5 ms·

Russian empire aerospace refugees (2021)

yread 3y ago
Kartveli also designed the A-10
cassepipe 3y ago
Moral of the story: As an autocrat, when your power is challenged by society as a whole don't fight back attempts at democratic control else worse things may happen for everyone (if you care, also you may end up in front of a firing squad) (And don't go to war repeatedly, war is always a gamble)
- bradhe 3y ago
  Characterising what Stalin did as "open the gulag and crack the whip" really glosses over a lot of details.
  - cassepipe 3y ago
    It's not that I am glossing over details, it's that I am not referring to Stalin : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia
azangru 3y ago
From the part of the article where the author draws the moral of the story: > As America descends into the California model of madness and tech-mediated kakistocracy, the smart and adventurous Americans; the kind that found tech companies, or build devilish new weapons for governments, will leave. I know many who have. Virtually everyone I speak to (of course a biased set) is thinking about it. Left wing, right wing: people in tech, military technology, finance, crypto; they see the US heading over the waterfall into madness and want no part of it. Assuming for a moment that this observation is correct, what are the destinations that the smart and adventurous Americans are leaving to? What places in the world are now the most hospitable and the most rewarding for talent? My naive impression was that Wester European countries are even less agile and enterprising than the US, and anyway, move in lockstep with it. Russia is obviously out. I doubt people are moving to African countries. Nor do I think I heard about an immigration wave into China. And despite Balaji's bullishness on India, I thought net migration is still out of India rather than the other way around. Same with Eastern Europe. So where are these Americans going? Australia? Israel? Singapore?
- wrp 3y ago
  I've known a few American techies who have set up shop in South Korea and Thailand. The tech scene in Turkey has been, to me, surprisingly active. I've heard distant rumor of people looking at Brazil.
  - boeingUH60 3y ago
    Thailand, Turkey, and Brazil are unfathomably corrupt and less productive countries…taking refuge from the US in these places is weird.
    - notahacker 3y ago
      They are also extremely odd choices for people that think the possibility people might boycott them for their political tweets is a threat to their freedom of conscience comparable to Soviet Russia...
  - wrp 3y ago
    I'll add to this...all the cases I personally knew of were in hardware development, as with the notable cases in TFA. I suppose you may evaluate a locale differently for a hardware company than for an Internet startup.
- localplume 3y ago
  as a counterargument, every single aerospace engineer I know (a few dozen), mainly in socal, has no plans of ever leaving. in fact, aerospace engineers I know from the UK and europe are dying to move to the US. I buy that people they spoke to "think" about it, like people saying they were going to leave the US when trump was elected but no mass exodus occurred. it feels like pure fear mongering with people "thinking" or "considering", since that means nothing. The US isn't falling or dying, and even if it was its worth saving rather than running away. they're even spouting misinformation like the USG is preventing people from revoking citizenship because they dont want people to leave, despite the reason this was occuring was because of COVID regulations. The US is the greatest country in the world, bar none. It has a lot to improve upon and these intelligent people should try their hardest to improve it. this article is anti-american at best and is abundant with conspiracy theories to the point it is noncredible.
hackandthink 3y ago
This is a strange essay. The arc from Russia in 1917 to California today is absurd. Russia lost World War I and fought a terrible civil war for a few years. I imagine San Francisco as a paradise in comparison.
the_gipsy 3y ago
> Igor Sikorsky... fled in 1917 because the Soviets threatened to shoot him. > The US has been working itself up to this for about 20 years now, since the “war on terror” started, and the oligarch weaponization of “woke” politics to keep the left from raising their taxes post Occupy Wall Street. Now it’s a war of terror, and the enemy, as they say, is us. The "Woke Left" is coming to shoot us! Any day now! > Conservative family-oriented religious people like Sikorsky and Seversky [...] being the backbone of every functioning civilization for all of human history. Honestly, nobody is getting "cancelled", harassed, or whatever, for manifesting these adjectives. It's ALWAYS something beyond.
- paganel 3y ago
  What was "beyond" in what Brendan Eich did?
  - the_gipsy 3y ago
    Quick check on wikipedia reveals that he proposed / funded a campaign to ban homosexuals from marrying.
    - efdee 3y ago
      Sounds pretty "conservative family-oriented religious" to me.
      - the_gipsy 3y ago
        Well if you move the goalpost to "taking away equal-rights from homosexuals"... what else should we include? Racism, misogyny..? Do you really wonder why someone would get attacked for being homophobic, or are we just playing hide and seek here?
        mutant_glofish 3y ago
        Yet another example of "That’s Not Happening and It’s Good That It Is". [1] [1]: https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-good-that-it-is/ https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-g...
dustypotato 3y ago
Well, considering that at it's peak , only about 10,000 out of 330 million americans applied to give up their citizenship a year, I'd say the second part of the authors article is BS . They mention some regional and covid related events to argue that a certain group of people are getting persecuted in the US. r/persecutionfetish if it were reddit
- jack_squat 3y ago
  The author's site is primarily poorly-researched and hyperbolic BS, mostly to provide cover for his political hot takes. Example: https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2021/11/20/us-public-health-problems-which-are-more-serious-than-corona-chan/ https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2021/11/20/us-public-heal...
tokai 3y ago
Another great example of a physicists being atrocious at doing humane scholarship. Between praising tsarists Russia and having his favorite translation of the futurist manifesto published on his blog, this is just straight fascism on the front page of HN.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  > Between praising tsarists Russia The linked article suggests that Russia might have kept its educated people if the Bolsheviks hadn't taken power and driven all those people into emigration. Few people would dispute that, and it is important to note that the Bolsheviks did not overthrow the tsar: he was already gone by the October Revolution, having been deposed in the February Revolution earlier in the year. So, it’s not about praising the tsar. If Bolsheviks specifically hadn’t screwed everything up, Russia may well have remained on the same path of development under the tsar-free regime brought in during February 1917. > having his favorite translation of the futurist manifesto In spite of Futurism's undeniable links to early Italian Fascism, I suspect that, overall, the Futurist Manifesto is discussed as an important piece of literary history and an interesting text by more people who are broadly on the left, than people who literally believe in fascism. After all, Futurism was an example of Modernism in the arts, but much fascism today often makes it a point to rejects Modernism. The linked site is well known for being quite on the right, and arguably too unhinged to deserve HN links. But there is so much better evidence you could have pointed to for that, than your two assertions I quoted here.
gedy 3y ago
The mass emigrating to other countries take is a little eccentric, but companies and people are doing this with moves out of California to places like Texas, etc.

Kartveli also designed the A-10

Moral of the story: As an autocrat, when your power is challenged by society as a whole don't fight back attempts at democratic control else worse things may happen for everyone (if you care, also you may end up in front of a firing squad) (And don't go to war repeatedly, war is always a gamble)

bradhe 3y ago
Characterising what Stalin did as "open the gulag and crack the whip" really glosses over a lot of details.
- cassepipe 3y ago
  It's not that I am glossing over details, it's that I am not referring to Stalin : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia

azangru 3y ago

From the part of the article where the author draws the moral of the story: > As America descends into the California model of madness and tech-mediated kakistocracy, the smart and adventurous Americans; the kind that found tech companies, or build devilish new weapons for governments, will leave. I know many who have. Virtually everyone I speak to (of course a biased set) is thinking about it. Left wing, right wing: people in tech, military technology, finance, crypto; they see the US heading over the waterfall into madness and want no part of it. Assuming for a moment that this observation is correct, what are the destinations that the smart and adventurous Americans are leaving to? What places in the world are now the most hospitable and the most rewarding for talent? My naive impression was that Wester European countries are even less agile and enterprising than the US, and anyway, move in lockstep with it. Russia is obviously out. I doubt people are moving to African countries. Nor do I think I heard about an immigration wave into China. And despite Balaji's bullishness on India, I thought net migration is still out of India rather than the other way around. Same with Eastern Europe. So where are these Americans going? Australia? Israel? Singapore?

wrp 3y ago
I've known a few American techies who have set up shop in South Korea and Thailand. The tech scene in Turkey has been, to me, surprisingly active. I've heard distant rumor of people looking at Brazil.
- boeingUH60 3y ago
  Thailand, Turkey, and Brazil are unfathomably corrupt and less productive countries…taking refuge from the US in these places is weird.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    They are also extremely odd choices for people that think the possibility people might boycott them for their political tweets is a threat to their freedom of conscience comparable to Soviet Russia...
- wrp 3y ago
  I'll add to this...all the cases I personally knew of were in hardware development, as with the notable cases in TFA. I suppose you may evaluate a locale differently for a hardware company than for an Internet startup.
localplume 3y ago
as a counterargument, every single aerospace engineer I know (a few dozen), mainly in socal, has no plans of ever leaving. in fact, aerospace engineers I know from the UK and europe are dying to move to the US. I buy that people they spoke to "think" about it, like people saying they were going to leave the US when trump was elected but no mass exodus occurred. it feels like pure fear mongering with people "thinking" or "considering", since that means nothing. The US isn't falling or dying, and even if it was its worth saving rather than running away. they're even spouting misinformation like the USG is preventing people from revoking citizenship because they dont want people to leave, despite the reason this was occuring was because of COVID regulations. The US is the greatest country in the world, bar none. It has a lot to improve upon and these intelligent people should try their hardest to improve it. this article is anti-american at best and is abundant with conspiracy theories to the point it is noncredible.

hackandthink 3y ago

This is a strange essay. The arc from Russia in 1917 to California today is absurd. Russia lost World War I and fought a terrible civil war for a few years. I imagine San Francisco as a paradise in comparison.

the_gipsy 3y ago

> Igor Sikorsky... fled in 1917 because the Soviets threatened to shoot him. > The US has been working itself up to this for about 20 years now, since the “war on terror” started, and the oligarch weaponization of “woke” politics to keep the left from raising their taxes post Occupy Wall Street. Now it’s a war of terror, and the enemy, as they say, is us. The "Woke Left" is coming to shoot us! Any day now! > Conservative family-oriented religious people like Sikorsky and Seversky [...] being the backbone of every functioning civilization for all of human history. Honestly, nobody is getting "cancelled", harassed, or whatever, for manifesting these adjectives. It's ALWAYS something beyond.

paganel 3y ago
What was "beyond" in what Brendan Eich did?
- the_gipsy 3y ago
  Quick check on wikipedia reveals that he proposed / funded a campaign to ban homosexuals from marrying.
  - efdee 3y ago
    Sounds pretty "conservative family-oriented religious" to me.
    - the_gipsy 3y ago
      Well if you move the goalpost to "taking away equal-rights from homosexuals"... what else should we include? Racism, misogyny..? Do you really wonder why someone would get attacked for being homophobic, or are we just playing hide and seek here?
      - mutant_glofish 3y ago
        Yet another example of "That’s Not Happening and It’s Good That It Is". [1] [1]: https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-good-that-it-is/ https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-g...

dustypotato 3y ago

Well, considering that at it's peak , only about 10,000 out of 330 million americans applied to give up their citizenship a year, I'd say the second part of the authors article is BS . They mention some regional and covid related events to argue that a certain group of people are getting persecuted in the US. r/persecutionfetish if it were reddit

jack_squat 3y ago
The author's site is primarily poorly-researched and hyperbolic BS, mostly to provide cover for his political hot takes. Example: https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2021/11/20/us-public-health-problems-which-are-more-serious-than-corona-chan/ https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2021/11/20/us-public-heal...

tokai 3y ago

Another great example of a physicists being atrocious at doing humane scholarship. Between praising tsarists Russia and having his favorite translation of the futurist manifesto published on his blog, this is just straight fascism on the front page of HN.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
> Between praising tsarists Russia The linked article suggests that Russia might have kept its educated people if the Bolsheviks hadn't taken power and driven all those people into emigration. Few people would dispute that, and it is important to note that the Bolsheviks did not overthrow the tsar: he was already gone by the October Revolution, having been deposed in the February Revolution earlier in the year. So, it’s not about praising the tsar. If Bolsheviks specifically hadn’t screwed everything up, Russia may well have remained on the same path of development under the tsar-free regime brought in during February 1917. > having his favorite translation of the futurist manifesto In spite of Futurism's undeniable links to early Italian Fascism, I suspect that, overall, the Futurist Manifesto is discussed as an important piece of literary history and an interesting text by more people who are broadly on the left, than people who literally believe in fascism. After all, Futurism was an example of Modernism in the arts, but much fascism today often makes it a point to rejects Modernism. The linked site is well known for being quite on the right, and arguably too unhinged to deserve HN links. But there is so much better evidence you could have pointed to for that, than your two assertions I quoted here.

gedy 3y ago

The mass emigrating to other countries take is a little eccentric, but companies and people are doing this with moves out of California to places like Texas, etc.