Do you think it’s better to block someone or add a note to them so you can still engage with their content? I’ve gotten into the habit of blocking people and I’m not sold on it being the best approach.

It’s worth it. I’m almost two years in Germany. Wouldn’t move back for a million dollars (although at 3 I could be bought). Work on the local language, volunteer or other community involvement activities, treat it like the new home it is. We’re fortunate to be able to move to a new country, try to be a part of improving it and earning your spot there. I’m even more fortunate to be white, male, straight etc - assuming you’re at least some of those things, do your best to counter the anti-immigration fear mongering that comes out of the political right. It effects you now, but more importantly it’s ramping up and it’ll effect people less fortunate far worse.

Hope you love it and welcome to Europe.

Kagi seems to surface great independent content and I’ve been loving it.

If housing is an investment (“a nest egg”) then the people and policies that support it as an investment will stand directly opposed to people and policies that want housing to be affordable and a right.

Housing cannot be an investment vehicle akin to stocks in a society that meaningfully values housing for everyone as an objective to strive for.

Yes, of course. I wish you and everyone stuck there luck.

I am paying taxes and am able to vote, but because I make less than the required amount my taxes are essentially zero to the US because we have joint tax agreements between the two countries.

I don’t know if I’ll renounce after earning German citizenship or not but the exit tax is something I have to consider.

Ya, that’s rough. That feels like a very immature take. The two parties are not the same, voting does matter, and I’d even argue that there are people so awful that assassination does make sense but I’m happy Trump survived because I think the Republican party would have been stronger without him.

I left the US, I’m between a millennial and gen z, and I left explicitly because I was worried about the future of the US and because moving abroad is akin to time traveling 20 years into the future. I have healthcare now, I live in a walkable city with great public transit, the crime rates are lower (although most places in the US aren’t super violent, the probability of getting murdered goes way down when you leave), I have 6 weeks vacation, essentially unlimited sick time, and I’m not allowed to work overtime.

Both parties are not the same but if Democrats won in a landslide in every single election both state and federal in every chamber and every seat, how many years would it take to achieve all of those same things. I have no doubt these policies would happen with the right people in office, with radical change to the party they could even happen quickly and I believe it’s what half the people want. But the two other outcomes are 50/50 with the parties and little gets done in a timely manner and worse the corrupt judges continue to error the system, or the Republicans win one big election just one more time and project 2025 starts getting a percent complete tracker and we slide back into the dark ages.

So I left. I believe if things go bad in the US historians will look at Trump’s first victory as a period of brain drain from the country. But that’s my two cents to go with this article.

Some of the “claims without a citation” are things that were done under the first Trump administration.

• taxes did go up for most Americans under the last tax bill. It’s safe to say that if Republicans need to raise taxes it’ll be through the lower and middle class.

• kids go hungry or into debt for school lunches today because of how little some families make. Trump admin agnostic but definitely a feature for the Republican party and not a bug.

• books are being banned in the US at an alarming rate, look at Florida as a prime example. Trump admin agnostic but definitely a party priority.

• trump suggested multiple times as president that people should just be shot, killed, or executed for things as benign as protesting outside the Whitehouse. He didn’t do it, but it’s a pretty short distance between “the president wants to kill you” and “the president is having you killed”.

• the president did send in national guard and other militarily equipped groups to beat and pepper spray journalists and protestors while president.

• trump appointmented judges clearly lack the experience, qualifications, and apolitical-ness expected of a normal judge. You can see that in the supreme Court and you can see that at the federal judge level.

Ya, remember some number of them are bots or underpaid people who’s job is to spread frustration and essentially commit information warfare.

Since I moved to Lemmy I’ve gotten into the habit of blocking the bad actors after it was clear they are incurable and unsaveable. The ones who seem to live for pro-russian messaging or refuse to have a dialogue like these TLDR people.

US labels also contain weight. And again, unless you are baking all the water out and curious about that nutritional value, you’re picking up a package that has nearly identical labeling and testing standards and are therefore comparable and using that to make nutritional choices. In this case almonds are more calorically dense than tofu and have less protein per calorie. Water included or not.

What? Surely that’s not how nutrition labels are made. If I look at the label for almonds and I look at the label for tofu and they both list 100g of X has Y protein in it - surely they’re comparable. So what is your point? Are you suggesting I need to dehydrate tofu to determine it’s real nutrition? I don’t know if that’s practical or meaningful in anyway. I guess you’re suggesting that if we cook out the water certain foods like tofu get even more macro nutritionally dense?

I think people are upset with the foods included for comparison when they should be upset with metric being used to compare them. Protein per 100g tells me protein to weight but what I really care about is protein to total calorie count per 100g. That tells me if the food is efficient in delivering me protein and even that should be coupled with calorie per gram or volume per gram or something to show how much of the food can I eat.

The graphic makes almonds look amazing, for instance, but you get a handful of almond for 100g and also a fourth of your daily caloric intake at 550 kcal. Which means they’re not exactly an efficient protein source. Where as tofu is rather efficient at only 80 kcal per 100g.

I’m swapping to Linux finally because of it. Few things are black and white but these things do have effects and some additional percentage of users are shifting over because of it.

Is there a guide or any educational material on this? I’m about to swap to Linux (some fedora distro focused on gaming) and I’m interested in potentially one day swapping to arch after I’ve gotten my toes wet. Doing a bit of extra work and planning ahead to make that easier sounds nice.

The whole of Spain. I grew up with a lot of people who loved Europe but had never been to it or really anywhere else. Spain for some reason got a lot of love and attention in my social circles but I didn’t engage with it meaningfully so I didn’t understand it. I started my international travels in “the east” and had a wonderful time. By the time I visited Spain I expected a normal travel experience but definitely not the elevated grandeur my highschool years would have had me believe. I had average expectations.

Then I got there and every meal was bomb. Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona - I couldn’t go wrong I loved the local food. Worse, I loved at least Madrid and Barcelona’s ability to recreate other cuisines too. Some of the best sushi I’ve ever had was in Madrid and I make a point of getting quality sushi where ever I go (including practically gorging myself into a food coma in Japan).

Then I went to an art museum and it moved me, found some artisanal stores, got fresh orange juice at multiple grocers, saw a movie in a decent theater, you know the normal like “show me what it’s like to live uniquely here” stuff. Ya, Madrid stole my heart for what it was and Spain as a whole surprised me.

Ya, I live right next to where this happened. It’s an immigrant heavy area. These guys planned, and a similar group the following day, to protest right next to the people they hate and want evicted from the country.

I agree, no one should be stabbed for their beliefs and free speech (to a degree) is important. But if someone came to my neighborhood and spent the whole day shouting out of a loud speaker that I didn’t belong, my family didn’t belong, my neighbors and friends didn’t belong, despite some of them living here for multiple generations - I’d be upset, I’d feel threatened.

Now couple that with doing it in a poorer district against a specifically marginalized group who has been historically treated poorly for decades with talking points that are clearly racist and easily disproven - idk. No one should get stabbed but even if I believed those awful things I wouldn’t do what they did unless I was looking for trouble.

Idk, my roommate and I have been talking about it all weekend. Yes we believe you should be allowed to punch Nazi’s, no we don’t think we should be allowed to stab anyone, yes 20% of the German population roughly hold dehumanizing beliefs that are dangerous and we should be educating them, no the government isn’t doing enough to better everyone’s situation and therefore racism and fascism are growing at an alarming rate.

It’s not about capitalism vs something-other-than-capitalism, it’s about all the small systems that make up our way of life. As a simple example, housing shouldn’t be a vehicle for profit seeking. It should be illegal or so greatly discouraged that owning an unhealthy amount of properties is non-viable because if house prices must always go up and everyone needs a place to live - the cost of living must always go up. A subsystem of capitalism that needs fixing, not “a new system that isn’t capitalism”.

And I’m not suggesting people not have 401k’s or not invest or not save money, I’ve got my retirement fund too. But we have to realize that that system isn’t doing it’s job and it’s harmful to society and the more we participate the more incentivized to keep it harmful, to keep it around. So participate like an intelligent person and then leverage your power and position to better the systems for everyone - eventually at an expense to yourself.

You got to remember, most of the wealth is still in very few hands. So telling yourself “the stock market also benefits the people who are retiring” makes it sound like there’s a good side to this when really it’s only a silver lining to an otherwise meaningless and arguably downright hurtful event.

The economy is as bad as it is, we’re seeing fascism rise as much as we are, partially because our major economic systems aren’t designed to actually benefit the people they’re built on sucking value out of.

So no, I don’t care that everyone currently cashing out of the system just got a little bit more money or more time out of the recent layoffs and the recent COVID profitteering and the recent inshitification. I think we have to be careful defending bad systems even minorly, despite that being rational and logical, because it feels like we’re coming to a tipping point and minor defenses like that make it seem as if we can extend the shelf life of these systems a few more decades, a few more unnecessary deaths, a few more degrees of warming, etc. Idk, only politics is weird. At least you’re participating, so thanks for that.

Just chiming in, I’m 28, American, immigrated to Germany. Can’t speak for Lemmy but I migrated from reddit when they shut the APIs down. Just want a shelf stable Aggregate site where I can stay up to date on my favorite hobbies and periodically connect with other humans. A healthy political debate is good every now and then but I’m also in the camp that the answers for our current problems are well researched and pretty fuckin obvious so debates have gotten… Idk stale.

Generally Lemmy feels like reddit but smaller, less polluted, but also less connected with every niche major update.

For these things I don’t think you have to prove anything, just a report to your govs food agency could prompt an inspection - or so I think.