honzabe

That article reads like Noah’s cognitive dissonance trying to cling to something that no longer exists (if it even existed in the first place). Like using the net migration numbers from 2024 and talking about it as if this was the present - there is no way I am going to believe the green in that chart is not going to turn red when numbers from the Trump 2.0 era are there.

The article does not mention payments. I would be especially interested in a European Stripe alternative - this is what I find really difficult to replace.

> The story of the United States is one of genocide, racism, imperialism, and oppression of the working class.

I do not think it is. The story of the US contains all those things. And just as the story of the US contains Abu Ghraib, it also contains functioning courts sending Abu Ghraib perpetrators to jail. You can call it the permanent struggle between good and evil. There is no country in the world without evil. But there is a difference between evil being present and evil dominating. When functioning courts are dismantled, the perpetrators rewarded, you are forbidden to even talk about it, and there is no recourse left, it will be different. People who have not lived through a totalitarian regime sometimes miss that distinction. I also grew up in a communist Czechoslovakia, and I did not idolize the US because I was blind to the bad parts. I idolized it because you had evil, but not evil fully controlling the game. Even now, you can still simply move out of the US. Sure, there might be some bureaucratic hurdles, but you can fly away on a plane - your only way out is not to try to crawl under barbed wire and risk getting shot.

I will be honest - when people say something like “it’s all the same, Russia, the US, all are bad”, I think to myself... óóóh, you have no idea what you are talking about. Unfortunately, the current US is going in that direction, so you might find out. Not that I wish that on anyone.

As a European, I hope Trump 2.0 will do to European Trumpist movements what Brexit did to European anti-EU movements.

What is your experience running that company? It looks great on paper, but if you don’t mind sharing, what is the practical side of things? Have you encountered any stumbling blocks?

> What is the European alternative to the US military if Russia attacks Europe?

European military. Why do some people act as if European countries had no armies?

And even if we had no armies and Russia attacked and totally destroyed us, how is it related to the topic discussed here, which is whether the influx of European engineers to the US will continue or not?

> This whole thing just seems like the standard hysterical overreaction of people who spend too much time on social media.

Perhaps. I don't think it is, but let's say you are right. How is that relevant? People do not want to go to a country they perceive negatively. Whether that perception is an objective fact or hysteria is, in this context, immaterial.

I think you underestimate how dramatically the perception of the US in Europe changed for the worse. It was already in nose dive during recent months, but the recent days (Greenland crisis) will put a nail in the coffin. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I expect that influx to dry up very soon.

> Come on. Americans sent no such signal. No US election in my lifetime has been about foreign policy, including the last one. Domestic issues are by far predominant.

Guess what, we also care about domestic issues more. Except in smaller countries, your election might have a bigger impact on our fate than our own elections. We only want to live our lives and take care of our families... and then you elect the president who starts helping our worst enemy, and then even threatens our neighbor.

Our soldiers bled and died for you in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please, try to put yourself in our shoes. Imagine you live in one of those small countries that always tried to be a good ally to the US, and you get stabbed in the back, and then you hear an American basically saying, “come on, we don’t care about you, we only care about ourselves”. How would you react?

> Was/is it common practice to omit the ages of adult women in Germany?

A gentleman does not ask a lady's age.