I tried it once before and liked it! Certainly helps that I’m also lactose intolerant

Although, I prefer to just drink black usually. With good beans (locally roasted) and a good grinder the coffee itself provides a lot of flavor so… other additions are a bit unnecessary

Couldn’t believe it has been… what, 4-5 weeks that I have not been feeling well. Last few days I had noticeably worse cold symptoms & really struggled to do much outside of work. Allegedly a few ppl at work reported having a cold 1-2 weeks ago too, so it could just be a really nasty virus floating around. No idea what caused the extended sickness… either my immune system got impaired after getting COVID, or some type of Autism burnout, hopefully nothing worse

On the plus side, the cherry blossoms and the bluebell flower blooms are happening, so I’ll be keeping my weekends flexible for that

That’s actually really interesting. My understanding is that colorblindness is one of the better accommodated deficiencies…? A colleague called me out once when I used a data visualization that wasn’t particularly colorblind friendly, so it’s something I try to accommodate as well. Would love to hear if he has experienced any other difficulties (or a lack of)

On this topic… I think the funniest way I saw was someone on Reddit asking why a video game dialogue refers to an anime girl as being green when her hair color is “gray”

Everything about fecal transplant. Or maybe just the fact that it is even a legitimate medical procedure

Depression, Prozac. Approximately 2-3 weeks when the initial benefits kick in, which is also how long it roughly took for me to feel depressed again when I once accidentally stopped the medication

Realistically? Something like “BIOL/STAT 451, Intro to Bioinformatics”

Department head will probably force me to teach “COMP 271 Intro to Generative AI” instead 💀

I’m sorry I can’t answer this, not experienced enough with current dating culture. I am just really curious where people are even finding dates around the BeNeLux area, especially as a guy. Things are… a bit dire for me

Good luck BTW! That’s a lot of dates, hope you can find the one soon

Not technically an American but lived in America for a long time, also not eligible to claim citizenship anywhere. I hope I’d be somewhat qualified to speak on this

There really aren’t that many countries which are a step up for an American IMO. Probably a good number of the EU/EEA countries, places like Canada/Australia/NZ, and mayyybe places like Singapore and a few more… Fewer if you have a strict limit on English, in that case maybe only places like UK & the Nordic countries; maybe also the Netherlands, but I’ve heard mixed information about language requirements there. This is a pretty short list, so I think you could probably have a passing knowledge of all of their basic immigration processes without spending that much time on it. But yeah you are right, for any expat/immigrant wannabe it usually goes like this:

Winning the “life lottery” (ancestry, asylum, or a literal lottery like the US) -> “Buying” your way in via Golden visa -> Love knows no borders so marriage -> Workers visa, aka getting sponsored to work

The first three obviously don’t apply to you or me TBH, so work sponsorship it is: either international transfer via a large international company (does that happen often for trades people?), or finding a job in your target country. I think others have mentioned this, but since you will likely be immigrating via work, secure a job first. Don’t even think about anything else without a solid job offer. I didn’t follow this advice myself and literally got screwed; I spent several hours learning German everyday during a really busy time of my life, wrecked my mental health along the way due to stress, and never ended up finding a job in Germany in the end… Don’t be like past me

tradesman with a lot of technical skills with some specialized skills in short supply

Probably your biggest asset. Some countries like Canada and Australia/NZ publish their skill shortages, so if your skills are on them you’d be in very good luck. There are subreddits and discussion groups on these topics so I’d look into them

Note that in Australia, allegedly the real job shortage can be quite different from the published list. This doesn’t hurt your chances of moving there per-se, but can make your life difficult after moving in, especially if you don’t have a large amount of savings

Also, I’m not sure exactly what trades you are in (for the sake of privacy I prefer not to ask), but different countries may have different regulations. It is possible that you may not be allowed to work in the EU without local certifications for example. I don’t think it is an impasse per-se, but I’d definitely investigate this beforehand

But anyways, if you are interested why not try and apply for a few jobs first? You never know :D

Neither of us is very good at picking up a new language (lord how I’ve tried)

To be honest… that doesn’t sound very good. Comes without saying that most places expect workers to speak fluently or at least B1 in their native language (which is also required for immigration purposes for most countries), and the English-friendly places (such as Ireland) can have extremely high demand, which can cause other societal complications

I am taking what you said at face value, since I have seen first-hand how much my boss (German) struggled with learning French and had to settle for learning Dutch instead lol. Nevertheless, for most people it isn’t that hard to at least get a passing conversation skill level in a target language in a few years especially with full immersion & government/employer-sponsored language classes, so I wouldn’t completely rule it out just yet! If you’re able to deal with other languages, there are lots of EU countries that have plenty of opportunities; maybe even some more developed parts of Africa would do as well

Usually 7.5 hours, ±20 minutes. I literally can’t properly function at my day job if I do less. On rare occasions when I do sleep less I usually end up making up for it over the weekend so

During college I also did way less, only 4-6 hrs/day… but then I’d fall asleep during classes

Honestly really surprised to find everyone here all do their taxes so quickly. I also did all of mine as early as I could (mid-Feb) but…

The only few American friends whom I’m close enough to talk about this, they all ignore it until the very last minute. So either late March/April, or not at all

I’m back in cancer research for my current job again. But not in prostate… and more importantly, I’m on the computational side of things instead of experimental now

Also as to the topic… there were a few people in my undergrad lab who were actively studying JQ1 (back in 2017-18), but I’ve never heard much about the drug after I left. Thanks to you I finally found out why I never heard about it again (neurological side effects) so

Not sure if CC BY 4.0 counts? There’s an incredibly based Japanese producer 森田交一 (often goes by the alias 魔王魂) who released a lot of their music as CC BY 4.0. Hence a lot of them end up in all kinds of small projects, RPGMaker games, etc…

The website is https://maou.audio/, but the guy is also active on YouTube. 12345 is a bop; I was genuinely positively surprised by Burning Heart the first time I heard it, although J-pop may not be up everyone’s alley so

Bruh the cancer lab (prostate cancer out of all things) I worked in as an undergrad was studying JQ1. Couldn’t believe I’d ever hear this drug name again. Really hope this can go somewhere, reversible contraceptive sounds exciting

Working on more immersion. Started watching France 24 YouTube videos this week… Which is hard AF lol, sucks to be me that I’m more interested in current politics than gaming Ytb channels… at least the upside is that everyone seems to be speaking in standard French. But yeah if anyone has good French-speaking YouTube channels (not “for learning”, but what locals watch) please share them my way

Anki is a bit slow but still going, slacked off on learning new words a bit but revision is going well. Good news is that I’m almost completely done with the first 500 words of the 5000 deck, so I should be able to delete it soon

Wanted to get something from the supermarket. Supermarket was closed due to Easter :(

Yes I know this is really minor

Not directly. But

My Autism is actually a bigger issue. Allegedly Australia/NZ have regulations on disabilities, which I’m not sure how much being on the spectrum would affect

More importantly… One needs a job/education to live in somewhere like the EU (the few non-EU European countries almost all have equally or harder visa requirements). Education still costs lots of money for non-EU folks, and job market isn’t particularly good in EU. So having depression, which makes getting/keeping a job harder, certainly don’t help…

Day was alright!

But I legitimately only found this out via Reddit (and now Lemmy). For an event organized by the UN it feels so anticlimatic that I didn’t see any mention of it where I live throughout the entire day 😭

Short answer: Try medication (which worked)

Long answer:

I have clinically diagnosed depression, Major Depressive Disorder. Known it from first year of college, symptoms started way earlier probably around middle school

Psychologist from a few years ago recommended me to read the Feeling Good Handbook. I ended up reading the entire thing end-to-end… Most of it I don’t really recall anymore at this point. But the book did mention about how there are two gold-standard forms of therapy: “talk-therapy” (usually what psychologists do, most popular one I think is CBT), and antidepressants/medication. And the people who respond most effectively to these two options are almost anti-correlative with each other

It turned out I was among the smaller group of people who don’t respond very well (if at all) to talk therapy, but respond very well to medication. I was quite mentally against antidepressants up until that point, but I decided to just bite the bullet and give it a shot… So I talked with my psychologist, who then connected me with a psychiatrist who helped me get a prescription for Fluoxetine (Prozac) and monitored my progress every 2-3 months. It was basically a miracle drug for me. MDD can’t be cured, but me taking prescribed antidepressants, along with me getting adopted by two cats at that time, almost “cured” my depression for good. I was on a very low dose too, only 10-20 mg/d

But to echo what others have said. Therapy is work. I was very committed to finding an intervention. Even though CBT didn’t work very well I still managed to visit my psychologist every month and self-reflect afterwards, and that continued several years onwards even when most of my symptoms were greatly reduced after medication. No one forced me to read through a several hundred page book either, or to overcome my mental barrier of taking medication… I chose to partake these actions on my own

But yeah I think therapy does work if one is willing to put the effort into it

I have a pretty high respect for nearly all professional athletes to be honest. The aspect I respect the most is mainly how much technical competence and practice are needed to perform at professional levels

… although it may be because I do play really difficult video games, some of which can be considered to be e-sports. A less niche example, when I played chess semi-seriously for a year I really learned just how strong the Grandmasters are. Maybe this view bled into my view of conventional sports too

Glad you liked it! I heard from my colleagues that they liked Project Hail Mary too

I… am one of the only people I know who basically don’t watch movies at all. When I was younger I’d get a fever if I had to concentrate & watch a 2-3 hrs long movie (some weird Autism thing I think), so I didn’t watch movies… The habit stuck

I am a much bigger fan of nonfiction and don’t generally care that much for visuals, so whenever I want to watch something (mostly YouTube) it’s just on my laptop or phone lol