I’d like to think I would stand by my principles… but realistically, in this economy?? My degree is too specialized & the job market is pretty tight. I’m pretty sure most people in my field would go to a job at Nestle or Palantir without a second thought for something as simple as 10-20k above market rate and/or visa sponsorship 😭

If I have options, probably at least a net $50k/yr premium for a dubious company, and a net $150k/yr or more (which I will bail quickly) for a company that is straight-up evil

BMS (Be-Music Source), which is technically a file format, not a game. Started off as a Beatmania (now Beatmania IIDX) simulator in 1998, and evolved into its own thing due to some alleged copyright beef with Konami. Someone has made a 20-min video essay about this that is better than anything I could explain

Every song in BMS is original & is fully key-sounded, so the community ended up gathering a lot of (overwhelmingly Japan and Korea-based) music creators. Some of them are… quite experimental. The entire ArtCore genre (which is almost nonexistent outside of rhythm games, but extremely prevalent within) was invented and pioneered by BMS creators. Recent ones… I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a “Hi-Tech Full On” or a “Poetry reading” genre song outside of BMS, but there are at least several songs that fall within these two respectively

Just a heads up… BMS as a game is brutally difficult even by rhythm game standards, which is already a very demanding video game genre to get into

I used to be quite picky & only really listened to J-core and high-energy EDM. Last few months I’ve been getting into a new rhythm game that is known for being… adventurous with its music genre, & even invented some new genres, which has done a number to my music diversity. I think I’m much, much more adventurous with music now

Fun fact, these are genres of some of the charts I’ve played recently. They are… varied, and I think these are only within the past week:

• A lot of trance
• A lot of J-core. Some are “hybridized” which are J-core mashed with other genres
• Artcore, often referred to just “rhythm game music” because they don’t exist outside
• Hi-tech
• All kinds of pop. Including J-pop, K-pop, C-pop(?), pop française (??), …
• Techno & rave music, of all kinds
• Breakcore
• House, also of all kinds
• Ethnic music. I think I’ve heard an Arabic EDM chart yesterday
• Classical
• Experimental things: “poetry” (does this genre even exist?), Buddhism chants, whatever ppl like 立秋 and 大前司 make, shitposts/memes but in music form, …

I tried it once before and liked it! Certainly helps that I’m also lactose intolerant

Although, I prefer to just drink black usually. With good beans (locally roasted) and a good grinder the coffee itself provides a lot of flavor so… other additions are a bit unnecessary

Everything about fecal transplant. Or maybe just the fact that it is even a legitimate medical procedure

Depression, Prozac. Approximately 2-3 weeks when the initial benefits kick in, which is also how long it roughly took for me to feel depressed again when I once accidentally stopped the medication

Realistically? Something like “BIOL/STAT 451, Intro to Bioinformatics”

Department head will probably force me to teach “COMP 271 Intro to Generative AI” instead 💀

Not technically an American but lived in America for a long time, also not eligible to claim citizenship anywhere. I hope I’d be somewhat qualified to speak on this

There really aren’t that many countries which are a step up for an American IMO. Probably a good number of the EU/EEA countries, places like Canada/Australia/NZ, and mayyybe places like Singapore and a few more… Fewer if you have a strict limit on English, in that case maybe only places like UK & the Nordic countries; maybe also the Netherlands, but I’ve heard mixed information about language requirements there. This is a pretty short list, so I think you could probably have a passing knowledge of all of their basic immigration processes without spending that much time on it. But yeah you are right, for any expat/immigrant wannabe it usually goes like this:

Winning the “life lottery” (ancestry, asylum, or a literal lottery like the US) -> “Buying” your way in via Golden visa -> Love knows no borders so marriage -> Workers visa, aka getting sponsored to work

The first three obviously don’t apply to you or me TBH, so work sponsorship it is: either international transfer via a large international company (does that happen often for trades people?), or finding a job in your target country. I think others have mentioned this, but since you will likely be immigrating via work, secure a job first. Don’t even think about anything else without a solid job offer. I didn’t follow this advice myself and literally got screwed; I spent several hours learning German everyday during a really busy time of my life, wrecked my mental health along the way due to stress, and never ended up finding a job in Germany in the end… Don’t be like past me

tradesman with a lot of technical skills with some specialized skills in short supply

Probably your biggest asset. Some countries like Canada and Australia/NZ publish their skill shortages, so if your skills are on them you’d be in very good luck. There are subreddits and discussion groups on these topics so I’d look into them

Note that in Australia, allegedly the real job shortage can be quite different from the published list. This doesn’t hurt your chances of moving there per-se, but can make your life difficult after moving in, especially if you don’t have a large amount of savings

Also, I’m not sure exactly what trades you are in (for the sake of privacy I prefer not to ask), but different countries may have different regulations. It is possible that you may not be allowed to work in the EU without local certifications for example. I don’t think it is an impasse per-se, but I’d definitely investigate this beforehand

But anyways, if you are interested why not try and apply for a few jobs first? You never know :D

Neither of us is very good at picking up a new language (lord how I’ve tried)

To be honest… that doesn’t sound very good. Comes without saying that most places expect workers to speak fluently or at least B1 in their native language (which is also required for immigration purposes for most countries), and the English-friendly places (such as Ireland) can have extremely high demand, which can cause other societal complications

I am taking what you said at face value, since I have seen first-hand how much my boss (German) struggled with learning French and had to settle for learning Dutch instead lol. Nevertheless, for most people it isn’t that hard to at least get a passing conversation skill level in a target language in a few years especially with full immersion & government/employer-sponsored language classes, so I wouldn’t completely rule it out just yet! If you’re able to deal with other languages, there are lots of EU countries that have plenty of opportunities; maybe even some more developed parts of Africa would do as well

Usually 7.5 hours, ±20 minutes. I literally can’t properly function at my day job if I do less. On rare occasions when I do sleep less I usually end up making up for it over the weekend so

During college I also did way less, only 4-6 hrs/day… but then I’d fall asleep during classes

Honestly really surprised to find everyone here all do their taxes so quickly. I also did all of mine as early as I could (mid-Feb) but…

The only few American friends whom I’m close enough to talk about this, they all ignore it until the very last minute. So either late March/April, or not at all

Not sure if CC BY 4.0 counts? There’s an incredibly based Japanese producer 森田交一 (often goes by the alias 魔王魂) who released a lot of their music as CC BY 4.0. Hence a lot of them end up in all kinds of small projects, RPGMaker games, etc…

The website is https://maou.audio/, but the guy is also active on YouTube. 12345 is a bop; I was genuinely positively surprised by Burning Heart the first time I heard it, although J-pop may not be up everyone’s alley so

Wanted to get something from the supermarket. Supermarket was closed due to Easter :(

Yes I know this is really minor

Not directly. But

My Autism is actually a bigger issue. Allegedly Australia/NZ have regulations on disabilities, which I’m not sure how much being on the spectrum would affect

More importantly… One needs a job/education to live in somewhere like the EU (the few non-EU European countries almost all have equally or harder visa requirements). Education still costs lots of money for non-EU folks, and job market isn’t particularly good in EU. So having depression, which makes getting/keeping a job harder, certainly don’t help…

Day was alright!

But I legitimately only found this out via Reddit (and now Lemmy). For an event organized by the UN it feels so anticlimatic that I didn’t see any mention of it where I live throughout the entire day 😭

Short answer: Try medication (which worked)

Long answer:

I have clinically diagnosed depression, Major Depressive Disorder. Known it from first year of college, symptoms started way earlier probably around middle school

Psychologist from a few years ago recommended me to read the Feeling Good Handbook. I ended up reading the entire thing end-to-end… Most of it I don’t really recall anymore at this point. But the book did mention about how there are two gold-standard forms of therapy: “talk-therapy” (usually what psychologists do, most popular one I think is CBT), and antidepressants/medication. And the people who respond most effectively to these two options are almost anti-correlative with each other

It turned out I was among the smaller group of people who don’t respond very well (if at all) to talk therapy, but respond very well to medication. I was quite mentally against antidepressants up until that point, but I decided to just bite the bullet and give it a shot… So I talked with my psychologist, who then connected me with a psychiatrist who helped me get a prescription for Fluoxetine (Prozac) and monitored my progress every 2-3 months. It was basically a miracle drug for me. MDD can’t be cured, but me taking prescribed antidepressants, along with me getting adopted by two cats at that time, almost “cured” my depression for good. I was on a very low dose too, only 10-20 mg/d

But to echo what others have said. Therapy is work. I was very committed to finding an intervention. Even though CBT didn’t work very well I still managed to visit my psychologist every month and self-reflect afterwards, and that continued several years onwards even when most of my symptoms were greatly reduced after medication. No one forced me to read through a several hundred page book either, or to overcome my mental barrier of taking medication… I chose to partake these actions on my own

But yeah I think therapy does work if one is willing to put the effort into it

I have a pretty high respect for nearly all professional athletes to be honest. The aspect I respect the most is mainly how much technical competence and practice are needed to perform at professional levels

… although it may be because I do play really difficult video games, some of which can be considered to be e-sports. A less niche example, when I played chess semi-seriously for a year I really learned just how strong the Grandmasters are. Maybe this view bled into my view of conventional sports too

… do parents count?? I don’t have too many friends, if any at all

Otherwise I indirectly helped a coworker find a BF a few months ago. Yeah I guess that was it

For the most part yeah. I think that’s unironically how I “cheated” my old JLPT exams and got way higher grades than I should. And really high-level Japanese (such as political news, debates, legal matter) are mostly Kanji, and by that point you’d fully understand all the non-Kanji parts anyways so

But in real life you still have to actually say the words out loud…

Yes… Until when you’d have to pronounce it 😭 And then there’s a ridiculous amount of Japanese names that seem to follow no rules whatsoever for their pronunciations. And then there’s online JP users who would put the weirdest pronunciations for Kanjis, sometimes they are so weird that they have to annotate the pronunciation themselves

… Anyways, Japanese is difficult

Native Chinese speaker who is quite decent at Japanese and should in theory find Kanji quite easy, because of Chinese… YES

Not that the other parts of the language is easy, I find the keigo system quite complex so