If it’s Venezuala-ish economic collapse, fertiliser will probably still be available. Heck, with thorough composting need for that is pretty reduced, even. My buying advice leans towards unusual or higher-tech things as opposed to bulk products.

If it’s war/apocalypse/disaster, a few acres will help or could even feed a whole person, depending on where in the US. A mix of things is advisable, maybe including animals, since it’s less likely everything fails at once. Medicine, fuel, water treatment supplies, batteries and ammunition are also recommended bulk items. Water itself if you’re in an arid place, and nonperishable food including cooking oil in case your minifarm has problems.

If it’s a recession like 2008, just get your finances in order and an emergency fund. Life will go on.

How big does that perimeter have to be for the lesson to apply? In ZA I know they do whole gated communities, but we’re talking about a single house.

See, this is what the real targets do. Bin Laden lasted a whole decade with most of the population of the world’s hyperpower personally wanting to kill him, because it wasn’t clear where to break into.

Given unlimited time for whoever to break in undisturbed, nothing is secure.

The relevant measure is how quickly someone could break in, without preparation and then with. That’s kind of how they rate safes.

If you’re not Maduro and the goal is just to get away before they’re in, people have mentioned some good options to slow whoever down (alongside the silly suggestions). I’d also add trying to look unprepared, so they don’t come prepared for more than a door or window themselves, and having a non-obvious escape route to use in those critical seconds.

Of course, if it’s an authority, after you’ve run away you’re down a small-ish house.

Yeah, so much good information is there it’s unavoidable to just browse on in, from time to time.

I’m guessing most people here came from Reddit. It was a ghost town before the APIocalypse.

You know, I always assumed black people wouldn’t have the kamikaze-bugs-against-your face problem. If so, this is an ironic choice of template.

Even worse, you’re usually seeing the Venezuelans in exile who showed up to whatever rally. It doesn’t matter what the rally is for, only weird people spend their free time that way, and a random sample of the population will tell a very different story.

Except Cuba also has massive brain drain…

when the reality is that, although they are autocratic, their country is far better off today than it was under Batista.

That was the better part of a century ago, though. People who set that as the bar for success are hoping for a certain conclusion.

You can find Venezuelans that are happy, and most Venezuelans don’t like Chavismo and Maduro (at least anymore). Whether most are positive about the situation is another question, though.

My random guess based on how much people enjoy foreign meddling and how ominous this actually is is that most don’t, but I have no hard data and I’m not sure how much even exists.

Yes.

Why not? We’ve survived pretty crazy things using sticks and stones. Now we have so much more, and there’s so many more of us to act as redundancy.

Because I would have to go do that.

I’m not even sure being recognised is a plus.

Most European languages have no equivalent, since everything is gendered, not just pronouns. Efforts to embed equality in those languages go the other way - adding female gendered terms for male-dominated professions and vice-verse, as opposed to removing gender which is just too hard.

Russian in particular is spoken in places where they’re hostile to the whole idea. They have a neuter gender, and you might see it used in a mocking “it” kind of way for queer people of all kinds.

For languages outside the Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic families it’s usually a moot issue; 3/4 have no grammatical gender features at all.

Which open source projects have large expenses? Buying the creator a coffee is nice, but if money is actually required for something to exist I’d rather give there.

Right now I’m poor, but maybe someday I’ll be in the same boat as OP. My Lemmy instance and Tor come to mind, and then maybe Wikipedia, although I know their aggressive fundraising has already worked.

Edit: Oh shit, the Invidious instance I use should probably go first.

Two out of the five never got real political power, though. Meanwhile McCarthyism blew over because it was just a component of a larger panic within a healthy democracy, and the Contract with America looks like it amounted to a slight reorganisation of congress in the end.

The whole racist South thing is a more reasonable comparison. Although it was a time when things went by region a lot more, and the larger north could apply pressure. I can’t really see a Lincoln or fifteenth amendment coming to the rescue the same way this time around. Just, who’s left to stand up to MAGA?

I should probably throw in the Gilded Age too as it seems to fit with our current situation nicely. We had a decent progressive push after the last one.

Sort of? Inequality took on a different character after Teddy, but the roaring 20’s is often lumped into the gilded age anyway. That’s because it wasn’t really a political (or spiritual) movement so much as wealth self-accumulating like it always tends to in agricultural civilisation. You were right to leave it out.

To visit. Immigrating is a whole other thing - this BBC retrospective paints a pretty clear picture in the section about the village. I remember reading an account of somebody that’s been going to the same corner store run by the same guy for decades, but who still gets followed around because “foreigners commit crime”.

Looking Asian might make it worse if anything, because Japan has less than awesome relations with other Asian countries, and some of them come with a poverty stigma.

I’m afraid not. Although, that’s the least of your problems if you’re coming to Canada. You need to qualify competitively and immigration levels are tight right now, while our housing market catches up. If you can do that, getting a job as an educated American should be easy.

What I can do at my current moment in life basically amounts to personal favours, that’s it. I’m not even in a convenient location for crashing.

What’s your plan to get into Japan? It’s not a place that likes immigration.

You know it refers to your own mother, right? Like, it means you commit incest.

Lots of ideologies can be used as an accusation depending on context.