171–180 of 1001 posts
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Canada, the EU, Australia, ... Places with solid research institutions and less-dysfunctional governments.
CA, AU, and some EU countries are about to elect conservative governments
There is conservative... then there is Trump.
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Reposting because my previous comment was unjustly flagged: The US just facilitated a genocide in the previous administration. This is not just me saying this - this is the consensus ruling of the International Court of Justice at the UN.
Barring all of the hyperbole of your comment, I find it astounding how you're unaware of this with such a "thumb on the pulse" of world news: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/feb/04/benjamin-... Trump said Palestinians have “no alternative” but to “permanently” leave Gaza due to the devastation left by Israel’s war on Hamas. He described Gaza as a “pure demolition site” and claimed Palestinians would “love…
And actually, you in fact can argue that Trump has been better on the issue than Biden. Multiple news outlets have reported that it was Trump that forced the ceasefire:
- https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-forced-netanyahu-to-make-a...
- https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64825
- https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-13/ty-article/.p...
- https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-official-trump-envoy-sway...
Everything you find with regarding Trump is rhetoric while his actions have been much more peaceful than Biden's.
Which brings me back to my main point: it's absurd and hysterical to be claiming that Trump is uniquely fascist here. Whoever is freaking out now about him, and was not freaking out about Biden, is a fraud and should be called out as a fraud.
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I hold the idea that brain drain, i.e. emigration of skilled people, is one of only a small handful of real methods to hold fascism to account. With that, as things start to get real bad it seems leaving is something of a moral duty for anyone who cares, has skills that hold real weight, and can still afford to do so. Obviously where this "real bad" point is is hard to say, and there's important tradeoffs to consider…
And really who would choose to stay in 1938 Germany if you could leave. Even if you are some rich upper class Herr Doktor Professor, life for the next 20 years in Germany wasn't that great compared to England or the US. Why risk having your children killed paratrooping into Greenland. The world is still quite beautiful and quite full of kind people.
I don’t think it tarnished his scientific legacy, but it definitely created some friction in the post-war years.
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I’m a scientist currently on an NSF grant. I am certainly poking around other countries to see what’s out there, and I’m not the only one. A lot of scientists (at least in my field, computational chemistry) have decent skills that are transferrable to other areas. So I expect quite a few to move on.
Good luck getting 500k+ grants in other countries. If you leave there won't be a shortage of postdocs looking for a new tenure track position.
I think a lot of these guys and gals are fooling themselves with the whole, "find another country" thing. There is no other country that is A) doing research at these levels, B) Flush with cash, and C) needs you because they don't have a population that produces the necessary thinkers. That's basically only the US.
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I’m a scientist currently on an NSF grant. I am certainly poking around other countries to see what’s out there, and I’m not the only one. A lot of scientists (at least in my field, computational chemistry) have decent skills that are transferrable to other areas. So I expect quite a few to move on.
Good luck getting 500k+ grants in other countries. If you leave there won't be a shortage of postdocs looking for a new tenure track position.
Europe will not spend even 0.1% of its pension/welfare fund on big research bets. The private investors their will only want real estate investments, not fancy wancy "VC".
Young talent will flow one way from other countries to the US, because they've already seen what the grass is like on their side.
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The weird spanner in the works is that while people may be unhappy, they are unhappy because of things they believe that aren't true. Covid response in the US wasn't that bad; global warming really is causing the floods and fires and hurricanes and the EVs really are helping, as would methane emissions rules and so on; if people think the bi-coastal elites are looking down on them (and they are), like so what; that's…
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But we don't have a right to recklessly infect other people with a disease against their will either. Personally, as someone trying to keep elderly and immunocompromised friends and family alive through the pandemic, some of whom ended up dying from COVID, I am still angry at anyone who disobeyed or fought against those lockdowns: they were killing other people.
> equity initiatives like DEI and Affirmative Action have always left me a bad taste
Affirmative action is illegal in the USA, and nearly all DEI initiatives and efforts are based on making sure people are hired on merit instead of race, and that the workplace culture doesn't make it impossible for people from other backgrounds to participate and succeed, e.g. is inclusive. Trump's claims about meritocracy are a red herring. The core premise of the MAGA movement is the idea that only white people are qualified, and anyone else is a "DEI hire." If you’re a Japanese American you can bet these people think you are unqualified and should be replaced.
> The sheer amount of tax dollars being spent with wanton abandon is ridiculous science
US academic research is the 'engine' that drives industrial/tech dominance in the USA, and is practically a rounding error in federal spending. Go look up any successful engineering or science professor at a well known research institution and you will typically find a large number of companies that exist spun off just from the research of a single lab.
I support scientific research of course but to play devils advocate, how can the USA afford this? They run a deficit and have an enormous debt. I dont understand how this can continously be ignored. Of course nobody wants cuts but how can it go on? Same with the foreign aid, isnt that something a country running a surplus should be worried about?
How can they afford not to? Subtract public research funding from the economy. Go ahead - see what's left. I'll shortcut it real quick - we're all dead from lung cancer and leaded gasoline, so there's no one to do the calculation.
just two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910829 the problems that led to these frauds are structural --no amount of patching the system will fix this. maybe we should consider the possibility that we are due for a refactor, which is often painful, but especially painful for people (or code) with an entrenched incentive to continue existing. i dont mean to defend what the administration is doing but I…
I support scientific research of course but to play devils advocate, how can the USA afford this? They run a deficit and have an enormous debt. I dont understand how this can continously be ignored. Of course nobody wants cuts but how can it go on? Same with the foreign aid, isnt that something a country running a surplus should be worried about?