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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Right. That is why the Administration position on this has some merit which the courts need to defer to. As an El Salvadoran who is back in his home country, the US cannot compel his release. All the US can do is ask nicely.

    But, they haven’t even done that. Which is why the courts are so pissed. They know all this, and they know that all the administration has to do is prove they asked, in good faith. They won’t even go that far. They did that performative thing where the El Salvadoran President said “We won’t send him back since he’s a criminal”, but the courts in the US don’t consider him a criminal.

    There is no better definition of “contempt of court” then what the US is doing right now.




  • In some places, there is still a social expectation that your mode of dress should be an indication of how seriously you take whatever is going on. People used to get dressed up in suits just to simply go outside. Nobody expects that anymore but some might still expect students to look somewhat put together in a college setting.

    Now, I don’t think the professor should have mentioned anything (particularly about your hairy pits, lol). But, they may have been doing you a favor, because they expressed to you directly that they find it objectionable. While that shouldnt have an effect on your grade, professors are only human and this one signaled that they don’t think you take their class seriously based on your mode of dress. How many others think the same way, and are just not telling you?


  • You are now an American citizen, so you should have the rights the rest of us have. You should be fine. They haven’t gotten around to threatening to denaturalize people yet. When they do, they will concentrate first on people from countries they don’t like, that used old policies they have since rescinded. And they will have to use more due process than they are using on these non-citizens.

    The one thing I would be cautious of, though, is the state of your cell phone. They are very thin-skinned when it comes to criticism lately, and may decide to look through your phone’s social media to decide if you are insufficiently loyal. They have broad powers to do that when you re-enter the country. As a US citizen they cannot deny you entry, but they can still make your life difficult on entry. And this group doesn’t exactly pay attention to laws, do they?

    At minimum, you might want to shut down your cell phone before getting off the plane. Explain it by saying it is a long flight, and you wanted to save your battery for arrival. If they confiscate a phone and try to dump all its data, they are more limited if the phone has just rebooted. They would basically need the PIN to do anything. If you want to go further, you can also log out of all of your social media accounts and remove their apps before the flight, so they even if they force you to divulge the PIN they won’t find your social media history.

    That may all be too paranoid, but we live in stupid times.


  • Assuming you are in the US, you can sue over anything you want to. But there is a cost to that, and your management company may be banking on that cost being higher than your rent.

    Also, if you have all the documents, you should be able to read those and learn what stipulations there are if the lease terminates and you are a month-to-month situation. It could be that you needed to give them more notice. They could have buried it in the fine print. It would suck to pay a lawyer money only to be told “yup, they can do it”, and now you are out more money.



  • Since you are a professional who has happened to make it with some level of success, you know firsthand that there are a lot of excellent people who didn’t manage it for one reason or another. (And it’s not always because of lack of talent, they might have just gotten the wrong injury). How did they manage things when they finally came to terms with the fact they wouldn’t make a living doing that? What did they have to fall back on? Are they coaching? Teaching? Selling real estate or insurance?

    There is nothing wrong with him chasing his dream, but make sure he has an alternative planned. Make him talk to some of those people, and find his own path. Don’t focus on whether or not he has the talent to make it, but on the fact that even people with all the talent sometimes don’t make it, through no fault of their own. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.


  • If I had to guess, it’s probably because his family was able to lawyer up quickly (either because they could afford it, or knew someone who would work the case for free). Courts can’t act here unless someone files a case over it. There might be other people with valid legal cases to challenge their detention, but if they can’t get their hands on timely legal advice they’re just screwed.


  • They are trying to push engagement. But not just any engagement. You might think that they would prefer active engagement, when you search for a thing and watch the entire thing. But you are actually more likely to skip ads when you do that.

    What they prefer is more passive engagement, when you just accept the best thing the algorithm pushes. Because then you are not only more likely to passively consume ads, but also be served content that they were paid to promote. Which may not be what you want (or may actively push disinformation and bullshit).

    TikTok, Shorts, and all the things like that seem to be specifically engineered to exhaust your ability to request more things and let the algorithm take over what you watch next. That’s their endgame.



  • dhork@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    27 days ago

    That’s very generous of you, but I would advise against doing this secretly, for a few reasons.

    First of all, the information needed to do this (like their loan account number) is considered personal financial information whose disclosure is protected. There is nothing preventing them from giving you the info willingly, but if you try and find it out without their knowledge you may be breaking the law.

    Also, technically any gifts between people who aren’t directly related are treated as income by the US government, and there is technically tax owed on it. And yes, paying off a loan would still count as a gift. The threshold to trigger tax on a gift is high ($19k for 2025), but the tax is the liability of the giver, not the receiver. Depending on how big the gift is, you could be inadvertently opening yourself up for scrutiny by the US IRS. But if you are open about the gift and plan it with the recipient ahead of time, you can also do all the required tax planning to make sure you don’t run afoul of the IRS.

    I don’t think I need to remind you that the legal climate regarding foreigners in the US on student visas is precarious right now. It would suck if your attempt at a secret gift ended up backfiring and ruining your plans for education in the US.






  • You have to pick a leader somehow. In authoritarianism, the leader is often the one who can take over by force, and can maintain that force over time (even across generations, for hereditary systems). While it’s possible for someone who takes over that way to be benelovent towards their people, it’s far more likely they will be violent and overbearing, because that’s how they got the gig in the first place.

    And after a few generations, the one in charge won’t have any memory of how their ancestor came to power in the first place, and just take it for granted that they ought to rule. So now you have a leader who is violent and overbearing, only because that’s how their parent taught them to be, not out of any real experience accumulating power.