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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

#651

Post by tmountain »

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 an administrative coup, and it goes like this:

1) Remove all opposition for DOJ (already done)

2) Pass executive orders that should require congressional approval (doing)

3) Illegally seize control of the treasury (doing)

4) Broadly dismantle key government services (doing)

5) Watch politicians say, "you can't do that!" with no recourse (doing)

Continually take control more and more broadly until you have absolute power.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#652

Post by ivan_gammel »

MandieD wrote: post #633
brylie wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an expat in the EU, I have a surreal sense of being a bystander at an ongoing emergency scene. I don’t want to be yet another gawker as this situation is unfolding but am struggling to come up with actions that are within my power to take as a form of protest, resistance, or solidarity. What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?

If you're in Germany or know some Germans, talk as much as you can about how this is what Musk wants to do via the AfD to us here. The election is a little over two weeks away. Right now, the CDU/CSU ("normal" conservatives) look to be getting the largest number of votes, but nowhere near enough to govern on their own. They've been a little too flirty with the AfD (currently in second place), and the worst thing that…

Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix.

Greens just went through a stupid political scandal in Berlin where the leftist radical wing tried to frame a realo candidate for sexual harassment. SPD goes to this election with the worst chancellor in history. CDU lost its mind and voted together with AFD. FDP is serving a few special interests groups. Die Linke are borderline irrelevant.

We are in a strange situation where we have strong presence on populist left and right, but no decent political force in the center to contain them.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#653

Post by Gareth321 »

jimkleiber wrote: post #593
Gabriel54 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unethical race-based preferences is what those policies have been trying to fix. I understand that that is the stated intention. I also believe they are racist and discriminatory. > Not sure you’re aware of this, but academia used to be basically off-limits to anyone not white and male. I also understand this. And now it is not. What is the point here?

Not the OP, but I believe any distribution of limited resources could be seen as inherently discriminatory or racist or classist or whatever ist one wants. If there is only 1 job but 10 candidates, the job has to go to someone. If everyone has the same scores on an exam, what's the fair way? Flip a coin? Perhaps. What if there are intangible skills/knowledge that are important for the job? One person has a better sco…

I think this is well articulated. My response would be: what is the north star? What is the aspirational state? It is perhaps inherently unachievable, but what should we be aiming towards? I suggest that that be the thing which guides all other policies. If we intend to admit students on the basis of ability, an SAT score is just about the fairest way to do that. The waters became very muddy over the last few decades because universities decided that having people of many different skin colours was the goal. They dressed that goal up by pretending it had something to do with diversity, but that fails the sniff test. A poor black and white man have much more in common with each other than they do a rich man. If diversity were the goal, students would have been selected on the basis of place of residence, wealth, religion, voting affiliation, values, and interests. Quite the opposite occurred. In many universities more than 90% of faculty identify as left wing. So the goal had nothing to do with diversity.

I suggest we instead return to the idea that aptitude be our north star. IQ tests were originally created to provide opportunity to underrepresented children who might otherwise have been looked over due to their socioeconomic conditions or race. Let us return to a colour-blind north star.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#654

Post by tmountain »

scarab92 wrote: post #513
xp84 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Purity spiral. The left won't be competitive in elections until they learn what it is, why it results in alienation of people who would otherwise support them, and find a way to escape it.

Free and fair elections are likely a thing of the past in the United States after this administration has completed its term, so it doesn't really matter if the left is competitive. They'll be a placeholder opposition party without any change of taking power for the foreseeable future. Trump and Johnson were already colluding to refuse certification of the 2024 election if Trump lost. They'll have a far more robust plan prepared next time.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#655

Post by modo_mario »

taheG wrote: post #648
MandieD wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in Germany or know some Germans, talk as much as you can about how this is what Musk wants to do via the AfD to us here. The election is a little over two weeks away. Right now, the CDU/CSU ("normal" conservatives) look to be getting the largest number of votes, but nowhere near enough to govern on their own. They've been a little too flirty with the AfD (currently in second place), and the worst thing that…

[flagged]

>Schroeder all stood up for Germany

You mean Gerhard Schröder? Didn't he end up on the board of Gazprom as a sellout?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#656

Post by Gareth321 »

tomlockwood wrote: post #358
Gabriel54 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...Faculty Diversity Action Plan, a special funding program for diversity-focused faculty hiring, which ran until 2023, when it was restructured and renamed. Created in 2020, the program played a significant role in dictating whom the university hired. In a 2022 faculty meeting, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was asked how many professors were hired through the program since it began. He estimated tha…

What was the impact?

Impact is irrelevant. Racist policy is immoral and indefensible.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#657

Post by MandieD »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #73
unsnap_biceps wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the former is most likely. The people are largely unhappy with how things have been and it's unlikely to get materially worse for the majority of people in the near term, so I don't think there will be a fire lit under enough of the population to rise up. If it gets bad enough that most people are starving, rather then just struggling, we'll see action, but I doubt it'll get there anytime soon.

The majority of americans aren't paying much attention and aren't going to notice things are off until things have really gone off the rails, but by then it'll be too late. There's also a lot of "It can't happen here" attitude (apparently because we're special or something) which is exactly the kind of conditions that make it more likely to happen.

Living in Germany quickly made me understand that Germans were not special - as in, did not have some unique weakness that made them particularly susceptible to fascism. The corollary, that Americans did not have some innate virtue that prevented it, took longer to really get through my thick head.

American Exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#658

Post by lisp2240 »

intended wrote: post #634
brylie wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an expat in the EU, I have a surreal sense of being a bystander at an ongoing emergency scene. I don’t want to be yet another gawker as this situation is unfolding but am struggling to come up with actions that are within my power to take as a form of protest, resistance, or solidarity. What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?

I have a suggestion - at least one of several, which is to understand why we got here. The fact that this is escalating since cable TV, Murdoch, and the internet is not a coincidences. Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech. Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpos…

The problem is, in America, both magnets pull to the right. We have a far right republican party and a center right democratic party. There is no leftwing party to provide balance. There’s not a single democrat who would be considered a leftist outside America.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#660

Post by jampekka »

preisschild wrote: post #606
CalRobert wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar (moved to the EU 12 years ago) The best thing I can think of is to make the EU a strong, powerful, wealthy democracy that can defend itself from invasion and try to encourage other democracies around the world. Which means we have a lot of work ahead, to put it mildly.

For that to work, the individual governments need to give more of their responsibilities up to the EU level, which is unfortunately somewhat unpopular.

Democratic and EU unfortunately doesn't mesh that well.

In the current form federal EU would be someting like having an unelected powerful executive branch, and a semi-elected weak legistlative branch. Furthermore the populace has very little idea about what is happening in the EU and who to hold accountable, partly because the media doesn't cover it, and partly because the processes are extremely convoluted and quite opaque.

Such "democratic centralism" bureaucracy probably would have benefits like more stability for long term strategy, swift execution of policies and coordinated action, but it's also very prone to corruption and elite capture.

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