If I never had to work again and I was single, I would gladly live out in the middle of nowhere like a hermit. I hate almost everything about city life.

Yeah I figured things would be changing soon.

As others in this thread have said, buying a property in Japan doesn’t extend your Visa or grant you residence in the country. This would be a waste of time if you didn’t already have that lined up. However, there are countries that do. Some have what’s called the Golden Visa program, or Investor/Real Estate Visa program (there are other names, but if you’re doing a search, this should turn up decent results). Here’s a list of some countries that do this, and the minimum amount you need to spend.

Portugal - Golden Visa Investment - €500,000 ($540k USD) or €350,000 ($380k USD) for lower population areas, or properties that need to be renovated Residency benefits - Residency permit for 5 years, with the opportunity to apply for permanent residency after that

Spain - Golden Visa Investment - €500,000 ($540k USD) Residency benefits - Residency permit for 1 year, renewable as long as you own the property, and you can apply for permanent residency after 5 years

Greece - Golden Visa Investment - €250,000 ($270k USD) Residency benefits - Residency permit for 5 years, renewable as long as you own the property, and you can apply for permanent residency after 7 years

Thailand - Thailand Elite Visa Investment - THB 1,000,000 (about $30k USD) for a 5 year Visa Residency benefits - Renewable every 5 years with no residency requirement

Ecuador - Investor Visa Investment - $42,500 in real estate Residency benefits - Grants you permanent residency

Malaysia - Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) Investment - RM 1 million (about $240k USD) in real estate Residency benefits - Grants you a 10 year renewable Visa

Philippines - Special Resident Retiree Visa Investment - $50k in real estate Residency benefits - Grants you permanent residency

When I was looking into bailing on the US, I made a Libre Office spreadsheet with like 70 countries and all this info plus a bunch of other personal requirements for what I was looking for, so some of it may be outdated. Hell, some of it may be straight up incorrect, so feel free to double check it.

Tons of places like that in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsyltucky, and all over the Midwest US. My girlfriend was scrolling through them talking about selling her house and buying one of those places on a big plot of land and thank fucking Jeebus I talked her out of it. I was like “babe, have you never seen the cinematic masterpiece ‘The Money Pit’ with Tom Hanks?”

Not sure if they’re still doing it, but a few years back (holy shit maybe a decade), Italy was even offering to pay people to move there. But there were massive conditions. Like, you had to buy a historical property, maintain it to their standards, and open a business to boost tourism, or something along those lines. I looked into it and was kind of intrigued, but it seemed pretty obvious it was designed to draw rich expats, not average losers like me.

I watched a video from an American guy who did this. But he already had residence, and made it very clear that if you don’t have residence, doing something like this would be a waste of time and money. He bought a massive junker of a house and it took him like 2 years and a bunch of help to make it livable. Still a good video, and still a cool idea, assuming you have certain ducks already lined up. Definitely not something to do on a whim.

I looked at doing something like this in quite a few countries, and skipped on Japan pretty quickly. Happy with my decision though.

Is it though?

ZACHARY, La. (BRPROUD) – The Zachary Police Department says they arrested a former student after Zachary High School was tagged with graffiti.

Police say that Shyron White was arrested at his home in Livingston Parish for drawing a triangle with a symbol in it on the exterior doors. Graffiti was found in several locations around the building, and police were alerted on Tuesday.

“It’s always important to not damage someone else’s property. It costs money and time to, you know, to actually fix,” Zachary Police Department Chief Daryl Lawrence said. “And then you’ll have people like us out looking for you.”

Lawrence said an incident like this is not common for the Zachary community. White is booked in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, charged with terrorism, criminal damage to property, aggravated assault and criminal trespassing.

This is the Orwellian shit you’re advocating when you start classifying vandalism as terrorism.

It’s property damage that was done specifically to avoid hurting people. By that interpretation, Banksy could also be classified as a terrorist.

I wanted to like Night Country so much. Great cast, great acting, not even a bad story at its core, but for some reason it just came out… kinda meh. They leaned waaaaay too hard into hinting at a supernatural element, which all turned out to be nothing. It was very anticlimactic.

Yup. This is a 10 minute video, and about 5 minutes in, he starts going off on culture war anti-woke bullshit.

Is this the same House GOP pressuring universities to expel students for protesting and pushing police to arrest and imprison protesters? That House GOP?

If you traveled back in time and told J. Edgar Hoover that in the future, the American public voluntarily wire-tapped themselves, he would cream his frilly pink panties.

Right? It’s really weird…

Science journalism in a nutshell.

Credit to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The techbros all support Fascism, and any kind of free expression is a roadblock for them to make it happen.

It’s illegal for normal citizens in the US to have any TV-like screen (including laptops) in their field of view (basically in the front portion of the car). I think that’s the case in every state, but someone can correct me if I’m wrong. Cops get a pass because they use laptops for work.

At the very least, the laptops in police cruisers should be locked out of any kind of social media, entertainment sites, etc. I mean Hell, my brother is a mechanic, and the laptops they use at work aren’t allowed to have any of that stuff on them. Just parts portals, diagnostic tools,etc.

Alex Jones was around back then, but he was very fringe. His biggest thing was being a “9/11 Truther”. It’s funny, because so many people associated him with the Left back in the early 2000s because of that. I know a lot of normally Left-leaning people who got sucked into his nonsense back in the day.

Trump was around too, but he was very much just a joke. We kinda fucked that one up.

I don’t even know how that’s possible, casinos are barely legal money printing machines.

Because it was a money laundering scam.

Literally all of his moments.