Toulouse University wants to host US researchers whose work is at risk | Hacker News Reader

Toulouse University wants to host US researchers whose work is at risk

en.univ-toulouse.fr

81 points_tk_18 comments

This is smart. Every science research institution in Europe should be doing the same. This is once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take advantage of the own goals the US Government seems to be going for at the moment.

We welcome you warmly to France! Come build a just and loving society here with us in Europe, where we provide free healthcare, we pay for climate-proof infrastructure with trains and by reducing cars and coal, we're supportive of artists and journalists, and we're mostly thinking about how to create a society where everyone finds his or her place!

Nice username btw ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo

My favorite writing school haha

“Reverse brain drain”, so to say.

Well, good for Europe. Like it was good for the USA when (jewish) scientists emigrated there in the 30–40s.

There is a certain irony in that, considering op. paperclip two decades later.

Ironic indeed.

For ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip (I didn’t get it at first)

The Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the US for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959; several were confirmed to be former members of the Nazi Party, including the SS or the SA.

I don’t think the details of this piece are too important. But I think it speaks to the global trajectory in science.

I think without strong and funding increases on the EU level this effort will stay localized and minimal. And comparing it when the reverse happened after WWII will stay wishful thinking. I think Europe and Canada faced problems with funding decreases even before any initiatives like that. I did not see much improvement in this regard.

This is great. Science will continue to happen, even if shifted a bit.

> You just keep on trying till you run out of cake. And the science gets done. [---] Anyway, this cake is great. It's so delicious and moist. Look at me still talking when there's science to do.

But.. the researchers.. ok.. they can do this for you. Their research though? Does the 'so far collected/produced' information belong to someone else? Some other company X Uni, that (the company) funded the so-far research?)

I live in Toulouse as an Australian, it's great here!

Political extremes are bad. Be in the Soviet Union on his day, the Nazi Regime, or the mini nationalistic-US blended with Neoconism.

You can't mix a free market with an ultraconservative goverment with zero social rights unless you want your potential clients either flee away or die en masse. The same with Communism without individual rights.

I support an European style healthcare (I live in Spain and it works great), but some things like telecomms are better under private companies (or even community-built such as Mesh networks).

The future is not about extremes, but more like a moderated approach for goverments, such as social democracies. Mixing the worst stuff of every side it's the recipe for collapse. Be in the US with schizophrenic self-harming classical liberal-conservative neocons, or in Russia with Duginism.

Telecoms ARE under private companies in Europe... also here we have full-speed fiber internet... for $30/month, not $150 like in the US...

I'm from Spain, I know it pretty well. When telecos were a state monopoly, long distance calls were horrible, very expensive. And no flat rates for Internet in late 90's even with ISDN, until DSL I think. Once the telecomms where liberalised, prices plummeted down with new ISP's everyhwere.

OTOH, healthcare from private companies are just good for very trivial surgeries, such as lumps or some minor aestethic surgery if you are in a hurry. For the rest, public healthcare it's far better.

Yes, I mean that's how we do it in Europe... it's always more or less some liberalism for economical stuff, with strong state guards to avoid them trying to ripoff consumers, and public schools and healthcare, as those are our crown jewels and we don't want to let stupid businesses trash them

Sometimes it can help to have a state-provided option to set a baseline that the free market needs to beat in order to attract customers.

Some things are just natural oligopolies and the danger of exploitation can be mitigated by just having an alternative that isn't trying to optimise for profit.

> The future is not about extremes

Yea, but right-wing ideologues are doing their best to prevent this and instead convince everyone that we must be ideologically pure (privatise everything for the sake of it) rather than just find the sweet spot and do what works.

Inviting scientists to come to Europe is a good sign that on this continent we're still open to reality and would rather know how things are than pretend they are how we want them to be.

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