Varyk
@Varyk@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on So, is the USA screwed? 1 day ago:
“China is catching up, but still behind in defense and aerospace technology”
this is a fiction, according to US defense officials, but if we pretended it was true, it doesn’t change the original point, that the US is falling behind in most technological fields.
you’ll notice that I didn’t mention aerospace in my original top of the dome list.
it looks like you’re agreeing with all my other points though, so I don’t have much else to say except that the important fiction to point out is this:
“other countries are catching up steadily overall and are ahead in some areas, especially China.”
10 years ago? you could argue that other countries were playing catch up in most technological Fields.
now?
The US is behind in nearly every technological field and especially now is uninterested in catching up to the rest of the world.
The US population cannot afford to live and is critically undereducated, and are about to have four more years of withheld R&D funding.
That’s the reality on the ground now.
any “we’re not doing so bad” mentality simply is not correct anymore, and it’s important to recognize the reason behind and the rate at which the US is failing to advance in critical fields.
You’re not going to be able to swerve back onto the road by pretending the guardrails you’re grinding against aren’t there.
- Comment on So, is the USA screwed? 2 days ago:
you first claimed that the US is still leading in most technological fields.
this is false, as I pointed out in my previous comment.
your new tack is the US “is still doing very good, though”
this is also incorrect.
“aerospace”:
a private company innovated aerospace technology despite the US government’s reluctance to invest in aerospace technology.
China has been investing in space, and are planning to build space stations and moon bases, and have been having regular launches.
“defense”: We are not ahead of the game anymore. US dod officials have been very clearly saying for Over a decade that the US might already be behind China in key areas of defense, AI weapons systems among those, despite spending 4 to 10 times as much on their defense budget.
“All the biggest and leading companies in that area are still based in the US.”
biggest? okay.
leading? in what world is Microsoft a leading technological innovator?
they cannot even compete with a free operating system despite decades of a head start and hundreds of billions more capital.
Apple? they haven’t been innovative in 15 years, depend on slave labor, and their newest phones aren’t even playing catch up with East Asian phones anymore, hardware or software.
“You’re also missing biotechnology…”
I wasn’t listing literally every field the US was failing in, I was refuting your false notion that the US was still leading in most technological fields.
“The possibly most disruptive technology AI is also firmly in the hands of the USA.”
not according to AI researchers, AI CEOs, computer scientists, and the US DOD.
and again, any prowess US companies had in AI was due to the mass exploitation of workers abroad.
“The amount of money spent on R&D is still huge in the USA”
it sure isn’t now, grants and federal funding have been cut by more than half since dumps took office.
“it attracts top minds from across the globe.”
this was true 20 years ago.
My point is that it is not true today, any more than it is true for any other country.
The US is not leading in most, if any, technological fields, it’s not leading in manufacturing, it’s not leading in most sciences, and it has one of the most awful education systems in the world, not to mention the living affordability crisis going on.
If people can’t afford groceries or a simple apartment to live in, let alone education, none of which they can afford in the US anymore, and have not been able to for the last generation, innovation falls by the wayside.
as it has been for a long time.
and now, US “dominance” will continue to freefall for at least the next 4 years.
you can’t do science without funding and support, and dumps has taken that funding away, and importantly does not believe in science or the benefits of research and development.
The US population has not been invested in, and your industries are suffering for that.
meanwhile, other countries are investing record amounts and setting technological records in innovative technologies like solar that the US has no hope of catching up to in the near future.
- Comment on So, is the USA screwed? 2 days ago:
The US does not have a dominant position in:
microchips.
batteries.
solar.
material science.
fusion.
energy.
automotive.
displays.
The list goes on.
If you still think the USA is leading in tech, you are sorely misinformed about the state of the technological world(to be fair, it Is startling how rapidly the US has fallen out of grace in many of these technological fields).
The US is either barely clinging to previous legacies of prowess in tech fields to match other countries or falling behind rapidly, and without innovative latitude, federal grants or funding for research, they’re falling behind even further.
the US does not have the technological edge it once did; scientists, the department of defense, everybody in the know agrees and have been making public statements about how quickly the US is falling behind in critical scientific and technological fields.
- Comment on So, is the USA screwed? 3 days ago:
The silver lining here is that with now 8 years of abolishing civil/workers rights, technology and social development being suppressed and Americans falling so objectively behind in most measurable fields, hopefully Americans can get over their blatantly false sense of exceptionalism and become comfortable just being another part of the world.
- Comment on I feel my life is empty. Is there any way to stop this? 4 days ago:
China and Saudi Arabia still pay 3 to 6K US a month, and it’s even easier to get a teaching job in those countries than japan.
I agree, he should get out there.
- Comment on How do you express romantic interest in someone? 5 days ago:
hey, the commenter Snowstorm Is the only comment I see here that is accurate. following those steps is the best way to show romantic interest in someone.
- Comment on I feel my life is empty. Is there any way to stop this? 5 days ago:
traveling to Asia is like 300 bucks, and hostels are $4 a day. food is a dollar a dish, and you can hang out in parks at the beach or at home and watch movies all day.
living abroad is much cheaper than what you’re paying now.
you said you save most of your paycheck.
If you have a few thousand saved, you can easily live abroad for a year and figure out something you like to do more than a job that sucks around a bunch of people that you don’t like in a situation that’s making you depressed.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
They aren’t!
Two things:
1: Americans are not actually very litigious relative to other countries, what you’re referring to is a culture projected by corporate interests violating the rights of individual Americans, interests invested in telling American citizens that they are too litigious, resulting in citizens who will therefore abstain from legally defending their rights when those rights are violated.
2: legal advertising became legal less than 50 years ago in the United States, because it’s obviously unethical and societally harmful. at this point, legal advertising is basically unregulated in the US.
Because The US allows legal commercials and advertisements on billboards and very importantly, American culture is the salient exported culture globally, lawsuits seem wider spread in the US and US culture than they actually are.
- Comment on this year has been pretty fun so far 1 week ago:
those are real? Kanye explicitly said he’s a Nazi and he turned down make a wish kids?
I’ve never used Twitter and don’t know enough to tell the real tweet from a not real tweet.
- Comment on Tough question 2 weeks ago:
100% an astrology daughter. like a third of everybody believe in astrology anyway, so she’ll receive plenty of support from her peers.
nft son is just going to… I mean, that doesn’t end well.
- Comment on How can a US citizen invest outside the reach of the federal government? 2 weeks ago:
oh yeah, that’ll do it.
it’s funny, there’s actually a built-in option in the form for filing the fbar late because you didn’t know about it, I assume because late filings happen so often.
- Comment on How can a US citizen invest outside the reach of the federal government? 2 weeks ago:
sure, i can clarify those for you up here as well.
the max excluded income is variable, so this year it’ll be $126,500. the cap is regulated by the irs and goes up each year.
the FEIE(foreign earned income exclusion) form is form 2555, which you fill out with your regular taxes. it’s a very simple couple of pages that you fill in the blanks with the dates you were out of the country and your total earned income for the year, usually takes me fifteen minutes.
the declaration of foreign investment you mentioned is called the FBAR, an online form that takes less than a minute to fill out If you have more than 10,000 invested overseas.
If you have more than 10,000 USD invested overseas, you have to annually declare how much and which financial institutions your savings are in via the FBAR.
as long as you take the 10 to 15 minutes to fill out the FEIE, you won’t have any problems with the IRS excluding earned income.
- Comment on How can a US citizen invest outside the reach of the federal government? 2 weeks ago:
i have.
you want to be part of the US tax system while being “out of reach of the federal government”, two aims you should understand are incompatible.
- Comment on How can a US citizen invest outside the reach of the federal government? 2 weeks ago:
Yes, reporting foreign income and paying taxes is exactly what keeps the US from seizing and freezing accounts.
you said you don’t want to avoid paying taxes.
If you pay taxes, then you’re in no danger of the US government seizing or freezing your accounts.
- Comment on How can a US citizen invest outside the reach of the federal government? 2 weeks ago:
then all you have to do is file the FBAR and pay your taxes every year and you can invest anywhere you want, however much you want.
- Comment on How can a US citizen invest outside the reach of the federal government? 2 weeks ago:
oh, so what did you mean by “outside the reach of the government”, just foreign investment opportunities?
- Comment on How can a US citizen invest outside the reach of the federal government? 2 weeks ago:
you can avoid paying earned income taxes altogether by living outside of the US for more than 330 days out of the fiscal year.
this is called foreign earned income exclusion.
investment income is different; investment income is not excluded by the FEIE, only earned income, so you wouldn’t be able to avoid paying investment income tax to the US unless you immigrated to to another country.
- Comment on FLASHBACK: FAA turned away qualified air traffic controllers based solely on race 3 weeks ago:
the title is bullshit, it’s a dog whistle attack on DEI hires to draw attention away from the fact that conservative policies just killed 70 people by adding DEI initiatives and firing FAA officials.
- Comment on FLASHBACK: FAA turned away qualified air traffic controllers based solely on race 3 weeks ago:
solution: complete hiring freeze.
worked out great.
- Comment on Steven Seagal Movie Out For A Kill Is So Lazy He Fights Sitting Down - Worst Movie Ever 3 weeks ago:
wow good call, I laughed out loud a lot during that, I’m definitely watching the rest of that channel.
- Comment on At least it doesn't cause tinnitus. Looking at you, Nirnroot. 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on So is it "It just works" or "Shit just works"? 1 month ago:
shhhh. it just works.
- Comment on Vegan drink Oatly can’t call itself ‘milk’, judges rule 2 months ago:
some places called nut-based milk “mylk” to avoid this legal complication.
they could probably start doing that.
- Comment on How the Fuck did Trump Actually Win - F.D Singifier 2 months ago:
when people ask me how Trump won, I explain that Americans care so little about women as a group that they’re letting them die in front of hospitals rather than allowing them to have health care.
“allowing” them.
so the party hoping to elect a woman president is at an extreme disadvantage.
I also think domestic and international election interference election interference plays a much more significant role in American elections than people think and in hindsight and future history textbooks, people will be shaking their heads, not just at the electoral college, but at direct election interference securing Republican victories.
people don’t think election interference is important because we hear the word gerrymander or social media bias or “Russian troll farms” and since they’re omnipresent, they’re dismissed, although they have direct practical influence on campaigns and election processes.
- Comment on Oedipus pasta 2 months ago:
it looks like mom’s fried rice is a separate dish that has more ingredients, you can add mushrooms and meat and a bunch of vegetables, but the recipes for this “kids” mom’s fried rice only have egg, rice and cabbage, plus sauce:
- Comment on Oedipus pasta 2 months ago:
- Comment on Is there any word of the how the tariffs or taxes that will be imposed by next USA government affect consulting from external countries? 3 months ago:
that’s basically what’s going to happen again.
US companies will use less consulting because it’s more expensive.
- Comment on I have been told ever since I was a little shit that when you die you go to heaven first wait in line for St Peter to judge you at the pearly gates? Is this in the Bible? I thought god did judging 3 months ago:
this is my favorite explanation, by Leslie mann, of the role of St. Peter:
- Comment on Why Don’t All Rivers Make Canyons? | MinuteEarth 3 months ago:
wow, that is a great video.
- Comment on Why is the word "expat" a thing? 3 months ago:
I hear the word expat all over the world, I don’t think it’s regional.
“immigrant” gives the impression that you are traveling to get to someplace, while expat implies that you are traveling to get away from someplace, as I’ve heard it used.
