and the red pandas!

they’re like fox colored raccoons, they’re super cool.

that is a very cool habitat, nicely maintained forests and pathways.

I was pretty thrown when I saw a dozen of these little orange fellas strolling around.

i liked Investing For Dummies, it gives you fundamental to medium knowledge about pretty much every investing option there is, and you can look more into the investing routes that fit your risk attitude.

but if you’re not very interested in investing, then I would look into index funds specifically, which means you’ll invest some amount of money, usually a minimum of $1,000, into a fund composed of hundreds of stocks, so you’ll own exposure to the majority of the market, a fraction of every industry instead of investing in just a few different companies.

index funds are a fairly simple set it and forget it type of investment with a good return and don’t vary much regardless of how the overall market or different industries are doing.

you usually pay a small commission annually to the company who manages the fund you invest in, and the trade-off is that you put in money, have access to the entire stock market, watch your investment gain interest and you don’t have to do anything else, just let it gain compound interest until you want to take your money out.

it is that kind of country, this is going to rapidly change the country for the better when the barn goes into effect.

The exhaust and noise of engines is pretty rough in cities and towns there, which is common in Asia.

but for a lot of countries I visited, after they transitioned to electric mopeds, it’s so much more pleasant to walk around, shop, and live.

Nice deals.

I got everything bagel chips that were normally $4.77(according to the tag) for $0.75 last week.

i bought all three bags that day, but nobody I told seemed particularly impressed by this deal and I am nonplussed.

that seems like a crazy deal to me, but it was like I told everybody I was saving a quarter per bag or something.

congratulations, I appreciate your thrifty find.

hahaha. when I was in New Zealand, everyone asked me what I was doing there, like they were shocked that I would even visit New Zealand, especially in the tiny town I was living in.

and I said that I just wanted to get to know New Zealand, I loved the culture and especially the humor.

and every New Zealander was like “what are you talking about? we’re not very funny.”

I explained about flight of the Conchords and eagle versus shark, and was told that those were fine, but not super funny.

New Zealand culture is so sincere and humorous, inherently.

"Francis Collins…got behind the effort to eradicate hepatitis C in the United States by 2030. The Biden administration allocated about $10 billion to achieve this. With the new administration [of Donald Trump], this is all gone.*

also, TIL there’s a cure for Hep-C.

vote with your feet.

I’ve been traveling for about fifteen years now, if you have any questions.

“…thousands of giant eggs from the elusive Pacific white skate.”

you know what, whenever I buy a car I do research how easy it is to repair first, and it’s probably one of the largest considerations before I make a purchase, so I guess I’m angling the odds in my favor.

congrats, that was my first step to YouTubing everything i had to replace and being incredibly surprised that most things on a car are about as simple to replace as the battery.

and even now, a battery replacement is really satisfying for me.

shoot, 5x the initial work to never cut grass and cultivate a plant bees actually visit?

sounds like a good deal!

travels are good, I taught English a decade ago and have been traveling since.

I don’t know how to follow your progress except to subscribe here, so I guess I’ll do that.

if you have the time, @ me on updates, but I’ll try to be following along.

I’m going to get a house eventually, and clover lawns or grass-alternative lawns are one of my musts.

have a good one!

everything I hear about clover lawns is so great, I’m so happy to see someone trying it out.

please keep us updated on the clover lawn, I hear they thrive forever so I’m excited to hear if that’s true in your situation.

I’m traveling right now, the last time I got to plant stuff a couple years ago I tried a whole bunch of of seeds and when the radishes and carrots and all the little sprouts popped up, it was so exciting, so congratulations.

I know how you feel and it’s very gratifying.

it looks like you’re doing a great job.

you bought it, why shouldn’t you also rent it?

only if the corporate citizen promises really hard we can trust them. like a super promise.

really good article with a couple surprises in there.

"some people speculated that, because of the political pressure against it, its release must have been an act of resistance by someone within the IRS. But the open sourcing of the program was always part of the plan, and was required by a law called the SHARE IT Act. It happened “fully above board, which is honestly more of a feat!,” Given told 404 Media. “This has been in the works since last year.”

Vinton told 404 Media in a phone call that the open sourcing of Direct File “is just good government.”

“All code paid for by taxpayer dollars should be open source, available for comment, for feedback, for people to build on and for people in other agencies to replicate. It saves everyone money and it is our [taxpayers’] IP,” she said. “This is just good government and should absolutely be the standard that government technologists are held to.”"

if you’re talking about the fermented bean curd that I’m familiar with, the flavor is insanely strong.

and despicable, haha.

describing the spiciness of fermented bean curd as superfluous sounds accurate to me.

You’re accessing a system meant to exrract value rather than provide care.

solution:

medical tourism means you choose which country has the medical procedure you’re looking for at the price point you’re looking for.

I get all of my dental work done in Thailand: same technologies, same expertise, better customer service, much lower prices, often 50% lower even at the most prominent international clinics, cheaper if you go to the local clinics instead(many still speak English)

the Thai government heavily invested in medical infrastructure, tech and education 20 years ago and it paid off for both their local economy in terms of medical tourism and for people like me and you who don’t want to pay obscene amounts of money for medical care.

you can check the fees online before you go, and if you have any major dental work to be done, it’ll be cheaper with a round trip ticket to Thailand than it will be in many other countries.

hi, I’ve been living abroad for 15 years or so.

if you want to move, you should move.

most countries have a very low cost of living compared to the US, so you can teach math or English abroad(what I usually recommend for first time travelers who want money) and easily save 1-2 thousand a month in a country like Thailand, which is very welcoming to trans people and has great, affordable medical care.

if you can get any remote programming job that pays more than $500 US a month, you can live abroad and immediately start saving any income over that 500, which covers your own apartment and food for the month.

and it is awesome out here in the world, btw.

you can live and save abroad for a couple years and if for whatever reason you want to go back to the US and buy a house, you’ll have the money to do that.

I’ve helped other people move and would be happy to go into any details you’re curious about.

I say “US Americans” to differentiate while traveling, works well.

easy to say, easy to understand.

correct.

there’s also the maybe more important scientific literature ban that is forcing scientists like those who make sure crops grow correctly in the US out of their jobs because they aren’t able to talk about the gender of the seeds they are breeding.

or the physicists who can’t talk about the “status” of the material they’re using, because that word is banned.

countries don’t want to buy American military equipment anymore because they rightly cannot trust the US, which is a huge loss of revenue.

the disastrous policies already enacted are going to economically and socially hobble the country for decades.

the scientist who goes to another country rather than the US to practice physics, agriculture, anthropology, anything, that’s an entire career of innovation and scientific benefit lost to the US.

and those scientists are already avoiding the us, that’s already happening.

the market numbers are the tip of the iceberg here.