This is my biggest fear tbh. I have friends I’d love to see in plenty of places, but leaving isn’t the worry. Coming back is, especially being trans with a passport of my correct gender marker

Only to then be disappeared into Federal custody, have my updated birth certificate deemed illegitimate and shipped off to God knows where

Someone I know just keeps telling me he disagrees with every policy that’s bad, while also saying he agrees with Trump for 50 things per the 5 he disagrees with.

Anyway that relationship is very sour as you can imagine

I used to be a POS tech. It’s such a gross, mismanaged walled garden.

Currently I spend a lot of time advising against pop ups like that :^)

The propaganda works though. People outside of the US struggle to see, and believe that the US has its own damning problems. 2 years ago I got close to a Romanian bartender while traveling. She told me about how she held scorn for her sister, who moved to the US despite having been warned against it.

What happened to her sister is what so many of us are victims of. Debt trapping, stalled wages, poor access to medical care and financial incentive to not seek care. Not to mention the poor quality food that wears you down.

As a result, she has had to send money to both her sister and Mom, and had to cancel several contract terms and vacation seasons off to care for her Mother. Her sister couldn’t help due to being in debt, and at risk of losing her job if she were to travel, regardless of the emergency.

It’s a cruel system that bundles up as an image of living free. The marginally higher standard of living has a lot of cracks, but they’re hard to see until you’re living with them.

It works for some, I’d caution even trying it though. If the bag scales are enabled, the weight discrepancy will flag it. Depending on how sensitive it is and jaded the workers are they may just press the bypass without a care.

Alternatively, imaging scanners (non laser based) tend to have the option of “produce assurance” where the image of what was scanned/keyed is compared against the average entry. Too big of a discrepancy will flag and force manual verification.

A small city close to me has one, it looks like it’s relatively successful too. They have an active Instagram and are open after school pretty much every day.

They’ve been shown to be super susceptible to scams even. I probably support as many young users in my company as I do older ones, but virtually no one in the age range of ~25-35.