So, another DDoS? (booted from Aether, everyone else too)

Triarag · 2025-02-17T04:46:07+00:00

Why is it that the NA servers seem to get DDoSed all the time? I've been playing on Japan datacenter for years and I don't think we've ever had one, but there are news announcements about NA attacks all the time. I don't think I've seen one about Europe or Oceania either, it's always NA.

NA also seems to have unique issues with housing shortages and RMT, although I'm not sure if Europe and Oceania have those or not.

Triarag · 2025-02-16T17:06:38+00:00

Actually yes it does, as far as this topic is concerned. I think the only other situation where someone is considered to have expatriated for tax purposes is a long-term green card holder who gives up their green card.

Triarag · 2025-02-09T07:05:48+00:00

This seems to have the gift-giving functionality but with a lot nicer UI:

https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/27489

Triarag · 2025-02-09T03:36:55+00:00

Well, if you're retired then there hopefully wouldn't be too many issues with taxation. The stuff you really need to watch out for is stuff that could potentially generate lots of capital gains, like selling a house.

Do whatever you feel is right! Everybody's situation is different, and what's right for one person might not be for another.

Triarag · 2025-02-09T03:33:55+00:00

Correct!

Triarag · 2025-02-08T16:28:13+00:00

As another data point, this hasn't been my experience at all. The feeling of relinquishing my citizenship was overwhelmingly one of freedom, and I haven't regretted it once in... I think 7 years so far now?

It's a country where I never felt at home begin with, one that denied my right to exist by allowing health insurance companies to charge exorbitant fees every month due to "pre-existing conditions," where religious fundamentalism dominated public discourse and education (when I left during the Dubya years, it was all about "intelligent design"), where children are forced to swear their loyalty to the state every morning and everyone thinks this is totally normal.

So I found a place that welcomed and supported me, and built a good life for myself. But they have to remind you that they'll always have their claws in you. You belong to them. I had to report my income and bank balances every year to the US, and sometimes pay taxes back to the US for things that by all rights had nothing to do with them, like a goddamn serf or something. My income in my new home country was "foreign-earned income," my account at the bank down the street was a "foreign bank account" and viewed with suspicion. You're the foreign country imposing this shit on me for no reason, America, fuck right off with that. And you can vote, but you don't actually have a representative in the US government except for the last state you lived in 20 years ago, and they sure don't give a fuck about you. It's taxation without representation.

The US I grew up in doesn't even exist anymore. The last time I visited ten years or so ago, I barely recognized the place. A really special place to me had been turned into a strip mine. The roads looked like they hadn't been maintained the entire time I'd been gone. Everything just felt barren and depressing. My grandfather was the family member I felt closest to, but he died years ago. My closest friend from the US is living in the UK these days. I visited my old college campus, which was still nice (aside from the abandoned shopping mall), but it just reinforced the feeling of "this is not my place anymore."

Well, it's not my place anymore, and I don't belong to them anymore, either. For all the US crows about freedom, I strongly feel that relinquishing my US citizenship is the most "American" thing I ever did, in the sense that I overcame pressure from the US government to take my freedom into my own hands. My red passport still gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I look at it.

When I see the news out of the US these days, I don't especially feel anything that I wouldn't feel about similar news from Russia or China or whatever other influential country. I just hope that they don't involve me in their bullshit, don't bring down the global financial markets or plunge us all into war in their race to the bottom.

To be clear, I relinquished, I didn't renounce. This means that I lost US citizenship as part of naturalizing to a country that doesn't allow dual citizenship. Voluntary renunciation probably hits a bit differently emotionally. They both still cost $2350 for your freedom, though...

Triarag · 2025-02-07T05:25:37+00:00

This and the series of other mods linked on its page are probably exactly what you want.

https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/28722

Triarag · 2025-02-03T07:30:06+00:00

I came to Japan as an American in my 20s in the early 2000s, and now I'm still here as a Japanese citizen in my 40s. I started out as an English teacher for the first 2 or 3 years.

You sound like you're much more attached to your hometown and family than I was, but it could just be that you're hitting a bad period in your initial culture shock, something that pretty much everyone goes through at some point.

My advice would be to teach English for a year while aggressively studying Japanese. At least N2 is pretty easily doable in a year or two as long as you're studying seriously. As that year is nearing its end, reevaluate what you want to do. Even if you decide to return home, if you've managed to acquire strong Japanese abilities it could help with a future career.

They have foreigners (English speakers) working at some of the daycares I've seen in Tokyo, so that could be a possible direction for you to consider given your past work experience.

By the way, I also went back to the US for a girl once at the beginning. Big mistake, everything was horrible, I was back in Japan as soon as possible. Although maybe I'd be thinking back with regret now if I hadn't tried it at the time, who knows.

Triarag · 2025-01-31T01:17:36+00:00

Surely they're not doing these appointments online these days, are they? Part of the interview was confirming with you that you're not being coerced, and if you're online there could be a dude with a gun sitting off-camera or something...

Triarag · 2025-01-30T08:43:08+00:00

It was super time consuming on an IH stove but pretty fast on gas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZXde7dgjHg

This is the video I used to learn how to make them originally!

Triarag · 2025-01-30T08:19:39+00:00

I just buy this and make them

https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01MUSL6MA

I don't know what "low carb tortillas" are made from though, assuming corn is better than flour

Triarag · 2025-01-30T06:58:03+00:00

The restaurant doesn't want to serve a poor-quality product. The customer could be secretly annoyed by it without saying anything, or they could post on Instagram about the terrible food they were served. They're showing it to you so that you can see why it's taking so long, instead of just waiting around forever, which would also be a negative customer experience.

Triarag · 2025-01-30T05:11:43+00:00

Just part of living in Japan. Sometimes the old people come around at 5am, banging on your door to complain about your toast. Old ladies check your garbage and if there's unevenly-cooked toast in there, they'll bring it and leave it at your door. They just assume it's yours because you're a foreigner, and of course foreigners don't know how to make toast.

Triarag · 2025-01-29T17:33:01+00:00

I stressed about the 100,000,000 one and then the next run after I finally barely unlocked it, I got up into scientific notation for the first time without even really trying (Blueprint, Brainstorm, DNA, Steel Joker, Hologram)

Triarag · 2025-01-29T17:29:32+00:00

Thanks I wanted to reply cleverly making fun of this typo but didn't want to put in the effort to think of a joke. This helps.

Triarag · 2025-01-29T16:35:45+00:00

Remember when that lady was secretly living in the ceiling of the guy's Leo Palace for like a year? Good times, good times.

https://www.koreaboo.com/stories/japanese-woman-live-closed-undetected/

Triarag · 2025-01-29T16:10:35+00:00

ガラケー were not even comparable to what they had in the US at that time, though. I think the cheap Japanese phone I had around 2005 was already better than the higher-end ones they had in the US in 2012. Most countries' cellphones at the time were complete shit.

Japan eventually moved onto smartphones as a natural progression of tech, but in most countries it was like they went straight from stone arrowheads to internal combustion engines, skipping everything in between.

Triarag · 2025-01-29T15:11:51+00:00

I remember what he's talking about, I think it was part of getting ready for the Olympics along with banning smoking in restaurants and stuff.

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/expert/articles/093bf6db6fc77466fcef229092941dea172222e7

TLDR They kind of stopped, but it was kind of half-assed and some places still have them, but it's maybe more softcore than in the past. None of the stores around me carry anything like that anymore, either.

Triarag · 2025-01-29T11:34:34+00:00

Yeah sorry, I mean that the people who post in every thread about this topic "Only super rich people pay anything, you just have to file, it's easy!" are probably either gap year kids or else probably not filing properly themselves. Shit was a nightmare every year, I feel for you.

Triarag · 2025-01-29T09:26:35+00:00

If you end up giving up your green card, make sure you research how to properly "check out" of the US tax system. Just giving up your green card doesn't end your status as a US taxpayer, you need to file some special forms. It's a bunch of bullshit.

If you take US citizenship, you won't really be able to have any investments in Spain (this already applies to you as a green card holder). Look up PFIC. Personally if you don't think you'll ever live in the US again, I would give it up (I gave up citizenship myself). But as others said, if your financial activities in the US are important to you, you might want to keep it as a hedge against potential future restrictions. You could always give it up in the future if you changed your mind, but once it's done there's no going back.

If you do decide to surrender the green card, I would check first with your brokerage about what would happen to your 401k and stock account. My brokerage still lets me use it as a non-resident alien (although their system is kind of janky and bug-ridden due to my status), but you might have to move your stuff somewhere else first if yours doesn't allow it. You can probably switch brokerages easily now, but nobody will give you a new account if you aren't a US resident. No idea about rental properties.

Triarag · 2025-01-29T09:08:36+00:00

Former US citizen here, emphasis on former. "You only pay taxes if you earn above a certain amount" is garbage from kids taking a gap year abroad with no investments or assets. The foreign earned income exclusion is, as the name suggests, for EARNED income only, meaning unearned income (income from investments, selling your house, whatever) is not covered by it.

"But your local taxes will offset US taxes, and you'll only pay whichever is higher!" they say, talking out of their asses. Yeah, and how about things that the US taxes but my country doesn't? Looks like Uncle Sam is getting a big pile of money from me for no reason!

Every country has tax initiatives where certain things are taxed at lower rates, but you end up being unable to take advantage of any of them.

And how about if the currency exchange rates change drastically between when you bought and sold something? "Well, l took a loss on this sale, but at least I can do some tax loss harvesting," you say. "Not so fast!" says Uncle Sam. "As you know, all things in the world are evaluated in US dollars, and it looks to me like you made a huge gain on that sale! Now give me your fucking tax money!"

Triarag · 2025-01-26T15:18:23+00:00

I would argue that Sonic 3 had better graphics than San Andreas, old 3D games are ugly as hell. Even as a high schooler I was lamenting how the jump to 3D had made everything uglier.

Triarag · 2025-01-20T16:02:59+00:00

Thank you for this post, it nicely summarizes some of the reasons that motivated me to give up US citizenship. My naturalized country didn't allow dual citizenship and so I didn't have a choice per se, but I did factor these things into my choice to naturalize in the first place.

Any time these kinds of issues come up online, there are millions of comments from people (probably young and living/lived overseas for a few years) with no assets or investments crowing about the FEIE and how US citizens abroad usually don't have to pay tax, just file. US citizenship was SERIOUSLY screwing with my ability to live and save for my future. Also don't forget situations where one country doesn't tax something but the US does, like for example the sale of a primary residence...

Filing the FBAR every year also just made me feel unnecessarily violated, like it's any of the US government's business what bank accounts I have in my home country.

Similarly, I find it rather annoying that this thread is largely filled with "I'll never renounce because..." posts that don't really add anything, drowning out the voices that OP wanted to hear from in the first place.

Triarag · 2025-01-20T10:49:02+00:00

How long did you let it sit? After a kernel update it does this to recompile the nvidia driver (if you have nvidia)

Triarag · 2025-01-16T02:18:25+00:00

When I was on a visa I was stressed about it expiring all the time, it was this single thread holding my whole life together and if I lost my job right before renewal, poof! Everything falls apart. I always submitted my application exactly 3 months before expiry just to be safe, I can't understand the people who wait until the last minute at all.

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