gusgalarnyk @ gusgalarnyk @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

My friend and I moved to Germany last year. We met some Americans from st. Louis who moved the year before.

It's anecdotal but not unreasonable to imagine some amount of brain drain is happening because of the instability in the US driven by late stage capitalism.

Add in an office for a publicly owned rail system.

I think part of convenience is name brand recognition. I don't know how you took a heartfelt compliment and made it hostile, but the reality is I grew up knowing what Google was and using it as a verb. Gmail was an obvious and convenient tool to pickup.

I just found out about Protonmail, or at least heard of it for the first time that it broke the barrier of not-caring into carrying. I imagine user numbers reflect that pretty readily.

That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying Protonmail is worse in anyway, please don't assume I am. It's okay to like a product and admit it's flaws, in this case the only flaw I'm suggesting it has is being less known than Gmail and even then only for me and my small corner of the world.

Thank you for this recommendation, I'll look into switching. It's a slow process of moving towards less convenient but more private services but your comment has moved the needle for me at least.

Which is a silly conclusion... What's the point? The better question would be why isn't more housing being built? And I suspect the answer to that question is there is a vested interest in increasing that deficit.

Whenever someone starts to conclude that housing is so expensive purely because there aren't enough homes, they often follow that up with pointing to construction costs. Which to me screams deregulation and wage complaints, two things an improving society should not be encouraging.

I really hate all the replies attempting to poke holes with minimal effort. Thanks for this comment and your robust set of examples.

Housing shouldn't be a vehicle for interest or making a living, I'd take it more extreme than what you have if I'm being honest. You can own the buildings you use 60% of the year for work or for housing but nothing else. We don't sell stocks in bananas, we sell stocks in farms. Housing should be a consumable commodity not a line item in a corp's assets sheet.

My last Japan trip was 4 or 5 years back and spent time in multiple big cities with an express train pass. I think I budgeted a grand for the flight, a grand in food and hotel and spending a week. But with inflation being what it is I'd want to rerun the numbers based off of what flights and hotel/hostels I could find and assume 1k for just food and fun per week. I think there are active data sheets online that talk about the average cost of eating out in Japan right now.

You want to visit for "a few weeks" so I'd say plan for 2k + flight + hotel/hostel + train tickets/pass. I'd bet you spend less than 4k total for that time.

I like to visit 1 major city every 4-7 days, I normally do travel in, 5 days, travel out. So two weeks would let me see 2 major cities and a couple day trips or 3 shorter stays at 3 major places. Some cities are cheaper than others which is something to consider and how you eat out also dictates your budget more than anything. You could eat in Tokyo for dollars a day at gas stations or you could splurge on sashimi every night and find yourself burning money by the fist full.

I'm a big foodie so that's where the 1k per week comes from.

Without data, take media reports as sensational by necessity. France's problems may not be as bad as they seem (I would assume they're not) and France's problems don't automatically translate to other countries like Japan.

To wrap this back around to your main post, travelling to Japan shouldn't induce fear at any step. It's a safe country with low crime rates and few health problems for tourists.

This is a great write up, thanks for sharing!

Again, don't be. I don't have data off the top of my head, but I'd wager Japan has shockingly few cases of bed bugs in their tourist sector.

"Most countries" is a hell of a stretch in my opinion. I've traveled to something close to 20 popular countries and only needed a visa for China when visiting, Singapore when studying, and Germany when moving there.

Here's the official list and I'd wager a guess that more than 75% of native US Tourist Traffic goes to these countries.

You shouldn't be scared of hotels. If you're getting a reasonable room you'll have an entirely normal experience. If you cheap out, then you are taking a risk in exchange for money.

But if you're going to travel internationally, you should default to not afraid. It is by and large safe out there. Be smart, but not media-sensitized.

Like I said, it's got pros and cons. Hotels are good too.

Hey, this is an exciting first step in planning your trip. I'm 27 and have traveled a lot on my own and with friends, if you need any advice or have any questions feel free to PM me.

1. Get your passport - this let's you leave your country and enter others. Depending on your country you may need to get a visa but assuming you come from the US you don't need a Visa (if a passport let's you enter into your native country, a Visa let's you enter and stay in a foreign country under certain conditions).
2. Book a flight through something like Google flights, no need to go through any company besides the airline's.
3. Book housing - if you're going alone and packing light I would highly recommend a hostel. Hostels are shared rooms where you sleep in the same room, share bathrooms, etc. If you're a light sleeper you may not like this, it will cause you to interact with other tourists which can be a pro or a con, and when you leave stuff in your room It'll need a lock (no issues in my experience but I also wouldn't bring 2 grand of electronics and lock them in the room). The main benefit is it's cheaper for individuals. Eastern hostel culture is way better than western, and Japan has some of the best in my experience.
4. Pack your stuff. You need clothes, but you can do laundry there if that interests you so you don't need too many clothes. You need a way to get japanese currency. My card let's me pull money out of international ATMs, you can also bring US dollars and convert it there in the airport, but Japan mostly takes card in my experience.

That's the bare necessity. I got to stop now but like I said, I'd love to help past that.

Depending on where you're going transportation can be handled entirely by public transit. Don't get a car.

I think that's a stretch for something that has a positive impact and is done by a group outside of Congressional gridlock.

We should celebrate the win and push for stronger protections. We should definitely not given into apathy and give up.

That feels like a really pedantic difference.

Example:

I kill 100% of a population AND my intent was to do that = genocide

I kill 100% of a population BUT my intent was only to kill a lot of people = not genocide???

If that's really what you're saying is the discrepancy then I have to disagree with this recognition being purely political. This seems like a common sense thing. The holodomor happened, it was mass purposeful death. We can argue if it was targeted against a people or a location, but the effect was clearly bound to some group or region and it was effective within those boundaries to the extent that it could be considered a genocide.

Without doing any reading on the matter for this topic as well, that's what I'd say.

We just need to keep and increase the number of dialogues we're having with our neighbors on life and our government. Apathy is powerful and hopelessness doubly so but we can build a better future working towards solutions with our neighbors.

Capitalist's are pushing the disparity between the haves and the have-nots. We have tools that can reverse that disparity and with it remove the intoxicating push to the far right.

Housing as a speculative investment is a plague on society. I hope countries place regulations and heavy taxes against properties you own but do not live in or utilize personally.

The main comments seem to think Milley WAS commenting on Biden's health after saying he wouldn't and I disagree.

He said Biden read the prep material, was aware of the current issues, and took national security matters very seriously. You could extrapolate that to mean he's mentally well but I don't think that's a necessary conclusion and it's definitely not a direct comment on the president's health.

No one likes how old the president is, but Milley wasn't going against his own words here in the excerpt that I read.

Excited to see more FPS offerings.