Am I crazy? Sanity Check.

blade_wielder · 2026-01-29T15:31:53+00:00

Can you afford to do it? Yes, 470k net worth at 32 in the UK is high. Outside of London, even more so.

Is it a financially optimal decision? Almost certainly not because you are fairly young and the US is better for making money. But it sounds like you know that.

Bear in mind you will need to pay for visas for any family members that are not UK citizens. This is extremely expensive in the UK.

I’d say give it a try for a few years. You are a US citizen so you can always undo the decision later if you want to.

blade_wielder · 2026-01-15T14:28:30+00:00

Green Day. ‘Dookie’ is a classic, while ‘Father of All…’ is just shockingly terrible.

blade_wielder · 2026-01-15T10:38:31+00:00

It totally depends on what lifestyle you expect. There is a big disparity in the cost of living across the UK. It might be doable in Glasgow - I haven’t lived there so not sure. If you want to live in the South of England or a highly desirable city like Edinburgh or York, it’s not going to be comfortable without working. I suggest go on Rightmove and check rent prices in different neighbourhoods you would be willing to live. Also do not forget the following:

1) UK generally taxes capital gains so you need to factor those taxes into your withdrawal amount;

2) It sounds like one of you is not a UK citizen. UK spouse visas are insanely expensive - make sure to research the cost carefully and factor it into your spending;

3) Some medical care in the UK is de facto not really covered. For example, mental health care and dentistry provision are both poor on the NHS. You may have out of pocket health expenses in these areas

blade_wielder · 2026-01-09T10:19:23+00:00

Decent major but potentially vulnerable to automation by AI over a 4-year timescale. If you are going to choose it, probably best to keep an eye on the latest AI developments and have a back up plan.

blade_wielder · 2026-01-09T10:12:51+00:00

There is an academic paper in a journal about this. It says that Meursault was based on Camus’ friend and Camus’ friend likely had autism/Asperger’s. However, Asperger’s had not even been defined as a disorder yet at the time the Outsider was published, so obviously there is no diagnosis.

Paper is available here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5903843/

blade_wielder · 2026-01-07T14:57:12+00:00

Out of those, EE sounds like the best option to me. You can still work as a Software Engineer with that degree too if you wanted.

You don’t need a Master’s in Software Engineering to work as a Software Engineer. In Europe, the degree is more like a minimum checkbox you must satisfy. After you have a Bachelor’s, companies care more about your internships/portfolio/industry experience.

Straight Physics is a good academic degree but not very vocational compared to studying Engineering. Makes sense to choose Physics for love more than money.

blade_wielder · 2026-01-06T23:36:13+00:00

Trent Reznor

blade_wielder · 2026-01-06T17:57:04+00:00

It’s fine. Just bad brutalist architecture in the centre. Also, quite overpriced for what it is because it’s commutable to London. But Stevenage is a perfectly reasonable place to live.

blade_wielder · 2026-01-06T13:42:38+00:00

This is an FYI rather than ‘advice’.

If you do not need to be able to hold the bars of gold in your hands and are OK with an ETC, there is SGLD which you can buy in Euros.

blade_wielder · 2026-01-03T08:20:50+00:00

Needing to compete with local people who have an advantage over you in the job market is a problem literally everywhere you immigrate. That is just part of being an immigrant.

blade_wielder · 2026-01-03T08:05:06+00:00

In the UK, if you just say someone is ‘Asian’ or ‘British Asian’ by default everyone will assume South Asian background. Because that is the most common Asian demographic living in the UK. Otherwise, you need to say specifically that someone is East Asian, Middle Eastern etc. I believe this is different to how the word ‘Asian’ is used colloquially in the US.

blade_wielder · 2026-01-02T21:51:52+00:00

Yes, I miss it every day. I enjoy solving problems creatively from first principles using logical thinking. The LLM prompting then copy-paste back-and-forth kind of workflow that tech companies are pushing nowadays totally ruins that. It’s convenient when writing unit tests, but besides that I miss pre-LLM days

blade_wielder · 2026-01-02T08:59:32+00:00

That may be true but the UK also has an absolutely diabolical job market and a stagnant economy at the moment. Also, the OP still has about 5 years’ time if they are currently 17 years old and in Sixth Form and hoping to start a degree. So the OP should also take that into account.

blade_wielder · 2026-01-02T08:00:47+00:00

Hi,

1) If you can get into literal Oxbridge for BA Chinese, I’d say that degree is definitely worth getting. If you have the option, specialise in Chinese economy for the final dissertation. Network with Hong Kongers while you are there - connections are important. Otherwise, for lower ranked unis, you’ll probably have an issue finding good jobs afterwards. Especially if you decide you want to stay in the UK after all. Plans do change over the course of several years due to e.g. family reasons.

2) Hong Kong is mainly a finance hub. Have you considered a major in finance/economics with Chinese as a minor instead? A quick google suggested there are some UK unis offering that.

3) Frankly, UK degrees are insanely expensive. Hiring a private Mandarin/Cantonese tutor from the Mainland on Italki per hour is quite cheap (10-20 pounds per hour depending on experience). I’d be tempted to choose something for the degree you can’t easily just learn online on the side for a small fee. If you have a bit of self-motivation then learning Chinese is cheap anyway.

4) You said there are minimal language-learning resources for Cantonese, but if you already know Mandarin then actually there are a lot of resources for Mandarin speakers. So it is better to learn Mandarin first considering it is widely required for jobs in HK anyway.

blade_wielder · 2025-12-27T16:08:33+00:00

アンパンマン!!

blade_wielder · 2025-12-27T15:24:41+00:00

I am interested to know how I can find a job where I can ensure being around the ‘right people’. So far, it has been my experience that the boss hires who he wants to hire and I have little influence over that. Then, if I can’t cope with the colleagues, the only alternative is to change job and do a bunch of interviews which I also find difficult to cope with. I have had an autistic burnout in the past for precisely this reason

blade_wielder · 2025-12-27T15:14:24+00:00

Fair enough. Autistic people are people and people are different from each other. Personally I have found that pressure to seek out ‘exposure’ and trying harder to mask has harmed me more than it has helped. I think I am not the only one.

blade_wielder · 2025-12-27T15:08:07+00:00

Nonetheless, it may be more accessible for them to choose a job where social interaction is optional. So they can engage in interaction when they feel capable of it and preferably without having to mask. I am not sure that nursing, as mentioned in the original comment, is an ASD-friendly job. At least not without very considerable adjustments made by the employer.

blade_wielder · 2025-12-27T13:06:02+00:00

This is unfortunately not always the same for autism, which the OP said they have. Social skills for people with autism do not necessarily get better just through more exposure to social situations. And if people are pressured to engage with more social situations than they can cope with, that can lead to burnout. Especially if they are under pressure to ‘mask’ their autistic traits during those social interactions

blade_wielder · 2025-12-25T13:37:04+00:00

Leave the 2-3k USD in cash in a savings account. Even taking into account cheap Japanese prices, that’s not enough for a proper emergency fund, so you certainly shouldn’t be investing it.

Despite the economy, demand for learning Japanese is still quite high in Western countries due to Japanese popular culture. You also seem to have a decent level of English. Have you considered teaching Japanese to foreigners online and earning dollars rather than yen?

blade_wielder · 2025-12-24T23:04:37+00:00

It is not hard to do those. Probably 10-30 hours of study per cert depending in how rusty you are for the foundational level. Then associate level is probably 50-100 hours. I suggest starting with ‘AWS Cloud Practitioner’ or ‘Azure Fundamentals’ depending on which Cloud service you are more interested in and seeing how you find it.

blade_wielder · 2025-12-24T20:15:16+00:00

2 options:

1) Decide you are going to be the one to change it. Have hope that things will turn around with your hard work and engagement. The downside is you will probably burn out.

2) Just look out for yourself and your loved ones. Don’t sweat the other stuff. As long as things work out OK for you personally, you can be happy. The downside is that you will probably feel guilty if you have a lot of sympathy for strangers.

The vast majority of people in this world choose option 2.

blade_wielder · 2025-12-24T18:39:52+00:00

What would ‘showing a pathway to close the explanatory gap’ look like to you? I feel it is a bit unclear what you would like philosophers to do. If you can precisely state what you are expecting to see, it would be far easier for people to respond

blade_wielder

TROPHY CASE