I met a person from Myanmar and I realised I was thoroughly uneducated on the topic, what is the current situation, groups present and maybe books to read, news sites to check?

I have a decent amount of money saved up, and I think I might be able to get away with making a break for outside my parents basement and my yeehaw hometown. I figure that I’m not going to get any younger now’s my chance to make some experiences in my 20s and do a hell of a lot of catching up.

For opsec reasons, I won’t say where I hope to move to but it’s going to be a HCOL area. Yeah, seems dumb but worth it if it means being surrounded by like-minded people and people who wouldn’t want me dead. As I’m going about this process I have a bunch of questions to help bring this goal into reality and help me stay successful in starting my life in earnest.

1. What are some things to look out for when looking for an apartment?

2. What are some important things that are rarely mentioned in “first apartment lists” to help with quality of life?

3. How do I find roommates? While I would probably be my happiest in a studio, I think there’s an advantage to roommates in both housing costs and holding me accountable to not being a total slob.

4. How do I build a support system literally from the ground up? Or would I be in a more advantageous place if I looked at places where I had at least a friend or family member near the city? How do I make friends, and n*twork (I hate that term) to help with job prospects?

5. What can I do to better help myself get noticed for the better by employers? The reason I am in this mess in the first place of wasting most of my 20s is both depression and the fact employers ignore me. The job market is saturated and I still want to do this anways. Are there some skills I can learn and if so, how do I prove it?

6. What are some HCOL survival tips? Yeah, I get it, I’m going from zero to one hundred here but I’m hoping to rely more on public transit so cars aren’t an issue, but what else can I do? I will gladly be broke in a place with actual things to do.

7. Are there any pointers I haven’t touched up on that you think might be helpful?

Thank you so much, this is a bit nerve wracking but I think I’ll feel better by hearing very human responses from people of varying age groups.

EDIT: Yeah, the “move out with no job lined up” was dumb and I should have known better. Changed to a better question.

As a kid, I saw the episode of The Simpsons about a rigged spelling bee. At one point, one of the children is eliminated by a word with an ambiguous spelling (whether/weather) where the host, when asked, delivers the unhelpful example sentence "I don't know whether the weather will improve."

This is a clip of the scene. In my recollection of it, the host was much more openly menacing than he actually is. I remember a musical sting, the camera zooming in on his narrowed eyes, and his delivery of the line being sharper.

I assume my mind manufactured that memory because I remembered the plot point about the spelling bee being blatantly rigged and filled in the gaps with imagery of the host being openly contemptuous of the kids it was rigged against.

Everytime I look up how to fix anything I am bombarded by 800 repair kits that are all either "basic tools except they're not called speciality repair tools" or "glue or epoxy with plastic crap thrown in the mix"

Like I know how to navigate this now because I have actual people who're good at this stuff I can ask but jesus christ how do you navigate this on your own. This sucks ass. Why is there 40 chemically identical woodglues at the hardware store

Do these people believe in their own propaganda about how economy works that austerity-led growth is possible?

Is it that they don't care about the party or their own reputation?

I hope Corbyn and the Greens don't fall for the same fiscal responsibility nonsense. Never give the neoliberals an inch.

What should I ask him?

I wanted to see Andrew Cuoumo's video about running for mayor again. All I can find on search is people TALKING about it.

So I went to his twitter where it was supposedly posted. I have to come clean that I hate twitter I have never used it. I just scrolled a bit. Half the posts are about israel and nothing is in order. I didn't know andrew cuomu was so... funny.

I looked at no more than 3 dozen posts. This shit is crazy.

"Honored guest" sounds like you couldn't think of an actually nice thing to say

Do people pick the posts that are high on their profile?

After a while I find the video he made announcing his previous run for the current NYC mayoral election. I wouldn't have watched it but it was silently autoplaying and this sequence just drifted past my eyeballs. Dear god. How could Mamdani have asked for a more perfect opponent.

Is this a guy to take health or relationship advice from?

Hey folks,

I was wondering if y'all had some suggested readings on gender and gender identity.

I feel like it's an area in which my understanding is noticeably weak and scaffolded on a more holistic understanding of social constructions and identity with a bunch of haphazard theoretical analogies gluing things together. There are a bunch of things that fall into understanding blackholes when you build the understanding by relating things to political and racial identity struggles lol.

I've seen some explanations geared towards other cis folks that never landed because it often relied on bringing awareness towards elements of gender that are typically unperceived but still seemingly strongly registered (I saw someone provide a partial explanation to some guys by having them imagine being referred to via gendered terms geared towards women. Seemed to have triggered some innate sense of discomforted but to be frank I didn't understand why, I've let plenty of folks do so as long as it didn't seem intentionally malicious).

I plan on squeezing trans liberation beyond pink or blue in my next few books but was looking for further things to engage with.

Thanks comrades

my kid wants a portable cdplayer, and i want to get her a good one. any recommendations?

Hey this might be a stupid question but I wanna get a Palestine flag and/or maybe a sign to put in my window. Is there a website that I should order from instead of amazon?

I'm from the US.

Dont worry. I'm not sick. But this link could eventually come in handy for my non covid-conscious peers.

This person seems to be the boogie-man that Zionists are pointing at these days to explain why today's Palestinians are the actual Nazis, not Zionists themselves. What's the materialist response for this smearing and conflating of today's besieged Palestinians with this one guy?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5550838

For example, this week I spent 6 hours helping a friend fix their roof & 0 fixing the leak in my roof. Most of the meals that I cooked were when I had company or going to a potluck. It takes me until the umpteenth 'let me just squish it down' and the flies start buzzing to take the trash out....

...It feels like if I were a stranger, I would take better care of myself than I do, if that makes sense?

In general, I feel like I am a very values- and care-driven person. Like what feels meaningful is taking care of my community and working towards the world I want to live in. I have a good reputation in my community & activist circles for consistent work and following through on what I commit to do....

...none of that seems to apply to myself! My dishes sit in the sink for days, and I usually only bathe in preparation for public events.

This will not do! How do I treat myself like I treat others? Ahhhh!

I somehow broke my front spoke reflector and these things are all over AliExpress - are they as good as other reflectors or should I just get an ol' reliable?

I'm on a desktop. I made some Ublock filters ~~but they don't work.~~

! truthsocial.com 2025-07-11 
! Remove sign-in crap. 
truthsocial.com##DIV[data-testid="modal"]
truthsocial.com##DIV[id="modal-overlay"]
truthsocial.com##BODY:style(overflow:visible !important;)

Edit. I had three ### not the correct number of two ##.

Am trying to find books about railways such as the Trans-siberian railway but usually the books are very . Book could also be about trains or tanks . If you have some books feel free to recommend them

I will be going to Japan for a couple of weeks and was talking to a friend about the Japanese far right movement taking a page from MAGA, of course. It made me wonder about Japan's trajectory as an axis member during WWII, committing atrocities in Asia to being nuked by the US, and now the number one holder of US treasuries. It's a fascinating history to me but also realize I have big holes in my understanding of Japan, how did this all happen? Was there a Japanese denazification after WWII or was it about as effective as it was in Germany?

If anyone has any good insightful reads about Japan and also any travel tips, I appreciate you!

publicado de forma cruzada desde: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/8482830

I'm trying to find a map that I saw a long time ago here or in Hexbear in which countries were painted according to how much they would gain or lose if wealth (can't recall if it was money, I think it was) was distributed perfectly for every person in the world. I remember that European countries would lose some money but African countries greatly benefited, like more than 10x the wealth or something.

does anyone do it anymore? I thought it was a very patriotic thing to do

It goes without saying that capitalism sucks and corporations suck. I don’t have loyalty to any “brand”. But I do care about me and my comrades being able to afford to live.

There’s that phrase that “it’s expensive to be poor”, which I think is very true. When you’re poor, you can only afford the cheapest commodities. These inevitably break, so you have to spend more money on a replacement.

I’m trying to break out of this cycle myself as much as possible. Instead of buying the cheapest replacement, I’m trying to save up my money to buy a replacement that will last. Unfortunately, researching this is hard. There’s so much astroturfing and “sponsored content”. So I figured I’d ask my fellow hexbears, what products do you know of are made in a way that they will last and actually cost less than buying replacements? There’s a few suggestions I can offer:

I used to work in a pretty solid outdoor gear store, and I was really impressed with the Deuter backpacks. They were always really durable and cheaper than Osprey. I have one I bought in 2007 and I still use it regularly today.

I own a Casio G-Shock watch. The “squares” are usually relatively affordable. The bands and batteries can be swapped out. I’m pretty tough on mine and it still looks mint. I do expect I’ll be wearing mine for a very long time. Or if you don’t want to spend money the F-91W is like $10 and still works well even though it’s not ruggedized. Worn by Bin Laden, too.

Something in the ideal category of durable and cheap are Sungait sunglasses. They’re like $15-$20 each and have UV400 protection. Mine have lasted a while and have handled a lot of being thrown around

As a parent, we have some Hape toys our kids beat up and they stay together well. My wife bought some Primary dot com clothes thinking they would last but they don’t seem any better than the super cheap clothes at Walmart or Target we normally buy.