For my immediate family I’ve made a small self-hosted Matrix server before, although it has its own bundle of issues… if I were to do it again maybe I would choose Signal. But yeah from a pure technical standpoint there are lots of viable insta-messaging alternatives

Sadly you hit the nail on the head regarding the social media “network effect”… I also came from a non-US country that has been dominated by an instachat app that doesn’t respect privacy whatsoever, but good luck convincing a group of ppl to switch to a different software. Sooo… most likely even if you really do get permabanned from Whatsapp, ppl you know in real life might just keep using Whatsapp without you anyway

But anyways, if you don’t mind giving a bit of a white lie… the excuse you gave (“permabanned from Whatsapp”) actually doesn’t sound to bad to me IMO

So to get the obvious out of the way… Becoming an American or a Canadien citizen are both difficult and highly demanding tasks during normal times. We are not in normal times… so I wouldn’t exactly advise it. But:

I don’t believe the communities have migrated out of Reddit yet, but you might have some luck going through Reddit’s r/immigration and r/immigrationcanada first. They both have pretty well-documented wikis and are both reasonably active, can try to register a burner account to ask if you have any questions not answered by anyone else

Cost is probably not an issue since it’s borderline impossible to immigrate to either US or Canada without some type of familial relationship or highly-demanded professional skills. If it is the latter, fairly certain it will be possible to save up to $10k for immigration processing so… And if I do not have familial ties or in-demand skills, it would be close to impossible to immigrate to these two countries in the first place

IMO if I have no affiliations with US/Canada whatsoever, I might try my luck with Europe first… a lot of European countries have a policy of 5 years legal residence -> permanent residence/green card. Canada does have a fast-track points system but it is quite competitive now; US immigration is quite nightmarish, and the country is not very welcoming due to recent developments

Edit: as mentioned below… Eurozone is not a single country. The 5 year thing is just what I observed several (not all) countries in EU adhere to, but yeah please do check the specific rules! Also Switzerland’s immigration policy is somewhat uniquely restrictive by EU standards if it helps.

Without being sarcastic…

I think Project 2025’s goal is less about “cost cutting” and more about reducing bureaucracy & consolidating power… I genuinely don’t think they have real plans for where to spend the money besides some vague goals like lowering income tax or something

And in practice, they are cutting a bunch of important governmental endeavors that have very good ROI (NIH has always bipartisan for a reason), so they are literally wasting everyone’s money, not saving

I just thought it’s more of an issue of language/expression than anything… Methinks the concept of “leasing/renting” for an indefinite amount of time might be quite new in human history, so maybe we just don’t have a better word for it

Case in point… From a pure technical standpoint, I thought a game I purchased on Steam or an audiobook from Amazon is technically “leased indefinitely with no additional fees”, but doesn’t the lack of additional fees make it equivalent to owning something?

And as otherwise pointed out, under capitalist systems you can literally own a home, but would still have to pay taxes to pay for maintenance of publicly shared resources… so at what time should we call it “leased” instead

The Chinese language doesn’t quite work that way as it is based almost solely on distinct characters…

I guess you can just keep compounding characters together. Just as a quick example, “[the] People’s Republic of China” is a 7-character word in Chinese with no breaks… it can go much, much longer as necessary, but I’m not sure if that counts, since it’s essentially just three words joined together (“China”, “People”, “Republic”)

Otherwise, the closest thing might be some of the longer Chinese idioms (“Chengyu”), although most Chengyus are only 4 characters long

Learning a language where you need to know how to write thousands of differently squiggles (with almost no rules whatsoever) to even communicate is difficult in its own way though

It seems that a lot of scientist jobs are advertised on EURAXESS (sometimes mandated by law). There are also research topic-specific job boards… for example Nature Jobs advertises all sorts of positions across the world, although most are in China (since they are desperate for talent). Also by “scientist” I’m referring to anything PhD student-level and above, so yeah. I think Sweden is the country I know which has both reasonable research quality while still being a bit desperate on looking for more applicants

If that’s not possible: a lot of countries have their own job board too, but most of them require knowledge of the local language… (again, scientists kind-of get a pass on this due to English being the lingua franca)

Some companies do international transfer too… like how Denmark is known for pharmaceuticals, so maybe someone working for Novo Nordisk could theoretically ask for that? Although I assume those jobs would be very competitive now…

Unironically… I’ve basically hinted at everyone I know on ways to apply for EU-based science jobs if they are interested (surprisingly… a lot of ppl are not)

I’m still being optimistic though, really hope the US can somehow pull out a miracle

I… don’t quite feel comfortable sharing the full details, but F-1; I have submitted a green card application too but no way it’s gonna pass now. I might find an opportunity to write about it a bit more in the future

Sadly, not quite: several countries want to, but they all have their own funding difficulties. They are trying to though, since these days American scientists might be seen as being offered at a steep discount

The HHS official announcement link if anyone is interested.

Yes, the double speak is quite strong. Also quite obvious who wrote this based on the URL.

It’s also called Burma, the political situation there isn’t exactly stable, and I’ve known one (but only one) Burmese guy in the US before. That’s… probably it

In response, the guidelines regulate the labeling of AI-generated online content throughout its production and dissemination processes, requiring providers to add visible marks to their content in appropriate locations.

My understanding is that this is meant more as a set of legal guidelines… I’m not a legal scholar, but since China has a history of enforcing certain information-related laws I’d assume they can “legally” enforce it

On the technical side… there is a subfield of LLM research that focuses on “watermarking” or ensuring that LLM-generated outputs can be clearly identified, so I guess in theory it might be enforceable

In practice as to whether it will actually be ensured… who knows (facepalm

Ideologically, I thought the “least bad” for me would be academic research. One year at an institution with a really toxic research culture later, and I’m thinking of either a local small-business or employee co-op or running a small business based on my special interest so… yeah.

Removed by mod

I was actually pointed to this by two posts from Mekka on Mastodon:

• https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/112468474131649004
• https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/114135119202956481

Very bad precedent being set here.

They don’t. Let’s just say that I chose the closest vet to where I live for convenience & I just needed someone to issue them travel certificates in a few months, but they are themselves a VC-owned nightmare… I’m moving out of the US in a few months and will likely change their diets anyways. I’m trying to find better alternatives as well

Oh screw me they are definitely paid way more than the postdocs. I’m fairly certain that for biomedical scientists with PhDs, postdocs are the lowest paid profession with this level of qualification…

Like seriously. I think the number that was thrown around for post-PhD scientists in pharma was like $100-150k/yr to begin with. Granted those jobs have their own shortcomings, but still…

So I have a bit of a unique case… I’m a researcher, and academia is kind-of known for hiring people across the world & are very willing to sponsor visas as long as someone has a PhD. I genuinely wouldn’t have been able to find a regular job in EU, and that is not even considering the language barriers… I’d love to know this topic better as well.

Biomedical postdoc in the US. Pay is exactly $61,008/yr. Postdoc means a PhD is required, and I work in Chicago, mind you

There’s actually a bit of a fun fact in this… Postdocs have historically been chronically underpaid. The NIH actually worked with a consultant a year or so back, who suggested NIH to gradually increase postdoc pay to $70k/yr (80k in urban areas). NIH didn’t agree to that, but chose to gradually increase salary over several years

NIH has a recommended minimum salary (https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/salary-cap-stipends) based on years of experience. In theory institutions can pay more… In practice, a lot of them just stick to the bare minimum, some places even low-ball. This is why my salary is exactly $61,008. Last year it would have been $56.5k so… At least it is an improvement

A carpet cleaner. I had to prepare a previous apartment for showing (it’s a long story) & there was quite a bit of dust on the carpet

Could just be I’m stupid, but I was not prepared for how involved such a machine is… to be fair it is meant for professional use, so I was probably just not properly trained for it