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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

481–490 of 1001 posts

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory it can also be beneficial to historical cold countries like Russia and Canada. It’s entirely possible Russia will find itself with a pacific warm water port. Perhaps tons of tundra frost will become fertile farm land. Of course this is at the costs of billions of climate refugees having to migrate as well as a bunch of other side effects

> It’s entirely possible Russia will find itself with a pacific warm water port. You are 100% right. Yes, some people could believe that huge mistake. Global effects will still catch them. The atmosphere and the oceans are global systems that don't care about frontiers. Warm oceans in Russia means extra hot waters in the equator belt, that means Hurricanes on steroids. This nice Russian port in Putingrade could be de…

AFAIK the peat is already releasing gas very quickly.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#482
post #448
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this* here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48568492 . * by "this" I mean posting ideological clichés and internet tropes - This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

It’s true in the sense that scientific exploration expands our understanding of the world, which often forces us to re-evaluate our beliefs and adopt new ones, something that is antithetical to small C conservatism, almost by definition. So in that sense, reality does have a “liberal” (perhaps more accurately progressive) bias, the more we learn about it. There is also quite a lot of history through the ages of scien…

Ok, but that doesn't make the GP a good Hacker News comment. It simply repeats a cliché, and a good HN comment should be more substantive than that.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Down voted, imagine that. Predictable as sunrise. So what should be cut?

Trump's ballroom. Trump's "irs lawsuit settlement fund" The salaries of all the lawyers being paid to justify illegal and discriminatory executive orders. ICE's budget. TSA's budget. "Border Wall" construction costs. Should I go on?

I agree with all of that but you don't put a dent in spending outside of tackling ICE budget. TSA is more neutral since a lot of funding from that comes from airline ticket fees.

There is only 5 items that matter:

Interest on Debt.

Social Security

Medicare.

Medicaid.

Defense.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#484

Reminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance. Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...

...which is why there are no emerging far-right-populist political movements in welfare-heavy societies like the UK, France, and Germany, right?

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become. At least it's a good thing that we're able to a) observe and b) talk about and c) acknowledge openly(ish) that academic, mainstream, practicing "science" (including as visible to microscopists and all that entails) is currently a "mess". This allows us to, eventually, address those issues (or die trying!). Science used to move at a p…

honestly my friend, i did not understand your comment.

I appreciate the feedback.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#486
post #360

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From what I understand, Spain has their own set of politics worth losing sleep over; perhaps as an expat you won't be as attached though.

I (American) worked in Spain (Cáceres, Extremadura) ~2015-2017 in tech. It was a wonderful experience. Extremely talented, hard-working, and friendly co-workers. Great health-care and education systems. I think since then rising housing prices partially due to migration have become an issue, but it's a really, really nice place.

To add context Extremadura is a member of the "poor" Spain. To US people could be useful to think on a sort of New Mexico.

Pros: Great food, interesting cultural past, only one language to deal with and not complicated accents to grasp (more important that most people think), gorgeous wild areas, uncomplicated people, maybe a little on the introverted side at first, but solid gold after a while.

Cons: Risk of poverty sadly high, bigger than many US states (but with better government support and healthcare). Harsh continental climate very hot and very cold. Not for everybody (but US has plenty of places with similar or worse weather). The trains and communication roads are also under-average for the country and many people don't really speak English.

In many of the non highly touristic places you can live well if you can adapt to the cons. Housing prices are lower, life expenses cheaper and buying a house should be affordable with a decent job (Don't try this in Barcelona or Madrid). Portugal is close, and is even cheaper, to the point of some people living there and working in Spain. To support the same standard of living in Barcelona, Valencia or Madrid you need to plan in advance, to stomach the stress that unavoidably come with big cities, and earn much more.

In Spain if you can speak English well you will be automatically seen as a great researcher.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#487
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to vent: climate change is not a controversial topic, it's an inconvenient topic for people making a lot of money.

Maybe off-topic, but sadly, climate change is an inconvenient topic for everyone. There's one thing that the poor, angry, ready-to-eat-the-rich masses hate more than the world warming up, and that's higher gas prices. Polices to reduce fossil fuel usage by making them expensive are strikingly unpopular across the world, regardless of how much they say they hate fossil fuel CEOs.

Not really, it is different in America, where everyone is utterly car dependent. Raise US fuel prices from barely nothing to barely nothing plus a tenth of a cent and TikTok explodes with Americans sat in cars, junk food in hand, saying some utter nonsense about how crraazy the new gas prices are.

Meanwhile, in Europe, where petrol prices have always been vastly higher than what any American has ever paid, if the price goes up, then meh. Same deal in Asia, it is not as if Japan has riots due to the price of 'gas'.

There is a funny side to this, sometimes untold atrocities are committed, maybe with a decapitation strike here, a double-tap on a school there, maybe with a few mosques for palate cleansing purposes, for nobody in America to care about that, just their gas prices.

Zoning comes into it too. Where I am, in the UK, there are many minimum wage jobs where the staff will be walking, getting the bus or getting the train to work. Apart from anything, many businesses just do not have car parking spaces for customers, never mind staff.

The class of journalists are heavily car dependent though, so, for them, gas prices are going to be huge news, because it affects them. They just have to go to a garage forecourt, interview a few 'talking heads' about how atrocious the prices are, and they have their story.

I write this having not been to a petrol station in thirty years, and currently living in a block of twelve flats (apartments) where nobody has a car. We do have a fantastic selection of hedgehogs, foxes, rabbits, squirrels and birds though, all alive due to the magic of practically no cars.

But none of us are going to make the news for saying 'meh, keep Hormuz closed, good riddance to it!', whilst feeding monkey nuts to named squirrels (on TikTok). If we were slurping on McDepression Meals, moaning about gas prices from a massive truck that cost $50K, then we would get 'heard'.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans voted to bring the country back to the 1950's and the plan is working perfectly

In the 1950s the US had lots of foreign scientists. In fact if the US hadn't had its huge influx of foreign scientists fleeing the Nazis, who knows where we'd even be today.

Then there would be someone else who'd come. Considering they came to US and not to other places out of Europe. It would mean conditions were favorable in US.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans voted to bring the country back to the 1950's and the plan is working perfectly

The retrogression perception is correct; but the specific timeframe is so incorrect that the back of my head blew out like a pinata. The goal is - and I am not picking on the reactionary wing alone, this impulse has broad support across our ideologies - de-industrialization . The complexity of post-Enlightenment civilization is being rejected, in favor of some hypothetical state. This puts the past timeframe as far b…

The piñata bit is a bit hyperbolic, but largely I agree that it’s a movement built against the principles of the enlightenment, and the movements of modernism and post-modernism that grew out of it.

It’s like: what if we took all of the principles of the enlightenment, and forced them through a sieve that served our racist, xenophobic, chauvinist world view? Rediscovering eugenics and pseudoscience, especially for christofascist ambitions and exploitative grifting.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#490
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become. At least it's a good thing that we're able to a) observe and b) talk about and c) acknowledge openly(ish) that academic, mainstream, practicing "science" (including as visible to microscopists and all that entails) is currently a "mess". This allows us to, eventually, address those issues (or die trying!). Science used to move at a p…

No. AI is not doing science. And also no, science is not being held back by "pearl clutching" and "unwillingness to let brilliant non-science geniuses in." While there are a lot of problems with how the journal model of publication has evolved over time, and AI has actually made that problem far worse, not better, the real threat and "mess" that science is in currently in the US is from the administration. Science in…

Points taken and appreciated. Thanks.
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