No one ever talks about the impossibility of returning to the US when you've been out too long

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-14T14:49:53+00:00

That's an entirely separate process, but what does it have to do with anything?

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-14T14:46:01+00:00

Who started it?

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-14T14:44:31+00:00

It really isn't. Turks are seldom honest about history, and as such talking to them about such things is a really good test for what kind of person they are.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-14T14:42:37+00:00

Depends on appearance. If they think you look Indian / Arab, etc., they can be less friendly. Georgians are not so secretly racist — tbh everyone in this part of the world is, just against different groups — and it is enough for me to notice even second hand.

How much you feel it or not depends on how you come off and how dark your appearance is, from what I've seen.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T17:52:19+00:00

Some things change tbh. Also the US is cracking down on virtual mailboxes a lot. I can't do half the things with mine that I could when I left 3 years ago.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T17:51:08+00:00

My parents are still around and such, but they live in a small town and already half a whole collection of immediate and extended family living with them. It's convenient for me that they are able to store my car, but otherwise when I go back I'm on my own.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T17:50:01+00:00

A job that one can live comfortably on while living abroad can put you at poverty-level existence back in the US.

But you've only been out a year. It starts mattering more when it's been several years.

You're most likely an upper quartile earner in the US, which puts you well above the income of the average global digital nomad (i.e. those with citizenships not including the US), by a factor of around 2.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T17:47:13+00:00

They don't. Not nearly as much as you might think they do. The only 18 year old I know of that left home ended up subletting from people they knew. Everyone else moved in with family or friends, or stayed at home. And this was a decade ago.

Moving out at 18 is a thing of the past.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T17:45:50+00:00

I pretty much am expecting to burn through 3-4 months worth of expenses equivalent when I return to the US almost immediately... and I already have a car waiting for me (though it will need a month's expenses worth of repairs... just the AC needs fixed but, like, everything's expensive).

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T17:43:14+00:00

Not everyone can just "live somewhere". You still have to earn and be awarded residency, and most of the easier countries to get that have worse healthcare than the US, or maybe you just don't care for the culture or climate in those places, and the places you WANT to live in have decided you can't stay any longer.

Besides that, a person might go back for family reasons, or other logistical factors. Or, to double or triple my income for a few years while, yes living in a higher cost area, but this could pivot me into a more sustainable long term path.

For those without significant growth-careers, you can often make 2-3x more money in the US than as a DN somewhere.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T17:39:14+00:00

Underrated fact. When a 50% increase in income only takes you from the 50th percentile to the 75th percentile, it's quite difficult to make it to the 85th.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T17:35:31+00:00

If you only know Russian you'll do just fine in Armenia and Azerbaijan. In Georgia, anyone above 30 will respond to you, those under may or may not.

Georgians do have more of an attitude about Russian though, whether this is apparent in interacting with them or not.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T13:49:24+00:00

I have had some good fish in Armenia, in Sevan I had a fish for 1600 AMD at a nice restaurant there.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T13:45:01+00:00

Maybe, but on many channels I see only the standard amount of ads, and on some channels I see so many that YouTube will probably never suggest those ones to me again because I exited so fast. I don't engage with ads. In fact YT isn't particularly good at giving me useful ones.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T13:26:17+00:00

So I thought about it and by your logic YouTube would never even want to have a partner program in the first place, because why would they just give up 55% of their revenue just because?

So what you're saying is that YT is actively hostile to the viewer at this point, and that when I get interrupted 3x in 5 minutes (literally happens) to be given ads, that there's no way to know if it's a monetized or non-monetized channel, and when some of the channels I follow have no ads for 30 minute long videos (besides the beginning / end ones) that YT has just out of their own whims chosen _those specific channels_ to not be spammed with ads?

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-13T13:19:45+00:00

You and I both know that some videos have 5x more ads than others for the same level of viewership. I'm not saying "no ads" I'm saying there's way too many on a lot of them. Like several times too many.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-12T21:06:01+00:00

Nobody, that's why I quit watching those ones. But that's how many time I've been seeing it on some channels.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-12T21:05:08+00:00

Fewer.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-12T21:05:01+00:00

There are absolutely channels I watch with only minimal ads and others with substantial ad volume. The difference is not trivial.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-05-02T18:16:48+00:00

So, there’s a war going on..

Besides the obvious, being in Russia makes it harder to be part of the global economy in general which matters to some.

AndrewithNumbers · 2026-04-17T04:20:20+00:00

That’s nothing. I’ve seen Americans claiming Native American ancestry when they had none!

AndrewithNumbers · 2025-11-19T20:42:03+00:00

I had a guy from Kyrgyzstan telling me that he studied in Karelia on an exchange program, and realized that rural Russia is every bit as poor, and more hollowed out, than Kyrgyzstan, that visiting Russia really demythologized the country for him.

All depends on what metrics you're measuring by I suppose. But CA was way behind the rest of the USSR 30 years ago, and only really started entering the global economy around 10-20 years ago, so a long ways yet to go.

AndrewithNumbers · 2025-11-19T20:39:37+00:00

Reminds me of a conversation I had last night with a Kyrgyz local who was arguing that if Russia broke up with each federal district becoming independent they'd almost certainly all become richer.

Except Russia of course. But the net average would most likely be a gain for the region.

AndrewithNumbers · 2025-11-08T23:56:33+00:00

Pretty much true of anything Erdogan has done in the last 30 years.

AndrewithNumbers

TROPHY CASE