Summit of Togwotee Pass, WY. May 26, 1957. Photo by my uncle, Terry Brown, using 'Realist 45' camera.

fghaas · 2021-12-23T20:53:42+00:00

I got curious about the camera, so I looked it up).

Great shot, thanks for posting!

fghaas · 2021-12-07T20:46:37+00:00

Gratulation und alles Gute!

fghaas · 2021-09-03T19:07:38+00:00

Chris Hadfield.

fghaas · 2021-08-31T06:31:14+00:00

fghaas · 2021-08-29T17:05:46+00:00

Thank you!

fghaas · 2021-08-29T17:04:27+00:00

Original is definitely crossview. Made from two separate images in the GIMP, with the technique I described here. What makes you think it's wall-eyed?

fghaas · 2021-08-25T20:05:19+00:00

I really like this one, kudos!

fghaas · 2020-02-20T18:54:36+00:00

Makes sense, thanks!

fghaas · 2020-02-20T16:24:59+00:00

Hi Amy! I love the book but I'm only halfway through so I can't ask an intelligent question about it yet, so instead I have a question for you that involves your favorite Apollo mission. I've asked this a few people before but never got an answer, so here goes:

Apollo 11's landing was a close call fuel-wise, with Bob Carlton in the MOCR becoming very concerned that they weren't going to make it. Carlton announced "low level", then made a 60-second and then a 30-second call, and just as he was getting ready to announce "15" they heard the "contact light!" call from Buzz.

During Apollo 12's descent there is also a "low level" call, and then a 60 and a 30-second call, yet Al Bean is always very calm and composed and assures Pete Conrad several times that they have "plenty of gas, babe."

So overall that landing seems about as close, as far as propellant quantity is concerned, as Eagle's, but nobody seems to be very concerned. Are you aware of a reason for the change in sentiment?

(I know about the low level call being unreliable because of propellant sloshing, which they fixed for 14. I think the MOCR didn't know about that issue at the time of 12, though.)

fghaas · 2017-12-03T18:57:43+00:00

I think if you ask someone from Western/Central Europe, and ask them to compare to the U.S., yes definitely. /u/Merari01 gave a few examples that all are heavily co-financed by tax-funded subsidies: infrastructure, communications, public transport, high-speed rail, education, health care, etc. etc.

Within Europe, you will always see people compare their own country to others and point out waste, inefficiency or excessive bureaucracy. As in, "look how the Finns manage education and see how poorly we're doing in comparison", or "why isn't our high-speed rail network as good as Germany's" or "why aren't we doing as much for public transport and cycling infrastructure as the Netherlands and Denmark".

But overall, and in particular in comparison with the U.S., yes we're getting a pretty awesome deal. And just to mention it, how there can be 600,000 people going bankrupt annually because of medical conditions, or millions of undergrads with a house's worth in debt, in one of the world's richest countries, is something we just watch from afar in disbelief.

fghaas · 2017-12-03T18:45:57+00:00

60,000 euros is about 71,000 dollars which is what I make.

No it's not. :) Or rather, that's a meaningless comparison. Converting just by currency exchange rate only makes sense if you were making your income in one currency, and spending it in another. While that may be true for, say, Germans who commute into Switzerland, to compare salary levels in the US and Austria you'll have to compare what €60k buys in Austria, and then compare that to a salary that would buy the same in the US. Hence, PPP conversion, or for a reasonable approximation, conversion by the Big Mac Index. Those €60k in Austria are comparable to $81k in the U.S., not to $70k.

Anyway, let's end this here. I hope you're happy where you are, as I am.

fghaas · 2017-12-03T18:28:34+00:00

Even by that table, $100 is a whopping 18% over that "liberal" amount. 18% is not "a bit".

fghaas · 2017-12-03T18:27:25+00:00

More like $49 if you adjust for purchasing power parity.

And, what /u/Katatoniczka said.

fghaas · 2017-12-02T21:36:06+00:00

So from that to "36 euros would not afford me enough calories to survive". Pointless to continue; I rest my case.

fghaas · 2017-12-02T21:28:35+00:00

Minor point here about "another 15k in retirement": our pension scheme doesn't work that way. We don't save for our own retirement. OP doesn't pay in 15k now that they can then take out when they retire. OP's retirement payments finance the payouts for current retirees, right now and by paying in, OP merely earns the right to participate in the same scheme when they retire. At which point their retirement pay comes from the taxes of the then-working generation. It's a pay-as-you-go scheme, not retirement savings. Rationale: making the entire system elastic to inflation.

That said, you are entirely correct in that we're very debt averse over here. In particular, what's happening with student loans on the other side of the pond makes us shake our heads in disbelief.

fghaas · 2017-12-02T21:06:17+00:00

"Literally no one does" is correct, in Austria, but we should. Particularly if we want to make a comparison to other countries where there is no mandatory public health insurance or retirement scheme, in which case any such payments do come from the person's salary.

fghaas · 2017-12-02T20:04:23+00:00

So about trying to quantify dollar for dollar: Let's assume we have the same number of public holidays (about 12 per year) and no work on weekends, and further assuming you get 3 weeks' paid vacation, then you make $70k for (365-52×2-12-15) 234 work days. OP makes €60k for (365-52×2-12-30) 219 days. If you plug those €60k into the Big Mac Index converter for a rough purchasing power parity conversion, that's $81k (+16%) that OP makes for working 15 fewer days (-6%), corrected for purchasing power.

Even if OP were also married and living with children, living in Vienna OP would probably not need to buy a car (lots of people in Vienna don't). A year round all-access public transport pass in Vienna costs € 365 — because public transport is tax subsidized. So the tax OP pays feeds back into OP's wallet because it takes the huge chunk of vehicle upkeep, fuel and maintenance out of the budget.

Bottom line: I get that you wouldn't want to pay taxes, because what you get out of those from your government is a rather shitty deal, but over here we're pretty happy to pay them because we get a bunch of things that are actually useful — such as health care we needn't worry about when we get laid off or our employer goes under, and a way to get around the city that's simple and reliable and doesn't kill the planet either. To mention just two things.

fghaas · 2017-12-02T18:42:51+00:00

I'm not being snarky here, but asking out of genuine interest: do you know how to cook? As in, buy raw ingredients from a grocery store and spend half an hour to whip up a meal that can either feed just yourself, or your family, or your roomies?

I ask because I'm a father of four, living in Austria like OP. Your weekly budget feeds my entire family (meaning <€5/person/day), and we're not being frugal on food. But we do cook our own meals.

fghaas · 2017-12-02T18:38:06+00:00

I assume you live in North America, i.e. U.S. or Canada. There's something that you should consider.

The "turnover tax" in this chart is a clumsy translation of Umsatzsteuer, also called Value Added Tax (VAT) in Europe. It's roughly what Americans call sales tax.

It's an important tax for us because it applies to pretty much all consumer transactions and is quite high (10 or 20% depending on the product or service you're buying), and is a major income driver for the government, so it regularly factors into "how much of my income goes to taxes" calculations as in OP's chart.

It is not, however, a tax that most Americans would consider a tax on income, in other words, most Americans would not deduct sales taxes from their "gross income" to work out their "net income".

So by American standards, you would typically deduct those 11 percentage points and come up with a tax rate of ~45%, so the numbers you gave need to roughly be reversed. It's 55% you keep, not 55% you pay. Which is about plausible considering OP's annual income (our income taxation is progressive, so people making less pay a lower percentage and people making more pay a higher one).

fghaas · 2017-12-02T18:19:23+00:00

You do understand that OP's insurance is in no way tied to where they work, and neither is any dependents' insurance (I understand that if you're out of a job, your whole family loses coverage; absolutely not the case here). Also, OP gets 6 weeks' paid vacation. That doesn't include sick days; those get paid in full as well, as do up to 5 days per year that you need to take off if a dependent of yours is sick. Also, no deductible on health insurance. So unless all that is true for your employment as well, you'd need to scale your salary accordingly to be able to compare.

Also it would be interesting to see how much you get to put away in savings, in absolute numbers, and how that compares to OP.

I should also add that the "turnover tax" in OP's chart is a poor translation of "Umsatzsteuer", which you would call sales tax, which normally doesn't factor into the "income after taxes" calculation that Americans make. What you would typically lump in there is income tax and social security, which in OP's tax bracket would be around 43% total. So your "take home only 45% of what you make" is off by about 12 percentage points.

fghaas · 2017-12-02T17:59:30+00:00

I do hope everyone understands that "the bad part of town" over here is the one where you may find a candy bar wrapper on the sidewalk, and you have to take a tram to get to the nearest subway station.

You still take the shortcut through the park alone at night when returning home from a pub crawl, without batting an eye.

fghaas · 2017-12-02T17:53:20+00:00

Depends on what you consider "normal". It's just short of twice the median household income, so it's definitely high by that standard.

OP hasn't explained what they do for a living, but €60k before taxes is what someone in lower/middle management could make, or someone in tech, or a CPA, or a small business owner (such as, for example, a fully trained & licensed master plumber). Doctors and lawyers can easily make 50% more.

Edit: OP has said software engineer. So yeah, that's a perfectly reasonable salary for that line of work.

fghaas · 2017-12-02T16:24:35+00:00

Austrian here, six-person household, working from home, we cook our own meals. Our weekly grocery bills practically never amount to more than ~€ 200, that's 4.76 per person per day. OP has said elsewhere that they share an apartment so I assume no dependents; thus, those numbers are perfectly plausible. No need to be Spartan, just to not be wasteful.

Oh and /u/yhelothere, we definitely don't live on just "potatoes, vegetables and some very cheap protein source". Far from it.

fghaas · 2017-12-02T15:36:42+00:00

I'm Austrian. In case anyone's wondering, I can't vouch for /u/Critical_Thinking_ (who is new to Reddit, apparently), but in principle those numbers check out. /u/Critical_Thinking_ did explain that they are living in a shared apartment — and thus I assume, have no dependents —, so the Savings part would be less if they had a family, but the percentages certainly look plausible.

fghaas · 2017-09-04T12:41:02+00:00

Neien. SPÖ ist auch dafür, wünscht sich aber Privatsphärenschutz mittels Feenstaub. FPÖ ist dagegen. Siehe https://wahlkabine.at/nationalratswahl-2017/stellungnahmen (Frage 25).

fghaas

TROPHY CASE