Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
@argv_minus_one Ouch. Yeah, that, exactly.
To be clear, my optimism didn't really last all that long, say from about 1995 when the #WWW really took off, to 1998 or so when the #dotcom bubble started to crack. By 1999 it was obvious things weren't working out so well: The #Matrix hit at exactly the right moment.
But oh, how I miss that brief period when it looked like we were going to get #StarTrek instead.
@davidho It's really striking how incredibly stupid these people are. Their thought processes are nothing but buzzwords. "Fair? Sounds like woke DEI to me!"
I remember when I was so optimistic about the techno-future. You know, "the #internet is the greatest advance in human #communication and #knowledge since the invention of #writing" and all that. I really believed we were headed for a golden age.
Maybe I was naive. But maybe not. Maybe we *could* have had that #future. And then the #techbros hijacked it and turned it to shit.
@kaffando I'll keep that in mind. 🙂
I am, once again, going to try to keep myself from posting about #politics. #Cats, #dinosaurs, my own #science when it's worth talking about, and fun stuff: that's the plan.
The political conversation is important, and I flatter myself that I have something useful to add from time to time. But it's a marathon, not a sprint. I need to pace myself.
And as a practical matter, I need to concentrate on the work that keeps me and those I love fed and housed, at least while it still exists. The #war on science already has #casualties among my friends. I'm trying really hard not to be one of them. #Medic's first rule.
So this is an accountability post as much as anything, a reminder to myself. It's easier to keep a promise you make to the world as a whole, than only inside your head.
@jsonstein hello back!
@UweHalfHand thank you!
All I know about #Trump is I could afford #eggs when #Biden was #President.
@UlrikeHahn I hate this timeline.
@Trenton_Hoshiko Not silly at all. We need good things to keep us going.
It's really kind of impressive how #MAGA finds the absolute worst possible people for every job. Quite an accomplishment, in its way.
"The first #Europeans weren’t who you might think." They pretty much were, given what we know about #geography, #paleoclimate, and #human #evolution—but generations of ideologues successfully argued otherwise. Implications for the modern world are left as an exercise for the reader.
Seen in the wild: Musk and Trump are "Lootie and the Bloatfish."
I have to admit, I did not have “energy drinks are manly and coffee is for girls” on my batshit manosphere bingo card.
This information is all out there, but it's good to have it in one place. The TL;DR is that the #Trump administration's goal is nothing less than the destruction of #American #science, and they may well get it. #NIH and #NSF are the most obvious and immediate targets—but #CDC, #FDA, #NASA, #NOAA, and even #DARPA are on the hitlist, along with numerous other funding agencies scattered throughout the government.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/what-s-happening-inside-nih
Authoritarians are often very fond of *engineering*: consider #Hitler's obsession with "#Wunderwaffen," or the #USSR's bloody-minded but largely successful approach to building a space program. But they fear and hate *science*, because inquiring into the fundamental nature of reality is anathema to ideology. Of course #engineering without #science runs dry fast, and you end up with everything from faulty machinery to mass starvation. This doesn't really bother the people in charge, most of the time. "Some of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."
Engineering is also where the profit comes from, which is why governments *have* to fund science to get the shiny toys. Very few private organizations are able to fund years-long blue-sky research, and those that can usually don't particularly want to. I'm lucky enough to work in a field where a fair amount of science *is* privately funded, but it's still all downstream from academic science—and that means #government #grants.
Take those away, and it's like killing the roots of a plant. The leaves may look healthy for a while, but sooner or later the whole thing withers. Since farming this particular plant is not only how I make my living, but also what keeps people I care about alive (including myself, as the years go by) I take the whole thing kind of personally. Hell if I know what to do about it, though.
Well. For the moment, there's still some life above ground. I'd better get back to that, and harvest what I can. Maybe we'll make it through the famine to come.
@anneapplebaum Rich people and Russians are two of Trump's favorite things, so this tracks.
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
