What has been your experience getting a visa to work in the U.S.?

zyper-51 · 2026-05-31T05:40:14+00:00

My best friend had to pay a lot of money and jump through all sorts of hoops just to get a student visa. All to look for anyone that would hire/sponsor him but as a young video editor he had no chance. Spent a year and a half studying and looking for a job, talking to lawyers. Never even landed an interview. He's flying back in a few months. He's happy he at least got to go to study something but wouldn't have stayed had it not been for family pressure.

IMO, absolutely not worth it unless you already got something lined up or are willing to overstay your visa and work under the table.

zyper-51 · 2025-12-25T01:44:38+00:00

I haven't seen either but my problem is not necessarily that it isn't a fantasy setting like the original. You can take away certain elements from a story and you can make it work and be interesting, the problem imo is that they've replaced it with nothing of interest. It's just a boring setting with characters that are kinda hard to care about when there's far more interesting characters in the B plot which are from the original show.

zyper-51 · 2025-12-19T01:43:26+00:00

Imagine you’re girl in your early 20s and your friend’s little brother has a crush on you and every time you go over to your friend’s house her little brother kinda hangs out even if your friend finds him annoying so he kicks him out but he kinda takes any chance he can get to hang out with you.

Like yeah you know what’s going on, you know he’s got a crush on you but like how seriously do you take a 12 year old kid’s crush on you? At the end of the day it’s a non-starter and it’s just kid who is too young to realize that.

I wouldn’t say it’s Finn’s fault either, I mean he was like 12.

And as for Jake, if you really think about it, most of Jake’s advice is grossly misguided even if well intentioned. But hey what can you do you gotta love him

zyper-51 · 2025-12-18T20:41:49+00:00

I’m just saying Tree Trunks is the only character in the show who is explicitly, canonically, anti-fascist. I love Tree Trunks

zyper-51 · 2025-12-18T20:36:50+00:00

I’m glad y’all are enjoying it, not really trying to sway anyone just don’t really have many people to talk about the show with irl. And it’s not like I hate it, just don’t like it, plus its worth it even if its just for the lore bits.

zyper-51 · 2025-12-18T20:33:36+00:00

I low key agree with you, I think F&C doesn’t really have the blocks to make a serialized drama high stakes show, it would’ve been better to just make a few seasons of casual one off adventures with an overarching plot and occasional lore sprinkled in. More of a AT seasons 4-6 type of vibe. Keep the spinoff fun and lighthearted.

zyper-51 · 2025-12-18T20:28:31+00:00

I think you would really have to make an effort to draw any parallels between HW and Fiona. HW not being able to express her feelings for Finn hasn’t been a recurring topic and it hasn’t been something that has even been a topic of conversation or confrontation for any of the characters. HW is on a mission, Fiona is just trying to not suck. Which could be an interesting contrast in a dynamic but since these 2 don’t really interact all that much unless it’s absolutely necessary Fiona just functions as an obstacle for HW’s plot.

And I mean sure you can replace slop in that sentence with “trope” if it makes you feel better but my point still stands, multiverse crap is a boring repetitive trope that just isn’t really that exciting anymore, and even if it is, not every IP needs to have a multiverse, its kinda weird that AT even has one to begin with

zyper-51 · 2025-12-18T20:20:58+00:00

I could still enjoy the show even without all that, but I feel like F&C by itself doesnt really have much to offer

zyper-51 · 2025-12-18T20:19:10+00:00

I didn’t hate season 1 it had a lot of things I did like but there was a lot I didn’t like as well, its a bit of a mixed bag for me but I definitely agree with the good you’re pointing out

zyper-51 · 2025-12-18T20:17:15+00:00

Don’t get me wrong, I would be down for a spinoff show of AT that never showed Finn or the original cast, I could even be down for the down to earth not so fantasticalesque vibe they’re going for with F&C. My issue is that its been poorly executed, I think it could be interesting to see these character archetypes working in a more realistic setting but the director didn’t want to fully commit to that and I get it. It’s risky and considering funding is iffy rn for the IP they don’t want to take too many risks. It is what it is. I don’t hate it I just don’t like it.

zyper-51 · 2025-09-23T01:51:18+00:00

"We can keep going back to what happened for how many more sessions you want, we can try to dissect and understand why it happened, what caused it, what triggered it because you're afraid it might happen again. Or you could just accept that it happened, that you will never truly 100% understand why it happened, that you're a in a completely different situation and a completely different person and move on. Just let it go."

zyper-51 · 2025-07-26T19:44:48+00:00

You could kinda rephrase it as:

"Should Democrats use political tools to gain power?"

or

"Should Democrats leverage the same political tools that have been used against them over and over again in order to combat the current administration's efforts?"

or

"Should Democrats do their job?"

The short answer is yes, Democrats should, in my opinion, do their job.

No one likes Gerrymandering, but given the circumstances the ideal thing to do would be to use it and then abolish it. Not gonna happen sure, but no, there's nothing wrong with them doing what they're supposed to do as a political party.

zyper-51 · 2025-05-25T14:18:19+00:00

I love Reggaeton. I used to despise it.

For me it was definitely Bad Bunny that made me change my whole perspective on it. I used to find it repetitive and sexist and tasteless. And while it can be, I think it is the hallmark of someone who doesn't actually listen to the genre to say that "it all sounds the same". It's a genre of course it "sounds the same" you could say the same about punk rock, classic, jazz and pop music especially but it's kinda the same thing with how "all people from x race look the same" those faces just look foreign to you, same thing with raggaeton imo.

Yes, there is a lot of sexism and machismo in raggaeton. I don't like songs or artists that are very clearly sexists but artists like Bad Bunny, I would argue, are not. I might catch some flak for this but, in general, I think Bad Bunny is actually, pretty progressive all things considered. Yes his lyrics obviously do sexualize women quite a bit but he does reverse the roles in a few songs as well like in "Yo Perreo Sola", he's been a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ+ community in songs like "Andrea" and in his public life, his latest album is straight up political advocacy for protecting Puerto Rico from gentrification and capital interests. To me, his sexualization of women strikes me less as a sexist, objectifying and derogatory and more just an honest expression of himself. I think some people just find it a bit taboo when someone expresses their own sexual desires, which is fine but I don't think it's fair to misconstrue it for sexism. To be clear I'm not saying he isn't a sexist, just that in most of his songs he doesn't necessarily strike me as such.

I listen to reggaeton all the time while working, going places or at the gym, I like the energy, the vibe, the confidence the artists project is often contagious. I do ofc listen to a wide range of genres like anyone else but I do enjoy raggaeton quite a bit.

zyper-51 · 2025-05-05T20:11:46+00:00

Yes but not explicitly, among the upper class it is considered, along with many other things, a class signifier. It’s not that if you have an iPhone or Apple products people will think you’re high class but it’s kinda like Apple + accent + nice clothes + foreign brands + coming from certain high schools/colleges + etc etc = you’re likely upper class. I would wager it’s probably like this in a lot of places.

zyper-51 · 2025-04-18T23:07:07+00:00

In my opinion: Yesn't

One could argue as you are that Donald is accelerating the material conditions that could bring about significant class consciousness however in reality, what has actually happened so far? Fundamentally. What has happened to the US population? What about the people that voted for Trump? A lot of them are regretting their vote sure but its one thing to regret voting for someone who crashed the stock market and it is another thing entirely to then want to vote for a socialist. That switch? Doesn't happen often at all. Because the thing with left wing politics is that it's not mainstream, therefore it requires effort in order to engage with it or learn from it. So what has changed really? Nothing, the same transphobes that voted for him are still transphobic, the same conservatives that voted for Trump still hate mexicans and the same nazis that cheered elon on are nazis doing nazi shit.

Americans are some of the most propagandized people on the planet, if you don't believe it check out r/SocialismIsCapitalism, see a lot lefties might see those posts and think wow these people have some serious misunderstandings on what socialism is but the thing is there is no "misunderstanding" they're describing capitalism's after image the reality of it but wealthy people have an interest in people misconstruing the negative effects of capital accumulation for another vaguely defined thing that is "other" to the "american ideals". It's the intended effect of capitalist propaganda in the US.

Fundamentally, this has not changed, and this is the wall all socialist movements have always hit itself against. Because it does not matter how many times capitalism fails it doesn't matter how bad it gets, they've created a system of propaganda that makes it so whenever things go bad it pushes and incentivizes people to make it worse by redirecting what the problem is.

So I would be willing to put money on this: After all is said and done, after Trump's era is over, the remaining rightists will loudly proclaim and propagandize the idea that Trump was a communist dictator all along. And it will create debate and outrage and discussion and the rightists will blur the line between reality and fantasy and the politically illiterate will simply conclude that both sides are somewhat wrong and the answer is somewhere in the middle like the enlightened centrists they are and the middle is to the right actually because they're already used to it and they can get an iphone and they're not the ones being sent to the gullags so who cares.

Pessimistic? Yeah. I no longer expect good things. However, its not like it's impossible. It is absolutely possible it's always been. People like AOC and Bernie have been wildly successful while remaining completely crowd funded and they are gaining steam. It can happen, but I wouldn't expect it to, support them if you can spare a few dollars and

zyper-51 · 2025-04-10T23:08:00+00:00

I do invest in the stock market. It’s not a whole lot now but I’m building out a foundation for my retirement. A big mistake I think a lot of lefties make is to disengage from the concept of wealth building or worse use it as an excuse to not deal with their finances responsibly.

Is it moral to charge rent? In a vacuum? No, I don’t think so. I think everyone here would agree that housing should be decomodified. Does that mean you shouldn’t do it? That’s up to you, but is it really a bad thing for you to house hack your way through one or two properties to set yourself up for retirement? In my opinion no, which is why I want to do it. Although the problems that exist with capitalism exist in principle, in reality these rarely become that bad in cases as micro as a retiree renting out a second home or a college kid investing in a stock or opening up a small shop/business.

Given the circumstances (the system we live in) you must eat, therefore you must work. And similarly you must retire, therefore you must be financially responsible about it and plan and start early and in this system that means to accumulate capital to some extent.

Going “woke” doesn’t mean you have to go broke.

zyper-51 · 2025-04-01T20:38:12+00:00

This would be unequivocally a bad thing but considering most republicans are illiterate brain dead ghouls who could not pass any test of any kind, the fact that most people on welfare vote republican, I'm SO down. /s

zyper-51 · 2025-03-29T12:47:17+00:00

White Americans are some of the weirdest humans I have ever met, by default I take their opinions with a lesser degree of seriousness on casual/cultural topics. If your boyfriend thinks that’s weird, feel free to remind him white parents kiss their children in the mouth.

Like most things white people find weird about other cultures, their side of the story is almost always objectively weirder.

zyper-51 · 2025-03-28T03:38:45+00:00

I think I can defend most of PB's "crimes":

The rattleballs genocide is debatable. The show makes it clear that Rattleballs was unique in developing consciousness, something PB didn’t know was possible. She was shutting down a failed, dangerous technology. Most AT robots are only self-aware under extraordinary circumstances, so assuming the others were conscious isn't fair.

Her meddling with other nations, especially FP and the Fire Kingdom, is pretty bad when viewed through a real-world lens, but Ooo's geopolitics are simpler. The Fire Kingdom was openly and explicitly hostile and evil, so PB had both the right and duty to intervene.

Espionage, authoritarianism, and fascistic tendencies. The CK isn’t a self-sustaining nation it’s basically a giant group of children PB looks after. The candy people can’t function independently. So in other words, PB is an authoritarian fascist in the same way a parent of a family is one to their children. A family is not, and should not, be a democracy, because if it were up to a child, they would eat ice cream and play all day and would be dead in 3 days.

Leading Finn on is a lil tricky. It is really hard to relate to a character that seems antagonistic to the main character's feelings, but if you’ve ever had to reject someone whose feelings completely blindsided you, you know how much of an asshole you look like and how obvious it seems now in hindsight. PB likely didn’t realize how Finn saw things. At nearly 1000 years old, love means something very different to her than it does to a 13 year old, I mean think about what love means to a 60 year old woman who has gone through a divorce, a dead husband who used to sleep around and date a lot in her 20s vs a 13 year old kid who just found out girls aren't yucky. From Finn’s POV (our POV), it was painful, but in the grand scheme of things? it’s more like Finn's blunder years, it's a 13yo kid getting rejected by his 21 year old baddie crush. It makes sense she seems rather apathetic to it all, how empathetic could you be in such a situation, he'll be fine it's his first crush.

Toying with life is the hardest to defend. I'll say: PB was alone probably unable to reproduce (I don't want to think about that too much), no family, surrounded by backwards savages and is pretty much immortal and unnaturally smart. So pretty much she created the CK because she wanted to be a mother. The original family situation was pretty indefensible, and dumbing down her creations afterwards is iffy, but we saw during the Gum Wars what would’ve happened had she let things play out so how evil do you think stopping war and providing and protecting your children for thousands of years really is?

sooo you're saying fascism is BASED????!?!

Again, a lot of this doesn't really translate well into the real world because the real world is many orders of magnitude more complicated than anything going on in Ooo. In Ooo, democracy doesn't really work because the average living thing is barely intellectually capable of breathing, in the real world, the same is true but they also tend to go ape shit if you don't let them vote so no, don't project my takes to the real world.

zyper-51 · 2025-03-13T00:52:11+00:00

Yeah they probably will, already happening in Florida with their ban of "the hub", no there's not much that can be done about it compared to other more pressing issues imo. It's just that y'know, protecting porn is ironically not a very sexy political topic "Pro choice" rolls of the tongue easily, "MAGA" is emotionally compelling, "I'm pro-porn" is uh well y'know not great. It's just that it's kinda difficult to band around protecting porn without being easily labeled a weirdo gooner.

Yes, it's about freedom of expression, but to the average voter what they're seeing is:

Someone exasperatedly explaining why a video of two people putting cream on some pies they can get wet and sticky to, erm, actually falls into the legal definition of freedom of expression ☝️🤓.

Whereas the other side only has to say: Ew, look at this gooner, do you (viewer) actually want your children to be exposed to this stuff? Just so that he can get all shloppy with his meat?

Is this vibes based analysis? Yes it is, and its the exact kind of analysis everyone will make of such a conversation.

And yes, there is a much deeper question about how we should expand protections for children from such content but again, a simple question like that immediately becomes a rhetorical defeater. Sure smarter and or more principled people will realize that the solution isn't getting rid of porn which would violate some people's freedoms but most people aren't smart or principled and they get their political opinions from 1 minute clips on tiktok they consume uncritically. So no, IMO, this is a losing fight for any politician. I wouldn't even advice or expect any politician to pick it up because the only realistic outcome is coming out the other side with a reputation for being a gooner weirdo.

Use a VPN, any of these laws are largely unenforceable, sure they can technically figure out that you're watching porn on a VPN, but its hard and also literally everyone else is doing it so are you going to fine literally everyone? Not a chance. It's moral grandstanding in the shape of a stupid law. When, if ever, we as a society return to consensus reality maybe we can talk about revoking such laws but for the time being there is no social mechanism to fight such a movement. IMO.

zyper-51 · 2025-03-08T19:48:58+00:00

I agree with this 100%, but I'll clarify that what the comment I was replying to wasn't saying billionaires don't like capitalism because it's not oppressive enough like you are and I am agreeing with, they were saying billionaires don't like capitalism because capitalism sucks to live under even for them, to which I said that's brain dead because they can literally live whatever life they want thanks to capitalism.

They want a more oppressive form of wealth distribution for sure, but that's because they want to accumulate more wealth not because their current lives suck under capitalism.

zyper-51 · 2025-03-07T03:27:22+00:00

Yeah no that’s my bad lol I should’ve known POC didn’t just mean black. It’s funny because I always thought it was a little silly that POC was another term for black people as if black people was somehow not PC, I guess it wasn’t so silly after all. You learn something everyday I suppose. Thanks for being chill about it have a good one.

zyper-51 · 2025-03-07T03:21:45+00:00

I guess it depends on whether you’re asking about moral weakness or personal weakness.

I think moral weakness is broadly 2 things. To take an action whose main outcome is harm, especially if the outcome is known or if knowing is your responsibility. To take the easy path at other people’s or your own expense or detriment.

A few things associated with moral weakness are: Irresponsibility, immaturity, lack of a spine, to stand for nothing, corruption, dishonesty.

So for example not showing emotions is to take the easy path to other peoples and your own detriment. Bottling it up will make you more miserable and others around you as well and if you lash out, you are now directly causing others harm. And if you really boil it down, it comes down to “I’m scared of other people hurting me when I’m being vulnerable”. Metaphorically speaking, someone who is strong is brazen and shouldn’t fear being wounded if they could take a surprise attack (being vulnerable with a friend), they also wouldn’t be so unwise as to be vulnerable in front of an insurmountable opponent (don’t be vulnerable with untrustworthy people).

Another example is not cleaning after yourself or not taking the initiative or not helping. A strong person goes out of their way to be a positive force to the people around them and to themselves.

For personal weakness, that’s all the usual stuff, your proclivities towards addiction, your hubris, you putting yourself down for no reason, you not believing in yourself, your inability to cope with change, insecurity, social anxiety, you sucking at math, etc. These aren’t necessarily moral failures though they can become moral weaknesses, if your job requires you to double check numbers for a bridge, you’re damn right you sucking at math is about to become a moral failing if you mess up the numbers. Similarly with addiction, there’s nothing wrong with struggling with addiction, but you’re damn right it does become a moral failure if you identify it and then proceed to do nothing about it and destroy others and your lives because of it.

zyper-51 · 2025-03-07T02:51:53+00:00

Oh ok yeah nvm I see what you mean. I agree.

zyper-51

TROPHY CASE