I haven’t done enough research to know how well it does in every category, but I was recently thinking of moving to Vietnam for similar reasons. I’ve learned a decent amount about it and while it’s definitely still a developing country, it seems like it’s oriented in the direction I want. It’s been making huge strides towards poverty reduction and while it’s not entirely there, it’s getting close. Similar to modern China, while it has markets, the government does a lot to make sure important things are adequately addressed including stuff like infrastructure and apparently they’re getting close to implementing universal healthcare. They have an unaligned foreign policy. From what I’ve seen, the government seems reasonably responsive to the people. And lastly it sounds like they’re reasonably friendly towards foreigners. I’m kind of shocked they’re not more pissed at Americans, but apparently there are US expats living there who have said they have good experiences with the people.

The problem with me moving anywhere right now though is I’m super depressed, so doing all the things I’d need to do to move, including learning a foreign language, would be really difficult for me and I’m not sure I’m ready to live without my current support network. It’s kind of stressful though because it really does feel like it might be urgent to leave now. Even before Trump I hated it here, but now it looks like the fascism train is rapidly accelerating and I’m an autistic Jewish communist. I might not be immediately in the crosshairs thanks to me being white, but I doubt I’m that far down the list.

We like to think we have rule of law, but in practice that is a fairly flimsy concept that ultimately depends on how many people in power are willing to adhere to it. Something could be against the law, the Supreme Court could rule that it’s against the law, (although with all the right wingers they stacked the court with, even that’s not gonna happen often.) the legislature could object, but at the end of the day, if the executive instructs the government workers to do something and they’re willing to do it, well… they can do it. So the politics of those government workers ultimately determines what can and can’t be done. And since those workers are downstream of appointments made by the executive… they’re likely to agree with them. And we see that bear out especially in the military and law enforcement agencies. The culture of these institutions is fairly right wing and the people in them have demonstrated a willingness to follow illegal orders and commit some truly heinous acts, even if they rationalize it as “just following orders.”

It’s not just under Trump either. The government has been acting in ways that violate our own laws for a long time. Every war we’ve been in since WWII has been an illegal act since they were never formally declared as wars and many of the things done in them have violated various international humanitarian laws. Police have straight up killed people without trial and were protected by their fellow officers and the government. And of course now we see ICE agents be more than willing to commit crimes to pursue this anti-immigrant agenda, whether they are just following along or they’re also ideologically committed to this.

So yeah. The answer can be anything as long as he find enough amoral right wingers or pushovers to staff the administration.

Thanks. I never thought of that. /s

Depression. Lots of depression. And anxiety. And probably some other stuff.

Tried tons of different treatments and nothing has really worked. Going to try therapy again on recommendation of my psychiatrist, but I’ve only had negative experiences with therapy and I still really don’t see how it’s going to fix anything.

Unfortunately this is the movie. So it’s longer and we have to pay for it.

During high school I did a summer study program in France and also briefly went to Amsterdam for a weekend.

In college I took a vacation with some college friends in Japan, going to several cities across the country. It’s kind of funny, we’re all weebs, but one of my friends learned Japanese in college and he’s pretty much fluent. He actually speaks better Japanese than Chinese despite being from a family that immigrated over here from China this generation lol.

It was definitely nice seeing the different kind of things they had in those countries as well as a lot of the similarities. That said, I don’t know that I know enough about them to talk intelligently about their modern politics.

I think this sub may be wrong. There are some stupid questions.

Thanks. Do only some of the instances have an old version? I see one for lemmy.zip but it doesn’t show up for ml or lemmygrad.

So I just pick one of them and I’m good? Any suggestion which one to pick? Just the biggest?

EDIT: Also, am I able to just be logged into both so I can see both sides at the same time or do I have to swap back and forth if I want to check out world or the commy instances?

How does that work? I assumed one Lemmy account covered everything. Where do I go for each of these?

Probably? At least in the sense that I’ve managed to gather from the very confused online arguments about the term. I’m a communist. While I’d love it if we could all peacefully vote our way into a better society, I recognize that it’s probably not going to happen and whatever nastiness we’d have to do to actually make the change is worth moving past the endless awfulness that is capitalism. And for the existing countries, while they’re not magical Christmas lands, I’ve learned they’re not quite as bad as the capitalists have fear- mongered.

And I get Anarchists thinking it’s states all the way down but…………. I don’t know what to tell you. What’s the alternative? Even if I want to get where you’re going, how do we get there? Where is the bus/train? I don’t see any running to get there.

Man now I can’t watch Seinfeld anymore? Why people got to do this?

I took AI courses in college and it was fun to learn about then when it was a bunch of toy examples that showed the potential of these systems, but it was clear enough to anyone in those classes or doing that research how not ready they were for real applications because of all the known flaws with how model training worked. And then some ceos just ignored all that and started blowing up the bubble.

So my answer is the research models that could play video games kinda good. Everything after that was getting ahead of ourselves.

have you been to a psychiatrist, ideally more than one? Done any research yourself beyond just the depression?

Yes. Quite a few at this point. A few that just diagnosed and managed medications, but then there was also a clinic that did a brain scan to try to help figure things out, this is where I learned I was also autistic, but that didn’t really lead to anything useful. I also went to try TMS and Ketamine. Lately I thought that I might have ADHD, so I went to go get tested for that, but they decided that wasn’t it even if I did have some attention problems, they were just more related to the depression symptoms. After that, I’ve started doing ECT. I’m still in the early stages, but I’m starting to get to the number of treatments where people supposedly start feeling it helping and they of course ask me every time I go and I just never know what to say. I can’t really tell if I feel any different. At some point if it’s not helping I’m gonna have to stop because this is easily the most painful, disruptive treatment I’ve had so far. At least with the Ketamine I was basically just zonked out listening to music for like an hour. The ECT involves going to a hospital that’s like a half an hour away, not eating for 8 hours, not drinking for 2 hours, getting a needle stuck in my arm for anesthesia, then getting my brain zapped. I feel like shit the rest of the day. So if it’s not working, more than any other medication or treatment I’ve had, I need to end it. But I don’t want to miss my chance at what feels like the last thing that might help.

I think the interesting thing about the US is that its propaganda sews the seeds for eventual dissent. It runs on ideals about freedom, democracy, equality, individualism, progress, prosperity, etc. The national mythology isn’t “fuck all the poor people.” The trouble is, the US isn’t any of these things. It just makes it hard to recognize that or what the alternatives are. So I wouldn’t say I moved along the political spectrum as much as I slowly started to notice that I wasn’t where I thought I was. You grow up seeing Obama go from “Hope and Change” to continuing to do all the wars, torture, and spying… it makes you realize “hey I don’t think these people were being honest about sharing my values.” And it’s just a long, slow trip from there to figuring out what movements actually represent your politics.

Some good answers already here, but I can only answer for myself: I used to be that kind of leftist that was “Well I want socialism, but not like those scary foreign authoritarian countries. They’re doing it wrong! Or that’s not really socialism!” At some point after learning more history and talking with others online, I’ve softened my view on these places. Some of that is learning that some of what I knew about them was straight up misinformation, but some of it comes from a shift in perspective: These aren’t abstract ideals of countries. They’re real countries. With real people, real histories, real material conditions, real geopolitical relationships to deal with, etc. They’re doing something really difficult and it’s really easy to be an armchair quarterback while sitting cozy in the US where I don’t have to deal with any of their tough decisions or the consequences of them. Am I happy with them doing some authoritarian policies? No. But maybe they’re necessary to deal with the interference of the US? I don’t know for sure if that’s the best approach, but I don’t have to imagine the counterexample of what it looks like if you don’t take defensive measures, the US has helpfully provided a bunch in the form of all of the countries they’ve backed coups in for the crime of electing even a slightly leftist government. We could squabble about better ways to deal with this, but neither of us has the full context to have an educated discussion on the matter. Also for the genuinely bad stuff, I wouldn’t go as far as specifically supporting those things, but it’s worth putting them in perspective. You can’t talk about China online without someone bringing up Tienanmen Square, meanwhile the US has been a never-ending avalanche of evil in it’s short history, but you can talk about any number of things not related to politics in the US without a random leftist wandering into the discussion about the latest hollywood movie shouting the entire lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” I mean we’re happy to bring all that stuff up if it’s in the right context, but people are so deranged about communist countries that the ONLY thing they can think to bring up in relation to them is their less savory moments that may or may not even be true/exaggerated.

It’s really hard to sort good information from bad about these places because there’s so much propaganda. I get that those other countries have an incentive to put out their own propaganda, but it’s hard for me to know what their reach is or what their motivations are or how much they are lying vs countering US misinfo. Meanwhile I KNOW the US has a fairly sophisticated system of propaganda spanning government agencies, media companies, NGOs, etc. I KNOW the US is motivated to prop up the interests of capitalists and try to stop other countries from pushing back against them. A lot of the bad shit and lies the US has done is just straight up declassified history. So I’m sorry if I’m a little skeptical about what the empire that’s made it it’s business to deny self-determination to countries around the world has to say about those countries.

As for Russia, I’m not specifically a supporter. Ever since the USSR collapsed they’ve been another capitalist, imperialist country. But in terms of scale they’re just not even remotely comparable to the US. They are at worst a regional power and outside of nukes can’t really threaten the US on the global stage. So when the US war machine starts saber rattling about them, I know what it’s for because I’ve seen it a million times before. We always need an external enemy to justify the massive amount of money we spend on the military and all of the capitalists who profit from it. Even if I think it would be good if someone in the region pushed back against Russian aggression, I think feeding the beast that is the US military industrial complex is a net negative for the world. Not that I really have any say in it. I can’t remember the last time my congressperson or senator asked if I wanted to give another couple billion dollars to their friends in the “defense” industry. And then of course there was all the hysteria about Russian interference in our elections from the Democrats. I don’t even care if they’re right or wrong. That’s besides the point. The function of the claims is what is more valuable to look at: The implication of “Russia is subverting our democracy by interfering in our elections.” is “We had a previously uncorrupted democracy before the Russians got involved. Please ignore how our own billionaires have bought out all of our elections.” It’s a way to shore up support for a failing system by externalizing it’s problems.

I just want to live in a world where we can all live dignified lives. US capitalists are the current greatest obstacle to that dream. I’d rather have imperfect allies against that than throw my lot in with the “Endless war, exploitation, and ecological collapse” team.

The Halo warthog run music.

The same way people go on knowing their president is a war criminal. We’re so far past the line that this doesn’t even register.

“Duh nuh nuh naaaaaah! Dun nuh nuh naaaaah! Dun nuh nuh naaaah!….”

It just depends on what classes you need and when you get access to registration. I got lucky some semesters and managed to craft a schedule where nothing started before noon and some semesters where I was dying because I had a class at like 8am.