The h Bar

Bernardo Meurer

2:14 AM

X11 is horrible

I just want to register that I've seen death

GPhys

3:55 AM

talking about the new tax code is so hot right now in grad student mailing lists

Sid

4:22 AM

@GPhys explain?

Also, are we now on BST or GMT?

Semiclassical

4:55 AM

@GPhys yeah

the dean of grad education at my Uni sent out a message urging grad students to contact their senators/representatives against it

which i'm of two minds about, upon further thought

on the one hand, i'm pretty irritated about the idea of my tuition benefit becoming taxable income

GPhys

the extreme amount it affects me at a private university in a city that even itself has large income tax is so much it's comical

Semiclassical

(i'm in a good place financially, so for me personally it'd be more an annoyance. but it could really screw over more disadvantaged grad students and that's outrageous)

GPhys

my yearly post-tax income becomes $5k, and I have to live in new york city to attend school

Semiclassical

on the other hand, I'm cynical enough that the fact that our Uni admin is taking sides in this makes me think that it's as much about how it'd affect their financial model as it is about the students

so i'm not sure we should give too much credit to the uni's who stand against it

@GPhys yikes

GPhys

even if what is financially good for the university isn't necessarily good for me, the negation does seem likely to be true @Semiclassical

Semiclassical

5:03 AM

true enough

Sid

@GPhys yikes. Good luck

John Rennie

@Sid GMT in the UK

Sid

Ah, okay.

(When does it change actually?)

GPhys

@Semiclassical as far as I know my university has not currently commented on it

John Rennie

5:21 AM

British Summer Time

During British Summer Time (BST), civil time in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Portugal is advanced one hour forward of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) (in effect, changing the time zone from UTC+0 to UTC+1), so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less. BST begins at 01:00 GMT on the last Sunday of March and ends at 01:00 GMT (02:00 BST) on the last Sunday of October. Since 22 October 1995, the starting and finishing times of daylight saving time across the European Union have been aligned – for instance Central European Summer Time begins and ends on the same Sundays at exactly the same...

Semiclassical

5:34 AM

@GPhys here's the text of what they sent out (long)

Dear Graduate Students:

The proposed tax reform bill in the United States House of Representatives contains a potential tax increase on graduate student teaching assistants. The proposal would count tuition reduction for TAs and RAs as taxable income, meaning that if a graduate student receives a $1,000 tuition reduction for teaching, that $1,000 would be treated as taxable earned income. This means your taxes could increase without you having an additional dollar in your pocket to pay the tax.

(from our Dean of Graduate Education)

John Rennie

Not that I have an iron in this fire, but if you get a $1K reduction in fees because you teach then that $1K is taxable income. That is the case in the UK.

The tax code should support students because it is an investment for the future i.e. the country is investing in you because you'll end up making the country a better place.

But in this instance the interpretation being used by the tax men seems logical.

Semiclassical

well, the point is more that currently that's not the interpretation used

"Repealing section 117 (d)(5), as the proposal does, will make tuition reductions for graduate student teaching assistants taxable income."

(from a different source)

so it's the possibility of a sudden dramatic change in taxable income that's spooking people

John Rennie

I agree, and I wouldn't be best pleased to suddenly have my tax bill jump. But this point seems so logical that I can't see any prospect of success challenging it. I would be looking for other tax changes to offset it.

Semiclassical

well, that assumes it passes. it's part of the larger republican tax reform bill

and whether they actually manage to pass it isn't exactly clear yet

John Rennie

From the UK perspective anything that simplifies the US tax system seems a good idea. I do my own tax return every year and it takes me about an hour to do the whole thing. By contrast the US tax system seems like some form of psychological torture.

But it does seem that Trump is taking the opportunity to repay the rich men who helped him.

Semiclassical

5:48 AM

well

it's more that the republicans are desperately scrambling to make sure that they pass this tax bill lest the donors conclude that it's not worth funding them

John Rennie

The sensible approach would be to make student fees tax deductible.

i.e. allow students to offset their fees against their income.

Semiclassical

eh, it's not fees but tuition

and that tuition benefit can be worth a few thousand dollars per semester

Anonymous

6:04 AM

Are graduate students in the US allowed to pursue part time jobs other than TAing, RAing, outside campus? Or are there rules against that?

Semiclassical

i think there's some issues there, yeah

Anonymous

Hmm. Grad school in the US seems too expensive. Some universities seem to provide full funding though.

Anonymous

Also, the ever-changing laws seem scary

John Rennie

@Semiclassical I mean you do tuition and earn money, which is taxable. Then you pay fees and you can offset those fees against tax. The end result would be that as long as you don't earn more in tuition than you pay in fees, you wouldn't have to pay any tax on your income from tuition.

Hmm, in the UK university fees aren't tax deductible. However out threshold for paying tax is quite high. If your income is below £11,000 per year you pay no tax at all. So very few students will pay any tax.

Sid

6:21 AM

@JohnRennie Are there any tax deductions for people investing in agriculture?

John Rennie

@Sid you'll have to clarify what you mean.

If I invest some of my money in agricultural investments then I get no special tax breaks.

If I'm a farmer and I invest in my farm then that's a tax deductible business expense.

Sid

@JohnRennie Isn't it obvious? I meant is agriculture taxable? Or Say, for instance, that a man is a farmer. Does he pay taxes?

Ah ha. So, agriculture is taxable in the UK. That is one area we need to learn from our old colonial masters..

John Rennie

A farmer is like any other businessman. Any profit he makes is taxable just like the profit I make on my IT work.

Anonymous

@Sid I don't think farmers should be taxed in India, at least until they don't cross an income threshold (since many of them fall below the poverty line)

Sid

@Blue Of course, only after crossing the threshold income(which I would keep at 1.5 times the current threshold for them). The thing is, a lot of canny businessmen tend to invest a significant proportion of their money in Agriculture and hence don't pay any taxes on them

John Rennie

6:28 AM

It's entirely reasonable for a government to use tax breaks to encourage things like agriculture, but it needs some care. If they're not careful they just end up supporting inefficient farmers who wouldn't be viable under normal circumstances. That doesn't help develop the country's agricultural sector.

Anonymous

Hah. Businessmen are not farmers. They should definitely be charged taxes.

Sid

^^That.

Anonymous

I was talking about farmers (by profession)

John Rennie

Well maybe the government are trying to boost agriculture and are using the tax system as a stimulus. Tht's fair enough if it's done properly.

Sid

@Blue It's hard to keep track of who is investing in what in a country of a billion people

@JohnRennie Nothing here is done properly...

and the result is that, farmers keep using outdated methods and hence their profits are less and they then blame the Govt. for everything

John Rennie

6:32 AM

> farmers keep using outdated methods

Well, yes, that's the big danger is tax support isn't used carefuly.

But the solution is to drive most of the small farmers out of business and replace them with large efficient farms.

Anonymous

@Sid It's just that the administration is not effective. In the age of computers "you can't keep a track of a billion people" is not true. Each and every transaction needs to be accounted for. The first step in that direction would be to reduce hard cash and make the entire currency system online.

John Rennie

That's tough on the small farmers and probably electorally disastrous.

Sid

@Blue Wouldn't work now. People still use a lot of cash. And people tend to highly distrust online sources

@JohnRennie Exactly. That is why no one has the guts to do that.

Anonymous

@Sid Maybe a few years down the line...

Anonymous

@JohnRennie That's very true

Anonymous

6:35 AM

Bringing small farmers together under firms would be a nice way.

Sid

(For instance, if the Govt. actually does that, all the opposition has to do, is visit the farmer's houses, eat a meal with them and then, let the media do its job of bashing the Govt. for being "anti-farmer")

For bonus points, maybe shed a few crocodile tears in front of the camera too

Anonymous

Lol. It's eventually for the greater good of the farmers. But then, in general people are short-sighted

Anonymous

@Sid That reminds of someone whose name begins with R and ends with I

Sid

@Blue Yes, heh, you got the reference. :P

John Rennie

@Blue it isn't for the greater good of most of the farmers. That's the problem. Big efficient farms employ far fewer people than small inefficient ones. Most of the small farmers would have to find other jobs or starve.

To be fair, most of the West provide subsidies for farmers. In general the subsidies work well e.g. they support hill farmers who do an important job of maintaining the environment.

But even in the UK farm subsidies are controversial.

Anonymous

6:52 AM

@JohnRennie The correct way would be to employ farmers according to ability. Say you have 100 small farmers in an area. Give the most efficient small-scale 50 farmers a good job. That'll normally drive at least some of the others to improve their efficiency. And the others who are lazy, will be out of business soon (they would be eventually be out of business even if the bigger farms had not arrived).

Anonymous

That should act as a motivation for them to go out and search for jobs in the city. At the end it would be gain for all, even if in the short-term it might be a hurdle for the inefficient small-scale farmers.

John Rennie

That would be open to corruption. Farmers would use bribes to get a good rating.

What happened in the UK is that big farms bought the small farmers' land.

This process is still going on. The smaller farmers are tending to sell their farms to bigger farmers when they retire, instead of passing them on to their children.

Anonymous

@JohnRennie How would a small-scale farmer bribe a large business firm?

John Rennie

They bribe the government officials who are rating the ability of the farmers.

Anonymous

@JohnRennie Employment by firms should not depend on government ratings. If they want efficient employees they should go out themselves and check the farmer's records.

Anonymous

6:57 AM

Government officials are corrupt, that's true.

John Rennie

Ah, OK, I misunderstood what you were saying here.

The big farms won't be interested in employing the small farmers. Big firms will have their own skilled and trusted employees. They will have zero interest in employing a small farmer who is probably poorly educated and would need long training.

Sid

@JohnRennie Exactly. Electorally devastating, as you said

John Rennie

Basically the small farmers would get a payoff then be kicked out.

Sid

@JohnRennie and then, there would be emotional arguments that the big firms low-balled them and paid them far too less...

Anonymous

@JohnRennie Wait, "skilled and trusted employees"? Imo "efficient" small-scale farmers who have been working for years have way more knowledge about their specific type of agriculture than any "formally educated" employee the companies might have.

Anonymous

7:03 AM

Someone who has been rice-farming for two-three decades would have much more knowledge about rice-farming than recently graduated agriculture engineers

John Rennie

@Blue wrong. Big efficient farms are highly mechanised and need specialist skills.

Anonymous

I won't completely agree with that unless I get some real-life experiment result which compares the efficiency of a specialized agricultural engineer and a small-scale efficient farmer who has years of experience with his crop. After a few months of training they should be at the same level.

John Rennie

7:28 AM

@Blue Just look at agriculture in the UK. Big farmers now use satellite surveys and GPS controlled agricultural machinery. No smaller farmer can afford that level of investment.

Anonymous

@JohnRennie It doesn't an efficient person take more than a few months to learn how to use those technologies. Farmers would be looking after the techniques used to sow/reap/harvest the crop while engineers would be developing better technologies for farming using their formal engineering knowledge. Farmers have way more knowledge about things like how weather, irrigation, and other conditions affects their crop and can advise the engineers about it.

user228700

10:33 AM

Hi, everyone! :-)

user228700

Hi @JohnR!

John Rennie

Morning :-)

user228700

Evening here :-)

John Rennie

It's quiet in here right now ...

user228700

Gosh, it has been so long since I properly hung out here. I miss it :'-(

user228700

10:38 AM

Do you remember that discussion we had about types of solutions? We talked about it for 6 hours or so!

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H I must admit I don't - we old people get forgetful :-)

I remember lots of discussion about binary phase diagrams.

user228700

And Gibbs Free Energy! :-D

John Rennie

You don't need any of that stuff now do you?

user228700

No ;_; Oh, all the time I wasted.

user228700

It was fun, to be sure!

John Rennie

10:41 AM

Time spent learning stuff is never wasted.

Especially if it was fun! :-)

user228700

True, true! I had fun, too; lots! Still, that is time I should have spent focusing on other subjects.

user228700

Oh, well :-)

John Rennie

There's only limited mileage in regretting what happened in the past.

More to the point is to focus on having fun right now :-)

Did you ever install Linux on that second disk?

(many people wouldn't equate installing Linux with having fun - their loss :-)

user228700

Nope! I am such an ass. The truth is that I have been caught up with exams. I had two exams last week and two more this coming week!

John Rennie

There's nothing wrong with prioritising the exams :-)

user228700

10:44 AM

I was actually going to get it done today!

John Rennie

Even if they're in absurd subjects that you'll never need (drawing?) they have to be scraped through by hook or crook.

user228700

I am out at the moment and will go back to the hostel in a few hours, at which point I'll try and see what to do about installing Linux.

user228700

@JohnRennie Yes :'-(

user228700

Have you heard of this?

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H if it was me I'd watch a film instead - or read an SF book ...

user228700

10:47 AM

:-) No, no, I must get this done today! I have been putting it off for far too long.

user228700

Is today a second Saturday?

John Rennie

err (consults diary) yes

Does that have special significance?

user228700

Huh, why did you need to consult your diary? Aren't your SF meetings on second Saturdays? That's why I even asked...

John Rennie

On the second Saturday of the month you transform into a werewolf?

@Kaumudi.H Aha! No, we meet on the third Saturday.

user228700

Ah, OK :-)

user228700

10:48 AM

@JohnRennie :-P

John Rennie

Next weekend. The book is The Tourist by Robert Dickinson, which I really enjoyed but I don't understand the ending.

ACuriousMind

@JohnRennie You should know that lycanthropia is associated to the cycles of the moon, which do not neatly align with our unnatural calendars :P

John Rennie

@ACuriousMind a guy I knew at college (not really a friend) was once arrested for running down the street on all fours howling at passing cars.

But I suspect that had to do with the cycles of the pub opening hours.

ACuriousMind

Ah, the fearsome weredrinker.

user228700

@JohnRennie I looked it up on Goodreads and it sure does sound a little confusing.

John Rennie

10:51 AM

Still, it's a great thing to go in your memoirs one day :-)

user228700

Hi @ACu! :-)

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H good though. I do like books that force you to think rather than spoon feeding you the plot.

ACuriousMind

@Kaumudi.H Hey there :)

user228700

@JohnRennie Right, right :-)

user228700

@ACuriousMind How's it going?

user228700

10:53 AM

@JohnR: Did you ever take any road trips in college other than that one to Venice or something?

ACuriousMind

@Kaumudi.H Quite well, procrastinating cleaning for my flatmate's birthday party tonight :P

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H Rome. No, I couldn't afford it.

I only got to Rome because there was a conference there and the university paid the travel expenses.

user228700

Oh, wow, OK.

John Rennie

i.e. they gave me what an economy air fare would cost, and I spent it on petrol for the motorbike :-)

user228700

@ACuriousMind Ooh, sounds fun! :-)

John Rennie

10:55 AM

Are you planning a trip. Cycle ride down the coast?

user228700

@JohnRennie Haha, no, no, I am not :-) My friends have been talking about going here though, as a mini-trip.

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H that sort of thing is fun to do just to be with a group of friends, even if you aren't fussed about waterfalls. I'd say go for it.

ACuriousMind

@Kaumudi.H It certainly will be - it's a (un)dead-themed costume party

user228700

@JohnRennie :-D I will, if we decide to go, after all.

user228700

@ACuriousMind Oh, wow!

user228700

10:58 AM

What would that typically look like? What costume are you going to wear?

Balarka Sen

ACM is really into the death metal scene

user228700

Haha, @Balarka: Hi! :-)

Balarka Sen

Hey

user228700

How's you? xP

user228700

@JohnR: Today is a Saturday! What's for lunch?!

user228700

11:00 AM

Ohhh, wait, that thing encased in stomach...

ACuriousMind

@Kaumudi.H Oh, I don't know what that would typically look like, we never do the same theme twice! :P I'm gonna be a vampire

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H Haven't decided. You saw yesterday's lunch on Facebook, didn't you?

Balarka Sen

@Kaumudi So-so. Working on schtick

user228700

@ACuriousMind Oooh, nice!

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H I've still got that haggis in the freezer waiting to be eaten ...

user228700

11:01 AM

@JohnRennie Yes, yes, I did!

user228700

@JohnRennie Yes, that is what I meant to refer to, when I said "That thing encased in stomach" :-P

user228700

@BalarkaSen Lol, same as usual, then.

Balarka Sen

Well, no, usually I procrastinate on schtick, being the difference

user228700

Ah, right :-P

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H it starts off in a stomach and ends up in a stomach :-) Though these days health regulations forbid them using sheep's stomach. It's packing in a plastic wrapper instead.

user228700

11:03 AM

Ah, OK, that's relieving :-P

John Rennie

I might eat the haggis today. With chips/fries maybe ...

Alex K Chen

12:13 PM

Anybody here ? Can I ask a simple mechaincs doubt here ?

ACuriousMind

@AlexKChen As the room description states: "Don't ask about asking, just ask" ;)

Balarka Sen

@ACuriousMind I see you people subtly changed the statement to avoid copyright strike

ACuriousMind

@BalarkaSen What?

Balarka Sen

The original statement is "Don't ask to ask; just ask", which is in the math chat

ACuriousMind

Ah, I doubt DZ even knew that when he added it to our description :P

Anonymous

12:23 PM

@ACuriousMind Well, he has 2k rep on Math SE. Must have known about it..

ACuriousMind

@Blue Most of our 2k users probably haven't visited this chat once, why should it be different on math.SE?

Anonymous

@ACuriousMind "Most of our 2k users probably haven't visited this chat once"...how are you so sure ? I agree that most of them haven't spoken here. But surely visited it...

Anonymous

Also the chat link glares at one's face in that drop down menu

Anonymous

It's unlikely that a 2k hasn't clicked it and checked out the chat rooms

ACuriousMind

@Blue And then read all the room descriptions and commited them to memory? :P

Anonymous

12:30 PM

@ACuriousMind No. But some descriptions like "Don't ask to ask; just ask" is too catchy a phrase to forget easily. Also maybe that was exactly the phrase which gave him the idea to implement something similar in hbar (maybe subconsciously). Anyhow, only DavidZ can confirm :P

Phase

PSA: If you ever open a question on SE before going to bed, dont turn off your computer

Someone posted a crank as hell answer about how the electrons mass was determined

Involving "imaginary masses and spacetime curvature" and that "Spacetime curvature gives things mass"

Slereah

@0celo7 what's $\eta_{abcd}$ in HE

Anonymous

@Phase I'm especially scared of asking questions on Stack Overflow before going to bed. The question might get a bazillion downvotes by the following morning, get closed/deleted along with a question ban being imposed on my account.

Phase

I dont think you can get a question ban from one bad question

Protip dont delete your questions even if they're bad

that's the best way to get question banned, or so I read on Meta

I think I've given up on Main site tbh. I only had like 600 rep before but I don't really feel like making questions or answers again. I feel like the gem of the site is really the chatrooms.

Anonymous

@Phase Most of my questions are bad for SO. Rather, too easy for the professional programmers. Everything I ask seems to be in books. :P But I am not able to find them even after searching for hours while they dig out links to specific topics in specific books in seconds.

Phase

12:42 PM

I dont think Questions are judged on the metric of "how deep there are", but "has this question been asked before / has effort been put in"

Im not sure about SO but it was my impression that all SE sites saw the site as a sort of learning repository to be built up for anyone looking for answers for problems

Anonymous

SO is way more strict than other SE sites, probably because of the number of low quality questions and answers they get. SO is 10 or more times larger in terms of user base than almost all other SE sites.

Balarka Sen

@Phase what if I delete my answers

Phase

Idk, I tried that too

If you want your stuff gone just delete your account and remake it

Balarka Sen

what if i want a proportion of my stuff gone

not all of it

Phase

Conduct a summoning ritual with candles, chalk and the blood of a newborn

to summon he-who-shall-not-be-named-for-fear-of-a-ten-year-ban

Balarka Sen

12:47 PM

satanism is Not Nice

Phase

Shoganism?

Anonymous

@BalarkaSen The downvotes on them are remembered by the system. After a certain number of downvoted questions asked by you, you'll be banned from asking more.

Balarka Sen

The Shoggoth

@Blue I am not talking about question ban at all

I was simply asking if deleting a lot of my answers gets me banned

Phase

I feel like there's probably something preventing you from deleting accepted answers

just like how you can't delete an answered question

Balarka Sen

prolly true

Anonymous

12:53 PM

@BalarkaSen You will be blocked from answering if you had a certain number of downvoted answers (even if you delete them).

Balarka Sen

ah

Phase

for how long?

Anonymous

"Deleting" doesn't impose a ban on you. The point is that deleting your low quality answers doesn't prevent you from getting banned.

Anonymous

@Phase Forever?

Anonymous

Unless you delete your account and start from 1 rep again.

Anonymous

12:55 PM

Even then there is an IP based restriction imposed on you

Phase

Nah @Blue that's not true

If you delete bad questions etc the algorithms are super strict

Anonymous

I'm not sure about the forever part.

Anonymous

21

A: How does Stack Exchange attempt to prevent low-quality questions and answers?

We already do this for answers. We now have some basic heuristics in place to check for the short answer, and the short “thank you” answer. If the answer is by a new user and matches enough of the heuristics, we provide automatic guidance — as originally suggested on meta by Kop — in the form...

Phase

209

Q: What can I do when getting "We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account"?

Do not repost the question you were about to ask until you have READ EVERYTHING WE ARE ABOUT TO TELL YOU. While trying to ask a question, one could get: We are no longer accepting questions from this account. See the Help Center to learn more. Likewise, for answers: We are no longe...

Balarka Sen

Well I deleted my top voted answers so

Anonymous

12:58 PM

One option is perhaps fixing previous answers.

Phase

You have to contribute positively

Balarka Sen

Unfortunately high votes doesn't mean high quality

0celo7

@Slereah volume form?

Qmechanic

0

Q: Tensor Networks' libraries comparissons and future directions

Can the QuTiP library be used to implement tensor network models with the same kind of features offered by the iTensor and Xerus libraries? What about TensorFlow, can it be used for this purpose to take advantage of its readiness to run on GPUs and distributed systems? iTensor seems to be better ...

quantum-mechanics tensor-calculus computational-physics simulations software

Off-topic? Primarily opinion-based?

Phase

@Qmechanic I have to ask, are you a sentient bot? How are you so prolific :O

Anonymous

1:00 PM

@Qmechanic Yes I guess

0celo7

1:11 PM

@Phase jokes on you I bought the game

ACuriousMind

@BalarkaSen If you are deleting a lot of answers without obvious reasons, mods will often reach out to you to ask why. Willful deletion of useful answers is viewed as vandalism and will be reverted, and can lead to suspension if the user does not desist.

@Blue afaik, even users hit by the strictest automatic ban get a new chance every 6 months

Phase

@0celo7 Dang

Is it fun?

ACuriousMind

Or perhaps one chance 6 months after the ban first set in, I'm not sure

0celo7

Dunno

Phase

Is it an improvement over games like Unity?

oh

0celo7

1:15 PM

I haven’t played yet

Phase

I bought hand of fate 2 yesterday, still havent played it

ive heard its hard to explain

0celo7

I was not sober last night so I just bought it, started to download, and then fell asleep.

Alex K Chen

OK, so suppose you have a uniformly dense rod, hold it in a hand, and start to rotate it fiercly at a constant velocity $\omega$. What's the tension of the rod at distance $L$ from the centre of rotation, given the total lenght is $1$ unit ? (My approach gives a VERY WRONG answer, that's why I'm asking)

Phase

I thought you'd be too edgy and contrarian to drink socially

Balarka Sen

@ACuriousMind I see. Well, I have good reasons to delete those answers that I did delete.

0celo7

1:18 PM

Nah I stole a bottle of vodka and drank it under a bridge while complaining about algebraists.

@Phase I’m not edgy at all. Where do you people get these crazy ideas?

Phase

And then you carved quaternions onto the bridge?

ACuriousMind

Apr 14 '16 at 0:21, by 0celo7

Oh well, the life of the edgy teenager is a hard one.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind I'm no longer a teenager.

Alex K Chen

Anybody to my question ?

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 But you are still edgy? :P

0celo7

1:21 PM

@ACuriousMind No

Phase

@0celo7 contrarian at the very least

0celo7

I don’t know why you keep saying that

Oh my god I have to update my GPU drivers

Massive Windows update

@Phase lmao I won’t be playing for an hour

Phase

RIP

GPhys

1:39 PM

@JohnRennie $1000 was an odd example; the tuition waiver at our university is $45000/yr

0celo7

@GPhys get ready to pay taxes on that!!

GPhys

how? I think it's close to 100% of my stipend (the taxes)

I suppose it would make more sense if I actually received the $45000, then I could actually decide how best to pay off a loan

ACuriousMind

Impressions from Europe: The mere fact that there is a 45000/yr tuition that can be waived is the larger problem. :P

GPhys

@ACuriousMind but it's not real?

nobody pays that, or has ever paid it

that's why everybody is upset, becuase now they are going to have to pay on it

(tax wise)

0celo7

I don’t even know why there’s a tuition

GPhys

1:43 PM

me either

0celo7

Maybe for corporations putting people through school

ACuriousMind

@GPhys Sooo...it's just a scheme to get you working for the university without them having to pay you in real money?

0celo7

But 95% of people don’t pay it

@ACuriousMind they pay you too

GPhys

@ACuriousMind they do pay us real money

we have a stipend, and then there's a tuition, that they waive, so that nobody pays the tuition, and the only thing that happens is they pay us a stipend

I don't know why it works like that

ACuriousMind

Wait a minute, I thought US students are so in debt because they have to take loans to pay tuition?

GPhys

1:44 PM

the change is the tuition waiver is now taxable income, so that the total tax we pay is now most of my stipend

0celo7

That’s for undergrad

GPhys

yeah that's undergrad

ACuriousMind

Ah

GPhys

this is grad school, we get paid like PhD students everywher eelse

except not anymore, because if we pay tax on our waived tuition, then almost all of my pay I will have to pay on the tax

ACuriousMind

Sooo...if universities just stopped pretending there's a tuition that can be waived, this issue would just go away?

0celo7

1:45 PM

Yes. Some schools like Cornell do that.

GPhys

Maybe, I don't know why it exists in the first place so I don't know enough to know that's even possible

it certainly seems like they could do that @ACuriousMind

0celo7

Maybe this is some 4D chess by Trump to get universities to do that.

But more likely is it’s a big “fuck you” to the liberal universities.

Not realizing that they might be fooling people like me.

Oh the other hand people getting worthless PhDs are parasites anyway so we deserve it.

Pragmatism is a hard pill to swallow.

GPhys

@ACuriousMind for me it takes my yearly stipend from $27000 to $5500

(my stipend is larger than most places because I'm in New York City, so the extra stipend is just for rent basically)

Slereah

ahahah

My yearly uni fee was 400 bucks

GPhys

I have like the worst scenario

my uni is private so our tuition waiver was already larger, plus I'm in NYC and NYC has income tax too

0celo7

1:49 PM

@GPhys I’m looking at doing my PhD in Germany now

GPhys

I mean obviously unless this changes or the university changes I'm dropping out of my PhD program

at least i"ve already finished a master's

but it's obviously not worth taking out that much money in loans; even if I wanted to take out loans my uni is just a terrible deal at that rate

ACuriousMind

@GPhys Given that you're probably not the only one in that position at your uni, it would appear the uni has to choose between removing a tuition nobody pays anyway or losing a sizable portion of their PhD students, right?

GPhys

It's not even clear somebody would give a physics PhD student a loan

@ACuriousMind correct

ACuriousMind

Seems a clear-cut decision to me, but I've never understood admins :P

0celo7

@ACuriousMind That’s my thought.

Wonder what the GOP’s reason for this is.

@Phase ok finally done

Phase

1:57 PM

Enjoy your game man