Authortarianism and censorship to the point where I can never return to my former homeland until that changes for the better. No worker’s rights. Human rights issues in the north and west in areas that weren’t part of China historically.

Possible conflict with Taiwan (if that happens than I’d be sent to the camps to die by orange cheeto, unless I leave).

1.4 billion people & had the One Child policy for the longest time.

Lots of enviornmental problems, air pollution (and apparently much of the country has really really hot heat indices in the summer, avg high of 40C and low of 30C already… no thanks).

Really difficult language to learn (tried to learn it back when I was in school, couldn’t really and basically forgot it all).

and part of an at-risk group - and there are many

Are there any other “at risk groups” that may likely be targeted but are not commonly talked about or targeted at the moment? I know trans, non male/female, green card residents, and naturalized citizens are some of the most at risk groups.

Cheeto has blamed aspergers/autism on vaccinations (?), so I’m not too sure yet whether cheeto plans to go after disabled/neurodiverse/aspergers people next. I have already seen “disabilities” and “disability” on the “banned words” list in the New York Times article about “banned words” at agencies in Washington.

I suspect that if the PRC goes after Taiwan, then that may put any ethnic Chinese in the U.S. into an at risk group.

The problem is that I’m not sure the latter I mentioned qualify for political asylum just yet, aside from the former that are targeted at the moment.

Which at risk groups should plan to leave right now aside from the most obvious?

Yeah, it’s pretty dire. Those aformentioned countries are the only places in which to go where learning a new language isn’t necessary to get permanent citizenship.

To get permanent citizenship in any other country generally requires fluency in the native local language in pretty much all cases.

If I wanted to move to the EU, say the Netherlands for example, I wouldn’t be able to get EU/Dutch citizenship until learning and becoming fluent with the Dutch language, plus x amount of years with residence in the 1 specific EU country. Replace the language/country with whatever EU country and it’s the same situation.

Even with Canada, since I didn’t take French in middle or high school, that means Quebec is pretty much off the table for me, unless I go through the hassle of learning French as an adult.

Even if Canada could have a threat of invasion from the south, I do not think it would likely succeed, as there are at least 5 border states that are blue/democrat, and Canada would likely get help from other countries. Perhaps Mexico may start a second front from the south siding with Canada, so that there’s 2 fronts to deal with? Canada does have the city of Edmonton located pretty far from the US border, so it is not required to live adjacent to the US border in Canada. I would say that fleeing to Canada is about the same risk as fleeing to Finland or Estonia, and the latter two are in the EU.

Australia and NZ also exist, those countries are likely fine in that no major global trade routes go through there (unlike the Arctic), so that mitigates the risk of war over there. Those I’ve read somewhere on r/IWantOut that some countries like Australia have a list of medical conditions that would mean one is not allowed to emigrate there.

England/the UK I haven’t read much, but that’s about as far as one can go, aside from Canada; to go elsewhere means learning a new language is outright required.

I’m in a similar position as OP, and trying to leave with someone else would be even more trickier. Even Canada is very limited in how many family members/friends/relatives that one can sponsor or emigrate with.

I’d feel like being of Chinese descent is more of a liability. If the PRC goes after Taiwan, I could totally see the cheeto crowd go after my ethnicity and be a repeat of what happened in WWII.

I just hope any one country will start allowing asylum seekers to get out before it’s too late, but I won’t hold my breath given that everywhere in the developed world seems to have a housing crisis all at once.

Online education isn’t exactly great for people with poor self control or focus. At best, online education is good for lectures, but not much else (aside from if commuting or finding a place close by to live is a pain, then I suppose online education may be a tradeoff in that regard).

Everything else is generally better in person. Stuff like group projects and whatnot cannot be done online.

Since COVID, I’ve found that the growth of technology isn’t exactly great for the learning experience. Now a lot of educational work takes place through the distraction vortex (computers and phones are very tempting to do something else instead). Pre-pandemic when education was more paper and pencil based, it is much easier to focus. At “best”, you can only daydream or whatnot. Other people would not be as tucked to their phones and laptops like it is since the pandemic.

In a way, online education would also be harmful in reducing social cohesion as well if it becomes the default mainstream, so it’s not just limited in excluding certain neurodiverse populations from access to education. Online education isn’t exactly more “efficent”.

*2029

Canada clamped down on immigration several years ago, so that option seems, mostly difficult at best if at all. Not sure about Australia, England, and NZ either.

By the time the world allows those who want to leave the hellscape for elsewhere, it’s almost certainly going to be too late and much worse off :(.

I feel so scared and paranoid, and I’ve never been this scared and paranoid for just existing where I’ve lived my entire life. And yet I’ve already blocked dozens of news feeds and whatnot, and it still doesn’t go away with more slop that gets through the ever growing cracks. Can’t hardly focus or do a thing at all.

A slightly different graph from Fedecan shows the user growth more clearly without the Hexbear blip

Highest daily growth since 2023 at 1.2k per day the past few days.

I did this on mobile, but I would do it all twice to mute it on both mobile on desktop. It’s one of those UX things that’s gonna make it hard to get new users onboard Lemmy, unless the UX can be improved to allow muting words directly within Lemmy and storing the list by Lemmy account.

I wish at the very least, Voyager allowed one to export the muted words list to a file and import the file, which could mitigate some of the hassle. On Mastodon, I have like 75 muted words covering news and politics, so muting them all is just painstakingly time consuming if I have to do it twice, and then updating the list twice as I come up with new words that need muting/blocking.