Earlier quoted context omitted.
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You can migrate and renounce citizenship. Staying and benefiting from the spending is tacit consent no?
There is no such thing as tacit consent.
Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
401–410 of 587 posts
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#402Consent matters. There is no worse tyranny than to force someone to pay for something they do not want to buy, simply because you think it would be good for them. I am vehemently pro-research and pro-education, but these tax-funded programs are not it. There must be some meaningful connection to the delivery of value, otherwise this stuff is just public-private wealth transfer. This seems obvious to me. Why should th…
Congress passed laws allocating the spending. That by definition is consent.
They did this without my involvement. Furthermore, the amendment that they claim permits them to steal your money was ratified by representatives who were elected by no people alive today.
The current population had no say whatsoever in these laws. They were born into it like being born into slavery.
There is no “unsubscribe”.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except it’s not really democracy. You have gerrymandered districts. You elect a leader not by who gets the most votes, but who wins a system that was designed for the benefit of white slave owners. And of course, who really believes the election results when you have Trump saying that Musk rigged some voting machines in his favor. Face it, the US no longer creates its government from the collective will of its citize…
I buy the gerrymandering concept at the congressional level. But Trump won the popular vote. He increased his numbers in 90% of counties. He grew across all demographics. This was not a structural failure. It was very clearly a country-wide mandate.
Ugh, please stop calling this a "mandate". You don't have a mandate when you weren't even able to secure 50% of the total votes, and your main opponent only trailed you by a percentage point and a half.
I think if Biden had decided up-front that he wouldn't seek re-election, and the Democrats had been able to field a real primary, Trump may not have won. Instead we had an old man making blunder after blunder during his campaign, followed by a not-all-that-popular replacement that no one selected through the primary process, who only had a few short months to put a campaign together. Frankly I think it's impressive Harris did as well as she did.
"Mandate"... oh, please.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
If people are very bad at making long term decisions, then how would a government (made of people) somehow mitigate this? Governments also have demonstrated their fundamental inability to outperform in making long-term decisions. “People are bad, therefore let’s throw organizations of even more people at the problem” doesn’t even pass the laugh test. In fact, not only does this “solution” not solve the problem, it cr…
Most people are bad at making long-term decisions. Some are not. Biases can be overcome with sustained training and dedication. Using taxes to fund basic research is one of many ways our institutions have a countervailing effect towards long-term thinking. In fact we should be taxing much more and doing much, much more of it. This is explicitly anti-majoritarian, yes. Corruption is indeed a potential issue, and we sh…
What you are describing is by definition an oligarchy.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#405This 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.
Biochemist friend moved across the country for a post-doc and three months into it is waiting to be let go. She is now looking at options outside the country, specifically China, given the incredible instability here.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a good thing you are "starting to settle" 2025. I mean before 2020 they disbanded federal bodies for pandemic prep and look what happened.
Still, "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
> Still, "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
¿Porque no los dos?
> “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/flo...
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
He disavowed project 25, but it was written by all his inner circle, and he hired them into govt. So, if the voter believed him, well duh. Musk was a big part of the inner circle before the election. His track record is well known. In other words everything that is happening was predictable and predicted. Voters knew what they were voting for. Those who are surprised really weren't paying any attention.
Voters could not have known that Trump would make a concerted effort to do anything unconstitutional. This is nothing like he did his first term or any other Republican has ever done. He is going after departments that are conservative darlings like the Defense department. I can’t remember any serious person saying we need to cut spending and fire people at the FAA. If he had thought that voters wanted Project 2025,…
> Voters could not have known that Trump would make a concerted effort to do anything unconstitutional
Trump literally said that he would be a dictator on day one. I heard tons of interviews with Republicans saying they'd be ok with Trump acting like a dictator.
Republican voters knew Trump would do unconstitutional things, and they liked it.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot "wilfully letting go of democracy". US democracy is far away from dying, but who knows how much longer it can keep holding up.
We're only one skipped election away from democratic death.
How would you "skip" an election, though? Every single blue state and swing state will hold elections in 2026 and 2028. The federal government has no say in that.
If the red states don't feel like having elections, then I guess their legislatures will be directly appointing electors to send to the electoral college. Outcome will be the same, more or less, as if they held elections.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#409This 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…
there are two tiers of program managers. there are those that are pulled from academia, as you say, but theres a 3-5x? multiple of "junior' PMs that are say MS or BS scientists, rarely PhD (usually the case when the PhD is... subpar), these are career and eventually thet are promoted to senior management and decision making roles.
I don’t know what the distribution of advanced degrees is among NSF program managers, but I strongly reject the implication that career program managers are somehow a lower tier or less well suited for the job. I’ve personally served a few times as an NSF panel reviewer for a career PM that does not hold a PhD, and they are awesome. They have a background in the startup world and ask really insightful question and know how to build effective groups of experts and efficiently guide discussion to get actionable feedback from them in a really short timeframe. A lot of PhDs are not great with these skills, and I’ve learned a ton about evaluating the potential impact and risks of research proposals by interacting with this person.
Also, this attitude is kind of counter to the egalitarian notion a lot of HNers hold that you don’t need a formal CS degree to be a great software dev.
Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't get so depressed. The Executive branch in the US does not have a lot of power when it comes to influencing the states. For example, Trump can't actually force states to change their school athlete programs. It doesn't have any power over individual states (or schools). All his DoE can do, is to threaten to withhold funding. And even that is being contested because the Congress has not authorized it. However, if…
Are states exactly flush with cash to plug even small gaps in school budgets? You mentioned CA which is rebuilding from massive fires, can they afford that? What about Arizona, 2021 to 2022 19% of their schools budget was federal funding. What happens if there is a natural disaster, Trump can withhold funds to force changes. Can a state turn down that level of assistance? They would have to prioritize recovery I assu…
Exactly. Look at how Hungary's Orban regime is slowly choking the last stronghold of any kind of political opposition, Budapest. It's a war of attrition.