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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#501

Post by ykonstant »

jampekka wrote: post #489
matwood wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a kind of lottery-mentality that Europe doesn't want to attract anyway. It’s not lottery mentality, it’s risk taking. And it’s something that the EU should be fostering. The US encourages risk taking where failing isn’t even seen as a bad thing.

Ending up homeless for failing is probably not the risk taking encouragement Europeans want. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31524645

That is the thing though: with the increased safety nets of the richer European countries, you would think that taking risks would both be more encouraged and naturally less dangerous than the US. And I am a big proponent of said safety nets. But we don't see this "moderate-risk-taking" mentality in the EU...

...or don't we? I am not sure. We are definitely not seeing the runaway successes of US big tech, but is it because people are not taking measured risks, or do operations fumble at a later point in their development? I don't know. What I do know is that revenue sources in the EU come with extremely onerous strings attached, are orders of magnitude below US levels, or are only available to big corporations of the old guard.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#502

Post by DarkmSparks »

realusername wrote: post #494
jmward01 wrote: post #490

This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…

Yes let's call a spade a spade, it's a coup. Trump is passing as much stuff as quickly as he can to bypass the separation of powers while they catch up.

not really a coup, its a default. US government is already using pension fund money to pay its bills since early January (aka special measures), the interest on their national debt is already more than they collect in taxes.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#503

Post by xp84 »

jmward01 wrote: post #490

This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…

As far as I can tell, Trump is doing things he openly announced he would do for at least a year. So all of this is either a result of robust public support for his policies, or, (my preferred explanation) an even more robust public repudiation of the only alternative that was put forward by the other party, a candidate famous for dropping out before Iowa in 2020 but somehow was coronated the nominee without any voter input.

The thing about democracy is, every person is going to sometimes wildly disagree with what the elected officials do. Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.'

Now, you can make limited inroads to block executive actions with the courts, but even when SCOTUS was friendly to the anti-Trump cause, when that's done to advance an unpopular (majority-disapproved-of) agenda, it is usually a hollow and temporary victory. To get the policies you want, you need to win over voters. That's the part the DNC seems to be completely unaware of. You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky, or by protesting. You win in a democracy only by convincing the very reasonable middle that you share their values. The DNC has taken a position of "Everyone not already in our tent is evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists," but to their chagrin, their current tent is under 50% of the voting public and it isn't growing.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#504

Post by barrenko »

bawolff wrote: post #4

Seems like a good opportunity for other countries to recruit scientists. I think its underappreciated how much of America's modern success comes down to attracting scientists and intellectuals from war torn europe in the 30s-50s.

No one other than the USA was really doing that. That's what makes US, US.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#505

Post by ben_w »

Spivak wrote: post #385
77pt77 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't know what to tell you, if you think the cuisine available in the US isn't great it's because you aren't looking. The "tossed salad" nature of the country comes out in full force to create a food scene that holds its own against anywhere in the world. Even if you restrict yourself to classic American cuisine the food is still world class. One of my absolute favorite things to do any time a friend from overseas…

It's possible that the… uh, 4? I think? Times I've spent a month in the USA, covering California, Nevada, Utah, NYC, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts (and Connecticut, only on the way through, but had a pizza there) may have not been diverse enough to fully encompass your cuisine, but…

But the food I actually saw in the USA was mediocre.

I didn't have any interest in 20 varieties of Oreo or bars of chocolate with bits of pork in it (for the latter, I'm vegetarian); the stuff that Whole Foods sold had slightly less flavour and variety than European discount stores like Aldi, Trader Joe's might as well have been a corner shop; the fancy restaurants were merely OK, the only positive of the fast food joints was the low cost, the "oh, you gotta try this while you're in Manhattan!" cafes and diners were on par with the random UK town centre breakfast diners you try once to see what they're like and never go back to, all the pubs were somehow even worse than Wetherspoons (UK chain with a bad reputation), the "cheese sauce" on tortilla chips was on par among the absolute worst approximations of cheese I have ever encountered.

And why is half your yoghurt thickened with gelatine, anyway?

The best food I had in the country was at a place covered by an NDA; but even that, the best, was "4 stars out of 5" by European standards.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#506

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

jorblumesea wrote: post #101

US loss, Europe's win. Same thing with the trade wars and other Trumpian policies. Short term gains to look strong but long term just degrades US soft power and decades of ally building.

US screws up and Europe gains some points is a best case scenario. I don't mean to sound like a patriot, but the US is a big deal and it's currently administered by unsound forces.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#507

Post by forgotoldacc »

tomlockwood wrote: post #284

Isn't the elephant in the room here the massive overspending on the US military which Trump and Elon and Satya and Bezos and Altman don't seem to care about?

His voters would be very upset if a single dollar was cut from the military budget. It's the same crowd and mindset that was all in on the Iraq War. The second amendment is the only amendment and anything seen as weakening the country in terms of actual strength would result in windows being smashed again.

But cutting money from weak nerds? Destroying education? That's fine. Nobody needs it.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#508

Post by realusername »

scarab92 wrote: post #499
realusername wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes let's call a spade a spade, it's a coup. Trump is passing as much stuff as quickly as he can to bypass the separation of powers while they catch up.

The left need to accept that they lost the election, that Trump won the presidency and the Republicans won control of congress. As much as you personally disagree with these decisions, they are in line with the broad policy positions Trump et al communicated prior to the election, and can be considered the will of the people. Challenging the mandate the public gave them, by hyperventilating over minor procedural hicc…

So first the US isn't a monarchy last time I checked, Trump doesn't have the mandate to do what he's doing now, no matter how much you agree with his decisions or not.

And secondly no, Trump also publicly lied about his positions by saying he had nothing to do with Project 2025.

But it doesn't matter if he did say the truth anyways, saying that you'll make a coup doesn't make the coup okay.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#509

Post by Sharlin »

khazhoux wrote: post #367
yibg wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly half the voting population wants a king. It's not just rolling over, this is welcomed with open arms. I try to understand how the "other side" is thinking about this. Disagreements on policy aside, why would "freedom loving Americans" want a king that can rule unilaterally? Not trying to start a flame war or pose a gotcha question, I'm genuinely curious. What am I missing?

I think you're misrepresenting. His side won, and now they get to do what they want. It's always that way, no? Like, isn't that the point of an election?

You’re describing an autocracy, a dictatorship. Of course they aren’t allowed to do what they want, there’s supposed to be this thing called the rule of law, "checks and balances", separation of powers, any of that ring a bell? Plus a two-party system is a fundamentally malignant example of democracy, not to even mention the crazy amount of power the POTUS has compared to well-functioning democracies.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#510

Post by ithkuil »

xp84 wrote: post #503
jmward01 wrote: post #490

This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…

As far as I can tell, Trump is doing things he openly announced he would do for at least a year. So all of this is either a result of robust public support for his policies, or, (my preferred explanation) an even more robust public repudiation of the only alternative that was put forward by the other party, a candidate famous for dropping out before Iowa in 2020 but somehow was coronated the nominee without any voter…

Trump said so many things, so many outlandish things that I think a sizeable percentage of the people who voted for him didn't quite believe he would do. I don't have hard data on that but I did speak with several repubblican voters who dismissed the worries saying that he was just joking to provoke the libs.
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