[writeswrongs]

Debt Dodgers: Meet the Americans Who Moved to Europe and Went AWOL on Their Student Loans | VICE | United States

Some cash-strapped former students are choosing to leave America behind in order to avoid paying off their giant debts.

The week after I graduated from undergrad I took a one-way flight to Berlin. I tried to do what at the time I thought no one else had seriously considered: fleeing the country to free myself of unbearable student debt. I was a refugee when I was a child, and I didn’t think it was outlandish to be a refugee again - first from American imperialism in El Salvador and then from anarchocapitalism at Reed College.

This is the first article of its kind I’ve seen spotlighting this super real trend that I was already seeing back in 2009. 

[wetdirtandearth]

oh my god

[tangledweave-deactivated2016091]

This is why I’m in Spain right now. I have zero intention of going back to pay off debt.

[ivenothingtosaybutillsayitanyway]

I mean you guys could have just go to college in Europe in the first place and you wouldn’t have debt at all…

[d0esntmakesense]

it’s really simpler

[ivenothingtosaybutillsayitanyway]

right? I mean in Germany is for free, in Italy it costs 2.000 euros per year (tops, like if you have a high income), in the Netherlands is a little bit more if you are not from here but then you have special aid for housing and you can get a scholarship if you have good grades. if I remember correctly in France was way less. Like why would you plan to run away from debt when you could spend three years in Europe and then (maybe) go back. 

Also why would you want to live in a place where you can get an education only if you have a stupid amount of money…

[d0esntmakesense]

In France it’s around 400/500 euros up to the masters degree IF you have high income. The only exceptions are some business and engineering bachelors And I agree. If you have enough money to flee to europe, you very probably have enough money to study here.

[phillanthropist-deactivated2021]

Travel and relocation is a arm/leg expense in itself. Especially if you don’t have family/friends, a place or a job waiting for you. But I think this is going to be a common reality for many people in the future.

[d0esntmakesense]

I kind of agree but the living expenses aren’t going to be higher here. Plus, considering all the money you would have spent in years of American education, isn’t it less expensive to move once abroad and settle there?

[writeswrongs]

To all you fascist Europeans asking why we didn’t just go to your schools for free in the first place please remember most of us don’t realize the full financial implications of our lives until it’s already too late and even if did attend your schools as Americans we’d be paying international fees and playing catch up in your languages so before you get smug just remember it’s your people that brought this neocolonialist hellscape to the Americas.

[nativenews]

Most of these countries require you to have savings/assets in the thousands, and/or be self-sufficient/employed before being eligible for free education in Europe. That’s not getting into issues of regarding visas for People of Colour.

But this wouldn’t have been an issue if white Europeans hadn’t invaded the Americas in the first place. Or continue to allow capitalism to run unabated after creating it.

[hostess-humans-generic-deactiva]

Germans need to be way less smug considering their country is solidly in the Top Three Worst Counties in Modern History

[raavynndigital-deactivated20200]

I lived there for a while and it was good, but yeah, it’s not without problems

[millionsmillions]

The fact that colonialism is so central to science-fiction, and that science-fiction is so central to our own pop culture, suggests that the colonial experience remains more tightly bound up with our political life and public culture than we sometimes like to think.

The Atlantic discusses the link between science fiction and colonialism. (via ceeturnalia)

[twaititi-deactivated20160901]

Favorite Spanish Word?

[sridevi]

The Dirty Picture // 2011

[shinyandloud]

confusion

you guys, TFA already means “teach for america” and when you are using it to describe certain other things it makes posts very hard to parse. TFA has fighter pilots now? TFA sends girls out into the desert? TFA underused lupita nyong'o? all plausible, i give you, but confusing.

[eisoj5]

nearly did a spittake in the middle of the coffee shop

[tropicwitch-deactivated20160303]

the most important tweet i’ll ever make

[hazelcills]

Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted,” for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have a primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each others’ sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other. Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.

Adrienne Rich (via arabellesicardi)

[quotethatshow]

[soulmeetsworld]

Louis C.K.

[youth-united-deactivated2017010]

this is one of the most important/overlooked things

[holydoobies-deactivated20161101]

YES

[j0sephine-marie]

someone final said it

[beachdeath]

It’s Hollywood’s fault, for letting this get so far, that when a black person or a female, or someone from a different cultural group is cast in a movie, we have to have debates as to whether they’re placed there just to meet a [quota]. I also understand, on the flip side, where these other mentalities will arise. “He’s just placed there for political correctness.” I don’t hear you guys saying that when Brad Pitt is there. When Tom Cruise is there. Hell, when Shia LaBeouf is there, you guys ain’t saying that. That is just blatant racism.

John Boyega (via jamesgordon)

[snowqueenelsa]

[striderbeegod-deactivated201507]

ARIEL YOU STUPID IDIOT YOUR BRA DOESNT MATCH YOUR TAIL YOU LOOK LIKE A FREAKING FASHION CATASTROPHE

[coalitionzine-deactivated201704]

Read Issue 6 of The Coalition Zine

Featuring: Yusra Siddiqui, Teta Alim, Nicole Lovet, Yasmin Masjeed, Christina Pineda, and Kendahl Rose. Featuring interviews with Aeon Fux and Angelina Fernandez.

Special thanks to Yusra Siddiqui and Bonita Okonkwo for giving us our cover photo and spread, Aeon Fux for making cool music and letting us into her world, and Angelina Fernandez for being too rad for words. Shoutout to everyone who contributed and participated in the making of this 6th issue. 

And, of course, to you who is reading this!

www.thecoalitionzine.com

[crazyexmachina]

“Where What is Guatemala?”

When they ask you what part of Mexico Guatemala’s in   You stare in shock. The fact that someone could even think that, even speak that. Incredible.

How do you answer, though? How do you tell them where Guatemala is? How can you give them a sense of a place, a feeling          that even you barely know?

You start off easy          What is Guatemala?  

Guatemala is mixtas, it’s rellenitos, it’s shecas. It’s tiendas selling típica, hastily-painted marimbas          for your consumption, for theirs.

It’s chicken busses and tuk tuks. Carpets made of woodchips with the sins of mankind parading overhead. Cathedrals that bring back your fear of God (and your love).   Smog and incense and sawdust – aire chapín.

It’s going over to visit Tía _________ with barely an hour’s warning –          and still getting a meal. It’s going over to visit Tía ____ and getting a meal without even that hour. It’s conversations about politics, politicians, family views/virtue/value Shaped by years, generations, war and education.          Not quite Ladino          Not quite K’iche’ Not something the sociologist-anthropologist-tourist can easily catalogue.

And it is the poverty, the violence, the aching. A rage against the governments that hate your people No matter who, what, when or where. It’s seeing red and red and red,          and never finding the líder you were looking for.

It’s fries at Taco Bell, that piece of lengua you keep forcing yourself to eat. Eating tamales with bread bought from Walmart.          A decade in the making.   It’s the cup of tea you have before kissing abuelita goodnight.

It’s a family, a home, a life that’s just $500 dollars away, minimum.                                                       A place you know you’ll never quite belong.                 A place you (do?) belong, long for, That all the Instagram fotos in the world can’t capture, can’t consume, just                               Can’t.  

Tears on the plane home, souvenirs that can’t hold onto memory, the hole in your heart when they’re gone.                      When they’re gone.                  When they’re gone.

Hard as I try, I still can’t tell you where Guatemala is.

[itsalljustvapourtrails]

There’s one big difference between the poor and the rich,” Kite says, taking a drag from his cigarette. We are in a pub, at lunch-time. John Kite is always, unless stated otherwise, smoking a fag, in a pub, at lunch-time. “The rich aren’t evil, as so many of my brothers would tell you. I’ve known rich people – I have played on their yachts – and they are not unkind, or malign, and they do not hate the poor, as many would tell you. And they are not stupid - or at least, not any more than the poor are. Much as I find amusing the idea of a ruling class of honking toffs, unable to put their socks on without Nanny helping them, it is not true. They build banks, and broker deals, and formulate policy, all with perfect competency. No – the big difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich are blithe. They believe nothing can every really be so bad. They are born with the lovely, velvety coating of blitheness – like lanugo, on a baby – and it is never rubbed off by a bill that can’t be paid; a child that can’t be educated; a home that must be left for a hostel, when the rent becomes too much. Their lives are the same for generations. There is no social upheaval that will really affect them. If you’re comfortably middle-class, what’s the worst a government policy could do? Ever? Tax you at 90% and leave your bins, unemptied, on the pavement. But you and everyone you know will continue to drink wine – but maybe cheaper – go on holiday – but somewhere nearer – and pay off your mortgage – although maybe later. Consider, now, then, the poor. What’s the worst a government policy can do to them? It can cancel their operation, with no recourse to private care. It can run down their school – with no escape route to a prep. It can have you out of your house and in a B&B by the end of the year. When the middle classes get passionate about politics, they’re arguing about their treats - their tax-breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they’re fighting for their lives. Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That’s why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won’t vote. That’s why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us – no walking around National Trust properties, or buying reclaimed flooring. We don’t have nostalgia. We don’t do yesterday. We can’t bare it. We don’t want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in mines, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate, then. That’s why the present and the future is for the poor - that’s the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better, later. We live now - for our instant, hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. You must never, never forget, when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad post-code. It’s a miracle when someone from a bad post-code gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all.

A rant about the divide between the rich and the poor from “How To Build a Girl” by Caitlin Moran (via itsalljustvapourtrails)

“When the rich get passionate about politics, they’re arguing about treats. When the poor get passionate about politics, they are fighting for the lives.”

Boom

(via seneddism)

[archiveofaffinities]

[mamapordios]

Einar Sjostrom and Jarl Eklund, Entry to the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition, 1922

[changan-moon]

GIF of 国画(traditional chinese painting) by artist  太阳_HUACHUN

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

There is a moving duck in the link and it’s even more interesting than other gif.

[msjarvis]

GQ shot in high quality… 

You’re welcome. :P

[chescaleigh]

(Grabbed from a friend’s Facebook page) White folks, when your friends and family repeat these anti-black sentiments online and offline we need you to speak up and collect them. I can’t have this conversation with your racist uncle for you. Deleting racists from your feed or just ignoring them isn’t making things better. The work isn’t easy, but we need you to do it. 

[madamethursday]

[Image: A chart titled “Dear Other White People,” with two columns labeled “When you say…” and “I hear…”. Put together they make five statements that say:

"When you say…Maybe he shouldn’t have been…(insert misdemeanor here), I hear…the punishment for an alleged misdemeanor by a black person should be summary execution at police discretion."

"When you say…Everyone just needs to shut up about Ferguson/Eric Garner. I’m sick of it. I hear…the murder of these me is less important to me than cat videos."

"When you say…I know it’s sad but these riots are appalling, I hear…I don’t care if rule of law has failed a significant portion of our population. They need to remain docile."

"When you say…Don’t play the race card, I hear…Since Racism isn’t happening to me, it’s not real."

"When you say…If there were riots here, I would get my gun, I hear…I fantasize about killing people of color."

Beneath the chart in big letters are the words: “Black Lives Matter”]