All good, after the initial surprise and when they found out that I am neither armed nor a criminal they were quite friendly actually. Still wouldn't want to experience something like this ever again.
I accidentally (e.g. I didn't know) bought a stolen laptop some time ago. The police came at 05:00am, raided my home with guns drawn and took the laptop. So yes, it does happen in Europe as well.
Anyone who thinks that this is really about protecting children should look into how the catholic church, who has a long long [0] history of abusing children in Europe, is treated. If governments wanted to fight child abuse they could easily start there.
Slightly off-topic - while I know that there are these lists of “crazy long German words” to make fun of each one of your examples besides the “Donau..” I actually used normally in conversations in the past.
Even just a couple days ago I came across “Personalisierungsinfrastrukturkomponente“ [0] in a news article, so it is not just a rumor that Germans like long-ass words :)
[0] Apparently these are the devices used by the government to verify passports and / or fingerprints of refugees.
What really helped me:
- getting a kitchen scale, weighting all the food and tracking it with Yazio (https://www.yazio.com/)
- intermittent fasting
- a healthy mixture of cardio / weightlifting
- stopped eating bread everyday and replacing it with oats (+ seeds)
Nothing revolutionary, however tracking everything that I eat really makes a big difference because otherwise I tend to overeat as tend to be always hungry.
I had ReLex SMILE done 4 years ago. Total costs were around $5k. Easily one of the best decisions of my life. I score the absolute maximum on the tests, there were no complications and it only took a couple days to heal. I actually took the bus back to my apartment after the surgery by myself.
I know that outcomes vary but for me by now I don't actually remember what it was to be shortsighted and all outdoor activities are soo much nicer without contacts or glasses. I'd definitely do it again in a heartbeat.
I’d love to move from Europe to the US to work on new ideas and companies, however while countries like Australia try to attract people like me (https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/v...), there is not even an entrepreneur visa in the US.
I wish I could upvote you 10x. I have a middle name and it is extremely annoying that it pops up everywhere and I always have to remember to fill it out.
Even worse is that where I am from there is no legal way to get rid of it (and believe me - I tried). This means that until the end of my life I am stuck with a name that no-one uses, I personally very much dislike, I always have to enter in forms and can't get rid of.
Totally agree, Creative Cloud by now is really one of the worst pieces of software ever created.
Because we are on this topic - what is a great alternative to Photoshop that uses mostly similar concepts?
I’ve tried Affinity Photo but simply doing some photo cropping worked completely differently than PS and took me a long time to figure out.
My main use case is having a photo, doing a selection overlay and running „cut via copy“, then deleting the underlying layer, nothing too complicated :)
That usually depends on which country you are from. Germany, for instance, follows a residence based taxation. So if you spend a substantial amount of time outside Germany, cut all ties (no spouse, apartments, cars in Germany) and don’t have German income (e.g. from rent) you’ll cease to be considered a tax resident of Germany.
In that case you won’t have to pay income tax anymore. However, where it gets complicated is that usually under these digital nomad visas you don’t get a new tax residence nor a tax file number from your new residence country. So you are kind of falling between the cracks and have a hard time opening bank accounts etc.
I’ve been through this whole ordeal and it certainly is an interesting experience with pros and cons.
> But....shares are useless until sold. Even if you have 1BN worth of shares it means nothing until you actually sell them/trade them? In fact, they could be worth nothing next week, how can you be taxing someone on a hypothetical sale value?
Basically your tax advisor agrees with the government on a "fair" valuation and you are taxed on a 'fictions sale' when you cease to be a German tax resident and hold more than 1% shares in a company.
> Unless you are a wage or salary earner, it is trivially easy to avoid having to pay taxes, at least in the USA. Same with the much lauded “inheritance tax” and even, to a lesser extent, sales taxes. It costs about 4000us a year to maintain the legal structures required to pay essentially no taxes, except sales taxes in some locations. In many cases, for lower levels of income, just having a small business can negate income tax burdens.
If it is that easy and costs only $4000, would you mind describing the technique(s)? I can't believe that it would be simple / cheap / legal, because otherwise every business owner would do it?!