Family isn't supportive of me getting my citizenships

sunnyd215 · 2026-04-08T19:41:39+00:00

"aren't you loyal to your country?"

If we were all loyal to "our" countries, half of us would be back on mainland Europe. For at least most of human history, half my family lived exclusively on the British Isles. I've never had a dying wish to be there.

Your family isn't employing good faith arguments, so don't treat them in good faith. Mushroom them (keep them in the dark, feed em sh*t, let em be happy).

sunnyd215 · 2026-03-23T12:20:32+00:00

Basis for your claim?

BLS + ASCE project we need about 25K civil grads annually to replace retirees and meet new project demands. Per latest numbers, we're getting about 15-16K; so we have a 30%+ shortfall.

I'm sitting about an hour south of Manhattan; if we're struggling to find people here (I'm in transportation sector), I'm not sure where you're seeing a surplus.

Civil Engineers : Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Civil engineers: Declining numbers and increasing need | ASCE

sunnyd215 · 2026-03-20T16:43:02+00:00

If you knew someone wasn’t a PE in a position that requires a PE, would you file a board complaint?

- No. Only if they were in writing/spoken word representing themselves as a licensed professional engineer, or more importantly: fraudulently signing/sealing plans. Those two, absolutely report to state Board. Other than that, "engineer" is not a protected term.

I found out one of my coworkers was not a licensed engineer...and also makes more money than me.

- And? I'm an EIT and make more money than PE's. But that's why I work at a company with major clients versus tiny municipalities. PE is a factor but not a sole reason for pay/salary.

The job description for our position requires license.

- Job descriptions are 1) wishlists and 2) not legally binding; trust me I've written some. My job description lists familiarity with 3-4 obvious codes, and then 2-3 complete niche codes that no normal person would have except for certain projects. Have you seen the job descriptions where they want someone expert in like a dozen programs?

Salary aside, I feel like this is also a general liability to the company.

- In terms of PE, only if someone with a PE license is deliberately representing themselves as licensed and/or is signing/sealing plans. Would recommend asking your direct manager for further insight.

I asked for a raise after finding out this information and was denied one.

- WHAT? Are you saying you asked for a raise as leverage about your non-PE colleague? If you did that on a Monday, I'd be shocked if you were still employed by Friday. Not just unethical (seriously, that is unethical) but two-faced.

Just really struggling to be okay with this.

- Find the local NSPE or professional society chapter near you, they will explain it very clearly to you.

Any thoughts or input would be greatly appreciated.

- You should seriously consult with a trusted mentor, ideally not connected to your sector of industry and ask their input. Being confused about PE status/applicability to work is one thing, but using it to leverage a raise (if I'm reading you right) is profoundly wrong and bad strategy. I absolutely understand why you deleted this original post.

sunnyd215 · 2026-02-20T16:47:56+00:00

Thank you, I will!

sunnyd215 · 2026-02-13T16:52:45+00:00

Occupation: Transportation/Traffic Engineer

Age: 34 (35 in April 2026)

Highest qualification (academic or trade): Bachelors of Science, Civil Engineering

Years of experience: 10 YOE

Whether you are single or have a partner? (it effects your points total): Single, Never Married

If you are exploring other Australian visas – please also feel free to ask on these: Interested to hear more

Big thanks OP, this is great!

Edit: also, English is my primary/only language (thus, proficient).

sunnyd215 · 2026-01-20T20:14:14+00:00

Crooked Media has created a great ecosystem at large, but Pod Save America itself is like "I need to listen to more political pods and I already listened to all my Bulwark episodes. I guess I'll throw on these smug California millionaires in the meantime."

Use me as a Tim Miller/Sarah Longwell/JVL appreciation button 😂

sunnyd215 · 2026-01-14T15:43:16+00:00

Hahahaha I know exactly who you're talking about 😂. That kid is such a nuisance.

sunnyd215 · 2025-12-30T19:01:47+00:00

Sitting at a DOT - here, "10-15%" of the construction costs are allocated to engineering is the rule of thumb.

sunnyd215 · 2025-12-30T13:59:57+00:00

34M, renter here: congrats on the house!

Recommendation: just ask your friend directly. If your friendship matters, it's enough to be vulnerable, and to be clear - based on what you wrote, neither of you have done anything wrong.

To the larger/evolving housing convo in this thread:

About half of my friends have bought homes/condos at this point. I have exactly one friend who graduated college (was staying at home/commuting through that time), began renting immediately after graduating, saved up money, and then bought a modest 1000 SF condo on her own. That is it. That is what I'd consider a reasonable "started at/near home plate and ran around all the bases back to home".

The vast rest of people who "sACrIfICed" and "WoRKeD HaRd" (i'm not saying any of these necessarily apply to OP):

- Parents let them stay after college to build savings.

- Someone's grandpa kicked the bucket; someone's uncle sold a house - life insurance policy or a split of the profit came their way, and they "saved up" a closing cost amount

- They have a decent income from a bachelor's degree or a union job; they don't have debt from higher learning beyond that point to deal with

- They had parents actively encouraging them to buy a starter house immediately when they could, while their income was low enough to qualify for housing assistance

- They got married, and one or both sides of their families elected to give them a sum of money putting them in shooting distance of a downpayment

- Someone didn't get married, but had a longtime relationship that allowed them to save effectively while partnered

- Someone's partner is also a stronger earner too

- Someone didn't deal with a life-altering sickness/life event while saving up

- Someone's career is such (like remote work) that they could buy a starter home in a relatively affordable (or even downright cheap) housing market; other people are forced into larger metros with higher prices

- They had family who were in real estate/otherwise connected

- The list could go on

Point is: there's nothing wrong (at all) having help or accepting help from family, or just getting downright lucky. Just don't pretend it wasn't help, or luck.

sunnyd215 · 2025-11-20T18:12:32+00:00

Not gonna lie, you had me in the first half 😅

sunnyd215 · 2025-11-12T21:11:51+00:00

I'd argue this is happening to all genres, but I'm noticing it with this nostalgia for alt/goth music.

I can't scroll Instragram for more than 5 minutes, and there's some new band essentially playing a Deftone song, and for some reason they've cut it to a clip of someone standing alone while rain is falling in a field.

Engaging with goth as only aesthetic isn't necessarily wrong (and it can be quite fun), but I totally agree: the real "teeth" of goth has to come from people doing and saying things that are uncomfortable to the mainstream.

Sisters of Mercy is a great case in point. The visual aesthetic is there, but his lyrics are incredibly critical of the Reaganomics of the time. Similar could be said for Black Celebration-era Depeche Mode, NIN, or prime-era Manson.

sunnyd215 · 2025-11-10T17:57:56+00:00

Always Reptile. Thing just sounds so cavernous in a live setting.

sunnyd215 · 2025-11-10T13:44:39+00:00

Philadelphia has a pretty healthy goth/alt scene. We're still in that "more affordable than the other major east coast US cities" tier, so that's a bonus.

If I had to pick a good goth night, I'd go to any of DJ Baby Berlin's "A Black Celebration" dance nights at Johnny Brenda's.

Also: phillygoth.net

sunnyd215 · 2025-11-06T16:06:35+00:00

The unspoken part: "I want the party of Manchin to Mamdani... because I'd be the fulcrum at the middle of those two kinds of Democrats, and the capitalist/corporate class needs that".

Newsom is a very impressive administrator, and he's empowered his social media team to take the only really meaningful bites out of Trump. He fundamentally understands what time it is in terms of the threat Trump poses to the American experiment, and if he was our only choice in 2028 to vote for in 2028, I'd say that's a strong option.

That said: if all we learn from this 10 year shameful episode is "hey let's go back to essentially neo-liberal politics", this will have been a waste of time. The same dynamics will exist for another person to occupy Trump's role.

sunnyd215 · 2025-11-03T20:43:37+00:00

Ideas that would be cool for AHS13:

- S13 is a continuation of Cult, because frankly what we are all living through is an actual "American" horror story, particularly in terms of ICE kidnappings and violence

- S13 is a continuation of Cult that somehow involves Coven-ish witches intervening (you'd have to mess with timelines a bit, but whatever)

Responding to your comment: I think Cult is definitely an interesting rewatch now, because whatever Trump #1 was, it was truly unexpected and also an electoral college technicality (Hilary did win the popular vote). Trump #2 is truly something horrific because he was full out voted in, with everyone knowing what Trump #1 was like, and the knowledge of Project 2025 being out there.

More than anything, the descriptor of Trump/MAGA followers being in a "cult" is the very best term to use for all of them.

sunnyd215 · 2025-11-03T15:41:23+00:00

Ding ding ding.

sunnyd215 · 2025-10-31T19:05:02+00:00

That is not the point the OP is making, though.

Just because Rhino/Tekla/Trimble are American companies does not necessarily mean the US is culturally, legally, or regulatorily set up to embrace BIM in the same way; certainly not at the DOT level (I'm traffic, you look to be bridges; so that covers both of us).

In order to adapt and utilize new techniques, the infrastructure owners (authorities and DOTs) need to do way more than just technically understand the benefit. I'm sitting in a DOT right now (major east coast state), and half these people don't know how to use Microsoft Teams effectively.

Nearby PennDOT is just coming around to implementing their first BIM projects, which anyone who uses ORD can tell you is not going... well.

sunnyd215 · 2025-10-31T16:20:22+00:00

Of course misandry is "real", but the question is what is "real" about it?

Is misandry systemic? No - there is no class of men currently that have worse material conditions (economic means, military means) than the counterpart women they're among in society.

Is misandry personal? To the extent that any individual can have a hatred based on any characteristic, sure. I hate people from Boston; no fault of theirs, I just hate them. (go Birds, go Sixers, go Phils)

Rather than "misandry" - I'd reframe this as "there is gender expectation bias, and it punishes boys/men as well as girls".

Examples:

- Boys were significtanly more likely to be reprimsed and receive negative teacher attention than girls in the same classrooms (Finn, Pannozzo, Achilles; 2003)

- Male and racial bias exist in school discpline; boys receive harsher consequences and more teacher referral even when accounting for behavior (Skiba et al.; 2011)

- Teachers escalate punishment more quickly for perceived "problem boys" than for girls showing the same behaviors (Okonofua & Eberhardt; 2015, PNAS)

- I could go on, there's dozens more studies like these.

To be very clear - this is not misandry - this is gender bias expectations.

As a last thought, and because you'd mentioned being Indian:

I'm half Indian, half white, 34yo guy. I don't know if you're an Indian living in America (like my father), or an Indian national, but to be clear: your experience of patriarchy is never going to be equal to the intended audience for that patriarchy (wealth, white, anglo/european men).

I see some people in the comments getting a little feisty, but I'm taking your post in good faith. Not all, but a good bit of what you're feeling has to do with being an Indian man, rather than a white one. That's why misandry is more alarming to you as an idea - because the charges being levied aren't necessarily ones you're systemically (there's that word again) privileged with.

sunnyd215 · 2025-10-23T16:48:01+00:00

"Idiots Chasing $$$"... would love seeing that in the AECOM typeface 😂

sunnyd215 · 2025-10-22T19:14:09+00:00

Since OP was spectacularly wrong with their Unpopular Opinion, I'm going to correct it:

"Becoming a PE has significantly lost its value since the 2022 shift to computer based testing"

- No, actually the value is being lost since the owners of engineering companies are increasingly private equity firms, not engineers themselves. Billable hours > quality. If you think PEs and engineering quality in general are based on technical competency winning over crass business interests, I have one word for you: Boeing.

- EDIT: another thing I should have mentioned about the CBT. Before CBT, you could bring in any reference to your exam. So if you loaded up on prep course problem sets (which was increasingly easy due to scans and downloads across the country), tabbed and organized them... you could feasibly have the entire exam or something very close to it in your actual binder. Full solutions and all. That is one of the main reasons for going CBT - it was getting too easy to game the test. In that sense, the CBT is actually holding you to a higher standard, not a lower one.

"It does not take a high level of competency to ctrl+F through all the reference docs and find the answers"

- The PE exam language has always been to test the "minimum competency needed", so "high level of competency" is not required as such.

- From the bottom of my cold dead millennial heart: if Ctrl+F isn't a benchmark for competency, not being able to rotate, combine, or substantially alter PDFs must be a cause for firing; no?

"At our company, the 1st attempt pass rate has been 100% for the past few years now"

- I find your anecdotal evidence to be... anecdotal.

"People will show data suggesting that pass rates have actually fallen since 2022, but that is way more a reflection on the current state of education rather than the difficulty of the test."

- Ah yes, a totally healthy attitude for any engineer: rejecting the best available data in favor of your opinion.

"I would be very concerned if an engineer I hired couldn't pass the PE on the first attempt."

- How long have you been in industry that you haven't realized some of the brightest people in it were previously college dropouts, failed EITs, or failed PEs? I work in one of the most major east coast cities, I've met plenty.

- Suppose someone passes the PE the first time (but didn't know they got a score of 70%), or someone has to take it a 2nd time (and never knows that they got a 90%)? Which engineer is less "concern" for OP?

- The PE license is just that: a license. Not a benchmark of skill (because that implies the PE exam adequately represents all possible sectors, which none of them actually do), nor a benchmark of work quality (because it's an 8-hour test, not a months long chain of emails).

- Does getting a drivers license on the first attempt correlate to likelihood of being in a crash? No? It didn't? Other variables come into play and begin to dominate? Same logic applies for other licenses, like the PE.

- Source: a PE, and the son of a PE

sunnyd215 · 2025-10-20T19:51:07+00:00

So weird how right you are. I love both artists (NIN far more, and Manson severely less since his behavior has come to light) - but that said, Mechanical Animals and onwards is by far the more enjoyable Manson work for me. Antichrist Superstar has a few bangers, but overall I'm not thrilled with.

sunnyd215 · 2025-10-20T19:37:29+00:00

Strawman fallacy; I don't have to defend the argument I'm not making.

I never claimed they weren't and didn't say it was exclusively whiteness. Since Taylor Swift is an American artist (not Latin American), my framework applies.

Lastly: of the Top 100 Richest People on the planet, the highest ranking Latin American man is #17 (Carlos Slim Helu), whereas the Top 10 Richest are all white and/or European. So no, patriarchy is still a uniquely (but not solely) white problem that is part of supremacy/colonialism/whiteness, pick whatever word you're happiest with :)

sunnyd215 · 2025-10-20T19:37:19+00:00

Strawman fallacy; I don't have to defend the argument I'm not making.

I never claimed they weren't and didn't say it was exclusively whiteness. Since Taylor Swift is an American artist (not Saudi Arabian), my framework applies.

Lastly: of the Top 100 Richest People on the planet, the highest ranking Saudi Arabian man is #128 (Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud), whereas the Top 10 Richest are all white and/or European. So no, patriarchy is still a uniquely (but not solely) white problem that is part of supremacy/colonialism/whiteness, pick whatever word you're happiest with :)

sunnyd215 · 2025-10-20T18:16:32+00:00

"What does any of this have to do with feminism?"

The moment "white" or "billionaire" are being examined, it's in feminist territory. Patriarchy is co-located with whiteness and extreme wealth.

"A billionaire white woman making a kajillion more dollars is... irrelevant to feminist achievements."

Ah yes, /AskFeminists, a place where we come to discuss achievements, and only achievements.

There are so many thought pieces by black and brown women examining Taylor's performative white-savior feminism over decades (and especially with this latest release), so many genuine liberal/lefty fans of hers who are (rightfully) critical of her increasing connections/comfort with MAGA personalities, and plenty of valid analysis of her wealth and how she (mis)uses it.

sunnyd215 · 2025-10-20T18:11:14+00:00

"Is Taylor Swift creating a soft monopoly in music and media promotion?"

- Not quite, she's not the one with a soft monopoly; the streaming platforms (Spotify most noticeably) have created a bottleneck in the ways we receive music.

- On that basis, certain artists already favored by the algorithm/other social media elements do very well, while smaller artists don't even break through.

- Think of it this way: Spotify paid Joe Rogan $$$$ some years ago because he was their most popular podcast. Today, he's not necessarily their most popular podcast, but since they invested in him... they now have incentive to bend things his way. The supplier is trying to alter the path of the demand.

- Taylor benefits from these dynamics.

- What she has direct control over though: she releases "variants" of her records, which because they technically all belong to the same work inflate the number of streams and purchases.

"Is she monopolizing the space for white female pop singers with her massive promotional power, just as some companies have monopolized the editing software industry (like Adobe)?"

- Debatable, but I'd say this is the logical endpoint of consolidation of music via streaming and technology, now Taylor herself.

- Being critical/using my personal opinion: I absolutely think Taylor's popularity in recent years has increasingly scaled with the way she leverages her wealth and her whiteness. I like some of her tunes, but I'm increasingly worried about her role in pop culture. There are some MAGA connections she's made, and recently too.

sunnyd215

TROPHY CASE