• 31 Posts
  • 489 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • A mixture of emotions. In my case,

    1.) I live in Illinois and bought a home in 2020 when the interest rate was 3.2% as a first-time homeowner. If I were to sell and look for a new home, the interest rate in Canada would be somewhere around 4%, plus the cost of living is higher compared to where I live. That’s ignoring the complications that could come from obtaining a permanent work visa as a foreign citizen.

    2.) I love my job as it is now and it may be difficult to find a job in the same field. Also, my wife recently found a job in her career field and for the first time wants to stay at her employer for the foreseeable future; working in public health and helping the people this horrible healthcare system is failing to care for.

    3.) Family and friendship ties to the area.

    4.) There’s some semblance of hope if we stay. I do still want the best for everyone that I share this earth with. Even if it were financially viable for me to leave, there’s millions that aren’t so lucky. If I pack up and leave that’s one less person voting for progressive policy and advocating for empathy in a country that has real projective power in the world.

    5.) Illinois, as a blue state, is temporarily insulated from damaging policy that Trump is trying to enact. JB Pritzker has remained steadfast in his opposition to Trump and regressive political action.

    I liken it to French opposition during the period of Nazi occupation. (Clearly it’s not a 1:1 comparison.) The french resistance hampered Nazi wartime efforts just enough to keep Nazi logistics from being able to cross the channel and occupy Great Britain. If that were to happen, the United States wouldn’t be able to set up any sort of staging area on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. Amphibious assaults would have taken place on the western coast of GB where there’s cliff faces rather than the sandy beaches at Normandy. Maybe Germany is then able to allocate more troops to the eastern front in that scenario, who knows. But thankfully that’s just a hypothetical and isn’t something we have to ponder.








  • That’s great and all, but taking away an option and saying “the other option is good so why bother getting upset about it” is minimalizing the core issue. International tariffs are going to reduce consumer options and artificially raise prices.

    That’s totally ignoring the ethical sourcing issues with coffee as well. Specialty coffee companies have been working directly with growers in countries like Colombia, Peru, Uganda, Indonesia, etc. to give them fair wages and to combat monopoly pricing in the industry. I’ve spent $100 on a drum roaster to be able to buy green coffee from responsible companies that pay farmers a living wage. In the end, my home-roasted coffee costs less per pound than Great Value brand pre-ground coffee from Walmart. So now if buying green coffee gets too expensive, I’m expected to go from roasting for my own taste preference, grinding fresh beans, and brewing espresso…to instant coffee. Which in the United States is almost universally bitter dark roasted coffee with no regionally distinct tastes.









  • I’m with you in the first half, but complaining about using the word y’all and calling it cultural appropriation is a strange take to me. Maybe it’s because I don’t believe in cultural appropriation (in the general sense of the term). Culture that’s shared is strengthened and grows. Rome became the strongest civilization in history on the basis of incorporating foreign people into their society (against their will most often) and through long distance trading. I’m less educated on dynasties in the far east and how they functioned because there’s far less documentation of their history, but that kinda proves my point.

    This seems like a super long response to just a throwaway comment, but I’ve been really thinking lately about what it means to be human and I think I’ve narrowed it down to one word. Sharing. Sharing information, culture, land, resources, experience, fortune, pain, ideas…etc. So maybe I helped convince you to share aspects of your culture or not, but I at least wanted to try.