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NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

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Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#531

Post by [deleted] »

0xTJ wrote: post #220
analog31 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They "elected" candidates who were chosen for them.

They chose between two candidates chosen via the US presidential primaries. Party members vote for delegates, who vote for a presidential candidate. Republicans chose Trump, then people who voted Republican at the election chose him over the alternative=. He did not hide his fascist and dictatorial desires and he was open about how he wanted to dismantle the government. When he lost in 2020 he threw a fit and tried t…

[deleted]

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#532

Post by [deleted] »

cubefox wrote: post #440
kjkjadksj wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that then you misunderstand what DEI really means. Conservatives assume black people can never be smart and therefor hiring standards must fall for DEI programs to happen. The reality is that there are more smart black and white people capable of doing your job than you are capable of hiring. So maybe consider taking the black woman who is just as qualified so your department is no longer so lily white a…

There is data (e.g. on Harvard university admissions) which shows that average SAT cut-off scores of admitted students are very different for various racial groups, which strongly hints at DEI based discrimination. I don't agree with that happening. I think people should be admitted/rejected based only on their ability, not partly based on whether they happen to fall in some group for which the quota has to be increa…

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Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#533

Post by ryukoposting »

MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #347
ThinkBeat wrote: post #57

Hmm the budget is supposed to be approved by congress is it not? Trump can certainly tell people what he thinks the funding should be, but until a budget is voted through it is not final? Or does this agency fall under the White House direct financing of some sort?

Without enforcement, laws are just words. The white house is really testing the concept of laws as they might apply to the executive branch.

"Testing" is a funny way of saying "breaking"

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#534

Post by Frost1x »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #498
zhivota wrote: post #295

I worked at two National Laboratories, Argonne and Idaho, on NSF funded internship grants. The second one turned into a full time job, again on an NSF grant. The first one was on supercomputing, writing proof of concept code for a new supercomputing operating system (ZeptoOS). The second was on the automated stitching of imagery from UAVs for military applications (at a time when this was not commoditized at all, we…

The upcoming generation will be plenty happy with factory jobs instead of jobs in supercomputing or science.

I know you’re being facetious, but I think there’s some nugget buried in this sarcasm.

One issue with our ever increasingly intellectual focused economy is that it leaves behind people who may just not be cut out for these such careers. I’m not against having these economies (I too used to work in supercomputing, with national labs), they’re very necessary, but we need to find a way for people who might not fit very well in such positions to still feel productive in society, and most importantly, still live comfortably in society. Industry and jobs need to exist for people who can’t do science and supercomputing or at least aren’t cut out for it as a career day in/out to still live comfortably.

Bringing back manufacturing isn’t the answer to that, but at some point as competition pulls the bar up so high and specific, we leave a lot of people behind, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing. They surely have plenty of other skills that contribute to society as well and even if they don’t, they should also be taken care of for at least trying. Maybe it’s just a lack of opportunity in education and training that fixes it, maybe it’s other careers that pay will, maybe it’s government subsidies, but I think plenty of the discourse now promoting these ideas like manufacturing are founded on shrinking of the middle class, and that’s partly due to how demanding it is now to live at that level of general financial security.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#535

Post by rcpt »

Onawa wrote: post #246
hermitShell wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence towards this allegiance? Why should we attribute to malice what we could attribute to incompetence, or greed?

Yes, there is a LOT of evidence of this allegiance, although maybe just observing Trump's unwillingness to openly criticize Russia and Putin is highly suspect by itself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associat...

And those "mishandled classified documents"? They were all about Russian interference in elections.

We never got them back but I'm sure Vlad liked his birthday present

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-rus...

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#536

Post by tzs »

ponow wrote: post #359
ourmandave wrote: post #35

Last week, staff were briefed on a new process for vetting grant proposals that are found to be out of step with a presidential directive on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI),... In the new structure, even if a revised proposal gets the green light from a division director, a new body whose membership has not been determined will take a fresh look to ensure it conforms to the agency’s new standard for making awa…

These are welcome changes, as the practice of DEI (not it's idealization) is actively discriminatory and intolerant of dissenting views. Let competence be the only metric.

If competence were the only metric (or even a metric that this administration actually cared for) 90% of the appointees of this administration would not have been hired.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#537

Post by greenchair »

dredmorbius wrote: post #504
baxtr wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean when you say "only"?!

The Ussher Chronology, held fast to by many Christian religious fundamentalists / extremists through Young Earth Creationism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism >

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Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#538

Post by frogperson »

chairhairair wrote: post #43

The NSF budget is ~$10billion. That's about half of NASA's, 1.2% of the DoD's, 0.5% of the discretionary budget ($1.7 trillion). Why is this the focus of the admin? Science is one of the few things the US is doing well.

Trump has been compromised, who ever is actually running the show is hell bent on destroying the US.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#539

Post by schmidtleonard »

trhway wrote: post #423
overfeed wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>$10k to give people who otherwise didn't have a road into science, exactly what they need to get their foot in the door. The current admin thinks those $10k grants are better spent by giving them to some billionaire via tax cuts. Impoverishing the many to enrich a few is a 3rd-world, banana-republic mindset, and unfortunately is not self-correcting. The politically-connected will see the pile of money controlled by…

That $10K breeds a Democratic/progressive voter. The actions of the current admin are pretty logical if one considers the goal of increasing political power of the conservative populist mass (i don't say "voters" here as making voting meaningless is among the end-games here) I'm waiting for an analog of my "favorite" AETA laws to be made into federal law (FETA - Federal Enterprise Terrorism Act) criminalizing any ant…

For those who think this is exaggeration, remember that JD Vance wrote a heartfelt endorsement for the skull book, the one arguing that anyone who opposes MAGA is a secret communist revolutionary who needs to be crushed by any means necessary to avoid an imagined communist genocide that they allege we are all plotting. Absolutely wild shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unhumans

It's not even midterm season yet, they are already testing the waters by conducting extrajudicial deportations of random Hispanics to labor camps in El Salvador, and the sitting US President is on record saying the El Salvador labor camps need to be expanded by 5x to accommodate the "home growns."

Dark times ahead.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#540

Post by donnachangstein »

zhivota wrote: post #295

I worked at two National Laboratories, Argonne and Idaho, on NSF funded internship grants. The second one turned into a full time job, again on an NSF grant. The first one was on supercomputing, writing proof of concept code for a new supercomputing operating system (ZeptoOS). The second was on the automated stitching of imagery from UAVs for military applications (at a time when this was not commoditized at all, we…

> I think the whole program may have cost the government maybe $10k total.

Your numbers are off by an order of magnitude. There is no government program in existence that costs $10k total, you are almost assuredly ignoring overhead and all other costs. It's like calling a contractor to repair something, then crying foul when he charges $350 because you found the part on Amazon for $15.

But let's assume it was $10k.

> $10k to build knowledge of cutting edge science that filters into industry. $10k to help give needed manpower to research projects that need it. $10k to give people who otherwise didn't have a road into science, exactly what they need to get their foot in the door.

To be blunt, you are upset because you got to work on a fun boondoggle project and others are being denied that privilege. I won't doubt it was fun and educational but I can't in all honesty pretend that is a good value for the taxpayers.

Unless you are producing something of value to the public, it's wasteful, and that $10k deserves to be returned to the taxpayers.

Taxpayers are not on the hook to keep you busy with pointless yet fun busy-work. That is private industry's job.

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