I spent days and days inside the STAR control room in grad school, often during the 12:30am-7:30am graveyard shift. We needed to run 24/7 for efficiency reasons during the experimental season. Getting superconductors down to temp is costly, so once you get it there, it is go time all the time.
You had to stay on top of all the detectors and triggers, since every minute of beam time cost around $1k. You often sat around doing little, probably working on other research, and then would need to drop everything to reboot a detector so we could get back to collecting data.
Cost of electricity. Accelerators consume huge amounts of power and require the appropriate infrastructure. For example in RIKEN, Japan, agreement is made beforehand with electric companies to provide power to the accelerator during specific spring and fall months, where demand for air conditioner and heaters are at the lowest.
NSRL is like $7k/hr and required over a dozen physicists when running the beam. The point is to get the most amount of experiments performed while everyone is available to do so. We would work like a 12 hour day when running tests at NSRL without any days off until we were done.
Doesn't power costs also affect shutdown periods? I know that CERN would shutdown in winter due to increased power costs and power demands around then. I suppose something similar may affect accelerators in the US.
Want to work for a software company actively working to help our fellow citizens instead of harm them? Want to work directly with state governments to get people home sooner?
Isreal has slaughtered over 60 thousand Palistinians. Israel is purposefully starving the rest. Israel uses desperate people searching for food as target practice as testified to by contractors working along side them.
But, apparently Israel holds no accountability or agency for this rampant slaughter.
The same reply, again and again... The usual ostrich policy that ignores Hamas, what they stand for, what they do, and their support in Gaza.
As I have just written peace with Hamas is not possible since their aim is to destroy Israel and remove all Jews by any means necessary. The only thing achievable is a deal for a temporary truce, which Hamas will use to regroup and rearm until they launch their next attack.
Hamas praised and claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday in Jerusalem in which 6 civilians were gunned down. That's how seriously they are "negotiating" for peace. [Israel's bombing of their "negotiators" in Qatar came the following day]
So let's really help the people of Gaza and step up pressure to rid it of Hamas. That's how this war ends sooner than later.
> but Netanhayu says: ‘Hamas is attempting to fool the world’
Recent events have proved him right, haven't they?
> On 24 October [2023, right after 7th October], Ghazi Hamad—member of the decision-making Hamas Political Bureau—explained the 7 October attack: "Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation". [1]
If there's one person we should all trust, it's Benjamin Netanyahu, teller of numerous verifiable lies (remember "40 beheaded babies") and wanted war criminal.
Israel is doing a genocide on the Palestinian population.
You can Hamas this, Hamas that, but Netanyahu bombs hospitals, Palestinian children, starves the Palestinian population, and murders journalists. All war crimes, all stuff we have seen with our own eyes thanks to the wonders of technology.
> On 24 October [2023, right after 7th October], Ghazi Hamad—member of the decision-making Hamas Political Bureau—explained the 7 October attack: "Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation".
"Netanyahu vows 'there will be no Palestinian state'"
Which is funny, cause there is already a Palestinian state, recognized by 147 of 193 UN countries. Which is similar to Israel: 165 of 193 UN countries. So it seems Netanyahu...is wanting to ...destroy a whole nation...kind of...ethnically cleanse it? Sure sounds like a genocider to me.
Stop the genocide. Israel is doing a genocide and there is nothing to be discussed about its finer points until it stops. Stop it and then we can discuss how similar it was to other genocides and how to punish the Israeli heads of state in Hague.
>peace with Hamas is not possible since their aim is to destroy Israel and remove all Jews by any means necessary.
I agree, but that doesn't make how Israel conducts this war acceptable.
It has been reported pretty consistently how Israel basically accepts crazy high "collateral damage" in their work, and have demonstrated that they do not respect Palestinians as sovereign individuals who do not deserve to be bombed for being next door to a terrorist.
Israel has demonstrated that they will literally bomb things due to AI hallucination.
You don't get to freely kill anyone you want just because there are some terrorists in that country. Putin doesn't get a pass to bomb all of Ukraine just because some people really hate Russia in that country.
This is NOT an existential war for Israel, not at this time. They do not get to act like it's a free for all with who they kill.
They have killed tens of thousands in their attempts to harm Hamas, and despite demonstrating that they have the precision and power to do so with significantly fewer innocent deaths, they have no problem with the innocent body count they have undeniably stacked up.
Israel has chosen to do this with utter cruelty. That's not necessary. It's unacceptable.
Israel needs to give Palestinians who don't want to be under the yoke of Hamas some sort of option that isn't "die".
Israel needs to sort out how abhorrent their soldiers act. You don't get to act like rampaging colonizers and then cry foul when the modern world is unhappy about it.
The cruelty can only be intentional at this point.
Thw law is very obviously being abused here by Trump and his administration to punish unfavored speech and unfavored groups. They dont care about equal protection one bit. They want to punish academics and universities so that Trump et al can controll their speech.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
OTOH "Conservatism" is simply the desire to hold on to, or conserve what there currently is, rather than progress toward something different.
Whether the progress is for the better or worse or even if anybody knows for sure.
Truly the opposite of "progressive". Neither one inherently good or bad.
And as can be seen, an indication of the relative greatness of American leaders who can be judged by their ability to wisely balance the interests of all citizens. The US has a history of exceptional true leaders since the beginning, but not every single one. Some have been far from saintly, and some not even suitable for a free country.
Quite a lot of times neither conservative nor progressive seem like as much of a driving force unless their hallmarks are in decline to the point where some things that were perceived as precious to conserve or progress toward or beyond had already been lost to a certain extent, or otherwise under increased threat.
Thank you. We really need to stop letting the fascists/reactionaries cloak themselves in this label of conservative. They're a radical reactionary movement with the main goal of tearing down our societal institutions and effectively destroying America's standing in the world - the polar opposite of conservatism.
Letting them continue to think of themselves as conservative assuages their own cognitive dissonance as to what they're actually supporting. It's plainly dishonest to call all of our institutions corrupt, point to some imagined rosy snapshot of the past 70+ years ago, and then claim you're merely conservative. The conservative slogan would be Keep America Great. Theirs isn't.
One of the things parties around the world have been successful at (as opposed to creating favorable law) is distorting and watering down other parties from within. Labor is anti laborer. Democrats are anti democrat, republicans hate the free market, conservatives want to change everything etc
Authoritarian states often function via selective enforcement of laws. We see that here. They will use any angle, any technicality to remove someone. Lived here for almost 50 years and are a productive member of your community but you're on a stayed order of release pending you check in regularly and you do so? Sorry, we changed our minds and are deporting you because legally we can. Please come with us in the unmarked car. [0]
Tried to kill police officers while trying to overturn an election on behalf of the dear leader? We'll pardon you and give you a job on a task force about weaponization of government. [1]
The law will be applied to the harshest extent to those Trump and his ilk see as enemies and will be warped in favor of his current friends.
Or, as a Preuvian facist president put it: "For my friends, anything; for my enemies, the law!"
I agree with the meat of what you say, but is selective enforcement really so unique to authoritarian governments?
In the US, even before recent administrations, we’ve long had evidence of uneven application of laws. Police love power. Criminalizing more stuff gives them more power to decide who to target.
Look how the war on drugs and policies like stop and frisk have targeted black folks. Even innocuous sounding things like seatbelt laws give police the ability to criminalize “driving while black.”
Meanwhile we’ve long ignored white collar crimes like wage theft. You know rich families aren’t going to be affected by anti-abortion laws.
My heavily tattooed White friends and I recently ignored no trespassing to swim in a nice river in TX. We agreed that if the cops came, I (non tattooed, White) would do the talking.
Anyway, the police have never been interested in holding the rich and powerful to account.
Chattel slavery- direct, constant, and complete control over one's life and death, and the reduction of the person to mere property, is essentially the most authoritarian institution there can be.
Not a huge Chomsky fan. He calls himself an anarchist, but if you pin him down on specifics he turns into a minarchist rhetorically, and a Social Democrat in practical matters.
He's similar to Lenin, imo, in that he advocates using the State to prepare to dismantle the State, all while gassing up the things that the State provides (e.g. social protections). There's never anything more than a vague promise to move on from that in the future, which is exactly the same as the single-party-State USSR.
People mistake Capitalism as the driver for authoritarianism, but Capitalism is just the means to gain power/wealth in our current society, with hierarchical government being the framework within which Capitalism operates. Greed is the driver, and greed is intrinsic to humans. But greed without a framework to amass power (like a State) can only operate on an individual level.
For the reader curious why the woman in [0] didn't get permanent residency via marriage:
> Milne was divorced from the nonimmigrant student she married prior to 1983. She then married a U.S. citizen but we found, in our above-said unpublished opinion, that she had admitted that it was a marriage of convenience. After another divorce, she married her current husband, a marriage that is uncontested as "bona fide." Her request for legal permanent resident status based on this marriage was denied under INA § 204(c) which precludes approval based on even an admittedly good-faith union if the petitioner had previously contracted an improper marriage.
> “The Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death,” Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said in a radio interview.
Yitzhak is a current sitting member of the Knesset.
I just did. No question a number of these comments are completely inexcusable.
2 points:
1. A number of them, especially by more moderate voices, were made in the immediate days after Oct 7 when there was a tremendous amount of anger as a reaction to what happened.
2. The above comment and others like this were made by the extreme of the extreme right in Israel. I don't think that even Ben Gvir would utter such a thing.
Nobody with decision making powers is making any attempt to exterminate a people.
Such as the US secretary of "defense", Pete Hegseth, who has the Latin phrase for "god wills it" tattooed on his bicep. A phrase that is also the motto of the first crusade.
Yes. The people are being lied to, the extreme elements of the two largest global religions, whichever it happens to be, will always be at some direct or indirect conflict. And it's a shame one side is pretending they are not driving it, but that their tiny little proxy country is.
Same here. NSF funded my grad research and I have the same feeling. Seeing this nation eat its seed corn to fund some bullshit tax cuts makes me sick. None of this is theoretical. Talked to a Stanford prof two week ago- her DOE grant is on hold. Talked to some UCSD profs- and they said they only admitted just over half the number of grad students as last year due to funding uncertainty. I fear my kids might have to go to another country to get advanced training, and that next generation of American tech entrepreneurs will be fewer or lost.
I could never get beyond "honorable mention" for the NSF GRFP. I found the diversity part of it most difficult to write. Like honestly my research had nothing to do with diversity and I'm not an underrepresented minority myself. But that was a major part of how the application was scored, so you had to come up with some bullshit and hope for the best.
And that was like 15 years ago, I hear things have only gotten more extreme since then. Well, at least until very recently...
Yeah that's what I would have done. Don't get me wrong, I am very anti MAGA!
Which is kind of crazy... I'm here on the Internet ranting about DEI, and the MAGA movement is still toxic enough to completely alienate me. MAGA is probably worse than DEI.
I would counter your anecdata with the 5 friends I have, all of whom are whiter than printer paper and 3 of whom are deeply conservative, who received GRFP. Your failure to get GRFP had nothing to do with the diversity statement.
Yeah anecdotes don't tell you much. You may have noticed I was also replying to an anecdote.
What tells you more is that the diversity statement exists and they say it's used as part of scoring. Therefore, unless the amount of score it counts for is infinitesimally small, some people win/lose based on the content of their diversity statement.
Was that me? Who knows. But unless the whole thing was just busy work for no reason, it was probably a bunch of people.
How many? Who knows. I'm sure you'd agree that it would be interesting if somebody published that data! Maybe the new NSF will be more transparent than the old one.
I think it's important to remember that, historically, science has been very racist and very sexist. It's not like the diversity statement came out of nowhere - the majority of our understanding of a lot of topics only comes from studying white men.
This is why AA men and women have significantly worse healthcare outcomes, or why women are more likely to die in a car crash.
Yes, maybe it's slightly inconvenient to write a diversity statement. But it's because of these types of initiatives that we're able to build more equitable research and improve outcomes for a variety of minority groups.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, suck it up. Or, at least, understand why they're asking for it instead of assuming it's some sort of strange, convoluted, personal attack on your character.
I will give you credit for having an explanation that at least makes more sense than "the diversity statement is just for fun and doesn't do anything", which is the explanation that I usually hear!
But yeah I am aware that the more reasonable DEI supporters say things similar to what you said. Just be aware that there are other people who are skeptical that the "improve outcomes for a variety of minority groups" part actually happens, and also think that DEI has various other negative consequences in addition to that.
I wouldn't really say I needed to "suck it up" since not winning the GRFP is a pretty minor thing - it's very hard to win, so a negative outcome was not really surprising and didn't really cost me anything more than a line on my resume. I was happy to even get honorable mention! My actual concern is when similar tactics are used for more meaningful things, and the second order effects of such policies. The GRFP was just the biggest example of it directly affecting me personally, since I didn't stick around in academia too long (for multiple reasons, not just DEI), so it makes a good enough anecdote I guess.
I feel this way as well. They're killing or gutting so many programs that help to develop the next generation. Not just NSF and NIH, but also Americorps, Job Corps, educational exchange programs like the Fullbright. I just saw they were making a 50% cut to the peace corps.
It feels like they want to destroy everything that's optimistic and forward-thinking.
Similarly. My grad research was funded by an NSF project grant and my advisor's NSF CAREER. My postdoc supervisor just won his CAREER before the election.
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.
Thousands of years ago there was a breakthrough discovery that shaped humanity forever: living in society.
Do we need to explain that one of the perks of society is pushing others forward with a tacit expectation that it will come back for everyone eventually?
Correct that OP did not imply those things, but a lot of people will read it that way. There are implications behind the implications, and I think that DiffEq is referencing the latter. I'm not taking a side in this fight.
So you're saying that if we ignore what he wrote, close our eyes, and make stuff up, then we can pretend his post says whatever we want? Sounds like you should work for US government.
> You are implying a few things here; that it is the responsibility of others to fund your success and that there were not, or will not be, alternative means of such funding.
Yes, the government funds research, the benefit of which accrues to all of society. There is no credible alternative to government funding for public research; the scales are not the same. Private funding of basic research (internal R&D budgets) accrues benefits to the funders directly.
Knock-on effects to cutting the government funding include a decimation of future research leadership by the US by making it unattractive to study and do basic research here. Other countries are taking advantage of this (like any private sector company would if one of its competitors makes such a drastic mistake).
> Lastly you are implying that your graduate research was something that advanced some combination of science, humanity, the country...or maybe that the current work you do is of such value that the government should have paid your way to your current status.
You're overly indexing on the benefits any specific researcher gets from research funding. Research is currently done by humans; if we want more research done, then the people doing that research will necessarily get some of the benefits.
Also, since you're commenting on a software-focused web forum -- you should be aware that the compensation for government-funded researchers is a fraction of what these folks could make in the private sector. Framing it as some greedy theft of resources from the public is foolish and disingenuous to readers who don't know about how science funding works in the US.
When you speak in abstracts and generic terms about the value of government funding research, you are saying nothing meaningful in terms of knowing whether the government should spend more or less on research. If the OP's specific research was into The Changing Mating Habits of the Delta Smelt Due to Habitat Destruction, then probably it was money that could far better spent paying tuition for, say, medical students or even just letting tax payers keep their money and spend it in a way that directly benefits their family, their community, and themselves. Otherwise you are just handwaving and demanding everyone assume that all research is good and should be publicly funded.
In terms of cutting NSF budget, they have issued grants for things that explicitly violate Title IX of the Civil Rights act.[1] You can't justify all NSF spending by cherry picking successful past spending. We can evaluate the benefits of proposed research and whether it aligns with the intentions and values of society at large. We don't have to spend because someone incanted the words "Because SCIENCE!" over a bubbling beaker.
> If the OP's specific research was into The Changing Mating Habits of the Delta Smelt Due to Habit Destruction, then probably it was money that could far better spent paying tuition for, say, medical students or even just letting tax payers keep their money and spend it in a way that directly benefits their family, their community, and themselves.
The problem is it's very hard to know ahead of time which research directions will yield fruit. If we knew how to only fund good research, then science funding would be very easy. Unfortunately, that's not the case -- oftentimes things that are sure bets fail, and things that are rejected as "not promising" result in a breakthrough. So we have to fund a lot of stuff, some of which is not obviously going to yield a great ROI.
On the one hand, yes, funding science the way we do results in a lot of "wasted" funding. There are tons of inefficiencies. On the other hand, the way we fund science has been wildly successful in terms of the benefits we have reaped. Look around you, you can see them everywhere in every sector.
The danger is we pull back funding to things that are "sure bets" and they turn out to be duds while we miss out on other less sure opportunities. That would be a loss for everyone involved.
I did not stop reading right there, but I may as well have. Invoking this particular area of research has become a popular conservative trope, because casual news readers do not get the point of studying a tiny fish in general or its love life in particular, even though it's a useful indicator species for the overall health of the riparian ecosystem.
You seem you like an intelligent person. Why are you leaning on tropes that exploit and glorify ignorance and anti-intellectualism?
Is it your position, then, that the government should not fund research? What entity is prepared to take its place? Can you name a country with a successful research community that does not rely in part on government funding?
You had to stay on top of all the detectors and triggers, since every minute of beam time cost around $1k. You often sat around doing little, probably working on other research, and then would need to drop everything to reboot a detector so we could get back to collecting data.
RHIC is dead. Long live eRHIC.