If the conference was originally going to be held on the west coast of the US then Vancouver would be an excellent alternative and if it was going to be held on the east coast then Montreal is another excellent alternative.
Can anyone suggest some viable alternatives in Mexico?
> Beyond problems at the border, the current Secretary for Health and Human Services - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - has said that he will send those with ADHD to camps. Source: Futurism.
What he actually said:
> "I’m going to dedicate that revenue to creating wellness farms — drug rehabilitation farms, in rural areas all over this country," he said during the podcast. "I’m going to make it so people can go, if you’re convicted of a drug offense, or if you have a drug problem, you can go to one of these places for free."
That what happens when you rely on Futurism as a source.
But he was definitely talking about ADHD. This tweet has the short video of him actually including adderal.
> I’m going to create these wellness farms where they can go to get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also illegal drugs, other psychiatric drugs, if they want to, to get off of SSRIs, to get off of benzos, to get off of Adderall, and to spend time as much time as they need — three or four years if they need it — to learn to get reparented, to reconnect with communities,
I am not going to skim through 1.5h of deranged ramblings in a raspy voice to find him saying this though.
What if I took them somewhere remote where there are no drugs and didn't let them leave?
My heart hurts for them, but I have no idea if it's a good idea or not.
Regardless, I think his heart is in the right place. Time will tell whether or not it's actually useful.
"Work will set you free from your addiction."
However, you put it in context with the fact that this administration has shipped off people to an El Salvadoran prison without any due process… this becomes a lot more ominous.
In other words, his opinion isn't worth the electronic bits needed to spread them.
Given the things he said about vaccines and bird flu, I wouldn’t trust him an inch.
I had a friend deported from Denmark when he overstayed his visa and it was basically the same thing.
Some of these look really bad and could be sensible justification for the proposed boycott/cancellation (see French scientist eg) but a lot of it looks completely hysterical.
Some bad history with executive orders / The Alien Enemies Act and interning people in the US:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans
Also, the current administration stated an intent to relocate (intern / reeducate?) the homeless, many of whom are citizens.
Because two weeks in jail what could be a simple flight home sounds fishy.
And I wouldn’t want to gamble if I‘m one of the unlucky ones that you described as looking bad.
That kind of uncertainty is exactly what makes those travels unnecessarily dangerous.
That’s not hysterical it‘s cautious.
https://www.cntraveller.in/story/these-3-countries-rejected-...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/05/us-scientist...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643467
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24369233
Clarification: the “not new” part is foreign attendees not being able to attend conferences in the U.S. So, if you valued inclusion, holding international conferences in the U.S. has been a bad idea for a long time.
> I was then placed in a real jail unit: two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet.
> The best part: there were blankets. After three days without one, I wrapped myself in mine and finally felt some comfort.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-det...
How is this not "new at all"? I just don't understand why some people are so blind to the ongoing abuse of power. What a shame!
They're not blind to it. They either like it and want it (sometimes because they benefit from it), or they're indifferent to it because it doesn't affect them personally. I know — it's really hard to appreciate the mindset of people with no empathy.
And I was very clear about which part is “not new”. What a shame people can’t read. What a shame partisan commenters read “U.S. has been blah blah for a long time” and immediately jump to “Trump defender!!!”
Edit: I should also mention I literally emailed dang to get https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410548 (discussion thread for your link) restored when it was flagged.
What are they waiting for? To see if they will come out ahead. It's classic rebel's dilemma.
Eventually the truth will catch up to us all. We'll undeniably realize this is a tyrannical movement that intends to replace the Constitutional order without the consent of the governed.
In no universe is the election of a dictator equivalent to 3/4 of the state legislatures ratifying an amendment to the Constitution.
However, these cases were rejections of visa. And even Stenberg's case was about being denied entry, not arbitrary detainment and torture like we see now. IMHO this wave of cases is a change in quantity that results in a change of quality already. But the quality of the rejection/detainment has changed as well.
The second and third are the same incident, from the prior Trump administration. But the visa was denied; nobody was arrested or detained.
The fact is if you care about people from all around the world being able to attend your conference, the U.S. hasn’t been a good location for a long time. That’s not new. In fact [2][3] is only noteworthy because it was an influential individual (in this circle) with a strong passport; people with weaker passports are routinely denied. Hell sometimes UN diplomats are denied.
People do take you more seriously if you've been around for a while and they know you aren't full of shit, but that's just social dynamics.
Personally I think the hyperbole only serves to cheapen the real problems.
Historians are actively comparing us to Nazi Germany. https://snyder.substack.com/p/what-to-expect-when-youre-expe...
The holocaust started as a deportation effort. Trump reportedly said "I wish I had Hitler's generals." https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-said-hitler-did-...
3-4 prominent republicans have Sieg Heiled in public, including Bannon who did not put his hand on his heart first.
You are confusing hyperbole for actually shocking news, and it's so shocking it's easily mistaken for hyperbole because if you don't bury your head in the ground it's too much to bear. Accepting the truth of whats happening means you must act, and so people are opting not to accept it to protect their mental health.
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5276898/rfk-drugs-addic...
"I'm going to bring a new industry to [rural] America, where addicts can help each other recover from their addictions," Kennedy promised, during a film on addiction released by his presidential campaign. "We're going to build hundreds of healing farms where American kids can reconnect with America's soil."
That's the kernel of truth, but when you bring in the historical context of authoritarian regimes, and the absolute lack of rule of law, you start to get very very afraid.
In 2025 Americans are so anesthetized even the "opposition party" can't say the obvious out loud in public. Let alone the president's cabinet.
People voting for a dictator isn't equivalent to 3/4 of the legislatures ratifying an amendment to the Constitution. The People have not given consent to set aside the Constitutional order.
If the People want to set aside the Constitution, they must do the hard work of convincing enough people in enough states to do it lawfully. Otherwise it's settled with might makes right.
For all the flaws of the founding fathers they definitely understood power. How it gets consolidated. And how to fragment it. Their advice is polyarchy.
What we're witnessing is autogolpe to establish a CEO-dictator, the consolidation of power. In no universe are Trump, Vance, Musk, Thiel, Yarvin on the right side of history. And they will fail.
Im a bit disappointed in HN for ranking it so high. Time to take a look at the bot detection algo?
I'm sure there's a left-leaning tech group you can join where everyone agrees with you. But this post doesn't belong here, and neither do flame wars.
I use https://hckrnews.com it shows flagged posts too.
I can’t get used to the fact that the US seems dead set on destroying its reputation in the world.
But with the direction the comment section of HN has taken over the last few years I’m sure there will be lots of commenters who will dismiss this as virtue signaling.
The targets usually have darker skin or are from countries far more east, but now it affects people like themselves.
Fence-sitting these days is a political decision all by itself. Well, it always was, but now that we've established a new normal (that's not very normal) rooting for the status quo is even more partisan.
It's not too much of a problem now, as t Big Tech is not in the "software business" so much as in the "laying off people to make the stock look good" ; but at some point they'll have to bring people in to actually write code.
Or, are they expexting LLMs to really make the bulk of the jobs?
Or maybe everything settles down in two years, and this is just a bout of neo-McCarthyism.
Time will tell. In the meantime, I guess Europe must not be that bad, if people are organizing conferences here instead of China or Dubai ?
I told the last recruiter flat out that it's no longer ethical for me to work for a US company but I don't think many people will do the same.
Maybe teaching about the holocaust should be accompanied with copies of daily newspapers from the late 1930s to demonstrate their mundanity.
Any reputable news sources for this?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-det...
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-03-14/green-card-holder-fr...
Mind you this is an individual with a legal visa, German citizen, and in theory the type of immigrant "good" for the US.
This raised all red flags to anyone even with legal status to go to the US.
(Apart from the GDS Transport font, which is exclusive to GOV.UK websites)
That said, I do find the US border incidents to be super scary. I don't blame people for not wanting to come.
[1] https://www.ietf.org/administration/policies-procedures/code...
And let's be honest, a lot of people do indeed feel that this will only happen to people who make mistakes in their visa application (knowingly or not), have tattoos (or travel with tattooing gear), participate in any form of activism, are transgender or otherwise queer, or any other reason not applicable to conservative/right-leaning, white, middle class or higher, educated white collar workers. Some people are quite comfortable with all this (I won't bother pointing out the historical parallels), and it does come down to privilege and having an approved political mindset.
And here's the really nasty thing: if you point this out, you run the risk of sounding exactly like the 'woke' bogeymen this administration is 'fighting'. Language and the imagery invoked have been hijacked to a fascinating but troubling degree.
This is called denial or shock, which is a natural result of grief.
Is there any evidence of this?
> She said Schmidt told her immigration agents pressured him to give up his green card. She said he was placed on a mat in a bright room with other people at the airport, with little food or water, suffered sleep deprivation, and was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.
> “He hardly got anything to drink. And then he wasn’t feeling very well and he collapsed,” said Senior.
> He was transported by ambulance to Mass General Hospital. He didn’t know it at the time, but he also had influenza.
0. https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-03-14/green-card-holder...
Everything felt like it was meant to break you. Nothing was explained to us. I wasn’t given a phone call. We were locked in a room, no daylight, with no idea when we would get out.
I tried suing over those, but even though there is a statute saying they must be bath towels, laws in the USA don't necessarily have to be followed. There are two types of laws, mandatory and directory. Directory laws are laws that are just "if you wanna" and don't carry any weight. A large majority of laws governing prisoner rights are these type of laws and there is no enforcement mechanism when they are broken. [ironically these laws specifically use the word "shall" in their wording, but in most jurisdictions "shall" is legally read as "may" in the USA]
the State Department has also announced that it considers sex markers that don't correspond to sex at birth to be fraudulent. ostensibly for the sports ban, but it actually applies to all visa applications and documentation.
combine those two facts with the administration's stated antipathy towards us, and the recent trend of Germans and Canadians being detained for weeks with no apparent cause, and I think you should see why trans women ought to avoid US travel right now.
I hate this culture war micromanagment where politicians write moral laws for things where there should not be any law.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/cops-burst-into-womens-r...
