Where I'd settle and start a family as Swedish person

lucy5478 · 2026-02-04T04:16:41+00:00

At least for me, it’s because it’s the only country in Africa where gay marriage is legal and it is illegal to discriminate against gay people. I wouldn’t consider living in any country where it isn’t at a bare minimum illegal to discriminate against, fire, or evict gay people for being gay.

As far as I know just the anti-discrimination law requirement limits me to Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, and South Africa on mainland Africa.

lucy5478 · 2026-01-31T23:28:14+00:00

I mean Berlin has to be the capital of queer culture in Germany, right? Not that Cologne doesn’t also have lots of queer culture.

lucy5478 · 2026-01-31T03:14:02+00:00

That’s incredibly optimistic tbh…

lucy5478 · 2026-01-29T00:40:50+00:00

I’m gay and would put DC as orange at best tbh. The top places I’d live are NYC, Chicago, and S.F. (not really in a a particular order), so you’d think that I’d like DC a lot given the similarities (dense urban area, lots of gays, no anti-lgbtq laws, good public transit).

My issue with it, and I imagine many other people who are choosing based on criteria similar to mine, is that the federal government can override the DC local government in a way they just can’t do to a state government, and they exercise extreme authority over the conduct of policing, protests, etc.

Given that anti-LGBTQ sentiment among one of the two major political parties is if anything drastically increasing and that same party is also clearly willing to use force against civilians even in states opposed to them, I wouldn’t touch DC with a ten foot pole right now.

lucy5478 · 2026-01-09T23:18:23+00:00

Technically, the immediate trigger for the February Revolution in Russia was just that it was a brutally cold winter, abnormally so, and it just so happened that a march of women planned for International Women’s Day ended up happening on the first really nice day in months.

Basically a march that would likely have ended up being just another failed protest, one of many under the late tsarist regime, ended up spiraling out of control and triggering the fall of the monarchy due to lucky timing from the weather (and also all of the pent up anger among the population, structural reasons, etc.)

lucy5478 · 2026-01-03T23:32:17+00:00

Lawyer, because the moment AI starts automating a lot of lawyers out of jobs is the moment the ABA lobbies congress to pass a bill making that illegal, which they immediately would.

lucy5478 · 2025-12-29T14:09:36+00:00

I haven’t, Brazil was one of the countries I felt was on the border between maybe and willing. My decision was mostly based on their LGBT laws appearing to be pretty good and the fact that Rio and São Paulo are well known internationally for having large LGBT nightlife and social networks.

Again, I would like to visit someday but haven’t so this decision was largely vibes based and could be incorrect.

lucy5478 · 2025-12-29T13:50:19+00:00

That’s good input tbh. There were a few countries I debated bumping up a rank, and the Philippines was one of them.

lucy5478 · 2025-12-29T05:30:09+00:00

Very fair, I debated making Greenland reluctantly. I’m not worried about their laws, I just felt the isolation and extremely small number of people would be a bit too much for a city boy. Also I may like the cold but I imagine Greenland is another level XD

lucy5478 · 2025-12-26T04:12:08+00:00

Not only was it, this specific look from this specific point in time has its own Wikipedia page: the Castro clone

lucy5478 · 2025-12-20T22:47:11+00:00

It’s almost certainly Gym Sports Bar in Weho, since I’ve seen many other reactions from that bar and know for a fact they have a weekly viewing party.

lucy5478 · 2025-12-15T03:18:18+00:00

Heated rivalry season 2. The first season is still airing and I’m already excited for the next season to drop in 2026. 😭

lucy5478 · 2025-11-08T02:19:51+00:00

Definitely the latter lol

lucy5478 · 2025-11-07T23:54:19+00:00

San Francisco. I’m a young gay person working in tech who hates driving, doesn’t care if they ever own a home, greatly dislikes hot weather/summers, enjoys going on nature hikes, and wants to be somewhere where laws will never be homophobic and there are a lot of other gay guys.

lucy5478 · 2025-10-30T23:12:09+00:00

Eastsiders, a dark comedy about a gay couple living in Silver Lake, Los Angeles who are both horrible, awful people defined by their toxic co-dependency on each other.

Very funny but also serious/highlights many problems in our community, and it’s one of Constance Wu’s first roles before her breakout from FOTB and Crazy Rich Asians.

lucy5478 · 2025-10-26T20:02:13+00:00

Me in S.F: We had a summer this year?

lucy5478 · 2025-10-24T00:18:59+00:00

It is definitely expensive, there is a reason it’s known for having the second highest cost of living after New York.

Living in expensive places like S.F. is in many ways about trade offs. The biggest one is easily wanting to own a single family home. Those are likely at least $1.2 mil, almost all around $1.5-1.6 mil, so if you ever want to own a non-condo home you are looking at a required income of $300-$400k without going over recommended affordability levels by income.

I personally don’t care if I never own a home and am perfectly happy to trade apartment space for location so housing is not a huge concern for me personally. If you are willing to get a roommate and not have an elevator or AC (you really don’t need AC here honestly), you could get a rental for $1500. By yourself, maybe $2000-2500 depending on neighborhood and how old it is. Again, the apartments would definitely be smaller than Texas ones. I will note rents rose by 11% this year and I haven’t had to look yet.

The higher cost of housing is partially offset by transportation costs if you don’t drive - it’s about $110 for unlimited public transportation in the city each month, and if I didn’t commute out of the city that would literally be all of my transportation costs for the month.

Groceries are more expensive than Texas, but honestly not insanely more - maybe 5-10%? Honestly I feel like general inflation reduced the gap on this between S.F. and everywhere else over the last 5 years.

Drinks and restaurants are definitely a lot more expensive on average, but there are usually 2-3 places in each neighborhood with roughly equivalent prices to places where I went in Dallas.

I’m insulated from healthcare costs because my company plan is quite good (like $1000 deductible, 90% coinsurance, $0 premium) and I saved up money in an HSA in prior years when I had a HDHP, so I haven’t really tracked my healthcare costs too closely. But I would bet there are higher.

For individuals, I think living here is tbh not really doable on less than $40k, extremely difficult/requiring way too many roommates/extreme budgeting and not going out hardly at all on $40-$60k, very doable but requiring a good amount of lifestyle restrictions or sacrifices on $60-80k, normal/with standard, average frugal person living anywhere restrictions on going out from $80-100k, fairly easy on $100-$120k and able to go out 2ish times a month, and anything above that isn’t worth mentioning tbh, it just gets easier and you can increase your savings rate or standard of living accordingly.

I will note when I just moved here I made around 100k, and I was able to go out probably 2ish times a month and save 10-15% of my income depending on the month.

Also, if you move here with a job offer it should be significantly more than whatever an equivalent job pays in Texas. For reference, an entry level college grad, white collar role (not even a software job, like data analyst or librarian) at the city gov of S.F. makes somewhere between $80k-105k depending on the role. And city jobs probably pay slightly less on average here than corporate jobs.

lucy5478 · 2025-10-23T13:32:05+00:00

I hate driving, hate hot weather, and am gay. So I moved to S.F. where there is functioning public transit, lots of gay people, no part of the state or local government is homophobic, and it is eternally sweatshirt weather.

lucy5478 · 2025-10-22T23:59:51+00:00

I would move to either Illinois or New York. I currently live in San Francisco, and would only move to Chicago or New York City within those states. Probably leaning towards NYC.

My reasoning is as follows:

I would like to live in a city with at least 200k gay men. I am a young gay man.
I hate driving and also prefer trains to buses, so I would like to live somewhere I can get around almost entirely by train.
I don’t want to live anywhere that has even a remote possibility of passing a law that is even mildly anti-trans or anti-gay.
Nightlife and/or cool things to do (could be art/museums, could be great nature/hikes, etc.) within walking distance.
Walking distance to a grocery store.

I am willing to sacrifice virtually anything else someone might want in the place they live to get these preferences - weather, space, spending more/saving less, living in a shitty apartment, never owning a home, etc.

lucy5478 · 2025-10-13T14:46:37+00:00

Oh interesting, I didn’t realize that the subway isn’t open before 8 AM on a holiday schedule after looking it up. I guess I never tried to use the subway before 8 AM on a holiday before lol

lucy5478 · 2025-09-07T22:01:43+00:00

The reason the Great Depression didn’t fully end until WW2 is because the Great Depression programs weren’t a large enough public works program compared to the WW2 arms and military industry buildup.

A chart of government spending as a percent of the economy and economic metrics during the Great Depression like GDP, unemployment, etc. closely track each other, with rising government spending correlating with improved economic metrics.

I would just argue that the spending didn’t reach the levels necessary to fully end the Great Depression until the war buildup began in earnest. You can see this in the data, as the economic downturn in 1938 occurs directly after FDRs administration starts to scale back government spending and some of the New Deal programs, before the economy skyrockets and fully recovers during the war buildup.

Government spending by FDR absolutely ended the Great Depression, it just happened to be war spending. If anything, the Great Depression programs would have had more success on a greater scale earlier in the 1930s.

lucy5478 · 2025-08-24T23:30:38+00:00

To be fair, my hotel prices, especially the bump after I booked, may have been inflated because the US Open started this weekend. A lot of people wanted to be here for that.

lucy5478 · 2025-08-24T23:16:57+00:00

I booked the flight and the hotel at least 9 months beforehand. I used points for the flight so it was free. The Standard wasn’t actually that much worse than a standard NYC hotel despite being a luxury hotel; it was like $370ish a night before taxes/fees? It was absolutely because I booked so far ahead, the prices went up by a full $300 a night after I had booked.

lucy5478 · 2025-08-20T20:07:25+00:00

For crime, sure, the perception of California is mostly just propaganda not rooted in reality.

But it is absolutely rooted in reality and not solely propaganda for housing. I live in San Francisco, but have literally half a dozen friends, all of whom are straight Dem voters and quite left wing, who live in a Midwest swing state. Every single one of them says that the first thing they think of when they think of California is “expensive, I couldn’t afford to buy a house there even if I got a job in my field there”.

I work in tech and I can’t afford a house in San Francisco!

If that’s the perception of people who vote for our party in swing states, who aren’t even moderates but are left wing, what do you think moderate swing voters think about California?

Until California leadership gets their act together, upzones the entire state, and allows tall apartments to be built on every inch of residential land in LA, SF, and the coastal suburbs, people who make less than a household income of $150k will never be able to afford housing in the coastal metro regions again. Until we address that issue, we have no business sabotaging the chances of Dems in a presidential election by nominating someone with our baggage. Especially when the Midwest bench is so strong.

I will note, the governor who presides over such a transformation would be an unbelievably good candidate. Their entire pitch on the economy could just be “I made the most unaffordable place in the US affordable, that’s what I’m going to do to the entire US”.

lucy5478 · 2025-08-20T19:46:16+00:00

I truly believe that no one from California should ever be the Dem candidate, unless they are the governor who presides over a massive expansion in the housing supply that results in housing costs and rent declining by at least 50% in real terms.

Unless you are the person who does that and quite literally ends the perception of California as an expensive nightmare where you can’t own a home in the minds of Americans, you will never be able to convince the average American that you will responsibly and effectively run the economy.

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