs, and a personal communication I had with someone at University of Gothenburg who was literally asking me where to look for US-based postdoctoral applicants…

Anyway what was I saying

Oh screw me they are definitely paid way more than the postdocs. I’m fairly certain that for biomedical scientists with PhDs, postdocs are the lowest paid profession with this level of qualification…

Like seriously. I think the number that was thrown around for post-PhD scientists in pharma was like $100-150k/yr to begin with. Granted those jobs have their own shortcomings, but still…

Biomedical postdoc in the US. Pay is exactly $61,008/yr. Postdoc means a PhD is required, and I work in Chicago, mind you

There’s actually a bit of a fun fact in this… Postdocs have historically been chronically underpaid. The NIH actually worked with a consultant a year or so back, who suggested NIH to gradually increase postdoc pay to $70k/yr (80k in urban areas). NIH didn’t agree to that, but chose to gradually increase salary over several years

NIH has a recommended minimum salary (https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/salary-cap-stipends) based on years of experience. In theory institutions can pay more… In practice, a lot of them just stick to the bare minimum, some places even low-ball. This is why my salary is exactly $61,008. Last year it would have been $56.5k so… At least it is an improvement

A carpet cleaner. I had to prepare a previous apartment for showing (it’s a long story) & there was quite a bit of dust on the carpet

Could just be I’m stupid, but I was not prepared for how involved such a machine is… to be fair it is meant for professional use, so I was probably just not properly trained for it

Thanks! You put this better than I could. I was thinking that this has to be something philosophers have figured out or at least seriously investigated… I will look into these concepts

IMO this is the asklemmy community and I came here asking for opinions so… I think your opinion is quite valid