Don't worry about it Elon hired 19 year old criminals to run the agency's description through grok and it turned out that isn't important.
Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
91–100 of 587 posts
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#92[flagged]
You seem to be oblivious to the fact that you can type that comment in a web browser and post it on the internet is due in large part to decades of people funded by the NSF and then making the knowledge they discovered freely available.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is, the team that fired all these researchers doesn’t have that data either. So it’s extremely easy to be critical of their haphazard cuts since they’re made completely arbitrarily with the only consideration so far being the ease of firing them based on their probationary status. The process and detail you’re asking for would be the responsible way to shrink the government and is the polar opposite of what…
Non-probationary employees can't be fired (and even voluntary resignations are rate-limited by the Iron Mountain mine shaft elevator). So every day that process takes lowers the number of employees that can even be fired. Once it gets to a year (very easily) they would all have come off probation so nothing could be done. Everyone saying "oh something should be done but just do it slower" is actually saying do nothin…
I didn’t realize that; this is a really good point
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#94This is true for many programs for reasons that will be hard to understand if you aren't a scientist. The NSF program managers are often pulled out of academia for brief periods of their career to do various tasks as experts. This means they are often probationary. This is the only way to hire people with deep expertise on the topic-du-jour. The trump administration fired in wide swaths many probationary employees at…
In addition to these scientists, I heard from my friends in academia that they will be taking fewer PhD students because they're unsure of the funding. We may be looking at a lost decade.
Lost decade for the US and the beginning of the Chinese century for others
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The consequences are inflation. However, as long as there isn't inflation, it's just fine. And there are other sources of inflation, like energy crises, outside of spending based inflation.
Actually it goes the other way. Inflation erodes public debt [1][2]. It is, however, not necessarily good[3]. But at the end of the day, the causes of inflation are not cause and effect. You can print money to save an economy without causing inflation as we did during the 2008 financial crisis[4] or you can print money and cause hyperinflation as in the case of Argentina[5] or Zimbabwe. It’s more about how you do it…
Inflation causes interest rates to go up. Which increases our interest payments. Which blows a hole in our budget.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#96[flagged]
You think this NSF money was stolen? Where's your evidence of that?
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't believe that, or you would have moved to be out from under this ultimate tyranny. Somalia, perhaps. Your argument is the classic Randist Libertarian one: "There is no such thing as society, everything I did I earned myself with no reference to anyone." It is, of course, complete and utter garbage. Government spending is the only known way of constructing projects that are not attractive money-makers: rural…
This violates consent, though. Consent matters, regardless of how much handwaving occurs after people choose to violate it. The other such places you describe also violate consent. Same criminal acts: coercion by violence. I do indeed believe in the things I have said, and I have indeed emigrated from the United States for many such reasons, principally among them my objection to being forced to fund neverending war.…
You can renounce your US citizenship and thus avoid the burden of US taxation.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#98Interesting approach to competing with China on wireless technology. I would have thought the US having a competitive edge over China in terms of research and development would be important to Republicans.
The federal govt can’t be the majority of technological innovation. If we’re lucky this vacuum will be filled by an even larger private sector innovation hub like Xerox park and bell labs.
Just like in healthcare, right? Where we are lucky the private industry has created...oh wait, most expensive healthcare system in the world, doesn't cover a third of the population, doesn't even crack the top ten in outcomes.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#99[flagged]
This is the real reason. Does the program produce money or help people? Or is it a black hole for funding to be dumped into?
People are so used to excessive waste they can’t even tell it apart from something that adds value.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#100Notwithstanding the other awful aspects of all of this, there’s a certain vibe of, “people who don’t understand how a system works attempting to act like they know how the system works and are too cowardly to admit they are breaking everything.” This just reads like “Character Limit” except replace Twitter with the federal government.
It reminds me of the Gordian knot myth. All these sages had tried and failed to untie it. Alexander the Great, a true jock, sliced it in half with his sword.
Trump and Musk style themselves after Alexander. They see the complexities of geopolitics, security, culture and economics, and they have contempt for that complexity. They give simple, brutal solutions for hard problems: War in Europe? Force Ukraine to surrender! Slow to change government policy? Fire Federal workers and consolidate power! Too many illegal immigrants? Send them to Guantamo! And it feels active, it feels efficient, it's cathartic, and so their base cheers them on as they take swings at the load-bearing walls of our country. The fulminant narcissism, impulsive mania and willful ignorance are adaptive, to them.