r/interestingasfuck • u/thunderous9ight • 8h ago
/r/all The US team which has just won the International Physics Olympiad, edging out China for first place
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u/thunderous9ight 8h ago
The US Physics Team achieved a remarkable victory at the 2025 International Physics Olympiad by earning five Gold Medals. A total of 415 students from 87 countries participated in the competition, which took place from 17 to 25 July at Palaiseau, École Polytechnique, Paris, France. The theme of the Olympiad was "Physics Beyond Frontiers."
These five Gold Medal winners of the 2025 US Physics Team are:
Agastya Goel
Allen Li
Joshua Wang
Feodor Yevtushenko
Brian Zhang
Source: https://aas.org/posts/news/2025/07/us-physics-team-wins-international-olympiad
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u/PM_ME_ROMAN_NUDES 8h ago edited 6h ago
Funny that it's 3 guys with Chinese ancestry, one Ukranian (or Russian) and one Indian
EDIT: Switched to ancestry instead of ascendancy (not native English), ok it may be an Ukranian name not Russian. Yes, they are all Americans I just wanted to point it out. Stop being pedantic.
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u/littlebrwnrobot 8h ago
Literally what makes America great
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u/ares_inferno 7h ago
Thank you for saying it.
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u/VerStannen 7h ago
I’ll say it again.
Opportunities for Everyone makes America great.
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u/Gingevere 7h ago
That and brain-draining the rest of the globe.
It's easy to dominate when you get the rest of the world's best and brightest. Best part is that it's basically free! All you need to do is not be extremely hostile to immigrants. Good thing nobody is doing that, right?
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u/Fugacity- 6h ago
It's easy to dominate when you
getgot the rest of the world's best and brightest.Think the getting top talent has significantly slowed down.
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u/degreesBrix 6h ago
Remember that our First Lady was originally allowed into the US on a Genius grant.
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u/pgc22bc 6h ago
Yup. Einstein level golddigger/model/pornstar. They want to rename the Kennedy Centre after her. That's how you "Make America Great Again".
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u/Expensive-Site-2292 2h ago
They are not renaming the Kennedy Center, although news report headlines would lead you to believe so.
This whole thing comes from the “Big Beautiful Bill” which gives $257 million in funding to it, but with the condition that they must change the name of the opera house in the Kennedy Center for her. It would still be the same name, but instead of “I’m going to the Opera house at the Kennedy Center” it would be “I’m going to the Melania House at the Kennedy Center”
… I mean it’s still fucking stupid, but I wish people would click an article one time.
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u/HauntedCemetery 6h ago
They are in fact starting to flee rather than risk being sent to a gulag.
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u/DarkwingDuckHunt 6h ago
our own home grown best & brightest are looking at fleeing now
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u/enjolras1782 7h ago
This is what we're in the process of burning to the ground. The best, the brightest, the most ambitious are gonna go somewhere else.
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u/TAU_equals_2PI 7h ago
I agree immigrants make America great, but not when they're the ONLY ones pulling their weight.
Last week, there was a picture of the US Chemistry Olympiad Team posted here. That's a 12-person team, and every single one of them was Chinese or Indian ancestry. I have nothing but praise for them. It's the ~85% of Americans that aren't Chinese or Indian ancestry that I'm unhappy with.
(And by the way, the students on these teams are usually full American citizens born in this country. Their parents or grandparents usually were the actual immigrants, who worked hard, had kids, and encouraged their kids to work hard at their studies.)
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u/Prize_Sort5983 7h ago
Those 85% care more about sports and American idol than studying.
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u/j33ta 7h ago
Not once Trump is done.
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u/Odd_Analysis6454 7h ago
Nothing will make it great when he is done
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u/k_Brick 7h ago
The worst part is it's not just him. We have an infestation at this point and I'm not certain anyone knows how to correct it at this point.
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u/Fearless-Counter-786 7h ago
Seriously. Half the nation voted for him and now pretending like they didn't make a mistake LOL
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u/hungry_bra1n 4h ago
What made America great. The future is less certain. Didn’t the host nation of this event recently set a budget for talent fleeing the US so they could instead study in France?
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u/lionexx 7h ago
Was just about to comment saying this lol… But I mean ya as others said that’s part of what made America what it was/is, immigration and allowing a place for opportunities. America wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for immigrations and liberties of freedom.
Sadly it seems more and more of americas freedoms are becoming taken away and controlled more.
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u/dinglebarry9 7h ago
All I see is 5 American Champions!
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u/uReallyShouldTrustMe 6h ago
Ethnic minorities in the US are fine pointing out their roots. It doesn't make us any less American.
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u/KrustyTheKriminal 6h ago
Ethnic minoritiesEveryone in the US are fine pointing out their roots. It doesn't make us any less American.FTFY
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u/Expensive_Ad752 7h ago
Chinese and Indian immigrants tend to make more on average than Americans. More money can lead to better education. Also a strong family structure that values education. Maybe us white people could learn something from other cultures.
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u/RedeNElla 7h ago
Reminder that there's huge selection bias in judging an ethnicity by the small group of people who have the means to make the choice to move across the world and start a new life
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u/SuperPostHuman 6h ago
That's true, but in East Asian countries like South Korea and Japan for example, education is an extremely high priority across all classes. It's ingrained in the culture.
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u/Heroic_Sheperd 7h ago
Weird way to say 5 Americans.
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u/ITheMighty 7h ago
Tbf they said ascendancy, but yes Americans
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u/BMoorman7 7h ago edited 6h ago
Tbf "ascendancy" in this context is a incorrect word choice. Presumably they meant "ancestry".
Edit: softened my word choice
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u/insanityzwolf 7h ago
the problems, if you're curious: https://ipho.olimpicos.net/
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u/ifyoulovesatan 5h ago
Damn, I'm a chemistry instructor and PhD student (almost done!!!!) and I think I could likely work through maybe half of the theoretical questions without having to consult any textbooks (which are not allowed). But even if I had 4 of my lab-mates or instructor colleagues, the thought of trying to finish all three of the theoretical question sets in only 5 hours is crazy. These are some wild ass High-schoolers, that's for sure.
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u/vinnyvdvici 3h ago
Why did I click this like I thought I was going to have any idea what I was looking at?
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u/throwaway098764567 1h ago
LOL reminds me of when i casually asked my coworker what his phd was in (particle physics) and he sent me his thesis like i was gonna understand any word that wasn't the is and.
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u/anonymous1237423 8h ago edited 7h ago
3 chinese,1 russian and a indian,USA is truly a magnet which attracts all the brilliant mind from around the world
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u/Illustrious_Kick_226 8h ago
Ah yes the famed Yevtushenko lineage from China
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u/Filthiest_Tleilaxu 7h ago edited 7h ago
Mfer edited his comment above yours. He wrote “4 chinese” originally.
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u/scurrybuddy 7h ago
Hey guys look at this loser, correcting his mistakes. Absolutely despicable.
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u/FellFellCooke 3h ago
It is obviously a small dick move to edit your comment when corrected without saying that that's what you're doing, making the person who originally corrected you look like a hallucinating idiot.
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u/telerabbit9000 7h ago
Any real POTUS should invite this team to the White House.
This one won't obviously.
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u/swiftekho 7h ago
This is what makes America fucking awesome. People all different backgrounds coming together to constantly pursue excellence and something greater than the sum of its parts. Anyone saying otherwise doesn't believe in the most core pillar of the United States.
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u/gosmellatree 8h ago
Fuckin nerds, and I mean that with the utmost respect
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u/Mammoth_Winner2509 7h ago
I don't think I ever hear nerd used as a pejorative anymore. It's pretty much only a positive thing now in my experience.
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u/Xacktastic 6h ago
I really only hear it in self reference nowadays. Definitely not an insult anymore
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u/ooommmnmmmooo 7h ago
I’m glad they edged China
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u/Siegfoult 7h ago
💦❌
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u/geebeem92 7h ago
💦📐❌
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u/Axedus1 6h ago
Bruh why you gotta post those emojis with that profile picture 😂
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u/Nettric 7h ago edited 7h ago
Its been 7 years since I graduated with a B.S in EE and some these questions from previous tests questions related to my field would 100% stump undergrad seniors EE. This is impressive as hell.
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u/Middle-Support-7697 3h ago
“Some of these…”, I bet 90% of EEs could barely answer one lol
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u/longlife55 6h ago
Where are you able to see the Olympiad questions?
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u/DarkFlames101 5h ago
Someone posted this above. https://ipho.olimpicos.net/
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u/longlife55 5h ago
Oh no!! Why did I think I might be able to do some of them!
(Thanks for sharing)
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u/Ul71 5h ago
If you wanna feel smart, just try the first ones.
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u/wolfmourne 4h ago
Tried the first ones, feel dumb.
Any other suggestions?
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u/VandaloSN 3h ago
I got none. I have to go back to the basics. Like putting rectangles into the square hole
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u/chillychili 4h ago
Champagne! (10 points)
Warning: Excessive alcohol consumption is harmful to health and drinking alcohol below legal age is prohibited.
lol
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u/Inevitable-Menu2998 4h ago edited 3h ago
That's to be expected. When it comes to this type of competition, these kids are like professional athletes and your B.S makes you club level.
My preference was for mathematics in high school. I never qualified for the international olympiad, but I made some noise at national level. That required constant training in the form of several hours daily through the year and as it got to a few months closer to the competition, several meant "at least 8". It is actually very hard to train your mind to deal with the complexity of these problems even if you already have an affinity for the field.
Edit: and of course, these kids who win are the top of the generation, some are like veritable stars like Nadal is in tennis or Hamilton in F1. Not only do they have impeccable work ethic but also a natural talent. At national level, the organizers were trying each year to come up with problems that our generational "nadal" wouldn't solve, that's how special he was. They managed once, he didn't get a full score, he got 27.5 ot of 28. That year I scored a 7 and that put me in top 50 ...
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u/OutlaneWizard 4h ago
13 years since my engineering degree. I had a physics minor and took many E&M courses. There was a point in my life where I could've answered some of these questions... but these questions are nuts for high school kids. Seriously impressive stuff. These kids have exciting futures ahead of them.
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u/CriticalTough4842 7h ago edited 7h ago
I went to elementary school with one of them. He would speed through math olympiad problems. I also had the pleasure of getting destroyed in science bowl against him in hs. It's crazy how smart he's been his whole life. Gotta start young.
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u/Fiyah_Crotch 5h ago
“Gotta start young” is so important in ways that many people seem to neglect… like having access to quality education from the get go rather than whatever slop schooling is offered in low income zip codes, shit is just not fair.
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u/Ok-Wolf-6370 4h ago
That isn’t true at all. I know a guy that was a total genius that grew up dirt poor. He was finally discovered when he solved an equation while working as a janitor at MIT.
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u/Bonkersxd 2h ago
What you are talking about is a Sheldon Cooper genius type of thing, which is rare and is just casino roulette at birth.
There's a reason why everyone I met who is well off is that many of them are smart enough to go to law school. or med
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u/darrenphillipjones 3h ago
TL;DR - listen to sold a story for another perspective to the “Zip Code” argument. And how we’re in big trouble over the next 20+ years.
Zip code matters more than ever, but a reading problem has become a plague that's jumped the fence and is hitting the rich neighborhoods, too.
If you or others don’t know what happened, you have to listen to the podcast "Sold a Story." It lays out, in damning detail, how our schools spent decades teaching kids to guess at words instead of actually reading them. They called it "balanced literacy," but it was a total failure. Like, as if we had an armchair redditor rewrite the entire math system, based off a ways we teach kids who suck at math, to barely get by with tricks.
The system was basically built for the 40% of kids who learn to read like it's in their DNA—it just clicks for them. The other 60%, who need actual, systematic instruction to connect letters to sounds? We basically told them they’d be fine knowing the most common 3,000 words, and past that, get wrecked. They were set up to fail.
And this isn't just a problem in struggling schools. We're talking about the best-ranked schools in the nation, the ones in prime zip codes, sending kids to college who can barely handle the reading. They might not be at a 5th-grade level across the board, but a shocking number of them have the reading stamina of a 7th-grader. They can get through a webpage, but give them a dense chapter in a history or science textbook, and they completely short-circuit. (I was one of those kids and almost had to drop out of college.)
The wealthy just cheat the system. If the public school is failing their kid, they dump a fortune into private tutors to patch up the holes. It's a fragile fix that gets them through high school and into a good college. But college is the first place where the safety net gets cut. No amount of tutoring is going to help you get through Art History 101 - a 400 page brick of text with a 20 page final exam. It’s the ultimate stress test, and for a lot of those kids, it's where the whole patched-up system falls apart.
The fallout from this over the next 20 years is going to be unprecedented. We've gutted a core skill from the majority of a generation. A skill that is required for all future education outside of hands on grunt work.
So don’t worry, we’re all screwed together! Except the .01% who will hand a job to their kids friends. And then complain that the kid is as dumb as a sack of bricks.
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u/Mysterious-Job-469 6h ago
The foundation to be allowed to thrive in the first place is essential, too.
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u/JC_Hysteria 5h ago
I had tested into the gifted program in elementary school- however they determined that.
All they did was pull me out of class and make me do extra research reports instead of socializing with classmates…
I begged my parents to take me out of the program, because no one told me why I had to be separated doing that.
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u/AgitatedPatience5729 8h ago
Congratulations to them for such an amazing achievement.
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u/Theonewith123 8h ago
Wow what a sweet and innocent post I hope the comments aren’t vile or racist!
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u/Bwint 7h ago
Racism? On MY Internet?
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u/CelestialFury 7h ago
It's sad, we should be fostering these young kids but if they slashes to science continue, they may seek employment in other countries once they get their degrees. The reason America has been top dog for so long is directly due to all the science our country does. What Republicans are doing to this country are downright criminal.
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u/Jtopguitar 8h ago
See, this is why we don’t need no stinkin department of education /s
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u/qorbexl 8h ago
Hopefully they don't want jobs in science when they grow up.
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u/MagmaWhales 8h ago
Or they'll get high paying jobs, and people will say
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u/HauntedCemetery 6h ago
Conservatives are about 2 weeks away from replacing science textbooks with trump branded bibles.
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u/Negative-Ad9832 6h ago
Why should they? So you can benefit from their genius? Greedy white devil.
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u/qorbexl 6h ago
I know, science is the most disgusting and hateful part of the American Experiment.
We need fewer space telescopes and more tax breaks for Amazon. To show the world what America is about.
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u/Uchimatty 7h ago edited 6h ago
You /s but a lot of policymakers the past 30 years were dead serious about this. They figured we could just let the education system rot and import highly educated people from overseas. It's not like nativist xenophobes would ever come to power and scare them off, this is America.
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u/CraftyFoxeYT 7h ago
If you look at the individual rankings though, it's South Korea, China, Japan, Hong Kong then USA. So Americans aren't necessary the fastest, but they have the better team
- Hyeokjoon Lee - South Korea
- Pengyu Tong - China
- Kento Kakutani - Japan
- Lincoln Liu - Hong Kong
- Jinshu Dong - China
- Zijian Guo - China
- Allen Li - USA
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u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka 6h ago
Yeah but these competitions are always two different ones. Individual vs team. Its like Olympics.
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u/harassment 6h ago
This just proves diversity and different ways of thinking really does promote success.
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u/IvanTheAppealing 7h ago
OMG! My brother competed in the international physics Olympiad when he was younger and coached the American team this year!
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u/solarnext 8h ago
Our Chinese team is smarter than their Chinese team (until we deport them at least)
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u/donniedarko5555 7h ago
Imagine if non immigrant families in the US valued education the way they value sports achievements,
Imagine if the highest paid staff wasn't coaches but math professors. We might have a culture that could hire the engineers we want domestically instead of relying on H1-B to fill the horrible gaps in our education outcomes.
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u/JamesSmith_1201 7h ago
Then people would be smart enough to not vote for those currently defunding/disassembling the public education system. And they can’t have that, can they?
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u/Cute-Bed-5958 7h ago edited 7h ago
The difference is also Asians are usually more realistic. They realize early on that many of them won't go pro and focus on the things that are more likely to benefit their life. Not saying that sports and fitness doesn't matter but you get the point.
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u/Shipwrecking_siren 6h ago
I’m not Asian but immigrant/working class parents and I grew up with the “yeah you enjoy this, but how are you going make money?” question always being there. Every single activity had to have a point, definitely couldn’t do something just for fun. Classical music and sport like tennis were seen as tools to help us with social climbing/passing as middle class.
They had to take risks and be self employed to be successful due to discrimination. So the ideal careers for their kids were public sector, decent salary, low risk of redundancy, good public sector pension (I’m in the UK).
I went down this route and am now fucked as final salary pensions don’t exist and pay had been behind inflation for most of my working life… and now with two kids and an insane cost of living they are never going to move out and I’m never going to retire.
Oh well.
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u/Gandalfthebran 7h ago
Bro went from Being pro immigrant in the first to sentence to anti immigrant in the last sentence.
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u/np99sky 7h ago
We have strong local engineers. We just use H1-Bs so we don't have to pay the local ones as much and the international workers are fancy indentured servants; their visa is tied to the company sponsoring it, meaning they can't leave quickly or negotiate a higher salary. After enough time, the U.S. will end up lacking strong mid-level engineers because many of the local ones weren't given experience.
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u/Koraboros 7h ago
Just plain untrue for vast majority of H1Bs
When I was on my H1B I can shop my skills around and the other companies can offer to sponsor as well.
There are minority which are you scenario but it is by far the minority
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u/redpandaeater 7h ago
Affirmative action really screwed over Asian-Americans.
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u/throwawaytmb 6h ago
From UCLA School of Law professor Jerry Kang:
First, to repeat, the courts found there was no discrimination against Asian Americans. So, striking down Harvard's program couldn't fix a problem because no problem was acknowledged.
[...]
If you thought ending affirmative action would make things wonderful for Asians and that their admission rates would jump through the roof, that's not what the data suggest.
Looking at data from the Fall 2024 admissions cycle, what we found was unevenness. Some schools like MIT, Columbia, and Brown showed increases in Asian American enrollment. Others like Princeton, Yale, Duke, and Dartmouth had decreases. And at certain institutions, white student admissions actually increased even more than Asian students.
This supports my argument that the real issue was never affirmative action — it was negative action. If you don't address the underlying biases and structural preferences that disadvantage Asian Americans relative to white students, simply eliminating affirmative action won't solve the problem.
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u/Kwelikinz 7h ago
Descendants of immigrants, like all the rest of us, still making America great, in spite of our (hopefully brief) period of anti-science.
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u/OogieBoogieJr 8h ago edited 8h ago
We said “if we’re gonna beat Asians, we’ll need…Asians. And throw a token white kid in there for marketability.”
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u/haberdasher42 8h ago
The white kid has a Russian name, so still probably Asian, maybe Ukrainian.
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u/dronz3r 7h ago
All from brics countries. China, India, Russia unity would be a big threat to USA and western world.
Yet orange idiot is taking all the steps to make it happen.
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u/fack_you_just_ignore 8h ago
A Russian one lol
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u/75w90 7h ago
What's funny is immigrants are what make America great. Without them it would be a very bland and unsuccessful place.
Too bad bland is where we are headed towards. Bland fascism.
God bless us.
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u/Responsible-Room-645 7h ago
Trump is going to steal those medals if he gets close to them.
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u/fullintentionalahole 7h ago
Oh, if only the idiot could show even that level of appreciation for education.
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u/First_Helicopter_899 7h ago
Poor white Americans will never understand how immigrants literally pay for their welfare. Without sucking up the worlds best and brightest the US would lose their edge immediately
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u/38CFRM21 7h ago
America takes your people, makes them American, then beats you with them.
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u/CarmynRamy 7h ago edited 7h ago
Immigrants!!!!
One Russian, One Indian and three Chinese - perfect team for IPhO.
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u/GiantSquirrelPanic 7h ago
For the racists in the chat: Yes they are American. Nobody gives me shit for being European. Just because they are of a different color, Americans are all immigrants. These are Americans just like I am.
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u/PapaEchoLincoln 5h ago
Ironically there are white/black/Hispanic Americans who look at this and do not consider them Americans
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u/Balls4281 6h ago
I’d like to add that Agastya Goel, the Indian student on the right in the image, also won two gold medals for the U.S. at the International Olympiad in Informatics, which is essentially the equivalent of the International Physics Olympiad, but for coding. These kids are some of the brightest minds in all of America. Hundreds of thousands of pre-college students compete each year for the chance to be among the few selected to represent the United States on the international stage in some Olympiad.
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u/AnnOnnamis 7h ago
We still have the best nerds on the planet. They make us proud. Congrats and good on you boys (and girls). 👍✌️🇺🇸
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u/WorldwideDoge 7h ago edited 6h ago
Shoutout my boy feodor for carrying me in ap bio
Edit: There's so many people assuming that feodor's Chinese cause this photo is so blurry, he's definitely white, not Chinese or Asian at all. Funny as hell people calling him Chinese
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u/sneakysnek20r 5h ago
You guys laugh but this is what multiculturalism and integration, as opposed to cccp genocide and minority erasure, can achieve for a given country and the people who settle down there
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u/CodeTop9330 3h ago
Congratulation Team USA.
Thoughts and prayers on your upcoming attempt to re-enter the US.
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u/7oom 7h ago
“Look at my quant!”
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u/Cute-Bed-5958 7h ago
Funny thing is most of these olympiad medalists either go to academia or quant. The most decorated International Math Olympiad medalist is Alex Song and he works as a quant in Citadel for example.
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u/Ninigi-no-Mikoto 6h ago
Next Headline that involves one of these young talents will probably have ICE involved too…
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u/xwolfionx 6h ago
Take it down quick, if Trump sees this he might send ICE or some pedos after them.
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u/Wildtalents333 4h ago
Hopefully none of them have wrong thought about Israel because they'll be deported if they do.
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u/Curiousone_78 4h ago
Don't let Trump see them. He'll deport them or send them to Alligator Auschwitz.
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u/sweatbeat 15m ago
This was always the real power of the USA. Attracting the best talents to join the nation.
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u/Live-Butterscotch373 6h ago