I think it’s close? Like 5-20 years close for commercially available robotics prosthetics systems (probably still need doctor’s prescriptions for it though)

• We already have pretty well-established prosthetics systems at the moment
• China and Japan (esp China) have some pretty exciting robotics breakthroughs, see the hilarious robotics Olympics from China recently
• However, China isn’t the best at manufacturing QC yet, so widespread deployment may take a few years from above

First of all: you’re good! I think there are lots of centrist and right-leaning people in academia who are doing just fine; especially in the US lots of world-class unis are in deeply conservative areas too. Most of academia don’t discuss politics that much at all as long as one cares about science. I’d wager the political leaning bias is more from a population bias rather than systematic discrimination of any sort

I could imagine AI researchers being more right-leaning yeah. The stats I got were from personal anecdote and research being done about this a short while back… there might have been an update in the AI age

First of all, good for you lol

It’s € 1.715 with today’s exchange rate. The minimum salary where I live is roughly € 1,9k after tax. Not life-changing money, but it’s still an absolutely huge amount that is enough for survival & is quite significant

I mean this is a large amount of money even for Americans though. The absolute highest paying “normal” job I could think of is a stacked SF Bay tech guy who makes $200K/yr after tax… but that’s still like 12% of take-home pay

Current STEM researcher who also happened to have met a few academics on the right side of the political spectrum… I am very qualified to speak about this I hope. I’ll try to use as unbiased language as possible

First of all, you are correct. It is generally true that most academics are left-leaning (obligatory not all, but you get the point)

In general, higher education attainment is associated with being left-leaning: academia is known to have extreme levels of education attainment (many jobs require a PhD). On top of it, academic jobs reward intellectual curiosity, do not tend to pay super well, tend to heavily rely on governmental funding… all of these are traditionally more associated with the political left or left-leaning. Still, there very much are right-leaning academics, they just don’t tend to scream around a lot about it

There are notable exceptions however. Economics is quite famous for being politically balanced, although what economics treat as left/right-leaning might be a bit different from the general public. If I remember, business schools (yes there are business professors!) tend to be more right-leaning. This is a smaller field and a bit more anecdotal, but quite a few prominent meta-science researchers are right-wing nutjobs: the “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” guy and the NIH director Bhattacharya guy are both COVID deniers

There are also fringe scientists as some others have mentioned, but most people within their fields don’t consider fringe scientists as part of the academia so to speak

The Chinese side of the story is heavily censored and only has official reported numbers (likely tampered with, knowing China) and some propaganda pieces, but this is very much a Chinese national emergency as well. The Guardian’s latest reporting claimed that the Chinese officials reported 16 deaths and 546 missing, while Nepal’s numbers are 675 deaths and 2,498 missing

Maybe there are ulterior motives, but I think given the extent of the disaster, it is much more likely that China treated it as a top-priority national emergency, so might as well help out the neighbors with any extra manpower as well

My understanding is… Being popular (a.k.a. having lots of subscribers) requires someone to be entertaining and be good at self-promotion. Being entertaining is independent from being a good person. For the latter, I once saw a streamer say something along the lines that anyone who is willing to do that level of self-promotion likely self-selects for at least some level of narcissistic traits

… and a lot of their subscribers are relatively young and likely don’t care, probably

The idiom is “reduce, reuse, recycle” in that order for a reason. Even if plastic recycling is difficult in the US, reducing and reusing are doable by just about anyone. This can be using less one-time plastics, eating less meat (make sure nutritionally balanced), drive less, reuse those shipping boxes for other stuff such as for paper waste, buying from local farmers (if you can afford it)… something along those lines

For home, living in an apartment is actually one of the best things one can do for the climate, since living in an apartment in a city is much, much more energy efficient than living in a suburb… not to mention cutting down on car-related costs. For ppl living in a home, methinks AC is more of a boogeyman… having good home insulation is a much better solution (as a well-insulated home uses less energy!), and the best part is that it is bipartisan so red states would happily do it too. If renovation is not possible, stuff like blackout curtains, window blinds, … are cheap insulation options

IMO these are still negligible effects on an individual level, but these are not nothing, and if everyone does these the world would be a much better place. For more meaningful actions, probably organizing

Slay the Spire 2. I do NOT want to be infinitely killed, memory-wiped, and resurrected

Currently? I am center-left in Western Europe. Political views where I live generally lean left but are quite diverse, so it’s hard to find people who are directly opposing… I do have a colleague who is a classic liberal (free market, deregulation and all that), but we are quite chill about it & that’s pretty much it

I did spend 3-4 years living in majority Hispanic/Vietnamese neighborhoods in Houston though, and I’d be considered much more left-leaning relative to the US population. So I was a left-leaning person, in fairly right-leaning neighborhoods, in a left-leaning city, in a right-leaning state… having any discussions about politics was certainly an experience, I just tried to not talk about it for the most part lol

Straight into the investment account. It’s not nothing but I’m not strapped for cash, and 50K USD alone can’t do much where I live…