… do parents count?? I don’t have too many friends, if any at all

Otherwise I indirectly helped a coworker find a BF a few months ago. Yeah I guess that was it

For the most part yeah. I think that’s unironically how I “cheated” my old JLPT exams and got way higher grades than I should. And really high-level Japanese (such as political news, debates, legal matter) are mostly Kanji, and by that point you’d fully understand all the non-Kanji parts anyways so

But in real life you still have to actually say the words out loud…

Yes… Until when you’d have to pronounce it 😭 And then there’s a ridiculous amount of Japanese names that seem to follow no rules whatsoever for their pronunciations. And then there’s online JP users who would put the weirdest pronunciations for Kanjis, sometimes they are so weird that they have to annotate the pronunciation themselves

… Anyways, Japanese is difficult

Native Chinese speaker who is quite decent at Japanese and should in theory find Kanji quite easy, because of Chinese… YES

Not that the other parts of the language is easy, I find the keigo system quite complex so

• Mandarin Chinese. Native, but actually not that good. Can’t speak Cantonese though
• English, with heavy “American” accent. Basically native-level fluency
• Japanese. Somewhere between B2-C1 based on test results but that was a long time ago. I can probably get to C1 if/when I have the time to practice
• French. Still actively learning, around A1 across the board

I also have some passive knowledge of Dutch and German… But really passive though

I think I’d be a good person to answer this. I’ve lived in Houston (needless to say, extremely car-friendly) without a car for almost 2 years; currently I’m living in a city that banned cars within its city center in 2015 which resulted in very visible changes, but the rest of the country is still very pro-car and quite car-friendly

A couple of things that cars benefit everyday life that would be difficult to do without a car. There’s probably more but these are the ones I can think of:

• Accessibility to places that have difficulty justifying being served by public transit. These include poorer neighborhoods that are far away from city center, semi-rural natural preserves, extreme geographical difficulties, … Case in point, Houston has a lot of nature/green spaces that were 20-30 miles outside of the city center… good luck getting to these without a car (trust me, I tried once)
• For certain physically disabled people, driving would be easier than walking/biking/public transit… Especially in particularly hilly cities, centuries-old cities where roads were paved no better than playgrounds, or sometimes both. This can be somewhat mitigated with good infrastructure projects, but cars are usually an easier solution
• Car-free zones can get very crowded, very fast. This is usually a good thing in terms of urbanism… but some find it uncomfortable for various reasons. My current city is actually a rather extreme example: they are now considering banning bikes in the city center too, due to pedestrian injuries
• I know cars are prone to needing repair, but with how the road network functions, personal vehicles can reduce a lot of dependencies on external factors such as public transit being functional. Case in point, two months ago NL’s national rail company became essentially non-operational due to extreme weather, which would be rather devastating if your only way of commuting to work relies on the train

Also I think some positive points associated with cars are doable without cars:

• Hauling stuff from point A to point B: delivery companies and car-rentals exist for a reason! This is surprisingly doable even without owning a car (you are technically using someone else’s car in this case). Of course doing it without your own car will be more expensive… but we do have the logistics for it, especially if the entire society shifts to a car-free model
• Not all rural areas need cars: some are actually quite doable by walking alone due to how small they are (I have a friend who lives in a rural American town like that: yes everyone drives, but everything is also 30-minutes on foot if you don’t mind walking). And there are quite a few parts of the world where rural towns are served by trains frequently
• Road trips: scenic railways exist for a reason… and unlike point 1 I made, sightseeing trains actually do make money, so there is pretty good justification for building them

I think this is a matter of the microeconomics concept of “scarce resources”? It’d be lovely if everyone in the US learns at least Spanish. But school can only teach a limited number of subjects, so in the US where most people don’t need to use anything other than American English, it might be argued that it is more beneficial to spend more time on, say, STEM and history, rather than getting kids to learn Spanish/German/Chinese… I guess there are foreign language electives for that reason? They are still highly valuable after all

Besides, learning and teaching a foreign language is hard lol. China used to (I’ve heard rumors that some places changed, not 100% sure) require mandatory English education from 1st grade elementary… social issues with the English teacher expats aside, the English literacy rate in China still looks like that. There are even multilingual countries in Europe where a good number of people struggle to learn/speak the other national languages so… Even if the US wants to do it, it’s not that straightforward

I guess Japanese really doesn’t have in-your-face sarcasm now that I think about it…

Now that you mentioned it, Japanese also has a rather interesting quirk of not having what most people would consider as “swear words”. Read it somewhere that Japanese does have swear words, but they tend to be quite tame, and the words themselves aren’t “taboo” (as compared to just about any swear word in English)

I play a lot of games over steam

If my main concern is playing game with Steam, most mainstream Linux OSes should be fine. If I have to pick one… Linux Mint is very beginner-friendly, and I’ve heard great things about Bazzite too. SteamOS works flawlessly with Steam out of the box (owns Steam Deck, can verify), but I don’t know how easy it is to set up by yourself

If you happen to also like non-Steam games: a lot of them can be added as a custom application/game via your Steam Library, which does most of the heavy-lifting: you only have to specify which compatibility layer to use & sometimes do keymapping. Setting up wine on its own is not for the faint-hearted

I personally use Arch because AUR (a user-uploaded repository, a lot of popular Linux OSes have their own versions) makes it easy to play a lot of FOSS games… but I can’t recommend Arch Linux for beginners

It’s a small brand started by a few Chinese marathon runners, modelled exactly after HOKA. So it’s equally as comfortable at like 1/2-1/3 the price. Only available in China unfortunately…

The main annoyance is that this pair doesn’t have much sideways support, so it’s easier to slip sideways. Probably not a worthwhile concern for most people of course

Also… Durability isn’t a strong suit for HOKA shoes, so I’m not sure if I can really recommend them for daily drive regardless

I just realized that nearly all of my daily shoes were replaced by my dad… who is a semi-professional marathon runner and would go through shoes in months… So probably every 1-3 years, depending on when my parents visit I guess; I think their definition of wearing out is when there are a good amount of rips/holes

My last pair was a pair of HOKA that lasted a year and a half; they are designed for long-distance running and have massive toe boxes (which I need) but are not known for their durability… Dad basically urged me to get a pair of Chinese HOKA knockoff to replace it, got it half a year ago. It’s showing signs of wear but I think it can still go for at least another year

I’ve actually been looking into how music genres/subgenres are defined for the past few months due to the fact that my favorite genre “doesn’t exist” (I’m not joking someone wrote a research paper on this)

I think there are research articles on this if one wants to go into details… Like how certain genres separate. Sometimes there are strict definitions (most techno I think are quite well-defined). But practically I think most ppl tend to enjoy ranges of genres that are close to each other… There are also plenty of genre-blend songs too so there’s that

Also I second for Every Noise At Once, they have some really obscure genres too for detailed comparisons

… This may sound a bit pessimistic, but I think the main thing to look for is whether there are viable ways for one to enter said new country in the first place

Using the Low Countries as an example… For non-EU (or a select few countries) citizens, these three only grant residency permits to people who have a really good reason to be there… I believe they allow things such as having a job, having family, going to university, and some other situations. NL has the DAFT visa, but that’s only for American citizens (I believe?) and is quite difficult to follow-through

Depending on how young… maybe uni would be a good bet? NL has some extremely strong universities. I’m not familiar with the system there though, from what I just looked up looks like they’re quite expensive for non-EU citizens

There are a ton of other things to consider too but at least for me the most difficult part is to get a job in the first place so… everything else (climate, culture, language, …) was an afterthought by that point

Physically, I don’t think so; the main enzyme in saliva mainly digests starch, which humans are not made of

More likely, you’d drown eventually due to not being let out, which would be one of the crazier ways to die I guess, up their with that time when some nobles drowned in fecal matter

There are! Problem is that most of them seem to be either “jobs” that companies don’t want to pay a full-time employee for, or require lots of entrepreneurship skills that I don’t think fits most people… I don’t see how someone living in a developed country would benefit more from an online gig than getting a shitty minimum-wage job at the local grocery store, but there definitely are options

A few non-scummy ones (at least by my standard) I could think of:

• Most practical one I could think of is to teach English/foreign languages. The East Asian countries (especially China) have a huge demand for these types of roles, and I’d presume they have platforms where you can do it as a freelance tutor (at least that’s what my parents told me lol)
• If you have any in-demand skills, it is possible to become a self-proprietor to do contracts for businesses… ranging from the classic IT consultant to selling art commissions on Twitter/X
• If you are good at crafts, I believe it is possible to make a small but reasonable amount of money by selling crafts online on places like Etsy, some ppl are really into these and I think ppl generally have a very positive view of these type of careers. Bonus is you might even be able to do some in-person events at conventions/markets/etc
• If you have a fun personality (or if you are a complete train-wreck), content creation/streaming. Standard Twitch streaming, YouTube streaming, making edutainment like the funny bike guy, if you are willing to let go of some morals then Kick… Quite fun if you are into it, but competition is fierce and most people don’t make it; and a lot of people who “made-it” chose to relocate to low cost-of-living countries where they only need like $500 a month so…
• Extension of previous point, if you have any sex-appeal… lots of places to “sell your body” online and make decent profits. Not doable without good genetics though

Disclaimer: level 1 ASD, low support needs

Was it ableist for my ex-friend to say “[all] autistic people make her uncomfortable “?

… maybe? It is true that the majority of Autistic people (including those with subtle symptoms, maybe especially those since uncanny valley and everything) tend to make NT people uncomfortable whether we like it or not, so just having that thought alone might not say much. I would assume most reasonable people would prefer to keep thoughts like that behind closed curtains even if they have those

As for your ex-friend’s specific case… I think the bigger issue is that your ex-friend was an asshole more than anything else. My understanding is that talking behind someone’s back is a big no for most people. There are… some parts of Asian culture where this type of behavior is more accepted, but if your ex-friend is American then I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with them

Obligatory not an economist, only know some basics about investing (and quite lazy about it)

I always thought that gold is just a rather unique commodity that people can also have the option of holding physically (not that it’s advised to do so). Professional investors invest in just about anything as long as there is a potential return on investment, like typical stocks and bonds, gold and silver, housing/land, art, literal truckloads of food… frankly gold isn’t even remotely the weirdest or “scammiest” on this list

As for more regular people, I do have a suspicion a lot of con-artists and/or people with suspicious intents heavily promote gold investing though. Also some libertarian types have a weird… fantasy? of total societal collapse with them rising to the top post-collapse, which I do not quite understand. But I’d presume gold would be attractive to those types since gold has been used as a means of transaction for a long time in human history

From personal experience. I am willing to assign a higher value to products made by local and/or small businesses, even if it doesn’t otherwise make any practical sense. But it is a very conscientious moral judgement on my end, so I don’t expect most people to behave this way… and I have a limit too, +100% is probably too much.

Although I guess the benefit of being a “small” business is that you also don’t need as many customers… There are also some types of small businesses that are competitive: I suppose most ethnic food stores or your local market stall won’t struggle with competing on price.

how is it that there are any little shops left at all?

Maybe this depends on the area? I don’t know if it is just me, but it seems to me that these days small businesses do better in larger cities… maybe larger cities have more “ethical shoppers”

Yes they are… the reason I think that way is that I like to look at relative rankings; as in, it’s not accurate to just look at how many stars a place got, but rather compare it with other places around it

If I recall… at least in Chicago where good restaurants easily get 500+ ratings. I have never had a “miss” at a place 4.7 stars or above on Google, and the local “cult classic” was at like 4.9; 4.5-4.6 can be hit-or-miss; any fine dining below 4.5 is almost always a miss. Obviously since almost none of those establishments got below 4, just looking at the number of stars isn’t useful… but if I have adjust my expectations accordingly (>=4.6 is solid, <=4.4 is bad) it’s actually quite useful

Sadly I have no clue whether it translates to other places. Fairly certain ppl in my current city are a lot more critical (so maybe a 4.7 in Chicago would be… 4.4 here, or something like that)

Now that OP mentioned it, I just realized how few alternatives there are to Google Maps…

For reading reviews, sadly I think Google is still by far the best review aggregator especially for restaurants, in big cities especially the star ratings are scarily accurate (edit: with caveats). I guess expert reviews (such as all of Michelin’s ratings) are good too but they aren’t always available

For writing reviews, I sometimes order food with apps (recently using Too Good To Go) so I’d still leave comprehensive reviews on those. If the place is not on OpenStreetMaps I’d add it. Other times sadly I just don’t, I don’t really have a functional Google account at this point