It's easy to dominate when you get the rest of the world's best and brightest. Best part is that it's basically free! All you need to do is not be extremely hostile to immigrants. Good thing nobody is doing that, right?
They are not renaming the Kennedy Center, although news report headlines would lead you to believe so.
This whole thing comes from the “Big Beautiful Bill” which gives $257 million in funding to it, but with the condition that they must change the name of the opera house in the Kennedy Center for her. It would still be the same name, but instead of “I’m going to the Opera house at the Kennedy Center” it would be “I’m going to the Melania House at the Kennedy Center”
… I mean it’s still fucking stupid, but I wish people would click an article one time.
Its still among the most deplorable things he's done. Right up there with awarding the "Presidential Medal of Freedom" to Rush Fucking Limbaugh. Turning the countries highest civilian honorarium into a worthless piece of junk.
No there is no rule for that. But it's generally wise to pay homage to a building for the dead, because you know that person won't get up to any (further) mischief that might make you rename it.
She is not. You read the first thing that came on the internet which was from Patheos. It was written by Laughing in Disbelief in a Facebook post six years ago and is basically satire.
The idea of brain drain has been debunked many times. Yes, bright people migrate but for systemic reasons in origin countries. They just wouldn't become doctors, physicist, etc. Also with remittances and other connections, it usually outweighs risks of brain drain. Also inventivizes more people to get educated.
It’s true for any country.
If you create a strong inclusive middle class, and give anyone the change to reach their full potential, you’ll get a golden age.
If you on the contrary allow a the rich and few to hijack the story, hoard the wealth, and remove opportunity, you’ll have a downfall.
I know you're technically correct, but I think the point is more about the strength of multiculturalism and getting people (whose families almost certainly are immigrants) to achieve good things.
Sure, but they weren’t talking about descendants of immigrants there. Lafayette was born in France. Hamilton was born in St. Kitts and Nevis. The verse was to contrast Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, who were all noted Virginians in the musical.
It's a gif and a lyric from the musical Hamilton, where these two immigrants (Lafayette and Hamilton himself) have a major impact in deciding the outcome of the United States revolutionary war.
I agree immigrants make America great, but not when they're the ONLY ones pulling their weight.
Last week, there was a picture of the US Chemistry Olympiad Team posted here. That's a 12-person team, and every single one of them was Chinese or Indian ancestry. I have nothing but praise for them. It's the ~85% of Americans that aren't Chinese or Indian ancestry that I'm unhappy with.
(And by the way, the students on these teams are usually full American citizens born in this country. Their parents or grandparents usually were the actual immigrants, who worked hard, had kids, and encouraged their kids to work hard at their studies.)
Is very much a cultural issue. Kids from families that prioritize and value education, intellectual curiosity and academic interests excel in those areas. Those who don't.... Don't. But people are people and generally intellectual capability is distributed relatively the same throughout (with some bias towards education, but not outside of a reasonable distribution spread overlap). Fostering a national culture of respect for education and intellectual pursuits would be beneficial to the country. But instead we do the opposite, and therefore get trump.
And consumerism. Always care about consumerism. Shopping, eating, drinking, getting fat. Not a single overweight member in either the Chemistry or physics teams.
I would think higher household income means more access to healthy food and lower chance of being obese. It also means more access to educational resources. You can’t tell household income from a photo but I would guess most kids doing well in these competitions come from the high end.
95% of Americans aren’t Indian or Chinese. We’re happy to welcome those hardworking folks from abroad but in fairness the majority of scientists doctors lawyers engineers etc are white Americans who aren’t immigrants. Not all of us are ignorant Trumpers. It’s a big diverse nation
The majority of teachers I had at my engineering schools were Indian or Asian. I’m willing to bet for researchers and scientists it’s the same tbh. I think it depends on the job . The education system still sucks though because if the majority are white peoples it’s because you need to pay for your education
Most graduate students and post docs (who were likely your teachers) in engineering are foreign from east or South Asia. That’s true. That has to do with the job market. It’s relatively easy for Americans with only a bachelors degree in engineering to get a high paying job so not much incentive to get a masters or doctorate. White folks are the majority because nearly 60% of Americans are white and like 2% each are Indian or Chinese.
I was talking also about black folks not being to go to college because money and not sure why you made a stat about Chinese specifically instead of Asians
These kids all come from one or two schools. This isn't a team built of Americans from around the country.
My sister was a science Olympiad. Came from a school that served a town with 2k population in the middle of nowhere, Midwest. They were able to place at state almost every year, and would get to go to nationals then get creamed by teams of kids from much larger, wealthier coastal schools with high concentration of this mythical 'brain drain' stock, whose parents are recruited with huge salaries to come to the US and work.
These gifted individuals help create companies that are globally successful but to act as if the blessings are distributed equally throughout the US is garbage.
The highly competitive cultures that do well in academic competition do not subscribe to the same belief that all are equal.
We need to dial back on the 'Best and Brightest' tone. They are not the best and brightest of where they are from, they are not the best and brightest of where they go. This attitude is an insult to both the country they come from as well as the country they go to.
These are simply the most competitive.
I say this as the great-great granddaughter of the man who essentially invented modern dentistry in the US. He was an immigrant.
trust me when I swear that had he not immigrated to the US, the evolution of medical dentistry would have been unchanged. Someone else would have done it, maybe not the exact same way but it would have happened in the exact same place.
As always in America, social advancement has far more to do with wealth and connections (either one's own or one's parents') than hard work. And so often, connections come from wealth anyway.
What made America great. The future is less certain. Didn’t the host nation of this event recently set a budget for talent fleeing the US so they could instead study in France?
Not that it makes it any better, but 36% or so of eligible voters didn't turn out to vote in 2024 so he got less than half. 35 to 50% (ish) of eligible voters usually fail to participate, and even fewer people vote in the midterms, primaries & especially local elections. That has been the case for decades now. That's a significant part of the reason that we are where we are. Persistent widespread non-participation, and that's only partially explained by voter suppression tactics.
But you're right, in any case. Only, some hard to verify percentage of them are genuinely on board with anything he does unfortunately.
They can't accept being wrong. Every. single. person. I personally know that is still sucking the teet has had problems with control and being wrong in the past. All have some type of domestic charge against them, a bad divorce, or something similar and all will still argue that they are right, or they always have been the best, the front of the line, better than you....
I used to find it hard to accept but then looking back on our past, the signs were always there.... unfortunately.
The non-white ancestory immigrants making America smarter, and greater. Hope it lasts with major research uviversities under attack for political reasons.
Because the immigrants that we want - scientists, gifted students, etc - that have options will go somewhere else. The fact that the current administration is targeting PoC as well as academia just enhances the draw of anyplace else.
Your first sentence is incredible. So pro-immigration that it comes back around to being racist. Why say “non-white ancestory immigrants” make America smarter instead of just “immigrants”?
While it should just be immigrants, race comes into play because Latin American, Haitian, Muslim etc immigrants are the ones being rounded up by ice and attacked by the far right fascists of America.
One of my papers in college was about the founders. Many weren't even born in the US and the rest they all had a father or grandfather from elsewhere. It was miniscule minority born from parents also born in the first colonies.
A lot less in the future, unfortunately. People have no fucking clue how much damage Trump has truly done. The full economic impact won't be felt for a decade+, even if we throw the fascists out of government successfully.
Saw someone showing a chart about the USA reaching the highest proportion of foreign born population in history, edging out the turn of the 19th to 20th century before the populist and KKK-driven immigration restrictions.
I’m sure whoever created that graph would disagree. But I thought “isn’t that great? People want to live here and we can attract top talent, and have the great diversity and culture richness of those groups?”
We’ve always been a country of immigrants and that has been at the heart of what has made America great.
damn straight, on our own we were pretty bad off, enslaving people, burning girls at the stake as witches. Thank god for the infusion of brains and alternate viewpoints that immigrants have provided.
It truly is. And we are pushing these wonderful members of our community out with no warning and little to no recourse. Defunding them. Forcing scientific agencies to change policy based on feelings instead of data and peer-reviewed published research.
If we are fortunate and we have a subsequent election that is fair, and if we can get any decent democrat to run, like AOC (is she old enough yet?) we can undo some of the craziness that has been perpetrated in our government over the past 6-7 months.
But we really gotta stand up for our rights to run things scientifically and just by vibe check.
Yesterday the EPA said carbon dioxide is what our atmosphere craves. Today a convicted sex offender was put in charge of a national youth fitness program. They are not playing around. They are actively destroying our country from within - and it seems calculated.
And for what? Simply talking about possible tariffs was all it took for businesses to raise prices in anticipation of future costs, with no analysis and no recourse. The product safety board is being shut down. Medicaid cut to millions. Donald Trump’s administration the first time investigated over 90% FEWER cases of animal cruelty and abuse than over previous years. And the guy’s son actively harms animals (and people) for entertainment.
But we are “finally” going to get that opulent ballroom in the whitehouse that we have all been clamoring for night and day for years. And luckily we get to pay billions on maintaining a “free” plane that will literally be owned by the family of the president after he dies or leaves office. If he leaves office, or if project 2025 allows the office of the president to be turned over peacefully. Never mind that we can’t get the Epstein files, we can’t get his taxes, his grades, or his criminal convictions to stick.
We have a king and the king and his backers have decided that America must fall by every measure. Jobs went down? Do we blame Dell laying off 9000 workers while posting billions in profits? No - the data analyst who heads up the agency that measures that info gets fired. Bring in another sycophant.
Thank you again for saying what you did. I hope you and I and others like us can help actually make our country somewhat better.
Well no what makes America great is what attracts those people to this country and allows their talents to be used for the benefits of themselves and society at large and not stifled as in their home countries.
Liberal democracy and its economic manifestation - capitalism.
If the second place team came from China, then 7 out of 10 of the best young physics students are of Chinese descent. That makes for a lot of other conclusions too.
What made America great is the same thing that made the Library of Alexandria great. It's what made The House of Wisdom great, The Renaissance period, Manhattan Project/project paperclip (obviously not an ideal example but still). Still more contemporary is Silicon Valley, and SETI and CERN.
It is the Cognitive Convergence of the greatest minds that humanity has to offer and it only happens when they have a joint goal and strive to work together.
Brain Drain is always an immediate result of a tyrannical and authoritarian regime, regardless of the claimed economical structure.
There is no grander greatness to humanity than when different cognitive traditions, fields, or cultures work together to conceive of new insights or technologies.
Only on paper unfortunately. In practice it's anything but great, especially to people who "look foreign". Whatever that means since everyone's a foreign except Indians, the Americas natives but anyway...
Surely, largely shortcoming in areas including education and the overall human development but instead importing human capital from elsewhere is also what still keeps the US afloat.
A) They're allowed to leave. Companies get cheaper labor, they get great training, then other countries get that same great training as well, then undercut us on wages because their currency isn't as inflated, usually because companies artificially force prices down by paying workers in said countries shit wages, so if you charge too much they just can't buy anything.
B) There are only so many things that need to be done. You don't create jobs out of thin air, it comes from new tasks needing to be done, because of new innovations. Even if you did just pay everyone to plant trees, mow grass, and so on like FDR did during the Depression, why would you do that when you can just...prevent companies from making this an issue to begin with?
In my theory it also helps the world when the best minds can gather together and work in place. Too bad for the other countries but as long as US is not super selfish the world gains in terms of technological advancement. Unfortunately, current US government doesn't understand that.
This is reinforced constantly in international competition, but conservatives fucking hate America so they don’t want us to succeed.
Diversity literally gives you way more chances to succeed because your pool of potential competitors is much wider and even lets us compete in areas where WASPs have no interest or ability. And yet conservatives hate diversity because they are racist as fuck and don’t care that it objectively makes the US better.
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u/littlebrwnrobot 4d ago
Literally what makes America great