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Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

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Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#561

Post by _DeadFred_ »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #268
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We may be looking at a lost decade. We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world. Reduced health, reduced education, reduced funding for research, reduced international aid programs (which both garner goodwill whilst also creating a bulwark against those who profit from misery), reduced oversight / regulation of the power of capital, alienation o…

I keep oscillating between are they just stupid or are they malicious and I'm starting to settle on the latter given the kinds of actions this administration is taking. Ironic that their voters thought they'd be mAkINg AMeRIcA gREaT aGAin when in fact they're going to cause us to lose our leadership role in many areas.

They have stated/published that their intentions are malicious over and over again. But for some reason people keep wanting to steelman their position into something different than what they say it is.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#562

Post by _DeadFred_ »

zombot wrote: post #380
esalman wrote: post #356

Earlier 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".

Except these people have stated their intentions as malicious over and over and over so there is no need to 'ascribe' anything to them.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#563

Post by acdha »

cyberax wrote: post #270
ajross wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States have "power", but not money. There are no state level science grants anywhere at the scale of the linked article.

CA spends around $11B on the University of California system. The NIH budget is $47B. I haven't done the math, but I would hazard that the total amount of money spent on science by the Federal and the individual state authorities would be comparable. It's just that historically the Federal government was leading with the fundamental research, but if push comes to shove, states can start spinning up replacement progra…

California spends $4.7B in general fund revenue on the UC system. Tuition is a bit more than that, but it’s paid by students for their personal benefit so you can’t just repurpose it because some billionaires want tax cuts.

https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4862

That covers everything from paving roads and mowing grass to paying for their pension system and monitoring for wildfires, so the proportional increase for research funding would be even larger than it sounds because federal funding has been the backbone for that since WWII.

While you’d be looking at a significant increase in tax demand for them it’d be much worse for almost everyone else because California is also the richest state in the country, almost twice as rich as the second (Texas). There’s no way that isn’t a bloodbath for American science.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#564

Post by insane_dreamer »

esbranson wrote: post #559
insane_dreamer wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and they cannot even implement Login.gov after being told by Congress What are you talking about? I use login.gov all the time. Works well. > I would like to see the rest of the first world do something significant, like fill the void, like Europe. Europe may or may not do that. But who know who will? China. Look at what's happened in Africa in the past 20 years. While the US was totally distracted with its "war on…

> China will become more popular among developing countries Can't wait! That's going to an awful lot of Kool-Aid though to believe that. I recommend sticking to state TV on China's popularity in any given country. > It has struck major deals for access to natural resources, and boosted its influence significantly primarily through infrastructure loans. Yeah, maybe we should have given them loans instead of aid. That…

I’ve lived and worked all over the world for decades, including China, and have a good grasp of international affairs, and I can confidently tell you that you are incorrect.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#565

Post by esalman »

gwd wrote: post #417
esalman wrote: post #356

Earlier 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.

But was that malice, or stupidity? Do you think they disbanded pandemic prep because they wanted people to die in a pandemic? It seems much more likely that they were too stupid to realize that being unprepared for a pandemic is way more costly than being prepared for one. There's certainly a lot of malice: asking for names of FBI agents who worked on Jan 6 cases, and in putting Tulsi Gabbard over the CIA, refusing t…

Saying this is stupidity is an underestimation. One does not simply become the most powerful and the richest man on earth by playing stupid. In fact we are stupid for believing so- that's exactly what they want.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#566

Post by rayiner »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #543
rayiner wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the power Musk holds isn’t the result of him being rich, it’s because he has a populist cult of personality. The candidate who spent twice the money lost the election. Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers.

> Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers. From Gallup [0]—top issues among all registered voters: The economy Democracy in the U.S. Terrorism and national security Types of Supreme Court justices candidates would pick Immigration Education Healthcare Gun policy Abortion ^^Taxes Crime Distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. ^^The federal budget…

If you look at polling, Trump voters prioritized democracy slightly more highly than Harris voters. The permanent government is a democracy issue.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#567

Post by rayiner »

_heimdall wrote: post #505
rayiner wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a role the framers ever envisioned, and it’s a bad thing to have in a democratic system. The government should be responsive—voting should result in visible changes to the government. A lot of the current polarization is due to the fact that people have been voting against globalization since 2008 and somehow we keep getting more of it. It’s dangerous in a democracy for voters to perceive that elections ar…

That's a tough comparison to make. The framers lived in a drastically different world with regards to the size and scope of the federal government. They design a federal government that was purposely hamstrung by the states. It was poorly funded, had no standing military, only briefly had a federal bank, and had very limited purview of authority that didn't fall down to the state level. If we want to remove bureaucra…

> That's a tough comparison to make. The framers lived in a drastically different world with regards to the size and scope of the federal government.

That makes it more, not less, important for that expansive government to be highly responsive to elections.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#568

Post by rayiner »

acdha wrote: post #508
rayiner wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a fine notion before it became apparent that skilled professionals are unable to separate their work from their political ideology: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-hea... This was a huge problem in the first Trump administration: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-burea... . Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration p…

> Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now? Yes - every lawyer I’ve met considers it their professional obligation to work on their client’s behalf, even if it’s behaviour they personally disapprove of. This is especially true in government where the merit-based civil…

Lawyers are highly political, as we saw during the Trump administration. The ABA, for example, has been peddling completely absurd ideas, like that rhetoric Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified.

Reversing Trump’s immigration policies is one of the first things Biden did: https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_biden-signs-executive-orders-r...

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#569

Post by rayiner »

DFHippie wrote: post #501
rayiner wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a fine notion before it became apparent that skilled professionals are unable to separate their work from their political ideology: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-hea... This was a huge problem in the first Trump administration: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-burea... . Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration p…

> Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now? This is precisely what lawyers do. They try to make the best argument for their client's case. If they do not want to make that argument, they let their client find a new lawyer (resign, if they work for the government). They…

Government lawyers absolutely failed to represent the Trump administration as aggressively as they did the Biden administration. There are reports of political appointees having to follow PACER themselves because staff lawyers weren’t keeping them up to date on cases.

And yes, Biden enacted mass immigration policies. Revoking Trump’s EOs was one of the first things he did: https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_biden-signs-executive-orders-r.... He also granted TPS to hundreds of thousands of immigrants, created the CBP One app to facilitate illegal immigration, etc.

This isn’t even really disputed. Border crossings are already down 60%: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-era-southern-border-s.... Migrant shelters are being shut down, migrant caravans are being turned around, etc.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#570

Post by crusty »

_heimdall wrote: post #467
watwut wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has zero to do with rooting put fraud, this is literally making goverment more corrupt. And the whole "democrats are Marxists" talking point is ridiculous. There are no paralels here, just a authoritarian and anti democratic movement successfully demonizing other side regardless of truth.

You're being too black and white here in my opinion. From what I've seen we don't yet have a clear vision of what their end goals really are. They've talked about waste and fraud, and what they've done so far could be to that end. Going out a layer and you find people around them, and Project 2025, that seem to talk much more towards privatizing the government. I haven't seen enough to know which way it will go, but…

If you are a person who thinks diversity, equity, and inclusion are by definition determinants or waste, fraud, and abuse, then sure, you aren't going to see this as something totally different. So when Trump threatens to disrupt and destroy funding streams to agencies and institutions merely for referencing or addressing those things, i guess that's just part of the government being efficient.

Waste, fraud, and abuse are completely subjective and at this point arbitrary terms to a guy who thinks Putin is aces, calls Zelynsk is a dictator, and claims Ukraine stayed the War with the country that invaded them... twice. If he's unwilling to recognize a shared reality and set of objective truths with us, how would we not be complete idiots to believe his version of waste, fraud, and abuse comes straight from the upside-down and its real value is as a catchphrase that capitalizes on people's preconceptions of the government.

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