Leaving The US -- Has Anybody Moved Or Are You Considering?

[Modulated]

7 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Yeah it's just the strangest thing, how so many living in this country don't know they're being abused by the health care system here, and continue to vote for the very people who are the source of this abuse.

They are brainwashed by those who spread myths about other health care systems -- lies like there are such long lines in Canada with people waiting for care.  Well there's often lines here too. And the most important thing -- in Canada nobody is left out of the line as people are here, dying because they can't even get in any line.

Please spend some time in any VA hospital in your area, this is the level of care the government provides in the current year..watch how people are treated and how they die because the care is not cost effective. Everything done is for the bottom line pretty much.  The care is 'free' , but its only about saving the government a dollar.-not about saving lives or getting people better. This won't likely change if they provide care for all, in my opinion.

[Luna Bliss]

1 minute ago, Modulated said:

12 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Yeah it's just the strangest thing, how so many living in this country don't know they're being abused by the health care system here, and continue to vote for the very people who are the source of this abuse.

They are brainwashed by those who spread myths about other health care systems -- lies like there are such long lines in Canada with people waiting for care.  Well there's often lines here too. And the most important thing -- in Canada nobody is left out of the line as people are here, dying because they can't even get in any line.

Expand  

Please spend some time in any VA hospital in your area, this is the level of care the government provides in the current year..watch how people are treated and how they die because the care is not cost effective. Everything done is for the bottom line pretty much.  The care is 'free' , but its only about saving the government a dollar.-not about saving lives or getting people better. This won't likely change if they provide care for all, in my opinion.

But the private health care system here is all about saving the insurance company a dollar too. It's not about saving lives or getting people better, although there has been strides made in paying for preventative care (probably because someone figured out it costs less in the end).

Likely the bad treatment of Vets has more to do with how we think they can be 'used' for the benefit of the country, and that they are in a sense  expendable, and not the fact that it is the government vs private insurance dictating care.

Also, I don't think all VA medical care is always bad, and you do have to take into consideration different management at different care centers. Granted this is only one example I have, but my uncle got great care where he lived and was very satisfied.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

24 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

yeah, the racial profiling is annoying, the assumption that Black people are always poor or likely criminals.

Interesting stuff with Oprah...wasn't aware of these stories. Like you said, it's difficult to tell with the purse story what went on, but Oprah doesn't seem like a liar. She relates another incident there where she and her Black assistant weren't allowed into a store, with the excuse they had been robbed by 2 Black people recently.

 

Yeah - I seem to remember another incident that happened with Hermès in Paris - if that's what she's talking about there.

The problem with this kind of thing, and even talking about it in detail for some of us, is the stores are never going to outwardly say "yes, this is our policy, we totally did that, we'll do it again, in fact, so there!" It just doesn't work that way.

The reason I believe it happened to her is because I've had it happen to me on numerous occasions. Not when trying to buy a $38,000 purse LMAO - I'm too poor for that mess. But just browsing in a lower-priced store - get followed. Browsing in a mid-range store - get followed. Browse in a higher-end store - reallllllly can't shake that sales clerk. And they don't make it obvious (well, to me it is, because I've seen it a million times) - they just start acting real slick and busy themselves folding clothes right next to you. But if you're really on your game to know to start watching - no clothes actually get folded, because if you move, they move to another display to keep up with you. It's exhausting honestly. Online shopping taking off was the best thing to ever happen in my life IMO.

Looking for that article btw led me to a few others about some lawsuits against some other major designer brands - apparently their stores used code words to signal to employees to keep their eyes on black customers and got sued over it. I'm not even surprised.

Strangely, I did not have that experience whatsoever when browsing in Harrods and Selfridges in London. I even tested it - reached out to poke at some Alexander McQueen shirts and the section I was in stayed empty. I assumed they were just watching on cam but honestly I did expect a whole bunch of frantic clothing folding to commence but...dead silence. 😂

No for real - that type of thing never happened to me in the UK - even when I left the city to venture out into the Midlands or stayed a month in Scotland. Speaking of Scotland, the area I was staying in was so friendly, I had cashiers and sales clerks talking my ear off while ringing up purchases. Not saying that kind of thing can't happen there, of course. I've just personally never experienced it.

[Luna Bliss]

12 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

The problem with this kind of thing, and even talking about it in detail for some of us, is the stores are never going to outwardly say "yes, this is our policy, we totally did that, we'll do it again, in fact, so there!" It just doesn't work that way.

I don't know if you were on the forum during BLM days, but there were more than a few who claimed prejudice against Black people simply did not exist. Even when I pointed to reputable studies that proved otherwise. It was totally "I don't experience it, so it must not exist".   Makes me so angry.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Luna Bliss

[Ayashe Ninetails]

Just now, Luna Bliss said:

I don't know if you were on the forum during BLM days, but there were more than a few who claimed prejudice against Blacks simply did not exist. Even when I pointed to reputable studies that proved otherwise. It was totally "I don't experience it, so it must not exist".   Makes me so angry.

I think I was around - definitely not as a poster but I was likely here reading. 

But yeah, I'm jealous of anyone who hasn't experienced that type of thing. It. Is. Exhausting. And hell, I'm a woman. Men get it way worse than we do. 

Oh and btw, you don't even need to point to studies. Just point to the numerous YouTube videos where it's all caught on camera.

[Luna Bliss]

14 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Oh and btw, you don't even need to point to studies. Just point to the numerous YouTube videos where it's all caught on camera.

Yeah I imagine videos do work better.  I did post one about the doll experiment where you could see the children preferring the white doll over those with darker shades of skin.

I wonder how Black people fare in Mexico on average. I might message this woman I'm learning Spanish from (having greater success with her method vs duolingo btw):

 

 

[Ayashe Ninetails]

6 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Yeah I imagine videos do work better.  I did post one about the doll experiment where you could see the children preferring the white doll over those with darker shades of skin.

I wonder how Black people fare in Mexico on average. I might message this woman I'm learning Spanish from (having greater success with her method vs duolingo btw):

 

 

Nah, I didn't mean videos like that (the doll experiment). I mean videos where someone turned a camera on in a clothing store or a car dealership or restaurant or wherever to record someone getting harassed by store staff or another customer. Like, "in the moment as it's happening live" type things. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of those on there and TikTok  - sometimes recorded by the customer in question, or by a bystander. 

As for Mexico, I have noooooo idea. Mexico City looked fairly diverse in the walkaround video I was watching, but I didn't really check much outside of that.

[kali Wylder]

I'm longing for a time when our species evolves beyond the mentality of "I got here first so I'm entitled" and "I've got mine so screw you".  There is more than enough abundance on this earth for everyone if we'd just learn to share.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

7 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

That has me wondering...would wearing Guatemalan clothes seem strange there?  I do love some of them when less intense, and even have a blouse and purse made there, kind of Boho-hippie style, but wouldn't want to offend. Some of the Mayans do sell them there.

It just now hit me that I never answered your question. Well, almost question. 😁

I honestly don't know. I think you could probably just observe what others do and take your cues from that. I've seen travelers roaming around in local garb before and the reactions were generally positive, but who knows if that'd be the same everywhere.

I don't personally wear cultural clothing at all. I do absolutely love certain items and styles and textiles and patterns, but I generally avoid them and opt for abstract prints that have no significance (when I'm not gothing out, that is).

 

 

[Orwar]

3 hours ago, kali Wylder said:

There is more than enough abundance on this earth for everyone if we'd just learn to share.

   Even with a declining annual growth rate of the world population, the rapid growth over the past few decades was so strong that we're projected for ~10bn people by the end of the century. If all people on earth were to live by the standards of the average 'westerner', our planet could sustain ~2bn people. And sure, we're very wasteful in many regards (such as the average of 173kg of food waste per person and year in Europe, or 20% of the food we produce - with the US up at between 30-40% food waste), and we certainly could improve in that regard as well as many others - but it's a little more complicated than 'just learning to share'; we'd have to lower our quality of life standards very sharply to equalise things to sustainable levels of equal resource usage across the globe. Not only would it be extremely unlikely that any given western democracy would vote for the politicians wanting to so severely reduce our consumption (food, clothes, tech requiring finite materials, housing, transportation, etc), but for such an agenda to be globally accepted and adhered to doesn't strike me as a realistic occurrence. 

   Human overpopulation is a bit of a controversial issue and we could of course sustain a larger population if we reduced our consumption, but the three possibilities are; unequal distribution of resources (i.e. some of us keep up our current consumption, and others remain poor), lowered but equal distribution of resources (which, as mentioned before, seems unlikely to happen), or a reduction in the world population (and after the various political stuffs of the 20th century, I don't expect that either of the options between enforced generational population decline - something akin to a 'one child policy' - nor outright termination of large swathes of humanity will be very popular). 

   On the bright side, it's been estimated that - if we really put our backs into it - we could possibly maybe terraform Venus to become inhabitable by humans in as little as a few thousand or possibly million years, which would give us a little bit more stuff to share!

   Or we could stuff people in air-tight apartment complexes on Mars. Because apparently that's something people are looking forward to. I imagine it being like a very, very long flight aboard a passenger aeroplane to get to something very much akin to living aboard a passenger aeroplane when you get there. And it's not as if there are that many resources around there that are worthwhile sharing - I've yet to find any recipes for how to properly cook up some yummy silicon dioxide! 

[Luna Bliss]

I do wonder, @kali Wylder, about this change of attitude you speak to, and just how far the Earth's resources would reach if we could magically take the excessive wealth from all the oligarchs around the world and spread it to the poorest among us. An immense amount of wealth has been funneled to the top through all sorts of chicanery.

No doubt the redistribution of this wealth wouldn't amount to 8 billion people having the same living standards of a higher middle-class person, but I'm convinced we could achieve a simple roof over everyone's head, basic medical care, and enough food to ward off starvation.

I'm not buying the 'oligarchic excuse' @Orwar, that because everyone can't live a higher middle-class lifestyle this means we shouldn't try to elevate the poorest among us, or that the only situation is to escape to another planet.  These are used so the greediest can hoard even more, or by those who worship the dark side and can't imagine the opposite as also being a valid part of reality.

It's championed by those who believe in the "might makes right" philosophy -- "survival of the fittest" -- justifying that it's okay, it's natural, if the weakest among us perish. The reality, however, is that cooperation and love were just as much a part of our evolution as trampling over others to 'win' was (proven by Science -- look it up @Orwar).

Just because this noxious individualism is ascendant now it doesn't mean we can't access the other side of our humanity -- cooperation, sharing, love. It might be too late now to save many as the ice melts and the earth heats up, but this other side of humankind is a part of us, and when we emerge again, vastly reduced in numbers but still roaming the Earth, it will always be within us.

[Silent Mistwalker]

14 hours ago, Orwar said:

   Even with a declining annual growth rate of the world population, the rapid growth over the past few decades was so strong that we're projected for ~10bn people by the end of the century. If all people on earth were to live by the standards of the average 'westerner', our planet could sustain ~2bn people. And sure, we're very wasteful in many regards (such as the average of 173kg of food waste per person and year in Europe, or 20% of the food we produce - with the US up at between 30-40% food waste), and we certainly could improve in that regard as well as many others - but it's a little more complicated than 'just learning to share'; we'd have to lower our quality of life standards very sharply to equalise things to sustainable levels of equal resource usage across the globe. Not only would it be extremely unlikely that any given western democracy would vote for the politicians wanting to so severely reduce our consumption (food, clothes, tech requiring finite materials, housing, transportation, etc), but for such an agenda to be globally accepted and adhered to doesn't strike me as a realistic occurrence. 

   Human overpopulation is a bit of a controversial issue and we could of course sustain a larger population if we reduced our consumption, but the three possibilities are; unequal distribution of resources (i.e. some of us keep up our current consumption, and others remain poor), lowered but equal distribution of resources (which, as mentioned before, seems unlikely to happen), or a reduction in the world population (and after the various political stuffs of the 20th century, I don't expect that either of the options between enforced generational population decline - something akin to a 'one child policy' - nor outright termination of large swathes of humanity will be very popular). 

   On the bright side, it's been estimated that - if we really put our backs into it - we could possibly maybe terraform Venus to become inhabitable by humans in as little as a few thousand or possibly million years, which would give us a little bit more stuff to share!

   Or we could stuff people in air-tight apartment complexes on Mars. Because apparently that's something people are looking forward to. I imagine it being like a very, very long flight aboard a passenger aeroplane to get to something very much akin to living aboard a passenger aeroplane when you get there. And it's not as if there are that many resources around there that are worthwhile sharing - I've yet to find any recipes for how to properly cook up some yummy silicon dioxide! 

Did you know?

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/biological-physical/scientists-grow-plants-in-soil-from-the-moon

[Luna Bliss]

18 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

It just now hit me that I never answered your question. Well, almost question. 😁

I honestly don't know. I think you could probably just observe what others do and take your cues from that. I've seen travelers roaming around in local garb before and the reactions were generally positive, but who knows if that'd be the same everywhere.

I don't personally wear cultural clothing at all. I do absolutely love certain items and styles and textiles and patterns, but I generally avoid them and opt for abstract prints that have no significance (when I'm not gothing out, that is).

 

 

I just had a brilliant idea -- I could ask them! lol   I could purchase the clothing from the Mayan women who make and sell them if they felt okay about me wearing it on the street or if they preferred I wear it at home only   

[Ayashe Ninetails]

4 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I just had a brilliant idea -- I could ask them! lol   I could purchase the clothing from the Mayan women who make and sell them if they felt okay about me wearing it on the street or if they preferred I wear it at home only   

You could, but surely they won't be the only ones with an opinion on that. People milling about on the street will have their own views, as well. 

That's a very complex topic in general and one I generally avoid messing with. Not because I worry about gaining the wrong kind of attention when out and about (I'm a goth for crying out loud 😂), but because I have no personal attachment to traditional clothing whatsoever. For me, it's not just a matter of "would I offend someone with this?" but more "why would I even be rocking this in the first place?"

That said, as someone who realllllllly wanted to take belly dance classes in NYC years ago (dang Covid, and money, and travel time, and and), and has been obsessed with it for decades, I'm super used to seeing people wearing traditional garments that fall outside of their own culture (kaftan dresses, for instance). But that's slightly different to me - there's a reason for it, these are highly-trained professional dancers who tour and perform in international venues, some are super tuned-in to a particular region's culture/music/dance style and adapt their clothing choices to suit it, and they aren't just out running errands like that. 🤣

 

[Sid Nagy]

2 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Did you know?

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/biological-physical/scientists-grow-plants-in-soil-from-the-moon

That isn't really shocking.
You can grow plants on almost everything as long as there is enough light, water, appropriate temperatures and food.
Here in NL we grow a lot of our fruit en veggies in the greenhouses without soil for decades already.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Silent Mistwalker]

5 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

That isn't really shocking.
You can grow plants on almost everything as long as there is enough light, water, appropriate temperatures and food.
Here in NL we grow a lot of our fruit en veggies in the greenhouses without soil for decades already.

Not the same thing. 

And hydroponically grown doesn't have the robust flavor that veggies and things grown in soil do.

[Sid Nagy]

4 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Not the same thing. 

And hydroponically grown doesn't have the robust flavor that veggies and things grown in soil do.

I beg to differ.
There was a time when for instance the Dutch greenhouse tomatoes were mainly water bombs without much taste. But that is history for a long time already.
These days the cross breading techniques with varieties are so advanced, that veggies and fruits are grown in the preferred shape, size, color and taste.
They are now experimenting with growing eatable plants that can live on saltier (brackish) water, so that vegetables in the future can be grown in more places under more harsh conditions.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Mollymews]

2 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

They are now experimenting with growing eatable plants that can live on saltier (brackish) water, so that vegetables in the future can be grown in more places under more harsh conditions.

is pretty interesting this. Will be quite important if climate change is not arrested

i was reading about the Po river in Italy.  There is not enough snow on the Alps anymore, which feed the river headwaters.  The water level of the river is dropping, and the sea (salt water) is coming further and further up the river. Which is having a major effect on the arable land along the river. Seems the Po River arable land area currently accounts for about 30% of all vegetable production in Italy, and that production figure is being threatened by the saltwater in the river

so hopefully the botanists can come up with the plants you mention

Edited May 19, 2022 by Mollymews
typs

[sirhc DeSantis]

5 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

I beg to differ.
There was a time when for instance the Dutch greenhouse tomatoes were mainly water bombs without much taste. But that is history for a long time already.
These days the cross breading techniques with varieties are so advanced, that veggies and fruits are grown in the preferred shape, size, color and taste.
They are now experimenting with growing eatable plants that can live on saltier (brackish) water, so that vegetables in the future can be grown in more places under more harsh conditions.

Can confirm. As Chief Household Procurement Officer (Foodstuffs Division) there has been a marked improvement in stuff from your neck of the woods over the last decade.

(Never going to match the variety of monsters I used to grow but that was a fairly long time ago in an allotment 5,000 km from where I am now).

[Silent Mistwalker]

10 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

I beg to differ.
There was a time when for instance the Dutch greenhouse tomatoes were mainly water bombs without much taste. But that is history for a long time already.
These days the cross breading techniques with varieties are so advanced, that veggies and fruits are grown in the preferred shape, size, color and taste.
They are now experimenting with growing eatable plants that can live on saltier (brackish) water, so that vegetables in the future can be grown in more places under more harsh conditions.

No, thank you. None of that would be necessary if humans had done the right things in the first place.

[Luna Bliss]

22 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

You could, but surely they won't be the only ones with an opinion on that. People milling about on the street will have their own views, as well. 

That's a very complex topic in general and one I generally avoid messing with. Not because I worry about gaining the wrong kind of attention when out and about (I'm a goth for crying out loud 😂), but because I have no personal attachment to traditional clothing whatsoever. For me, it's not just a matter of "would I offend someone with this?" but more "why would I even be rocking this in the first place?"

That said, as someone who realllllllly wanted to take belly dance classes in NYC years ago (dang Covid, and money, and travel time, and and), and has been obsessed with it for decades, I'm super used to seeing people wearing traditional garments that fall outside of their own culture (kaftan dresses, for instance). But that's slightly different to me - there's a reason for it, these are highly-trained professional dancers who tour and perform in international venues, some are super tuned-in to a particular region's culture/music/dance style and adapt their clothing choices to suit it, and they aren't just out running errands like that. 🤣

 

It really is a complex topic isn't it (cultural appropriation), and varies so much according to location. For me a big part of the fun in a new area of the world would be to discover the differences among people in that regard and others.

In developing my own opinion on the matter when there are conflicts between groups most likely my preferences would align with the underdog, so I wouldn't care much about the people "milling about on the street", as you say, but instead would care most about the feelings of the Natives in that location who continue to suffer oppression by colonial forces.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

11 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

I beg to differ.
There was a time when for instance the Dutch greenhouse tomatoes were mainly water bombs without much taste. But that is history for a long time already.
These days the cross breading techniques with varieties are so advanced, that veggies and fruits are grown in the preferred shape, size, color and taste.
They are now experimenting with growing eatable plants that can live on saltier (brackish) water, so that vegetables in the future can be grown in more places under more harsh conditions.

That's really interesting...I had no idea all this had gone beyond simply hydroponics.  It seems okay as long as the nutritional content is the same. I do have trouble with some aspects of civilization when it goes too far and becomes excessively artificial in destructive ways, but it's not all bad by any means.

[Sid Nagy]

 

[Luna Bliss]

1 minute ago, Sid Nagy said:

 

It's blocked for me     Says it contains "content from Netflix, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds".  What's the name? ...maybe I can input that into my Netflix.

[Sid Nagy]

It is a sniplet of one of the David Attenborough nature documentaries.
It is from "A Life On Our Planet".

 

I hope this clip below shows in the US:
It is an interesting news item from PBS News Hour about indoor farming.

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Sid Nagy