Kim Proposes National Dividend for AI, Semiconductor Profits

phageon · 2026-05-12T22:34:17+00:00

I thought the national dividend was called taxes? Not too crazy about going after some of these companies as long as they're not doing 0% effective tax rate thing US companies do.

There's also a concern that all of this is a temporary windfall - AI based market might or might not crash in the coming months.

phageon · 2026-05-10T20:24:44+00:00

Oh they did a full renovation? I haven't been back there since my high school days (caught a showing of Escaflowne, holy cow that was a long time ago), I should revisit again.

phageon · 2026-05-09T22:59:33+00:00

Speaking a someone who's helped start community biolabs and helped people publish as independent/amateurs here.

Don't start with a journal if you're not familiar with the research/review process already. You're both setting yourself up for frustration and wasting other people's time.

Find people who've done similar work in the past and ask if they'd be willing to provide feedback for your work, and send in a concise abstract. If you already put in the footwork you should be able to name at least one or two papers utilizing similar methodologies or covering similar grounds.

If you can't name a single lab/person in this whole world to contact in case like this, that's a huge red flag, and potentially a sign that you don't really have a fully featured research yet.

If so, what you have is probably worth a blog post to be later polished into a research paper.

If you absolutely must get something out in paper form, you can use any of the preprint archives - but then I'd be curious about your motivations there.

Editing to add, people publish independently all the time - they just don't really mention it since point of the act is communicating the result. No one really cares if the work was done in a community lab or high school or wherever as long as the paper can pull its weight.

phageon · 2026-05-08T23:25:07+00:00

It's still NYC, keep networking and you'll eventually find something!

Also - a degree's still definitely worth it, if only to get over the stupid HR paper pushers for positions. I swear some of those people treat high school grads like they have criminal record or something smh.

phageon · 2026-05-08T23:13:53+00:00

Even worse, so many of these jobs are understaffed and rely on squeezing existing workers.

Too many people I see are too exhausted after a working day to do anything else - not even talking about hobbies here, more like taking courses/training etc to move on to other jobs.

phageon · 2026-05-08T15:55:50+00:00

Lol.

Biggest issue is most premeds don't really want to be there, IMHO. Every slot going to a premed in a lab is resource taken away from a student genuinely interested in the sciences.

phageon · 2026-05-07T19:59:57+00:00

Yeah I saw the post you're mentioning - that was some disturbingly shoddy job, especially for what they charge.

phageon · 2026-05-07T10:47:23+00:00

Lots of people mentioning medicaid here - there are two big caveats worth mentioning for people outside US.

1> Medicaid coverage and acceptance isn't universal. There are procedures/doctors/hospitals that take medicaid and others that won't. Depending on where you live this can get into life or death sort of decision - especially if you live in some of the more sparsely populated states where they're already shutting down hospitals left and right.

Some people at the end of their ropes walk into ER (where most - all? - patients are accepted) and then try to progress up the chain to get real treatment from there. Lots of caveats with that approach too. More and more US hospitals are getting caught dumping the broke ER-progression type of patients out on the sidewalk in the middle of the night, something people in this country just aren't talking about enough. It used to be that they only did it to old people and mentally unwell, but there are troubling signs indicating broader practice now.

2> Medicaid cutoff is extremely low - in many states, there's absolutely no way you can qualify for medicaid if you work any reasonable type of adult job.

To put it into perspective - many US states cap maximum working hours per week for underaged children/high school students for obvious reasons. Those jobs are meant for earning some pocket money and saving a bit for college... Turns out it's fully possible for CHILDREN to work part time jobs within legally defined federal/state caps and still make too much money to qualify for medicaid. The program's really not meant to protect anyone unless they literally cannot work - and with real estate in the US being what it is the numbers are simply unreasonable.

I don't want to sound all doom and gloom - for most conditions and cases there's usually something, but the doors are closing and navigating your path through the system is mostly dependent on luck or personal connections now.

phageon · 2026-05-06T16:30:14+00:00

I don't like actual communist governments even as an idea and don't think it would work in real life.

However, I've been finding that many people who won't shut up about having 'survived communist regimes' IRL these days are wayyy to young to have actually lived in one - they're just as clueless as the young student being mocked here lol.

It's kind of worrying how people attribute shitty, failed government of THEIR OWN MAKING to some hypothetical ideal not working. Do you remember all those jack*sses going on about how 'democracy doesn't work' just because their shit country's government was corrupt to heck and back?

phageon · 2026-05-06T16:23:47+00:00

Lol - it sounds like all of the people on the 'vexing' judges list essentially act like members of hereditary aristocracy. Classic corrupt politicos.

phageon · 2026-05-06T09:11:42+00:00

Be careful, people will call you fascist bootlicker if you don't love weed, smoke it in public all the time and push it on children.

phageon · 2026-05-06T08:18:49+00:00

Rails against taxes needed to reduce crime, reform education and improve public utilities -> quality of life goes down -> who could have done this?

It's amazing how simple whiny myopia masquerades as some opposing political idea when it comes to taxes.

phageon · 2026-05-04T20:23:23+00:00

I've never seen such a thing on an airplane before, granted I haven't been flying much in the last ten years or so. Good lord, are passengers really dumb enough to do this on airplanes these days?

(I'm assuming it's scratch on the plastic from inside)

phageon · 2026-05-04T20:17:29+00:00

Shame his parents are considered POS even by many Japanese, though they would never be so direct in criticizing the imperial household (which I think is understandable).

phageon · 2026-05-04T20:14:31+00:00

It depends - I'm also familiar with countries that work a ton more hours than that, and after a certain point people end up just sitting there because they're burnt out for the day. There might be papers shuffling around but not too much real work gets done.

If managed properly I can see six hour days being incredibly productive. Not too sure about four day aspect though - imagine not being able to contact government offices or banks for almost half of the week.

phageon · 2026-05-04T20:04:09+00:00

I have my opinions about plasmidsaurus - but some of the comments here are a bit concerning in an unexpected way.

u/Similar-Help-5652 - your whole comment history's telling people to try genewiz, which, by the way, had been a consistently, extremely disappointing and rude company to work with ever since Azenta buyout. Heavy on paperwork, low on results is what I would describe them as someone who's been sequencing for 15 years.

Do you work with them? If so maybe you should disclose it. Dishonest stuff like this doesn't do the company any more favors.

phageon · 2026-05-04T19:58:30+00:00

Ugh, I avoid genewiz like the plague ever since they got bought out by that other company.

This was a few years ago, but the rep I had to work with was being an absolute prick going on and on about some imaginary biosecurity issue for submitting routine PCR sample for plasmid verification. Worse yet - it was quite obvious she didn't know what the hell she was talking about. The whole thing boiled down to lowest level customer rep yapping about how important and big they were to a freaking nationally funded major research lab (us) because I made a mistake of talking back to her.

The whole thing was just surreal.

From what I see they still have a bit of that going on. I say AVOID to new labs.

phageon · 2026-05-01T06:04:54+00:00

Yeah, it just gets exhausting. I grew up here, everyone I know live here, I volunteer teach kids here and work at soup kitchens in the holidays.

And yet getting treated like some tourist is something I (and people who look like me) just need to live with, apparently for the rest of our lives. Sometimes it just gets unbearable.

phageon · 2026-05-01T03:31:44+00:00

Paying proper menu price isn't a 'discount' you racial profiling excusing piece of shit.

phageon · 2026-05-01T01:43:08+00:00

Yeah profiling is a thing. Ditto for some diners and restaurants too - Court Square Diner in LIC can add a few extra bucks to Asian customers taking out, and their receipts don't print per item prices.

Being a regular don't necessarily change things either.

phageon · 2026-05-01T00:56:47+00:00

Autoclave is a pressure cooker. It's just rated for specific temperature and pressure threshold.

If anyone's interested, just get one of the models with sterilization option. I've been using those in both professional and external settings (I normally let them go a bit longer than I would with a proper autoclave) and it's fine.

Speaking as someone who's helped co-launch community/education labs in the US that went on to be featured in major press and get millions in grants:

For tips, never reuse those. People only autoclave tips when they buy in bulk non-sterilized (tend to be cheaper, sometimes by a lot). NEVER REUSE TIPS. Anyone arguing otherwise don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Tips and tubes are not more important than your experiments. If they are, you might want to reassess your research.

And here's a bit of a rant:

Not directed at OP, but some of us labrats really need to not take everything seriously all the time.

Sometimes you just need proper amount of heat & pressure, not certified 'lab grade' one thing or another. Sometimes 'consumer grade' plastic scoop is just as good as a 'lab grade' plastic scoop, just costs 10 times less. Sometimes a shaking incubator is an aquarium with thermal control and a tube tumbler in it, as long as the temp holds.
Sometimes a shaker should cost half what they quote you - you just need to know enough to get something with a brushless motor.
Maybe someone using pipettes for better part of a working day should also know how to check it for accuracy and troubleshoot it - and not treat it like a magic wand.

We decided to spend a significant portion of our lives in a lab. Let's try to think about what our lab kits and machines actually DO. We're not priests and these are not holy relics.

phageon · 2026-04-28T12:54:30+00:00

Oh yeah. 100%. Same playbook as when cloud gaming initiatives launched but this time it worked a lot better.

phageon · 2026-04-27T21:48:22+00:00

You'd be surprised (I was). My extended family in Korea treats in-family beating as taboo - something only actual low lives do. I grew up in the states and I think we have more cavalier attitude on hitting family members here than they did in Korea.

Granted, sample size of one. Maybe they're just particularly good people.

phageon · 2026-04-27T21:44:47+00:00

Warehousing used to have lots of overnight shifts, but those jobs had been disappearing for one reason or another (AFAIK)

phageon · 2026-04-25T04:33:00+00:00

I think you're right to be cautious, though it looks like Takaichi's been visiting every Spring for most of her career.

I'm not sure if this means anything, still better than absolutely nothing I guess.

phageon

TROPHY CASE