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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

#651

Post by voidspark »

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.

"The budget request explicitly states it "cuts funding for: climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science," while maintaining funding for AI and quantum information sciences at current levels."

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

#652

Post by benzible »

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…

"Faulty intelligence" accepts that DOGE / Russell Vought / Project 2025 are sincerely concerned with government spending. The evidence says that this is deliberate sabotage of government functions to erode public trust. Consider:

Douglas Holtz-Eakin (former Republican CBO director) noted DOGE is specifically "going into agencies they disagree with" for ideological reasons, targeting programs that are a tiny fraction of the federal budget. https://thefulcrum.us/governance-legislation/doge-layoffs-tr...

OMB Director Russell Vought explicitly stated his intention for federal workers to be "traumatically affected" - showing disruption is the intended goal. https://www.govexec.com/transition/2025/04/project-2025-want...

DOGE cut specialized IRS teams that brought in billions despite small costs. One team of https://www.propublica.org/article/how-doge-irs-cuts-will-co...

DOGE has repeatedly made fraud claims that "none have held up under scrutiny" - appearing designed to undermine public trust rather than address actual problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic...

The pattern is clear: target high-visibility but relatively low-cost programs (like NSF internships) that provide tangible benefits to citizens. When services deteriorate, people naturally ask "why am I paying taxes for this?" - which is exactly the intended outcome.

A $10k internship that launches careers and advances American innovation is precisely the type of program that makes visible the value of government - which is why it's being targeted despite minimal fiscal impact.

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

#653

Post by monero-xmr »

standardUser wrote: post #646
monero-xmr wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember with the SEC tried (and failed after Trump’s win) to mandate every board have at least 2 “diverse” (no white dudes) members? Not a lot of merit there! https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/01/12/fifth-circuit-vac...

> The only thing that matters is if someone can do a job - period! That's an absurd lie. People convicted of sex crimes shouldn't have jobs with children. Foreign nationals shouldn't have top security or intelligence jobs. People with a record of substance abuse shouldn't operate heavy machinery. And so on an so forth... I'm boring myself with how obvious this all is. And maybe, just maybe, extremely powerful jobs th…

It’s not that jobs only go to white men. It’s that you don’t deny a job to a white man (or any other identity group) because they are a white man.

Harvard denied access to Jews for “personality flaws” in the early 1900s, and similarly denied Asians for “personality” reasons up until a couple years ago when the Supreme Court finally declared that illegal.

Racism is still racism, even if you claim to be “correcting” some imagined harm through your racism

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

#654

Post by mattgrice »

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…

Well, OK but none of this is based on faulty intelligence as you mean it. Faulty intelligence maybe in the sense that their brains are broken and that is a very different thing.

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

#655

Post by monero-xmr »

const_cast wrote: post #644
monero-xmr wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s weird is obsessing over the minute racial details of every person like it’s the antebellum south. The only thing that matters is if someone can do a job - period! Being denied advancement in your career because you don’t have enough drops of black blood, or don’t have enough homosexual sex, is insanely wrong!

> Being denied advancement in your career because you don’t have enough drops of black blood, or don’t have enough homosexual sex, is insanely wrong! It's a good thing this is something that is not happening, then. What's happening is you are assuming that black individuals or homosexuals finding success must have been handed something. Which is, obviously, prejudiced. The lede you're burying is that those people wer…

If you live in a society that mandates DEI, it’s assumed that anyone getting a job via affirmative action is not the most qualified.

If you make affirmative action illegal, then of course you will hire a variety of races and identity groups (unless you are so racist as to believe they can’t compete on merit)

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

#656

Post by avs733 »

frob wrote: post #11

The NSF funded my graduate research. It feels like someone is going through my past and burning all of the ladders that helped me grow and succeed.

Because that is one of several goals. I heard a really interesting comment recently that concisely put what I find most dishonest about all this.

The opposite of DEI isn’t meritocracy it’s nepotism.

That is why you feel this way, the goal is to inhibit the success of those not part of the in group. The words bandied about about reverse racism and the like are just right wing propaganda.

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

#658

Post by intermerda »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #619
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…

is this type of research really at risk? I thought the feds were after research with an ideological bent. Rather than speculate about how the feds might see certain research as ideological, can we have some concrete examples of the type of research projects that have been discontinued?

But you see AI has a liberal bias. Even Musk's own AI is too woke because it isn't producing the "right" kind of humor - https://youtu.be/7qZl_5xHoBw?t=6159.

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

#659

Post by intermerda »

donnachangstein wrote: post #540
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. >…

Who exactly made you in charge of speaking for all the taxpayers?

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

#660

Post by roenxi »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #554
Frost1x wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have a bit of a bias in advocating more for enabling excellence than accommodating average. I will concede we have done a terrible job at sharing the harvest, but it’s often the excellent that are responsible for our harvest being so plentiful to begin with.

I agree with the perspective, the part I have trouble marrying it back to is the taxpayer funding and the NSF. The excellent & the people who benefit from their work tend to have lots of money and earning opportunities and are more than capable of just funding the research themselves.

If there is a large group of people who aren't benefiting they don't need to be involved in the funding and the organising either. It is a mistake to make research subject to political pressure if there is a significant political faction who doesn't think it is worthwhile for them.

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