This isn’t exactly a rare sentiment these days, but it’s interesting coming from Nicolas since he’s one of the most aggressively pro-US Europeans I’ve met (particularly the SV vision of the US). Extra rare because he’s not just European but French. europeanstraits.substack.com/p/is-being-ame
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Says something about the depth of positive potential in this country that despite 4 years of Trump and the prospect of 4 more, I don’t share this sentiment. The US is falling shockingly fast, but from a startlingly high position.
Despite the current anti-immigrant mood, it’s still actually the place I feel most welcome. The ethnonationalist turn of the US feels extra shocking because “native” is still an extremely unnatural construct here. Everywhere else, nativism is a deeper and more unwelcoming idea.
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In absolute terms life here sucks right now. I detest the government, this state is burning, culture war is taking over everything, tech is stagnating... but when I ask, where else *could* I go with better overall prospects, there’s basically no other country on the list.
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A ton of places have fewer negatives, but basically no place has significant positives that are available to me. Many places would be much nicer if I were much richer and the barriers to getting in were much lower.
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Perhaps the view looks different if you already have a legal+linguistic foothold in a rich European or Asian country.
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There’s still enough of value in this country that it’s a no-brainer that it’s worth saving from Trumpies. If he gets 4 more years, and/or Congress remains deadlocked, I don’t know if that will still be true in 2024. His damage capacity will 3x if he stays.
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What’s valuable about the US?
The story of how the hacker revolution grew out of the railroad modeling club at MIT gets at it. There were 2 groups there in the 1960s. One focused on aesthetics, accurate train models, landscapes, etc. Other was into railroads as “systems”.
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Is there a book you’d recommend about this? I’ve read about Princeton and the early computers, and plenty of stuff about SV history, but not this piece of hacker history!
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Huh, it's on my list but would have never expected it to start with model railroads!

