8 ms·
The federal keyword lists that canceled billions in research funding
- dluan 2mo agoAmericas cultural revolution
- hn_throwaway_99 2mo agoThese people who work for this administration are all so grossly and maliciously incompetent.
- Varelion 2mo agoShould be criminal.
- reverius42 2mo agoA lot of it is! We live in lawlessness (for those at the top) in the US.
- piloto_ciego 2mo agoMan, this is the kind of thing I have been trying to tell people. It's unsettling to think about, but I'm like, "look, there are no rules now, it's all a negotiation, the only real laws are the laws of physics and the rules someone selectively enforces under the threat of violence." It would do us good if we remember this, because this sort of the basic state of nature that most people have lived under most of human history. I'm not saying this is how it should be, but a lot of people are still living in the pearl-clutched "but, that's against the rules!" despite there being basically no real rules for a decade. When people realize that it's all nonsense, it's going to get weird.
- throwaway27448 2mo ago'The last decade has been the Democrats clinging onto the rulebook going "but a dog can't play basketball!" while a dog fucking dunks on us over and over' -@Arr
- Varelion 2mo agoI love that analogy. Controlled opposition. A lack of action is the point.
- reverius42 2mo agoThe Democrats are not controlled opposition; they do not secretly want the MAGA agenda and only pretend to oppose it. They simply don't have any power to stop it and are really bad at getting power to stop it. "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
- throwaway27448 2mo agoThe MAGA agenda is just a tiny sliver of what the government actually does (albeit, a particularly culturally obnoxious sliver). On most economic and foreign policy the two parties are in emphatic agreement. The Democratic Party mostly exists to keep itself in power regardless of the state of the country—in this sense, it is emphatically controlled opposition. If they were effective opposition, half the party would be in prison right now.
- hibikir 2mo agoThere's entire books on developmental economics which explain how states create institutions that might appear to be rules based, but are ultimately just negotiation and favor. They get more money from developed countries and investors that don't look to deep, but ultimately the rate of growth is quite bad, because investing money in that kind of environment just has a poor rate of return. All well described, with experimental numbers and everything, for countries in Africa and Latin America. Little did people realize that no, you can also apply this to developed countries when they suffer sufficient degradation.
- sublinear 2mo ago[flagged]
- macintux 2mo agoDo not “both sides” this level of corruption and incompetence.
- mrtesthah 2mo agoFollowing the law is not a matter of partisan politics.
- zmgsabst 2mo ago[flagged]
- UncleMeat 2mo agoWhere are these quotas?
- zmgsabst 2mo agoQuotas were rules illegal in 1978. I listed them as one of a sequence of continued (and later ruled illegal) bigoted practices, over time. > 1978 — Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) — The UC Davis School of Medicine admissions program violated the Equal Protection Clause with the institution of quotas for underrepresented minorities. However, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.'s concurring opinion deemed diversity in higher education a "compelling interest" and held that race could be one of the factors in university admissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_Unit...
- ajross 2mo agoWhat's the counterexample of significant funding withdrawn by democratic administrations because of "possibly conservative" language in the output? "Tone deaf" seems not to be capturing the essence of the malfeasance here.
- qsera 2mo ago[flagged]
- sunshinesnacks 2mo agoOver-correcting from too much competence? Can’t tell if that’s what you meant (presumably sarcastically) or if you mean over-correcting from too much previous attention to DEI…
- qsera 2mo agoCompetence does not require correction. It is when there is too much stupidity going on that * Even large number of fairly average people can see it happening... * large number of fairly average people tries to correct it and overshoots the target, because you know, they are a large number of average people.. The cycle continues... I won't go into specifics, because read the above.
- jasonlotito 2mo ago> Competence does not require correction. Correct, which is why an even larger number of fairly average and intelligent people are wondering why we are correcting. > It is when there is too much stupidity going on Exactly. There is too much stupidity going on in government right now. Exactly. > I won't go into specifics, because read the above. Because you don't want to get corrected?
- qsera 2mo agoHe he he he he he.....
- wtfwhateven 2mo agoGrow a spine.
- qsera 2mo ago
- throwaway27448 2mo agoThey are quite competent at causing enough chaos for those with inside knowledge and wealth to exploit.
- slater 2mo agoAnd for the next administration to be left holding the bag, teeing it up for another round of "see? SEEEE???? they're terrible at the economy!!" if a Democratic president wins the election
- gmueckl 2mo agoThe next presidential campaign should narrowly focus on the long term effects of existing policies if not corrected and direct blame with name dropping. There is no more moral high ground in this fight. The ugly needs to be pinned on the current administration in way that it can never be removed again. But of course the Democrats will try to keep their heads high and try to float over all of this mess instead of throwing the dirt back that gets flung around. It's not working anymore.
- locknitpicker 2mo ago> And for the next administration to be left holding the bag, teeing it up for another round of "see? SEEEE???? they're terrible at the economy!!" if a Democratic president wins the election The damage the Trump administration is doing/has done is nothing that any future administration can undo. The relationship with NATO members alone is unsalvageable.
- k12sosse 2mo ago"Y'all trash people" - The world, to summarize
- M95D 2mo agoThey should not canditate. Let a comedian do it instead, like UK did with Count Binface.
- walrus01 2mo agoIt's easier to understand if you consider they might literally be agents of a foreign government.
- hamper653 2mo agoNever see malice where incompetence is a sufficient explanation.
- conception 2mo agoThey are making hundreds of millions of dollars on the grift. They seem quite comptent.
- hamper653 2mo ago[dead]
- no-name-here 2mo agoHundreds of millions dramatically undersells what happened in Trump's ~first year back in office: Trump personally made $3 billion during his 2nd term's 1st year. [1] 19-year-old high school graduate Barron Trump earned $150 million dollars. [2] Also, Trump's children stand to profit from a $1.6 billion mining deal that Trump cut as president this term - 'Kaz Resources'. [3] Also, "The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr." - 'Vulcan Elements'. [4] Also, "Trump’s Sons Land Massive Pentagon Deal as They Flaunt Corruption" via "Powerus" a company founded last year and which merged with a golf club in March. [5] The Trump family cryptocurrency company received a $500m investment by the Emirati royal family, before the Trump admin announced that the Emirates would be allowed to import enough Nvidia AI chips to build the largest AI campus outside the US. [6] Edit: As alluded to by walrus01, "The double life of Jared Kushner, mixing business with politics as emissary for his father-in-law Donald Trump … Ivanka Trump's husband has a career as an unofficial diplomat and a master dealmaker, juggling billions and focusing his activities on the Middle East and Near East. His latest coup, carried out with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, was the $55 billion acquisition of video game giant Electronic Arts." [8] While Trump and his family have made billions during Trump's first year back as president, for an example of how Republicans treated Biden family finances: in 2018, while Biden was out of office, Biden received a check from his brother with "loan repayment" written on it for 200K. Despite that Biden was not in office then, and the small amount (compared to not just thousands or even millions, but billions that Trump and his family have made in Trump's first year back in office), 5 years later, in 2023, Republicans were still investigating that $200K loan repayment. [7] [1] https://theweek.com/politics/donald-trump-presidency-wealth https://theweek.com/politics/donald-trump-presidency-wealth [2] https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/how-did-barron-trump-earn-150-million-at-just-19-inside-his-fortune-empire-article-152972790 https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/how-did-barron... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/world/europe/trump-lutnick-sons-kazakhstan.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tlA.QWdO.XiSpRVQrxZi3&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/world/europe/trump-lutnic... [4] https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-deal-white-house https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-de... [5] https://newrepublic.com/post/209840/donald-jr-eric-trump-military-deal-mining-company https://newrepublic.com/post/209840/donald-jr-eric-trump-mil... [6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/trump-uae-crypto-deal https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/trump-uae-cr... [7] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/31/politics/fact-check-evidence-comer-biden-james-200k-check https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/31/politics/fact-check-evide... [8] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/10/07/the-double-life-of-jared-kushner-mixing-business-with-politics-as-emissary-for-his-father-in-law-donald-trump_6746194_19.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/10/07/the-dou...
- mdp2021 2mo ago(And/)Or maybe uncaring ("psychotic", technically speaking) exploiters of the system of incentives... "Conformists".
- ChrisArchitect 2mo agoRelated: Banned Words List https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319573
- etchalon 2mo agoThis is what right-wing Twitter brain gets you.
- forestrywat 2mo agoThat's just "Twitter brain" at this point, right? Hard to imagine anyone leftish still being there.
- mlrtime 2mo agoThey all went to reddit. It is essentially liberal social media now.
- wildrhythms 2mo agoReddit is overwhelmingly liberal, not leftist.
- forestrywat 2mo agoLiberal isn't leftish. Liberal is your Clinton/Biden types, who are center right on the global political stage. (And only in the weird broken US political scene are they considered left wing).
- dools 2mo agoThe trump admin is a hive of scum and villainy worthy of a comic book universe, and Musk is inextricably linked. Thus anyone using twitter or grok or buying a Tesla or using starlink is complicit. EDIT: or working for these companies!! Couldn’t pay me enough to do it.
- BLKNSLVR 2mo ago> Musk is inextricably linked That's understating it. Musk was the lead role in the cutting, he'd have OK'd the list if not partially authored it.
- inigyou 2mo ago"admin" is what we call a regime that works properly. This one doesn't, so it's a "regime".
- wiml 2mo agoI guess this is from the Bush-era usage of "regime"? It doesn't normally have a negative implication.
- fluidcruft 2mo agoDon't most airlines use starlink nowadays? Therefore anyone who flies in a commercial airplane is complicit.
- whatever1 2mo agoMath professors at my alma mater were instructed to remove references to “inequalities” to increase their chances of getting funded. The <= and >= type of inequalities.
- transcriptase 2mo ago[flagged]
- qsera 2mo agoHumans are a stupid stupid stupid bunch!
- cwnyth 2mo agoCitation needed.
- what 2mo ago[flagged]
- cwnyth 2mo agoYou find it odd I don't need additional sources for the link that comes sourced and has been in the news for the past few years? I find it "weird" you don't need citations at all.
- Yokohiii 2mo agoThe comment is removed. I was also a bit confused, so I've looked it up. So a very rough overview: Under Trudeau in Canada some regulations around gender politics and climate change, got a bit out of hand in terms of absurd requirements to state how they are helpful in the matter. Even for trivial things, they were not a hard requirements but helpful. Unlike the US gov in this post, they didn't slash projects with good intentions, they just changed and clarified the requirements. Correction welcome, I am far away from canadian politics.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- deadbabe 2mo agoI wonder if just injecting a typo into each banned word when its used will be enough to bypass the keyword search for auto-banning.
- walrus01 2mo agoOr take a page from IDN homograph attacks in phishing/whatever and replace certain 'a', 'e', 'o' letters with their unicode equivalent that's not English.
- mdp2021 2mo agoWhich will have side effects affecting other realms (search and indexing etc.). And besides, when a regime asks e.g to "prosecute all intellectuals - wearing glasses will be a sufficient criterion to identify them" workarounds are not the point.
- blints 2mo ago[flagged]
- mrexroad 2mo agoCitation?
- blints 2mo ago[flagged]
- secretsatan 2mo agoIt’s the usual stuff, they shut down speech on all sorts of topics, like the superiority of white christian men over everyone else
- wtfwhateven 2mo agoNone. It's lying, as usual.
- protocolture 2mo ago>And some or all of the Black students across three sections of the course were offended by what they’d heard. So they wrote a letter to the dean of the Marshall School of Business, Geoffrey Garrett, among others, describing Patton as insensitive and incapable of teaching the three-week intensive communications course. The Biden administration is some students now?
- wnevets 2mo agoIts important to note that US deficit spending is breaking records. They can't even pretend that they're saving money. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/u-budget-deficit-hit-july-125224843.html https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/u-budget-d...
- hahahaa 2mo ago432bn/month is that right?
- infinitewars 2mo ago[dead]
- pjc50 2mo agoDeficits only matter when they can be blamed on Democrats. Basically all the (Republican-owned) media agrees on that.
- Obscurity4340 2mo agoMakes you wonder what the plan is if there's a third term for 47
- soundworlds 2mo ago"Humanities" is literally on the list. As in, do not fund any Humanities research. Also not allowed to use "solar energy", "Geothermal energy", "EV infrastructure", "electrification", "Hydrogen energy". Welp, America, you either gotta kick this administration out, or enjoy cosplaying the 1800s.
- hahahaa 2mo agoCar powered by coal combustion via fast energy transmission systems. "Chemical coal".
- protocolture 2mo ago>enjoy cosplaying the 1800s. Thats what they voted for, dont know why they would get rid of them now.
- selfhoster1312 2mo agoMy understanding is at least a portion of the people who voted for Trump did not vote for reactionary fascism, but for what he publicly said/says he'll stand for: standing up for the little guy against ruling elites, stopping imperialist wars, boosting the economy and giving people the famous "tariff checks", etc. Of course he's done exactly the opposite (and more!), but it's hard to see that when we're being brainwashed by billionaire-owned media. Just like it's hard to see why the Democrats are just another corporate scam to profit the wealthy classes when we're being brainwashed by opposite-side billionaire-owned media. I don't have a lot of faith or trust in the Democratic Socialists of America, but they might well unite most of the people (including Harris and Trump supporters) in common goals: healthcare for all, living wages, affordable housing, stopping the AI bubble and techno-fascism, etc. Basic stuff that's supported by most of the population yet despised by elected representatives from both parties.
- JeremyNT 2mo agoThey could use ignorance as an excuse the first time, but only those who were too young to see the first term can use it now. One of the failures of the US media is to continue allowing these voters to hide behind such plausible deniability. They knew what they were asking for and they need to be understood as people who wanted this outcome.
- bluecalm 2mo agoWhy not use an LLM to filter research they don't want to fund? Keywords list seem like the dumbest way to go about it.
- rjrjrjrj 2mo ago"Dumbest way to go about it" is SOP for this administration.
- secretsatan 2mo agoThey did though, an llm filter is just as dumb. Don”t they have those interviews with the edgelord doge employees trying to justify the stuff they killed?
- secretsatan 2mo agoAdding to this, i think llms are just part of their game, they know well enough they aren’t accurate, but it plays into comments like this, where we’ll think an llm would make a smarter decision, but it’s just a smokescreen, they’re already looking at gaming the bots, musk trying to get grok to abide by his petty worldview is the most obvious ploy. But they’re already obfuscating sources of information as a matter of course, soon, we won’t know anything anymore, we’ll have to trust their machines.
- kombookcha 2mo agoI think their fixation on the machine is part accountability-laundering, part obfuscation as you say. They want a monopoly on not just information, but analysis, and breaking all information infrastructure that does not flow through their pet ideology robot is part of that.
- bluecalm 2mo agoI think they don't want to cut funding to math projects or engineering projects. They want to cut funding to research that goes against their politics. Cutting math research because "inequality" keyword is a bad look for them and just gives free ammo to their opposition. If they employed an LLM that wouldn't happen and they could still pursue their political goals.
- floren 2mo agoBiologists I know were reporting that they'd changed their grant proposals to study e.g. ovarian cancer in "non-male" mice
- BLKNSLVR 2mo agoTestosterone-challenged mice? Not sure if that would get additional funding or have it cut.
- M95D 2mo agoWhy? They could simply study "ovarian cancer in mice". Was it a protest?
- Timon3 2mo agoI have very little knowledge regarding biology, but your suggestion seems less specific to me (I could imagine there are ways to research ovarian cancer that include male animals). Specific titles are important so research can be easily searched.
- mdp2021 2mo agoThe point clearly is that they got reasons to avoid the term 'female'. The point is in the twisted absurdity brought by the evil.
- dadjoker 2mo ago[dead]
- giardini 2mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- happosai 2mo agoYou would think the "Freedom of speech" crowd was up to to arms over a list of banned words from the deep government. But no, they still seem to busy on Twitter being angry about a Muslim Mayor in New York.
- walrus01 2mo agoThey can't seem to decide whether Zohran Mamdani is going to first implement total sharia law, or full red banner style communism. In response I have already seen people printing a few satirical tshirts with a mishmash of soviet era/hammer and sickle iconography and minarets and moons glorifying the Socialist Peoples Republic of Mamadanistan.
- tdeck 2mo agoIt's very simple. Free speech means you should be able to say bigoted things and keep your job and/or highly paid speaking engagement. It doesn't mean you should be able to write an op-ed opposing genocide without being arrested, detained for months, and then deported. The "free speech" crowd has no interest in those issues.
- dnautics 2mo agosince when does freedom of speech cover "getting money from the government". there is broad latitude for to government to restrict the speech of employees in general (if you are a nonappointed employee of the executive branch you cannot lobby the legislature as a matter of separation of powers, if youre in the military or privy to top secret materials, theres a ton of things you can't say).
- hallgrim 2mo agoWell, the government funds science projects in general, and now they are limiting it based on a very loose list of terms related to ideas counter to their own ideology. The idea of freedom of speech is to not limit expression of ideas counter to any one ideology. Also, if corporations donating to political campaigns is speech, so should science funding be - which is now being restricted. Their usual retort is: “we need more speech in the market place of ideas, not censorship”. So why don’t they just fund right-wing-aligned projects instead? Hypocrisy all around.
- adamiscool8 2mo ago>a handful of federal agencies confirmed earlier this month in court documents that they cut grants if researchers’ projects “expressed, or were presumed to express, viewpoints disfavored by the Administration.” Why is this bad? The Administration is democratically elected so nominally represents the viewpoints of the majority people - why should taxpayer funding go to disfavored research? >The UC researchers allege the grant terminations violated their First Amendment rights by targeting their work based on viewpoint and subject matter and have asked the federal judge overseeing the case to rule the revocations unconstitutional. More weird fascist technocratic fantasies from academia. Why would you be constitutionally entitled to continued public funding?
- mlrtime 2mo agoRead all the comments here, at this time, there are no civil conversations. It's all a echo chamber. You won't find anyone who wants to engage in actual conversation about the topic.
- wtfwhateven 2mo agoThere's numerous civil conversations happening. Why would you tell such an easily disprovable lie? Could you explain how the people talking about their experience having to avoid specific words in their grant request were somehow uncivil? I'm not sure I understand. Was the objectively ridiculous nature of the situation being laid bare to you uncomfortable and thus "uncivil"?
- mlrtime 2mo agoAt the time of writing my post 90% were pure complaints about administration, one thread went as far as Russian state actors or aliens. I'll take all the downvotes, I really don't care but if you can't see this then you're part of the echo chamber... sorry.
- wtfwhateven 2mo agoAt the time of writing your post 90% of them were talking about the article. That, obviously, necessitates talking about the administration. I guess you interpreted people saying anything other than "I love this admin" as "uncivil". But, well, you already moved from "none of the threads are civil" to "90% of the threads aren't complimenting enough". You know that, of course, which is why you refused to explain how the people talking about their experience having to avoid specific words in their grant request were somehow uncivil. Very dishonest and abhorrent. The only one in an echo chamber is you, apparently one you've hallucinated into existence. The only 'individual' here being uncivil is you trying to gaslight everyone into believing any and all criticism of an administration is "uncivil". And, no, I didn't downvote you. I accept your concession.
- rsynnott 2mo agoAh, yes, what could go wrong? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
- AndyMcConachie 2mo agoAs bad as this is, I don't see how it is fundamentally different to the ways in which research grants have been doled out before. Hasn't it always been somewhat political? Granted, the methods used here are asinine. But I don't think USG research has ever been apolitical and there have always been special words that grant writers knew to use and not use. Part of being in research is getting grants and it has always been a silly game. This just seems to take the silly game to whole new levels.
- Braxton1980 2mo agoI'm confused because you offer up that it might have always been this way but without evidence then ask us if that's the case.
- tancop 2mo ago> green new deal social engineering policies Looks like they accidentally put some right wing conspiracy language on the list. No one would ever seriously call their own policies "social engineering" when the word is associated with dictatorship and cyber attacks.
- kombookcha 2mo agoA lot of the DOGE-era bizarro stuff seems to have involved just throwing an LLM instructed to have MAGA conspiracy brainworms at every problem. It would not surprise me if this list was partially generated in that way. Or it could be one of the conspiracy brained dead-eyed little brownshirts they sicced on the task that put it in there. Who knows. I'm not sure they even knew themselves.
- bewareofscams 2mo agoLysenkoism, but we are not commies, we pinky-promise.
- Good4boothee 2mo agoMy favorites are: exclusive, historically, pollution control, systemic. There had to be an absurd amount of false positives but I doubt they care when they are anti-science in general.
- beej71 2mo agoI think hacker types look at this list and think, "Wow--that's inept." But I also feel that the administration looks at the list and says, "No, it's absolutely brilliant." And I figure that's because our goals are different.
- eudamoniac 2mo agoAs stupid as this list is, there is seldom any reflection about why half the country felt this was necessary. I don't accept "because they are just dumb trump voters" as a reason. Obviously the left was doing some things that half the country felt were deeply unacceptable.