161–170 of 218 posts
it truly is astonishing how idiotic or malicious so many of the posters on HN are in the face of this. yes, actually, it is bad if a bunch of racist lunatics are personally in charge of things, and increase their personal power to make arbitrary decisions based on their stupid hobby horses or deeply dumb opinions. yes, actually, this is different to when Biden or Obama or Bush presided over a functioning government,…
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I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy. It seems like an obvious channel for corruption of science. Sure private donors have interest driven motives too but it would be diffuse across many areas not concentrated like a political party’s interests.
"why would the government pay for things that benefit the people that they govern and which those people elected them do?" what do you want a government to do?
If an executive order can put grants under political control, they were already under political control. We just didn't know it. That is the case with so much of what is happening now. If these things are possible, the system was already broken.
In software terms, there has been a vulnerability in the constitution all along, it just had not been exploited until now. The three branches of government are supposed to be checks and balances against each other. But turns out two of the three don't have any actual power to enforce their mandates. This has worked as long as the three branches grudgingly respected each others role. But now that the executive branch…
Future people must endeavor to split up power even more, make more functions more independent and shielded from political manipulation, and prevent the rich from monopolizing and corrupting political office, government, mass media distribution, and journalism.
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The GOP has majority in the Supreme Court and in Congress. It's not like there's a conflict of power. There's no disagreement going on.
Indeed. Congress has tons of hard checks on executive power. (The Supreme Court, less so if it comes to enforcement and all norms are ignored) That a Republican Congress isn't checking a Republican President isn't evidence of a lack of checks and balances. And points to why the President is pushing so hard for Texas to gerrymander additional Republican seats into the House...
In the current context, gerrymandering only serves to prevent impeachment at this point, but it could permit even more extreme executive-dictated, legislative rubber-stamping. In the long-term, it would stack the deck for partisan cheating.
Perhaps an amendment is needed to insist on independent, non-partisan district map commissions for every state at the federal level.
PS: I used to live in Greg Casar's ultra-salamander TX-35, but now it bypasses me down I-35 with an umbilical or tiny body from SATX to ATX. TX-15 ® an TX-28 (D) run through my ZIP Code now.
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China is a pretty good place to be a scientists in certain fields. The pay is very competitive.
Then why are all the Chinese origin AI Devs working in USA?
No, they aren't all working in the USA, and in many cases those that were are leaving the US and moving back to China.
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Do you really think WWII America was a less oppressive state? Do you know much harder it was to get porn back then? Or be a trans? Japanese internment? Food ration cards? Office of Censorship? Smith Act? The draft? Curfews and blackouts?
They meant less oppressive in comparison to Nazi Germany.
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You seem to be frustrated about Romania (which has an east but not a formal eastern region designation as in Eastern Europe - are you conflating the two?) - but can you elaborate on your frustration?
EU never manages to act under reasonable timelines, because every bill is an opportunity for some pork on the side.
And so now, I have to police my free speech and participation in the public sphere because I'm afraid someone might choose to nuke the lab. That's some bullshit there.
Hey, and what will stop these political appointees from terminating grants because the scientists publicly support Democrats? or criticized Trump's public policy? Or called Stephen Miller a Nazi? And so now, I have to police my free speech and participation in the public sphere because I'm afraid someone might choose to nuke the lab. That's some bullshit there.
Vigorous adherence to the First Amendment by the Administration and, failing that, vigorous enforcement of it by the federal courts.
More seriously, nothing, and that’s the point.
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Go deeper - why does anti-intellectualism emerge?
Nationalist populism sacrifices academics and intellectuals to create a divide between “the people” and the presumed said “elite,” which is then weaponized for political gain by the actual “elite” (political, economical, etc). These movements rely on emotional resonance and simplified narratives, as opposed to educated, informed discourse. My crude take on the underlying root cause is resentment, discontent, and simi…
If the Democrats had been (and had messaged themselves as being) the party of the working class, they would have drained the swamp that Trump's support comes from. Instead, the message was "if you're working class, and you don't support gay marriage and trans people in sports, and you think that abortion is morally wrong, then you are a moral outcast and we are going to destroy your entire culture." They may have been pro-working-class, but they were pro other things more, and those other things were not big concerns for the working class. And many of the working class took a different stance on the cultural issues than the Democratic leadership.
In fact, the Democrats quit cultivating their base, and so their base walked away from them to someone who at least pretended to care about them.
Nationalist populism harvested that. But there has to be something growing before it can be harvested, and nationalist populism didn't sow the seeds.