581–590 of 1001 posts
> How did we get here? Careful what you wish for, that’s how. Just a simple example: when you play with firm biological facts, you might just open it all up to being bent. But then, wasn’t that maybe the goal all along?
My friends from grad school who went on to become professors tell me that not only did their grant funding dry up, but they were unable to follow through on hiring many of the grad students they had planned to hire, since the students came from foreign countries and faced new visa restrictions. So the money for science is gone, the people to do to the science are gone, and the institutions continue to not support the…
Americans voted to bring the country back to the 1950's and the plan is working perfectly
And somehow they still managed to be very rich!
the recent drama about science funding to me highlights one of the main problems with our grant-based distribution system: which is that it is unsurprisingly very frail to fast-moving changes in government and society at large. science as an apparatus often works on timescales that are decades, not 4 year political cycles. so rapid pendulum swings are particularly dangerous to the pursuit of science as a whole. you c…
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Which really tells you more about the state of mind of people asking that question. What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence, or the nature of the physical reality they live in (and yes, by "being curious" I mean "being willing to put a tax dollar amount to them")?
A person who’s been told all the people doing the science look down on them. Partially true, too, based on how I’ve heard people talk about ”dumb redneck trump voters”
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I guess I think of "expat" as a possibly-temporary state where full assimilation is not the goal. American expats also pay American taxes unless they give up US citizenship. Technically of course you are right.
> American expats also pay American taxes unless they give up US citizenship. Practically, they barely pay anything significant. The lower net salary in Europe / Asia associated with rather high local tax means that most Americans citizens oversea barely own anything significant back to the state. However it does remain an annoyance to fill the tax declaration every year: I know several American who chose to give up…
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From what I understand, Spain has their own set of politics worth losing sleep over; perhaps as an expat you won't be as attached though.
Most American ex-pats don't really understand that the thing that makes ex-pat life so attractive is that, for most of people's lives, being American in a foreign country has traditionally conferred a wide range of benefits (this is most clearly exemplified by the way Americans living in a foreign country refer to themselves as "ex-pats" not "immigrants"). The ex-pat solution assumes American exceptionalism as its fo…
My wife operates an optical trap (a sophisticated microscope, she uses it for studying gene/dna physical properties) and she's pretty good at working with that instrument. The number of people good at working that microscope are in the ballpark of 2000 (+- 1000) in the world! She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become. We are moving out of the country at the end of August.
There are many biotech startups and private research labs thriving and paying high salaries with excellent benefits for that specialty right now - focused on genetic testing, editing, and longevity. Before moving abroad, widening the search outside of academia and considering moving internally might be worthwhile.
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where to?
My family is looking at Missouri to Spain. Why Spain: Expat communities, cost of living, friendly visa options, beautiful climate. Why leave: Sick of U.S. politics and the way it directly and indirectly affects us and how difficult it is to escape from it - it’s a major point of conversations with family and friends, it’s on the local radio, local subreddit, local social media pages, etc. Also, I have over $7k in per…
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There are many biotech startups and private research labs thriving and paying high salaries with excellent benefits for that specialty right now - focused on genetic testing, editing, and longevity. Before moving abroad, widening the search outside of academia and considering moving internally might be worthwhile.
Why assume that this is about finding a job? I happily had a job in academia in the US. Probably what most would call “successful” after exiting a startup and getting a PhD I was US engineering faculty for 8 years. We picked up our keys to our new house in another country a few days ago and I start next month with a faculty promotion. Many of my colleagues are or are looking to follow.
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My family is looking at Missouri to Spain. Why Spain: Expat communities, cost of living, friendly visa options, beautiful climate. Why leave: Sick of U.S. politics and the way it directly and indirectly affects us and how difficult it is to escape from it - it’s a major point of conversations with family and friends, it’s on the local radio, local subreddit, local social media pages, etc. Also, I have over $7k in per…
americans pretending they aren't immigrants by using the term expat always cracks me up