Moving past the obvious slurs in your comment, those migrants might actually get more of a red carpet treatment - sorry to spoil your vengeful dreams. In part because they are who they are, but also because of the spoken language making it easier to get higher paid jobs, probably at multinational corporations too (English is pretty commonly spoken as a foreign language, so it’s not so well paid and sought as other foreign languages, but if that’s your native language you’re definitely getting an edge over the locals).

Patriots (also called sovreignists here in Romania) will do what they do the best: label them as sexo-marxists invading our country and too snowflake to stay with Trump. But outside those pricks, people here are very open towards migrants.

We have an ongoing collective memory of us taking the road to the West after the fall of communism, along with all the hardships we faced, and the fair treatment of migrants is, from my experience, pretty well promoted publicly (at least so far).

If the far right gets in power in two years from now, which is highly likely given the current political situation, things might take a turn to the worse. But until then, the orchestra is singing on the Titanic.

And as a personal opinion, I think it’s wrong to put all the American migrants in the same pot. I think the people leaving the US behind are exactly those who saw the things coming, who understood what Project 2025 was about and did all they could to prevent this from happening. Throwing them in concentration camps similar to those in El Salvador, degrading them or being xenophobic to them in any way will teach them no lesson and will definitely teach the usual MAGA supporter no lesson, or at least not the lesson you’re looking for. I’m rather pro treating these people well, especially since (despite all the shortcomings), during these whole decades when America was truly free, it represented a safe haven for people looking to escape prosecution in their homeland, especially due to their etnicity or religion. So taking these people as they themselves flee from political prosecution is more of an acknowledgement of the role the free America had on making the world a better place, sometimes even helping make entire countries free and independent from other countries.

@calm_bomb yeah, I added a title to it, so Mastodon treated my post as being an article in itself. Here’s the actual link: edition.cnn.com/travel/central…

You’re welcome. Stay safe!

I think you’re in luck here. You can use XMPP or Matrix as the other person said, and pick from the myriad of different servers to let the authorities play whack-a-mole with them. If you’re picking XMPP, suggest them one of the clients that support OMEMO (it uses the protocol used by Signal too; edit: most apps that support it are modern and in active development). Briar is another good option, since it uses Tor, but you both need to be online in order to receive messages from each other since it uses no servers (unless they and you use something like this on a spare phone).

An option that would likely be a better fit for what you’re looking for, but which I haven’t tried yet is SimpleX.

Whatever you pick, I think it would be a great practice for you to teach them to use a panic button app such as Ripple (not sure if that’s maintained anymore though).

Hmmm, that’s true. Probably OP checked this, but now that you mentioned it, I would do the same 😁

What happens with ordinary email by the way?

I expect it was previously appealing based on the fact that only the vendor had access (of course, now it no longer applies).

Maybe another option is to use one of the private providers that do not track you and are less mainstream than Proton. Let’s say Tuta or Mailbox.org (if they are not blocked already too). Probably encrypt the emails with PGP too for more security.

Tbh I’d probably use snail mail letters for anything private on the theory that the RU govt doesn’t have the resources to open all the envelopes

Hahahaha!

I’m not a Russian, rather Romanian. But I heard stories how all the mail coming from the outside was checked and “vetted for anything suspicious” at the border during communism. Since we and USSR were on the same team I suppose they did the same. And how the way the public institutions work barely changed, nowadays, given the current situation, I expect them to return to that practice.

So yeah, I wouldn’t trust snail mail with anything sensitive.

XMPP is more niche but on the other side more established. It has been used by both Facebook (now Meta), Google and WhatsApp (now part of Meta) to develop their platforms on. Up until recently you could still communicate with someone on Hangouts through an XMPP client, despite only with someone that was also on Hangouts (that was until they pulled the plug on that app). It didn’t support all the features but hey, it was there.

XMPP does have some modern clients too, but indeed, Matrix has been more designed with the 2020s in mind.

Then I don’t get why is that person not reporting stuff like that to the police, especially on streets where this is a more common occurrence…

I’m gonna steal this meme so hard, just like Russia stole Ukrainian land and toilets. Thank you!

In Romania, bikes are treated as vehicles in the legislation. That means that if you don’t have any amenities you are required to ride on the first lane of every road, as close to the curb as possible. Of course, some people take the sidewalk too, but they’re really risking it. If they encounter a policeman that is actually determined to do their job that day, they’re kinda screwed.

@supersquirrel oh, wow, the dick of consequences went too far inside Trump’s ass, who would’ve thought?!?

Think about all these people jumping ship from X to Threads lol

I think I would, unfortunately. There’s no choice. I’m Romanian and I know plenty of history to know what happened to our military in the last two WWs, but if there’s a demand, then I would go for it.

Peoplle in my country all say that “oh, I wouldn’t join, which corrupt politician do you see me to defend? I’d rather move out of my country” etc. (You usually hear this from the most right wing people out there).

The reality is that you’re not fighting for the asses of the corrupts only. You’re also fighting for the relative freedom that you have, the safety of your land, so that your dear ones don’t have to be forced to learn another language or subject to a culture they don’t want etc.

And no, if there will be any mission involving America, I don’t think there will be a draft. They’re usually just sending a bunch of people in the conflict, mostly sitting on the side and that’s it. It’s mostly Russia that I’m afraid of.

So they also invented mortars

@ProdigalFrog isn’t discover also available in the KDE version? I don’t remember

@PlzGivHugs not quite “just works” entirely, but I’ve grown more accustomed with MX Linux. Everything is pretty much just one click away tucked into the MX Tools app and you don’t need lots of skills to use it. Some of the said apps might open inside a terminal, but their options are pretty well explained.

@cm0002 they don’t expect it to be a divorce. They just did a sacrifice that they thought you’re willing to pay.

@limerod I already jumped the ship and ordered a Jolla phone. Hope I made the right choice. But if you cannot get it for whatever reason, you can always get one of the supported devices and install Postmarket OS

just as I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia didn’t have telegram compromised

I mean, Durov visited Russia at least 500 times since he left because the government “took VK from him”

It’s more of a Facebook alternative. It has almost all the bells and whistles of it, minus the ones that imply constant surveillance of the users (shadow profiles for instance) - you have a calendar where you can add events, or you can see the events you joined, you have a permission system on your posts, replies are seen as part of a post instead of being individualized, you have an activity log, etc.