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NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy
- jmclnx 1y agoAnother knowledgeable person leaving due to DOGE, what a surprise. The US is loosing its smartest people due to Trump. Soon we will be a backwater country with lots of weapons, nothing else.
- jfengel 1y agoYes, but we'll have stuck it to the woke, and that's what counts.
- danudey 1y agoIsolating the US from the rest of the world economically and politically and plunging the country into an unforced recession while giving trillions of dollars to billionaires and texting state secrets to journalists and relatives to own the libs.
- ttoinou 1y ago“stick it to all the too-tolerent people who let the woke movement gain power” would be a good steel manning of your argument
- stouset 1y agoWhich people in the woke movement had power, and what were some of the woke policies that they enacted? Every time I go down this line, it’s all vague boogeymen or claims of events that don’t hold up to scrutiny.
- StefanBatory 1y agoIt is a dog whistle for "We let gays/trans/atheist people exist."
- ttoinou 1y agoI dont know Im only removing the strawmen of the comment
- jfengel 1y agoIt's not a good steel manning. You haven't explained what "too tolerant" is, or how much power we're talking about. My comment was bitter sarcasm lamenting how much is lost and how little gained, not an argument. And you could call that out. But just flopping the words around doesn't turn it into an argument.
- CoastalCoder 1y ago> Soon we will be a backwater country with lots of weapons, nothing else. Making advanced, superior weapons systems requires a workforce with strong science, engineering, and manufacturing skills. I struggle to understand how the current administration's policies help.
- dullcrisp 1y agoYou can always hope your old stockpile of weapons works while bullying smaller countries with it.
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y agoAuthoritarians often allow for strong science and engineering skills within an approved range. The Nazis had excellent engineering and so did the Soviet Union in some areas.
- danudey 1y agoWe're going to bring manufacturing back! But we're not bringing back the crappy manufacturing jobs that pay absolute peanuts. No, we're going to automate those! With robots that we don't make here in the US, of course. Those robots don't exist, because if they did then China would be using them, but we'll buy some robots from China at 150% tariffs so that we can set up some degree of manufacturing here in the US! We'll create jobs! But good-paying jobs, for well-educated people! The kind that we won't be making anymore once we gut the department of education and saddle everyone with crushing student loan debt that we've just announced we're going to be chasing after again! Because the government isn't willing to let people get away without paying their debts! Unless it's a big bank, or a billionaire. Or the US government itself, for that matter! But the US government is in massive debt, and we can't let student loan payments go unpaid! But we can give a $4.5 trillion tax cut to billionaires who don't need it, that's important. The administration is in this weird limbo of "doesn't know what they're doing" and "is desperately trying to accomplish goals that will clearly and irreparably tank the entire country".
- hengheng 1y agoIf the benefits don't outweigh those minor inconveniences, you're just not rich enough.
- sathackr 1y agoOne thing I don't understand is people resigning on principles. If something bad is happening to an organization that I hold a significant amount of clout and power in, I'm not just going to leave and hand the reigns to someone on 'their side' -- I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can. So many people are just leaving...instead of fighting. Which seems like it's going to have the effect of just accelerating the demise of the organization they claim to love so much.
- pigeons 1y agoIf you stay it then becomes your job to do things you disagree with, even if you are attempting to have some mitigating effect.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoIt's resign or follow my orders. There's not much wiggle room in-between, and the lawsuits will probably cost you everything anyway.
- beeforpork 1y agoOK, but isn't getting fired better than resigning? Why resign?
- 1970-01-01 1y agoI can't speak for the NSF director, but the silver lining in a resignation is you leave on your own terms. Being fired is not "better" for everyone.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- sathackr 1y agoThere's tons of people that don't follow the boss's orders to a T and don't resign and don't get fired. And they would be much less effective at enacting their boss's agenda than someone who "just followed orders"
- cozzyd 1y agoHe was already obeying in advance before DOGE got there, but I guess that wasn't enough. I fear very bad news is coming.
- strangeloops85 1y agoI have to wonder what DOGE (including the alleged wunderkind Farritor that all the SV VCs were hailing) is planning for NSF. It’s amazing the arrogance of these people, to walk in and just do “hulk smash” on decades of hard work, infrastructure and institutional capacity.
- warkdarrior 1y agoIt's fairly straightforward really. Academics will work on whatever grant topics are available, most will do anything for money, so expect lots of grants on topics directly benefiting X.ai, Tesla, Neuralink, or SpaceX.
- Ar-Curunir 1y agoThere's multiple reasons why what you said is just wrong. First, if academics wanted to work on topics mandated by somebody else, they would go work in industry for that somebody, and earn much more money than they earn right now. Second, most academic scientists do not do anything relevant to Musk's companies. Do you expect a chemist to pivot to self-driving cars? Or a pure mathematician to whatever X.ai is doing? The only thing this will lead to is a destruction of American capacity to carry out independent scientific research.
- timschmidt 1y ago> First, if academics wanted to work on topics mandated by somebody else, they would go work in industry for that somebody, and earn much more money than they earn right now. Very few academics become principle investigators. Most every academic who's not a PI is working on something for that PI.
- dboreham 1y ago[flagged]
- twright 1y ago“The Great Leap Backwards”
- bananapub 1y agoPretty distressing at how there’s basically zero pushback from the American elites at the destruction of all strategic American advantages and only ineffective pushback from the public. There will be entire genres of books written about how America just said “eh” to being gutted by a bunch of rich psychopaths.
- jajko 1y agoWith Brexit Brits got exactly what was promised, they just didn't realize what that promise actually meant and very few are happy about it these days. This is next level of "I'll deliver anyway, I know what you wanted" while fucking it up spectacularly. If only all of our pensions wouldn't be now siphoned to those few with advanced government access I would be laughing a bit more.
- mike_hearn 1y agoThey did not get what was promised. They were promised large reductions in immigration, instead the Johnson government raised immigration levels to never before seen heights. Brexit enabled them to have lowered it to whatever level they wanted, but the Conservatives preferred to self destruct than compromise with the voters on mass immigration.
- eli_gottlieb 1y agoSomeone's gotta wipe Grandpa's ass.
- iknowstuff 1y agoBidets
- hedora 1y agoThe market’s down what, 10-20%? The dollar’s down 10%. 20-30% of average 401k’s have already been siphoned, and we haven’t even seen the impact of the tariffs or elimination of social security yet.
- sega_sai 1y agoSo he had a chance to say what he thinks of these plans to butcher NSF, but he chose to wash his hands and say "I am deeply grateful to the Presidents for the opportunity to serve our nation. " and so on.
- sundarurfriend 1y agoRequest to mods: s/NSF/National Science Foundation/ in the title.
- wglb 1y agoRequests are more effective if you send email to hn@ycombinator.com as noted in the footer.
- 9283409232 1y ago> And NSF said pending proposals that appeared to violate any of Trump’s executive orders—in particular those banning efforts to increase diversity in the scientific workforce, foster environmental justice, and study the spread of misinformation on social media sites—would be returned for “mitigation.” Basically don't study how Elon's websites are destroying the fabric of society or how Trump's policies will destroy the environment.
- rockemsockem 1y agoThe site formally known as Twitter is destroying the fabric of society, really? Do you hear yourself?
- 9283409232 1y agoI think social media as a whole is destroying the fabric of society, yes.
- rockemsockem 1y agoOkay, that's a far more reasonable thing to claim. The way you phrased it made me think you thought it was Twitter specifically. It's definitely a group effort on that front.
- bdangubic 1y agoI would question sanity of anyone who questions this… :)
- mikeyouse 1y agoElon’s one of our most successful and accomplished entrepreneurs and that hellsite broke his brain to the point where he’s posting on there hundreds of times per day and spending hours interacting and vouching for some of the most depraved degenerates online rather than running his world-changing companies. That’s really a bad outcome.
- Larrikin 1y agoThis is probably a bad faith sarcastic comment, but for others Pretending social media holds no influence on society was an argument you could have made when it was just kids getting into fights or shooting each other over Internet beef fifteen years ago. Now it's an essential target in governments all over the world when it comes to spreading propaganda/disinformation. It has a direct link to effecting change in voters and entire governments innumerable times now.
- AcerbicZero 1y agoI like to save my resignations for the whole "you can't fire me, I quit" part - when the fall is all thats left, it matters a great deal.
- pizzafeelsright 1y agoAnonymous. May have. That appear. Knowledgeable source. Guessing or mind reading passes as journalism and that's frustrating. What do we know? Budget cut and resignation.
- mulmen 1y agoI have no problem with such claims. It comes down to who says they have the sources and how often they have been right in the past. When Rudy Giuliani says “I have evidence but I can’t show it to you” you can be certain he is lying. When Jeffrey Goldberg says he was texted war plans you can believe him. In this case you can click on the author’s name and review reports from the past and see how those played out.
- roykesler16 1y ago[flagged]
- brianevangeline 1y ago[dead]