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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

#571

Post by dekhn »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #472
burntwater wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who forced this? Was it actually the Biden administration, or was it university policies?

Normally not the University. NSF has a "Broader Impact" aspect of the grant applications (for as long as I can remember), and the DOE started to require a Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) plan during the Biden administration. Grant reviewers (typically people from the research community) are asked to take these into account for the review of the proposals. I suspect the father mentioned above means t…

Regarding your last sentence- they also ensure that the grant proposals don't propose to do anything illegal, or that the university is not resourced to carry out.

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

#572

Post by graycat »

overfeed wrote: post #385
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…

>$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…

> some billionaire via tax cuts

The current noisy news is taxes for the rich the same or higher, not "cuts".

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

#573

Post by trhway »

schmidtleonard wrote: post #539
trhway wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The issues of speech, hate, deportations are the very visible ones. The less visible is for example changing the nature of US government.

The old government bureaucracy which was focused on protecting people - consumer protection, EPA, civil rights, etc. - is being dismantled, and new bureaucracy is being built in place to enforce myriad of new restrictions and dole out import/export/tariff quotas, exceptions, and other government favors (those being given out as favors is a key here). The old bureaucracy was progressive. The new is conservative and oppressive, and will be keeping tight chockhold on the main drivers of the progressivism - free trade and tech innovation. (don't take my word for it, just look at such bureaucracies in other countries)

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

#574

Post by phatfish »

cdmckay wrote: post #505
tinktank wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’m not sure I follow… how is that Russian? Wouldn’t it be British?

I'm not sure what was supposed to have happened 20 years ago. In 2005 everything seemed great. Maybe it's a reference to post 2008, the previous time America screwed everyone over? The election that spawned austerity was in 2010, so 15 years ago.

The Russian part is even more confusing. In relation to Brexit sure, but that was 9 years ago.

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

#576

Post by trealira »

kelnos wrote: post #451
inverted_flag wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, I guess we'll try to find competent and sane leaders again in 4 years. I don't know? There's not much else we can do at this point if this is the level of irrationality you're dealing with. There are absolutely not going to be free and fair elections 4 years from now. People really need to start preparing for this reality.

> There are absolutely not going to be free and fair elections 4 years from now. That's overly alarmist. The one thing the US has going for it when it comes to elections is that they are run by the states, not by the federal government, which insulates them from a lot of possible election meddling. Things like the SAVE Act are incredibly concerning, though. It's unclear if the worst provisions of it are even constitu…

> That's overly alarmist. The one thing the US has going for it when it comes to elections is that they are run by the states, not by the federal government, which insulates them from a lot of possible election meddling.

Ah, that's reassuring. I'm sure Republican state officials won't allege mass voter fraud in 2028 and discount votes they claim to be from illegals when it seems like the election isn't going their way. And I'm sure there won't be violence threatened against election workers from the voters for harboring such fraud, either.

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

#577

Post by decimalenough »

beachy wrote: post #515
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…

It's the American experience that decisions are made at the executive level based on faulty intelligence, while people working at the coal face such as yourself have a much better understanding of what's really going on. Case in point the Vietnam war, which cost thousands of lives because decisions were based on statistics from the field which had been heavily manipulated as they percolated upwards. Right now, just a…

> It's the American experience that decisions are made at the executive level based on faulty intelligence, while people working at the coal face such as yourself have a much better understanding of what's really going on.

The article notes that the people being axed are NSF execs making funding decisions, and contrasts this with the NIH, where panels of outside experts make the call.

I can't say I have personal experience with either, but all things being equal, the NIH's model sounds like it would work better, no?

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

#578

Post by kjkjadksj »

dragonwriter wrote: post #441
kjkjadksj wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Teslas are self driving on the roads everyday. Name one jursidiction where Teslas are allowed to operate on public roads without a human driver on the wheel. Because other people are doing that commercially, because they have demonstrated capacities that Tesla has not.

Well that is a goal post. They can do it doesn’t matter if they are allowed to or not. My friends tesla I’ve seen it in action. It goes on the highway. It goes on all the streets even hilly ones unlike waymo. It can even find a free parking spot in the lot and fully park the car. All while he does nothing at all with his hands on his lap. So yeah it totally can self drive.

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

#579

Post by tobyjsullivan »

baxtr wrote: post #366
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to declare that the earth is only 6000 years old with all those science hippies in the way. Gotta set priorities.

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

Many scientists believe the earth is, in fact, much older than that.

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

#580

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

monero-xmr wrote: post #499
standardUser wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are either lying about hard-number racial/gender quotas or you were working for companies that were flagrantly breaking the law. Did you whistle blow? You see, it doesn't add up, because usually when a company breaks the law so blatantly, it does so in crafty, shady ways intended to make more money, not in an attempt to create diversity that does nothing for the bottom line while also threatening the very existen…

The gaslighting here post-Trump is insane. I’m not going to pretend that “no white or Asian males” wasn’t standard policy during the DEI hysteria. Pretending DEI was “just all about merit!” is so absurdly revisionist. Pleaseeee

Your choice of vocabulary belies a personality that is probably not favored by many hiring managers, regardless of your ethnic background.
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