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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

#621

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #608
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn’t it what the head of executive branch supposed to mean? In a nation governed by a constitution and laws, absofuckinglutely not. The chief executive is supposed to operate within the bounds of the constitution and the laws created under it.

But you knew he doesn’t care. Your highest court ruled that laws don’t apply to the man. He can be a dictator if he wants and „whatcha gonna do ’bout it”?

Protest, support others who protest, annoy the shit out of my representatives, and loudly declare "THIS SHIT IS ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL!" whenever the opportunity presents itself.

It may become necessary for Trump and Musk to show their potential for brutality before people's minds change, unfortunately. But it has worked, in the past. The Kent State shooting is a good example; the obviously excessive brutality of the state caused a massive increase in willingness to speak out, protest, strike, etc. That massive public response became too large to ignore.

I also recognize that by speaking up I may make myself a target for that brutality. At this point, I've decided "so be it, if that happens, it happens."

Evil wins when good people stand by and do nothing.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#622

Post by realusername »

Gareth321 wrote: post #609
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.

I don't think you can call a democratically elected president doing what he promised to do a coup.

So first he lied about Project 2025 and then, "whatever the president does is democratic" is just an obvious sophism, no democracy works like that.

Democraties work with checks and balances, which are being broken right now.

On a final note, historically a lot of coup came from elected presidents

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#623

Post by JW_00000 »

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…

> 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 [...]

The reason people are calling this a coup is not (only) because they disagree with what Trump/Musk are doing, but because their actions are illegal. A president is still expected to follow the rule of law and respect separation of powers. If there are no more checks and balances, then it's a coup. If Congress decided to allocate budget to something, the president should not ignore this. The legislature is losing its power.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#624

Post by kortilla »

forgotoldacc wrote: post #500
kortilla wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not lottery mentality and thinking that it’s equivalent is why Europe isn’t innovating. If someone wins the lottery and gets rich, society isn’t better off. If someone starts a new company that made a cure for some disease and gets rich, society is much better off. You absolutely want to attract people that want to make huge breakthroughs with unlikely odds of success.

Once you get past a few million, you quickly get into "can't possibly spend this money in several lifetimes" territory. And wealth divides like that come at the cost of massive societal wealth divides. The US sustains that high number of people who strike $100 million+ through having a social safety net that barely exists, which results in far more people being seen as completely disposable. It also comes at the cost…

> Once you get past a few million, you quickly get into "can't possibly spend this money in several lifetimes" territory.

This is incorrect and you’re really out of touch for suggesting it.

Let’s say you have a 5 million dollar exit in the Bay Area. After tax you get roughly 2.5. That’s enough to buy a nice but modest house and now you have no money left. You now have to work a full time job to pay the property taxes, the rest of your living expenses, and try to save for retirement. Same thing applies in LA, NYC, SEA, etc.

> The US sustains that high number of people who strike $100 million+ through having a social safety net that barely exists

This is false. The US spends more on healthcare than any other nation, it just goes to a bloated system. More tax money from the 0.1% won’t change that.

> crime rates beyond most first world countries

Gonna need a citation there. This is likely a result of guns being legal if you’re talking about gun deaths or a result of the war on drugs if you’re talking about incarceration. Neither of those have anything to do with taxes.

> companies that constantly invent new evils like making all formerly paid-and-done services into monthly subscriptions

We’re talking about biotech exits. Drop your “muh capitalism bad” gish gallop.

> Few if any that hit 100 million are doing it ethically. They're doing it by milking the residents dry.

Pure cope. A broad unsubstantiated statement about ethics followed by talk of milking residents dry when those residents have more disposable income per capita than nearly anywhere else in the world.

> Some countries have national pride and resent the idea of stepping on their fellow countrymen.

If they do this by treating huge breakthroughs like you are doing, they are stepping on all of their fellow countrymen through oppressive tall poppy syndrome. Knocking anyone doing well down is not how you lift everyone up.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#625

Post by agnishom »

Propelloni wrote: post #615
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…

This is not a coup, because Trump is still in his lawful 2nd and final term. Until then let's call it Gleichschaltung [1], because that's what it is: bringing all aspects of society under totalitarian control. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung

Him assuming the office of the president is legal. But him trying to replace the law which has gone through due process using executive orders is unlawful.

It is not a coup because he became president by force. It is a coup because he is consolidating power. (The president is not supposed to be all powerful.)

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#626

Post by Gareth321 »

refurb wrote: post #487
RajT88 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the US; born here, lived here all my life. The former is 100% how it will go. The only question is: how bad will it get? A poster down thread mentions a million dead immigrants. I personally think it will just be in the low 6 figures. Maybe high 5 figures.

If only HN had a reminder option. The doom and gloom in these comments is truly funny. I remember the exact same when Trump won the first time. It’s like HN has no memory.

Yeah this thread is like being on Reddit. "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" The hyperbole was thick and fast last time he was elected, with accusations of fascism and certain doom. It turns out, he didn't in fact blow up the world. Quite the opposite. He was the first president in decades not to start a new war. People were inoculated during that first term against hyperbole. Even if "fascism" were to appear now (and I firmly believe it has not), people would no longer care. Well done those of you who cried wolf so vociferously. Trump is president because of you.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#627

Post by mjburgess »

ReptileMan wrote: post #526

[flagged]

This neglects that prior administrations were often the origin of these demands, wanting to see how research impacted broader society. They were also, often enough, an ideological cover for the intelligence community to find US-friendly assets in foreign nations. Identity politics is an explicit soft power strategy of very many of the last administrations whose defence/intelligence budget funded some of this research.

The situation is vastly more complex than you imagine, and has far less to do with "woke administrators gone rouge".

The unstated target of much of this is the intelligence (, and defence to a lesser degree) community, which runs USAID, and plays a very significant role in research funding, and the like. The right has never been targeted in the way the left was, until Trump -- and many in his upper circle are now taking revenge.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#628

Post by pavlov »

Propelloni wrote: post #615
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…

This is not a coup, because Trump is still in his lawful 2nd and final term. Until then let's call it Gleichschaltung [1], because that's what it is: bringing all aspects of society under totalitarian control. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung

It’s true, Vladimir Putin never did a coup either. He became a dictator through ostensibly democratic steps (without any actual democracy of course).

I wonder if Trump and Vance in 2029 can somehow pull the Putin/Medvedev switch, where the real leader takes a nominal secondary position until they can fix the constitutional issue.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#629

Post by kortilla »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #587
kortilla wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not lottery mentality and thinking that it’s equivalent is why Europe isn’t innovating. If someone wins the lottery and gets rich, society isn’t better off. If someone starts a new company that made a cure for some disease and gets rich, society is much better off. You absolutely want to attract people that want to make huge breakthroughs with unlikely odds of success.

>If someone wins the lottery and gets rich, society isn’t better off. Actually, society is much better off since the money is dispersed into the economy faster and to a much greater degree than most other windfalls. And most other windfalls are crafted to accumulate money from the economy, so the difference in who ends up with the money is another major factor.

[flagged]

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#630

Post by neilv »

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.

> Seems like a good opportunity for other countries to recruit scientists.

Also, some top scientists who previously would have come to the US, will decide not to.

That's not going to be negative feedback that registers for the decision-makers in the US. But it's good news for competing countries and their institutions. And it's possibly better quality of life, overall, for the scientists who decide to go work somewhere currently more sensible.

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