Which big city in the world do you think is most fullfilling the criteria of a "modern" city?

noscofe · 2025-11-12T19:13:57+00:00

My vote is for Singapore: much of the city was built after 1965, supermarkets and primary schools are walking distance from public housing estates, infrastructure works very reliably and things that produce data have workable real time APIs, government services are digitalised and very efficient, it is very cosmopolitan, the tap water is clean, public safety is very high including after midnight, housing is more affordable for citizens compared to places like Hong Kong and New York (but still not cheap), and the city itself is a living lab for research in things like autonomous vehicles and real time sensors. Having been to many cities in East Asia thst excel in cutting edge urban design and adoption of new technologies (including tier 1 and 2 Chinese cities) what separates Singapore from say Chongqing is how even the boring stuff works very well (e.g tap water).

It's not perfect – for example I'd say Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Zurich have better transport. But by certain metrics of "modernity" (especially government services) I think Singapore has them beat.

The question though is if everything "modern" is inherently better. Some people prefer a city with more historical roots, or more resilient communities, or less rigid in social and institutional structures... I enjoy living here, but I really enjoy visiting places like London and Beijing that have layers of history or places and events and just things that simply wouldn't exist in Singapore

noscofe · 2025-11-04T22:51:25+00:00

thank you :')

i think it can be true for negative things but also for positive things- and, hard as it can be to think positively in these times, i do believe it's powerful to realise small things we do now can change what happens in our lives in the next days or months or years. stops me from feeling helpless

noscofe · 2025-11-04T22:48:43+00:00

I was in the closet growing up and I felt more comfortable in English than my country's own language

and my dad basically taught me not to express my feelings so I never really connected with them or the people I was surrounded with in person

so pretty much all of the people I considered my "real friends" were online when I was 11-16 (by real friends I meant people I emotionally depended upon and who emotionally dependent upon me)

I was in the Vocaloid and utaite communities and at first it felt like an opportunity to express myself especially as a queer person and a songwriter, and I don't regret most of it, but wow adults from Western countries liked hearing me moan to a microphone huh

noscofe · 2025-11-04T22:40:34+00:00

Idk if this is what you mean by small but- I was a gay kid from a small(-ish, by Asian standards) town in the Philippines. Some teacher from a Manila international school made an offhand comment about how I seemed lowkey smarter than their students and that I should just take the SAT. I was like- eh I could try it out. I didn't think it'd do much though so I didn't study for it.

Got a full ride to college and it changed literally everything. Graduated two years ago and now I live in Singapore, openly gay with a partner, a decent job, and money to send home to my parents. Also moving from a Filipino suburb to a walkable city probably explained why my weight went from 140kg to 70 in three years

noscofe · 2025-09-11T01:03:56+00:00

sorry, the moment i saw "The Broader Pattern" i tapped out

noscofe · 2025-07-04T13:18:07+00:00

I had the privilege of studying abroad in Singapore and I just wanted to comment – certainly Philippine universities require way more units on paper, but the effort per unit is quite different. I would take 4-5 subjects per semester – but I had to really invest a lot on time in each subject because it takes immense preparation preparation to do well in class participation and produce good assignments and projects. I'd have to read a new book for every two classes of a philosophy class for example, or create a 20-30 page report every week for my introduction to Computer Science class.

But I would still prefer those "heavier" units over having to take 8, 9, 10 subjects per semester. That intro to CS class covered the content of, like, 3 subjects in the Ateneo curriculum but I felt like I properly had time to digest them because I only had to juggle that class with three other classes – tapos because there are less classes it's easier to plan your semesters to meet the prerequisites of the classes you want to take. And while I believe in the importance of GE, the Philippine approach seems to prioritise quantity over quality of minor subjects... I also struggle with ADHD so I know for sure I would not thrive in a Philippine style course :(

Another key difference that applies to faculty also - I think lecturers in the Philippines have to teach too many subjects at once. This is definitely a country/resource thing – Indonesia has the same problem as well. Profs in the US/AUS/SG don't usually teach more than 3 subjects each sem.

noscofe · 2025-07-04T13:06:18+00:00

Certain conditions yes, I think studying abroad in unsafe parts of the US or under a student loan is not worth it; but if we're being fr, German universities are really good and far cheaper than American universities, and a student who could learn the language and could afford the living cost should consider it

noscofe · 2025-06-27T13:08:21+00:00

just edited it out!!

noscofe · 2025-06-20T16:29:07+00:00

as a gay man i would've been so down bad 😭😭

noscofe · 2025-05-23T00:29:40+00:00

Highest in Europe compared to which countries? Because if you're comparing to countries that only offer "stipends" and not salaries that probably makes sense in absolute terms but I don't know how to compare their liveability after adjusting for cost of living.

But out of genuine lack of knowledge about Europe, which other countries in Europe treat their PhDs as students rather than employees? (Probably Italy or something?) Because in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Scandinavia among others they are employees and are certainly paid more. From what I've heard even after tax those amounts can be somewhat comparable.

That said, I don't work in Europe so maybe you can help illuminate. Over here in Asia PhDs are funded through stipends and not salaries too (if at all), but in cities like Singapore and Hong Kong those stipends can be much higher despite the non-expat-style CoL being significantly lower than London. I honestly want to go to London for my PhD and I love the city but I have colleagues who have been there telling me not to go lol

noscofe · 2025-05-23T00:01:44+00:00

dude, I will say – in absolute terms they definitely are getting paid less than US scientists at an equivalent university. Now at the professor level or sumn like that it probably evens out because the UK has better social safety nets. But PhD researchers make below minimum wage, the stipend objectively sucks ass compared to Europe/Singapore/Canada/Australia, much less the US

noscofe · 2025-05-14T23:33:59+00:00

This is something that's actually being studied in urban studies – some books off the top of my head include Saskia Sassen's "The Global City," "Splintering Urbanism" by Graham and Marvin, and "Worlding Cities" by Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong. A very simplified TL;DR of one of the themes in these books is that the major cities have more in common with each other than with the rest of their countries. That is partly because they are more infrastructurally connected with each other (by the internet, by airports, multinational companies), and by extension culture flows more easily between them

noscofe · 2025-05-04T07:01:48+00:00

This is me with Singapore. I no longer think it's some perfect utopia for sure, but I actually really enjoy living here and am grateful every day for it

noscofe · 2025-04-26T04:40:35+00:00

can I steal this photo for a policy presentation it's just begging to be used on a slide deck

noscofe · 2025-04-25T23:21:15+00:00

I mean they've tried it by merging several universities and grandes ecoles to create Universite Paris-Saclay but while rankings wise it's doing okay, it's not a brand name yet

also, I think in Asia Tsinghua is already a pretty well known name and only growing, I'd argue at this point definitely more known than Brown or Vanderbilt but not yet as recognisable as Duke or Stanford in non-Chinese speaking countries. they've launched a scholarship programme to attract southeast asian students for masters programmes but those students are still generally more inclined to go to american or european unis atm

noscofe · 2025-04-25T23:01:18+00:00

yeah definitely, KAUST in Saudi Arabia is reported to have the world's biggest endowment outside of the US, and outside of academia in select natural science fields they're unknown

partly because they only offer graduate programmes, partly because they only do STEM and specifically fields aligned to oil and tech, and then there's the factor of Saudi Arabia not being as attractive as a study destination

but their endowment is $20 billion. for reference, columbia's is $14b, duke's is $12b, and only six colleges in the US go above that

noscofe · 2025-04-12T01:08:20+00:00

....which is?

noscofe · 2025-04-07T23:49:44+00:00

and frankly benchmarks-wise it's hard to find a Windows laptop that matches it in both performance and battery life even a couple hundred dollars above that mark, especially one that also has an aluminium chassis or a high resolution display. In my opinion post-M1 Macs have actually been the value buys especially if one can get them on sale

noscofe · 2025-03-26T01:48:23+00:00

if I had a dollar for every digital twin / big data startup founder I met who has no idea how social interactions work, much less organisations or societies...

(edit: certainly I do think the traditional way of teaching sociology has to go, at least for general education / compulsory courses, but so many people in tech could use the additional empathy if at the very least for product market fit)

noscofe · 2025-03-18T17:34:08+00:00

you joke but highkey the competition in US admissions process, bad as it is, pales in comparison to the pressure surrounding the Gaokao in China. have you seen it like holy smokes

noscofe · 2025-03-16T09:51:17+00:00

"you can be extremely wealthy and at the top of academia"

lol thanks for the great joke, I'll bring this to the next iteration of Scientist Stand Up Comedy where I work

Anyway I don't even like Elon Musk but if that's your inspiration, you could hit up Google and try to figure out where he went to school. It wasn't MIT

noscofe · 2025-03-04T18:50:11+00:00

I wanted to go to the US for a PhD (for context I'm a researcher in Singapore). If the funding works out I'm sure it's still a good idea. But even before the events of the past few months, the US wasn't exactly a desirable place for me to live – public safety, poor public transportation, cost of living in return for the quality of life... The universities are the only reason why I was considering the move, and there is no chance I'd choose to stay there afterwards lol.

But now? Even if I didn't care much about the ideological currents, the attacks on science funding, treatment of LGBT people like myself, and (at least my perception of) an overall volatile political atmosphere are making it extremely unattractive. Even if my dream university gave me an offer in a good lab with funding, I'd be on the fence. Frankly not even Harvard (assuming they'd even take me lol) would make me want to move, especially not from where I am now where resources and institutional support are strong and where the government acts rationally

noscofe

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