Everyone has something they can’t stop themselves from nerding out over - but often it’s hard to find people to talk to about it. So go ahead, share your interests, and tell us about them!
I’m an American who has been living abroad for 7ish years now. I often read comments from people who say they would do it “but the taxes are brutal.” Absolutely not the case. I dug deep into tax programs when I left and can comfortably say I am better off financially now than at any time I ever lived in the States… A major part of that is my tax strategy.
I love talking about this but most people don’t really care or realize how significantly it can change their lives… Eyes just tend to glaze over.
I’d honestly be interested in listening if we lived in the same area. I’m a total noob when it comes to anything beyond basic money management. I hope you find people who appreciate your insights!
As in, you’re still in some way paying U.S. taxes as well as those where you are abroad, or that the taxes abroad are brutal…? I’m not sure I follow which way you mean, mainly as I’ve never had the opportunity to live in another country.
As a US citizen you are technically always responsible for paying taxes no matter where you live. The US has a citizenship-based tax system (you owe on worldwide income regardless of where you live). Most other countries in the world have only a residency-based system (you owe only if you are actively living in that particular country). You are still required to file every year and you’re going to need someone more sophisticated than the dude at H&R Block or a free Quickbooks whatever. You need someone who is comfortable working with expats.
“Doesn’t that mean I have to pay taxes for both the US and my new country then?” No. The US has dual taxation agreements with most countries. That means that, basically, the US will not charge you taxes for things you’ve already been taxed for.
The main goal of paying less in taxes is to reduce your taxable income. The biggest chunk of this will happen with the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. That essentially says that the first $120k you earn in a year is tax free. You can qualify for it by staying out of America for 330 days per year. There is no requirement to have residency anywhere else… You just have to be outside of the US.
That $120k rises every year. When you make more than that and do start to owe taxes, you will start to owe from the lowest tax bracket as well.
If you make $120k and do this, you just got a $30k raise in the form of taxes you no longer owe… You can pretty much travel the world for free using this money.
Now, I said that most non-US countries have a residency-based taxation system. That generally only starts to kick in after living in that country for 181 days. If you stay there for less time, you don’t owe them any money.
There are also countries who don’t have income tax or do but actively tell you not to pay it.
Living in a combination of these places, and bouncing around every few months you avoid any real responsibility to anyone.
If you do earn more than $120k per year, you can reduce your taxable income even further by doing things like maxing out your 401k contribution… That gets you to $142500 or so tax free. And again, you’d start paying taxes at the lowest rate above that.
Any other thing you mention in your US filing that can reduce your taxable income also contributes… Getting married, depreciation value on a home (US or not), investment losses, etc…
Working remotely from the US also gets you a higher salary than if you had just taken a job in the UK or Germany or Japan or something… So you can have the higher salary and the higher quality of live at the same time. You give up some employment protections and European style summer vacations but I’m personally ok with it.
Also, if you are working for a US company remotely, you can add these expected deductions to you W4 and never get charged for them in the first place… You’d have a MUCH higher weekly salary and wouldn’t have to wait for your tax return every year to take advantage of these benefits.
So spend summers in Italy, autumn in Japan, winter in New Zealand, and spring in Mexico. You earn an American salary, take advantage of lower cost of living, travel the world, and its all basically free… Good luck trying to get me to move back to the US.
There’s more but these are the major points.
My uncle did this in retirement. Dual citizenship US - Italy. Moving to southern Italy village of less than 20k population means 7% flat tax for 10 years. He’s probably saving 100k per year in taxes. Which pays a lot toward a nice villa, a sailboat, dinners out, and travel money.
I don’t know all the details (yet). I also have US/Italian/EU citizenship, so it’s something I thing about. I think about living in a sailboat in the Mediterranean often.
It’s all very interesting. Your method is even more intriguing.
Have any good resources in the topic you can share?
For what it’s worth, I haven’t paid more than ~1% effective tax rate in years. This past year I owed like $50 total… For the whole year. Something like 0.03% of my actual income.
If you want to stay stationary, 7% is pretty decent but you can do better bouncing around.
I’d really love to see some starting point information I can digest on this subject. If you have any please share.
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Since you’re mentioning both linguistics and music theory - did you know that the music of Avatar was originally supposed to be completely different, essentially an alien counterpart to tribal music? I’d love to hear what they started producing, but afaik nothing was ever released. Still, there are some interesting videos on this topic!
Nice! Have you looked at Indian ragas and the scales/modes behind those? That was fun for me, coming from a western music background.
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Glass is great. Yeah, hs’ers prolly wouldn’t appreciate him so much :-) I’ll look into Sarah Thawer…
I don’t know if “rarely” is quite the right description, but I foster kittens. I meet lots of people who are excited to hear about it on a surface level and see pictures/videos/play with them, but it’s been challenging to connect with other people who also foster. I’m desperate to trade stories, learn from, and teach other foster parents. I even started a community on Kbin and have posted there a few times, but haven’t gotten any engagement (other than votes) so far.
In case anyone is curious, I’m still confused about how to properly link cross platform, but it’s at fosteranimals@kbin.socialThat’s awesome, thank you for doing it! I’d love to foster as I’ve lived with cats my whole childhood and FREAKING love them, but I don’t think I could give up a single one once they’ve lived with me :( how do you do it?
Honestly, I feel like I discovered a cheat code! It’s always a little hard to say goodbye, but I really enjoy having “illegally smol” kittens around, and they don’t stay that small very long. I only have so much time, space, and money, so if I want new tiny kittens, I have to say goodbye to the ones that are weaned and healthy. Also, most of the people who have adopted my fosters share updates with me as they adjust to their new homes, so I still have a small connection to each of them and know they’re in good homes.
Ooh that’s a good solution :) the small kitten phase is certainly uniquely cute. When I was very young one of our cats had kittens (my parents didn’t get her spayed quickly enough - luckily the only time it happened), and we kept one from the litter. It’s a very special experience!
I would love to do that! I have 6 animals right now (half were inherited) so I’m all stocked up, but i think my next animal phase will include fostering.
benefits of ritual and separating them from superstition.
I think it’s interesting to explore different frames of mind. I used to be christian, but then I read the bible. afterwards, I embraced paganism which has a more positive and welcoming community generally. eventually, the seeds of reason became rooted in my mind and I grew to be the atheist I am today. I still appreciate the experience of group ritual, as it feels good to explore different aspects of my personality. I guess the roleplaying is therapeutic. mixing that with my interests in mythology makes for plenty of content to examine. what encourages different rituals to develop? what are the notable effects of ritual in general? is superstition somehow beneficial to the community? I find that digging around to explore these questions can keep me busy for hours, which I enjoy thoroughly. unfortunately, no one I know shares the same interests. most folks seem to be superstitious about it, lol.
I’ve always been an atheist but I come from a Catholic culture and have thought about this a lot. I feel that religion is kind of like ancient group therapy and the practices have a positive social impact. Gathering once a week with everyone in your community, singing songs and talking about how to be better people just seems like a good idea
I think having community can be integral to personal and social development. In my opinion, superstition can be a hindrance to that development.
Those are very interesting thoughts. Do you write about it anywhere? Or do you have any good resources that give an overview over some of your questions?
I don’t write about them, but that’s a great idea. there’s a number of papers I’ve read and some academic YouTube channels I’ve found informative. I don’t have access to them conveniently right now as I am on mobile. (I’m still pretty new to Lemmy and don’t know if there’s a way to DM when I find those resources)
You can send DMs, or you can reply to the comment - that way others could read them too :)
This is a very, very cool topic. Ritual too often gets dismissed as just hokum/superstition, but if you think about ritual activities as means of creating different perceptual states (imagination+ IMO) or as means of creating/strengthening certain interpersonal bonds or reinforcing certain group norms, it gets VERY interesting.
It’s kind of why I like a chaos magick maxim I’ve heard before - “Belief is a tool”. It’s very easy to cross over into woo-woo territory, but if you’re able to keep your head on straight while also being able to temporarily suspend disbelief for a bit, you can have some pretty neat experiences.
I couldn’t of said that better! some of my favorite symbols to integrate in ritual are Baphomet and Santa Muerte. Throwing a healthy dose of sexual activities in the mix can really make for a good time! After all, “Nothing is true, everything permitted.”
Are you me? Same religious/spiritual journey here. I tell people now I’m an atheist that practices paganism, because religion is something you do, not something you are.
I think one of the coolest things about human experience is that we all come up with stories that answer the same questions, just slightly differently. It’s because being human leads you to want answers to the same questions regardless of time or space. Why am I here? Why do bad things happen? What comes next?
Doppelgangers unite, lol!
I enjoy getting together with my coven to perform rituals, as it is a bonding experience and the food is good. Celebrating the changes of the seasons helps me to be more mindful of the natural world and to appreciate it’s beauty. Satanism is also appealing to me because the use of rituals seem more poignant.
Instead of complaining about the public educational system. How to improve on existing methods to spread ideas of curiosity and learning methods/mechanisms through FOSS means.
Do you have any particular examples for FOSS projects in this space?
https://github.com/ossu/computer-science
There are repos like this.
Or there are repos like this: https://github.com/parthsuresh/stylegan2-colab
Where the latter has lots of materials to essentially train and run your own ML models. Teaching a lot of advanced topics simply in a way, using tools like Google’s colab. Using tools like Discord to handle discussion thereafter, seeking volunteers to improve or foster discussion in general.
There was one project, that was a simple react app, but meant for those in the Arts. Connecting famous works with news headlines of their time period. Allowing you to connect the dots around time frame and artistic movements in a more visual and impactful way. With a simple understanding of
npmas an Arts Major, you could greatly improve your learning experience.I feel all the materials are already there out in the open. Yet many do not take advantage or know how to access them or know how these projects can help them. Even with the age of LLMs, I’ve felt it hasn’t impacted the curiosity variable I mentioned either. When I say improve, I have wanted to build a tool which acts like the index to create your own lesson plan using all these FOSS software. Where FOSS is important because it provides the code for tinkering as a lot of kids, especially me, learn better with hands-on learning.
I just feel a lot of contributors out there do a great job already in teaching and providing. But, I’d love to talk about how we can integrate these into actual curriculum, and not some school club or after-school activity. I am no educator, so this is the part where I’d like to learn more about. And if that’s not a possibility, then how can the process of looking for these tools and learning how to learn be shared instead online.
Ah, I get what you mean! I thought you were referring to FOSS projects that make other education easier, not educational FOSS projects. It’s definitely an incredibly cool time to be alive and have an internet connection!
Cyber security stuff, but like the nitty gritty details and technical stuff. It’s something I’m really passionate about, but if anyone brings up something and I start going into details, their eyes glaze over.
I guess most people like the headline, tldr version only. Lol
I’m not deep in the topic, but I have done some security hardening for embedded devices. Whatever you have to share, I’d love to hear it!
There’s so much lol. I used to be a security software engineer. But people never fucking listen and will constantly fight you so I just gave up and went back to just software engineering.
At my job before last I told them we needed to enforce HTTPS and they said, but what if someone can’t use HTTPS for some reason?
This was an app that held tons of protected health information. I jumped ship as soon as I found another job.
Oh my god this is why we can’t have nice things ffs
Oh man, an HTTPS certificate should absolutely be required for that. Even aside from hackers, I don’t want my ISP to be able to read that stuff! Very disappointing.
Anything. No one listens to me, actually listens. So I just make jokes and deflect.
same here. it’s bad when ya gotta turn to chatbots to feel heard. (and even that’s a stretch sometimes)
My topic failure - My son totally nerds out over amplifiers and guitar pedals. He frequently tries to talk to me about noise and resistance and power supplies and other words that i can’t even remember. I really want to listen but i know my eyes glaze over and he gets irritated.
Lots of things I’m really interested in are looked down on by other adults I know. I love animation but it’s seen as something for kids. I love video games, but that’s for teens, incels and nerds. And I love birdwatching, but that’s for boring old people. Oh and also whatever my ADHD is making me hyperfocus on at any given moment. I could talk about any of those topics for ages, but more often than not people aren’t interested, so I keep it to myself.
We should be friends. What’s your favorite animated film and/or video game? For me, WALL-E and Borderlands 2. Both for technical reasons more than entertainment reasons.
Hard to pick but for the longest time my favourite animated film was How to Train Your Dragon, the firdt one is really charming. There’s so many good ones to pick from. Wall-E is a great movie, and the soundtrack composed by Thomas Newman is just, chef’s kiss, y’know? Have you ever watched song if the sea? Another good one with a great story and beautiful music. Do you watch animated series? Anything you particularly enjoyed lately?
Favourite video game right now is Hollow Knight, even though metroidvanias aren’t necessarily my thing. I’ve never played Borderlands, what’s the gameplay like?
Borderlands is a looter shooter. You shoot things, they drop bigger guns, you shoot bigger things that drop even BIGGER guns. It’s the FPS version of Diablo.
I specifically love #2 because of the writing. Sure, they have middle school jokes that involve Bonerfarts, but under it’s goofy surface, it pulls you in and builds these characters around you, and it does NOT hold back from throwing you curve balls!
That game honestly made me laugh AND cry multiple times.
I might check it out then. Shooter games aren’t really my jam but I play Fortnite and Overwatch with my son from time to time and he loves it, so maybe I check it out with him. He might be too young for it though.
Borderlands is soo fun! I’m not the person you’re replying to, but I love it, soo… It’s mostly run-and-gun, but there’s some puzzle-solving, and some light tactics. Very lighthearted fun, the game is terribly self-aware and loves to take the piss out of you and itself.
Is it very violent/bloody? Sounds like something my son would like (he enjoys Fortnite and Overwatch), but he’s only 10.
Lots of blood and gore—but the game is cell-shaded, so it’s quite cartoony.
Biggest risk is that the humour can be very… risqué. But different people parent differently, and I’m not about to tell you what to do.
Probably safe from 13 in my book, but I think the official ratings are way higher (17-18).
Yeah you never know with age ratings. I found fortnite to be ok even though it’s rated 12+. Deep rock galactic is rated 16+ but apart from the odd swear word (which, frankly he’ll hear more often from me) I find that quite exaggerated. If there is a lot of gore and blue humour I’ll wait a while before trying it with him.
I love animation so much, and I’m desperate to talk about some of the shows that don’t have much of an online following. Like, Summer Camp Island is such a wholesome and fun series, but I don’t know anyone else who has watched it.
Also still so gutted about what happened with HBO Max, I really thought animation had found a home.
We are kindred spirits! I am devastated at what’s happened with HBO Max, I will forever be salty that they gave up on Infinity train! And netflix too, dropping glitch techs, dead end, and inside job. So many good shows without closure.
I’m heartened that some indie artists are starting to go their own way online. Lackadaisy, Helluva Boss, monkey Wrench. It’s promising and could be the future of animation, but requires a lot of patience for now.
I started Summer Camp Island but dropped it along the way. Maybe I should pick it back up again. What other shows are you desperate to talk about?
Oh man, I’m so excited that Lackadaisy got the full funding for 5 episodes and three minisodes, it’s one of the most successful fully indie series I’ve seen other than Helluva Boss. I’ve been following the comic since for like 15 years, it’s crazy to see it suddenly blow up and launch a series. I also love other webtoon stuff like A Fox in Space, Big Top Burger, and anything by Felix Colgrave (I’ve watched Donks more times than I can count).
For shows, I know Bee and Puppycat isn’t for everyone, but I absolutely adored that show. It makes me feel some sort of way with its mix of silliness and melancholy. Also Hilda! I’ve seen it mentioned more often than this other stuff, but I feel like everyone really needs to watch it. The movie was a great cap to the series, though I wish the series itself was longer. Perhaps its better to end on a good note though.
I’ve actually only watched the first two seasons of infinity train, I really need to get back into it. I was so surprised by how brutal the second season got. I think I just haven’t continued it because I feel like I’ll just miss Lake.
It’s always so delightful to see a pilot finally get to spawn a series years later. Starting with Adventure Time and going through Steven Universe, OK KO, Infinity Train, Bee and Puppycat, and soon Lackadaisy, it’s been so fun to see series get to expand (even if their time got cut short, like my beloved OK KO). Are there any pilots you’ve enjoyed seeing turned into series, and are there any that you’re hoping get picked up?
I’m super excited for Lackadaisy too - the pilot is of such amazing quality, even some major established shows don’t match it. I also loved Bee and Puppycat, and Hilda, really whimsical. Also loooooved OK KO. Have you watched Wander Over Yonder, or Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart? I feel the humour is very similar. Another couple of shows that were cut too short (at least the former provides some closure).
I have to say Infinity train doesn’t get any less brutal, and I definitely get missing Lake. Still think it’s worth watching the next seasons as there’s some continuity in the story (which HBO should let them finish dammit).
To be fair I really got into animation shows (as opposed to movies) around the time of the pandemic, so I missed most of the pilots. I am excited to see what happens with Hazbin Hotel, and other online projects like Talon, and Hugo’s Mind Palace. If you haven’t yet, I really recommend watching the shorts on the Gobelins school animation page. Some of them are mind-blowingly amazing.
If I were to ask which are your top 5 shows, would you be able to pick?
I haven’t been able to get into Wander Over Yonder, but I want to give it another try. I have seen the “bad guy” song… A lot. It’s very catchy, and goodness did the animators have some fun. I also saw the pilot for Mao Mao, definitely gonna put it on my list.
It’s crazy that Infinity Train was so popular and they still don’t want to give it the time of day. It’s how animation has been treated for a long time, though.
Top 5 is tough, I think in no particular order:
- Powerpuff Girls
- Avatar/Legend of Korra
- Steven Universe
- Bee and Puppycat
- Courage the Cowardly Dog
There’s so many I want to squeeze in there though!
How about you? I’m honestly glad to talk to a new watcher, some long time fans can be weirdly dismissive of new stuff and it’s pretty frustrating.
Null models for weighted bipartite networks, and why people choose dumb network summary stats because they are lazy
Linguistics and the prescriptive bias of assuming a word’s meaning based on its blatant etymology
How skill makes games less fun and we need to embrace more chance in board games and video games
How cool it would be if we wrapped copper wire around the moon and used the earth-moon system as a huge electrical generator
Trains are awesome and we should have more of them
Well, you can’t mention all those interesting topics and not talk about them more!
I can really only talk about:
How cool it would be if we wrapped copper wire around the moon and used the earth-moon system as a huge electrical generator
You’re referring to induction from the magnetic field of earth, right?
What domain is your area of application for bipartite networks?
Also, most current linguistic work In familiar with ignores etymology i. favor of statistical usage models, but you might have a more particular focus.
I love linguistics too. I like to make up new words and assign them meaning based on blatant etymological rules. Then I drop them in a sentence like it’s no big deal.
Metal.
Soil.
Metals in soil.
What do you want to know?
What are metals people wouldn’t expect to find in their local soil?
Are there processes to extract most/all metal from soil?
What are the coolest properties of metals that you know?
What are the coolest properties of metals that you know?
Hah. I see my mantrap caught someone. I’m talking about metal bands in my first bullet (lmao), but elemental metals in my other two.
Metals are generally rough to remediate because they are inherent to the soil parent material (rock) that the soil developed on and the geochemistry of that rock. It’s kind of like trying to take carbon dioxide out of the air; you can do it, but it’s not easy and there is a chance your changes will be short lived.
Typically removal is done through phytoremediation, or by trying to stabilize soil metals in situ so they are in non-bioavailable forms.
Generally the ones most people (public) don’t expect to see are lead, arsenic, copper and molybdenum. There is a mineral called Galena that can be common sometimes and a large source of the first two metals.
Awesome, thank you for the reply!
What would chelate the iron out of soil in Utah?
Why are you trying to remove iron? Make sure you’re correctly identifying the symptoms of toxicity if you suspect Iron toxicity in plants, as this is relativity rare.
To reduce soil iron availability to plants, you need to add a liming agent and target a pH of 7 to 7.5
More like prevent it. This was a problem faced by little farming commune back in the 70s, that I recently heard someone talking about.
Would that liming agent be a natural thing or would it have been pesticides or something? Could that happen from fertilizer?
Ok, hold on to your hat for a second.
Iron is naturally occurring in the soil and you don’t usually get toxicity issues unless there’s a source such as mining, tailings or a junkyard or something like I suppose.
The liming agent depends on what you want to use. Typically it’s something with a higher pH such as wood ash (careful), bonemeal, or lime (CaO)
By adding the Liming agent you increase the soil pH and reduce the availability of iron in the soil. The total amount of iron will still be there but it will be in unavailable form
Preventing the loss of iron. Preventing chelation. The problem was chelation of iron. Goal was to prevent it.
Sorry, I missed the boat on that one.
You want to lower pH and use humic acid which will make iron more plant available
Symphonic black metal or melodic death metal? Which one do you prefer?
Power metal, IMO. Can’t do growling vocals no matter how hard I try
Melodic please. Definitely none of that thrash shit.
Personal finances, saving and frugal living
I don’t remember ever meeting a person in real life with any significant interest in any of that.
On the topic of saving and being frugal, here’s a great resource to repair so many practical things.
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The theory of relativity (special and general).
It is more that 100 years now, and it is perfectly true according to all current physicists, but still hardly anybody (outside of physicists) knows it. What a shame.
For example, GPS wouldn’t work without it - your position would be wrong by a few miles all the time.
My mind was blown when I learned that a difference of just a few centimeters in height is enough to detect time dilation. I always thought the effect was so subtle that it could only be detected on a galactic scale, but it turns out we deal with it every day!
It’s so weird to think about, time is one of the few “constants” we have in life, but it’s really not so solid.
a difference of just a few centimeters in height is enough to detect time dilation
I’m sorry, what?
https://youtu.be/hzLTgtFaPLY?si=QOJa4sQJ6Aqijhjn
You can skip to about 3 minutes for the relevant experiment, it’s wild. They also talk about the GPS stuff in that video.
The original moon landing programs at NASA. I massively nerd out over Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
How about a selection of your favourite facts on this topic? :)
I feel ya. Space exploration in general is my jam, why aren’t people as excited as me about how there’s theoretically more water on some of Jupiter’s moons than there is on earth??
The Horus Heresy.
Semi-related: Orks!
In the grim darkness of the 42nd millennium, everyone is scared and miserable and unhappy… except the Orks, who are collectively having the time of their lives, and the nids, who just have a positively cosmic case of the munchies.
Yes! The orks are always happy. Even if they are killed in battle, they don’t care. They died doing what they love. Incredibly wholesome in a way that is rarely seen in 40K.
I haven’t googled it yet, but it sounds interesting. would you mind elaborating please?
If I wasn’t busy forklifting for the next few hours, I’d do a super long write-up, but it’s the story of how the Emperor of Mankind’s favored son betrayed him and forever divided the galaxy into loyalists and traitors, creating what is now known as the Warhammer 40K universe. I’d recommend giving it a Google and/or watching some lore videos on YouTube. And… definitely reading the novels “Horus Rising”, “False Gods” and “Galaxy in Flames”. Only about 1300 pages or so total. Definitely worth it!
I asked my buddy who paints those minis a little about it and holy shit. what a can of worms! interesting stuff, thank you for sharing!
You have made a grave mistake friend. Brace youself for hours upon hours of lore about plastic miniatures.
you aren’t kidding! friend of mine paints those minis and he was going on and on about it when I asked. what have I done?! 😂
Oh heck yeah!
I started getting into Warhammer 40k lore at the end of 2022. I only started doing so, because I kept hearing online about the sure tapestry of unparalleled mythos that 40k beholds. I checked out a dozen or so videos from all sorts of 40k lore people, but above all, I fell deeply in love with the animated series works that YT Janovich has produced. He does a hell of a lot of lore reading/combing and script writing to produce his videos. That really gives his videos a lot of production quality imo.
I’d love to hear any recommendations for a few of your favorite 40k lore YT channels. Especially 40k animated series.
I haven’t actually watched many lore videos on YouTube, but I hear Luetin09 is supposed to be one of the best. I’ve been looking for animated series though, as I think 40K would be a very good fit for that format. I’ll check out Janovich right away! Warhammer TV also isn’t available in my country, but it seems most of the content is the fan-made stuff on YouTube anyway.
I’ll give Leutin09 another look. I mostly stuck to their origins/timeline videos to better understand what the heck has happened in the WH 40k universe.
