Pete didn't add him, Mike Waltz did. But that's neither here nor there, they all were in the wrong.

This was the primary reason for me leaving the church, but I had begun my whole "deconstruction" journey years earlier. Between losing my belief and losing my religion, I was there to be a good influence on the true believers. I eventually realised it was useless to do so, that these people who I once considered friends were actually just horrible people. I'm embarrassed how long I really ignored some toxic beliefs and actions just because the people committing them were doing so "for sincerely held beliefs". Trump and Covid were the real catalysts just because the way and the speed of their "mask off" transition made it obvious even to a socially inept person like me that they were just bad people.

I'm not a financial advisor, so nobody copy this, but we removed all our money from the US over the last few years in preparation. We dont have stocks any more, and our last bit of US money is due to be transferred when our tax return is paid out. I'm cautiously optimistic things will hold until then 🤞

We've put most of our money short term into New Zealand banks, specifically term deposits at a few locations, as the financial system here is well insulated at least compared to most countries. Long term we will vary our investment more but we don't have many options until we are permanent residents (another couple years). It's a moderate low risk growth, and we are okay with the downsides of it being inaccessible since we have several staggered.

Here term deposits are likely to be frozen short term in the event of a crash by the Open Banking Resolution system, but our everyday funds will be more accessible. Now for a huge market crash, most bets are off, but being in this little island nation, I feel a lot more secure in the fact that society will pull together rather than eat each other. That's the true benefit of being here: the culture.

I was pretty sure I knew what a general strike was.. wouldn't any strike be more expensive than 2-4 hours of protest, and wouldn't a general strike involve much more planning than a normal strike due to the scale and breadth?

Also I was worried that generalstrikeus.com was too soon. The UAW general strike is planned for 2028 to get time to plan, because a general strike isn't something you can just do successfully at the drop of a hat.

Beautiful! Congrats on your escape :-)

Welcome! North or South island?

Absolutely. It's not a utopia, but it's a huge step up from the US.

New Zealand! It's not perfect, but with a population of only 5 million, we do a lot better taking care of each other. I live on the south island, so it's even smaller. We have a fairly conservative govt right now, just like most places the economic downturn encouraged a right shift, but the culture here has been very progressive historically, and the people still are. I feel much more hopeful pushing back on hate here than I did in Texas, and it feels like it's impactful as opposed to in the US where it feels like pushing back against a river.

I would suggest you look into it, at the very least! Leaving was the best decision I ever made.

You've done right by your daughter. Good luck on the job search!

Looks fun, I'll give the demo a try with my kids 😆

Find community. Meet in person regularly if you can. Just existing in community is huge, if for nothing else than your own emotional, mental, and physical health. We are thinking of you all from outside the US 🫂

There are no males.

The Starbucks 3rd space idea has been dead since 2015-2018. It was a conscious choice.

Biden does not want a nuclear war. If he did, we would have had one, he's had plenty of opportunity to start or allow one, and instead he has actively worked to avoid it. I also would contest the idea he wants to die to get to heaven earlier.

Maybe not the Christers (Christmas and Easter church goers) but the weekly+ faithful do. It's way more common than you'd think.. unless you are one of them, and then it's exactly as often as you'd think, and I was one of them. The number of them there multiple times a week who not only believe the end of days is a good thing but actively pray and donate and vote for it to come faster is significant.

Not the person you're responding to but I did the same thing for in part the same reasons.

We had significant fiscal privilege in that we were old enough and willing to go into debt enough early in our lives to purchase a house before things got stupid, and each time we moved we sold the house for a profit. We are renting again in our new country (New Zealand) until we build back up and get at least permanent residency (can't buy a house here unless you're a PR). Buying a home was the most stressful and most impactful thing financially, but that's not feasible now for most people.

We got lucky enough, and purposefully saved for escape for 10 years by living with things that weren't comfortable (concrete floors for years rather than replace water damage, going above and beyond to keep electricity and gas prices low even at the cost of comfort, working too much to put money into savings and neglecting family, no eating out and limiting grocery budget for last two years, pulling out ALL investments like 401k to make the final push and starting from scratch in our new home, etc.).

I can tell you it was all worth it. Live below your means (while increasing your means incrementally), beans and rice rather than packaged foods (balanced with how much your time is worth), make every sacrifice with a clear goal in mind. Like I said, it takes years, and you're operating at a disadvantage just because we did this starting 12-13 years ago when prices were significantly different, and average wages haven't compensated. We have kids, so the other benefits were things like the child tax credit increase in 2021, which gave us unexpected increases.

I've seen people do all this just to have to go back to the US because they didn't scope out their landing enough: make sure you know how much you need to survive in your new country, know the cost of visas, limits on what you can earn in your job, know what jobs you can even fill based on visa and qualification restrictions.. and then plan for having 5-10% more in total liquidity than you think you need. Things change, accidents happen.. in our case our kid had to have emergency surgery the week before our flight, that same day our car died so we couldn't sell it for as much as we wanted, and a year after arriving they increased the cost of visa renewal by over 100%. Luckily we had planned for things going haywire so we were still able to escape.

It's not easy. I wish you all the luck in the world. Sorry for the novel and basically saying "be born earlier and get lucky" 👀

Exactly my thoughts. 80+ is already a horrific number, it's not going to make people more likely to act to artificially balloon the number 3x. There could be 1000 school shootings in one year and I doubt the US people or Govt would do a thing. They actively choose this every day.

They'll know I'm breaking the law, because I'll be flying my custom gadsen flag with 7 dildoes on it that reads "Come and count them"

They could have just not investigated, like they do with 80% of the other murders in the city.