MaxPengwing

It's not just repairing cars, I told a coworker I replaces the fuse in my Bosch blender and he looked at me as if I was insane. "But what if it catches fire?" was his reply.

Dragging my team to the nearest maker space for a teambuilding exercise as soon as I figure out how to convince HR to pay for it. People need to know things do not catch fire if you repair it.

So that's still somewhere between 6600 to 11000 people in the US alone. Assuming a range of 1/300000 to 1/400000 out of 331 million US Citizens...

So while rare, its not impossible to run in to.

I was not aware of that, thanks for sharing! It does explain why I have seen more indian recruitment in EU from India and China since our backlog or naturalization process is only 5 years of living in the country and then 1-3 years for the bureaucracy to manage the application.

Given that we (Sweden) have been the preferred partner with Norway for NATO winter training exercises since the 1980s and our entire military strategy was based on "Nato will protect us if Putin invades" you are not wrong.

What changed was USA having people like Trump and the Republican party talk about not protecting NATO countries anymore. It made us realize that we can't continue to count on US help as the premise is based on the US having absolute control of the nuclear weapons, but loading them on NATO ally dual capable airplanes to launch the nukes.

If Europe is not convinced that the US will not share the nukes as agreed, then Europe has to actually rearm and might even casue a nuclear proliferation with France and UK restarting their nuclear programs.

so yeah it changes and not changes the geopolitics.

Now the biggest issue is to get those that train to come back. A lot of Russians chose not to, same with Indians, and Japanese. China has an extensive espionage network focused on keeping track of exchange students and make sure that they fall in line. Much more so than any other nation.

have a friend from Malaysia and they had this smart idea that if you study abroad and get a PhD or Masters (as I understood it) your entire student loan would be forgiven. Again people didn't move back, so the last I hear was that they tried to make it contingent on moving back to Malaysia. My info is abitout of date since it was a pre pandemic conversation I had with him.

Japan did the same thing before and after the world wars. This is not really that new or strange. India has been doing the same thing. Russia as well.

it's standard practice to send people to more advanced countries to train and then have them come back and start companies based on what they have learned. this is why Patents only really work in local regions or within a Nation.

the biggest difference is that China has been so much more blatant and in your face with it, especially in the military technology sectors.

and you have to consider that train-stations are older and have better layout to get people on and off trains than airplanes that have tighter security even on inter EU travel for EU citizens.

One thing that is really annoying with traveling in EU via train is that there is no simple way to book tickets even with InterRail/EuroRail app. I did a vacation where i traveled around between Netherlands, Germany, Denmark Sweden and Poland back and forth and if you want a reserved seat you have to order it in advance for Poland and have your paper tickets sent to you in your home country 2 weeks in advance.

If you are in Poland you can do reservations the same day.

An other problem with reservations is that they are only for the train you have reserved on, and in Germany and Denmark there is a high probability that your train will be delayed to the point of being replaced with a train with fewer cabins, meaning you won't have a seat.

Might not sound like a big deal but on a trip from Copen hagen to Berlin that is 7 hours or a trip from Berlin to Katowice that is 8 hours, not having a seat is fast becomming an issue.

You simply wont get business people to travel with trains like that. EU seems to have made the decision that inter european travel by train is for young people in their early 20s and goods containers.

But within European countries the internal travels are usually not a problem and quite nice. Except in Southern Sweden. The commuter trains are a complete mess and has been ever since it was privatized.

Yes, I agree. But if things go south with starting up. Failure is a possibility, it's good to have something in your back pocket no?

Thanks!