Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.
Everything is changing. Including our influence.
You’re right that it’s all policy making and that’s why you’re supposed to elect competent politicians and administrators.
The military isn't some limitless resource, and lead by incompetence, it is useless. There are no policy makers in this administration, they go on vibes and bad ones at that.
Even a guy named mad dog said that diplomacy was cheaper than bullets.
For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get?
I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished
For actual context, F-35 program receives $9B per year (amortized over lifetime), which is $3000 per year per graduate student. Erasing the F-35 program entirely would make something like a 10% difference in graduate wages, while destroying the US Air Force as a modern military.
So no — your request to fund graduate students is more expensive than the F-35 program and delivers at best marginal results.
When you math through per unit or per capita or per year, we already spend more on education and science than the military — and it’s unclear further science funding to the detriment of the military would improve things.
I understand why you want more money, though.
Then again, military weapons are indeed insanely expensive.
This is not an unreasonably ratio between cutting-edge affection and long-term potential. Particularly when grad students aren’t currently configured to be earning positions.
Putting “fight” into quotes here is terrific amount of low level shade for a scientific publication. chef’s kiss
Edit: probably not this one but atleast tells us why measurement is needed https://youtube.com/shorts/-X5EhUbzLTY?si=_N92PNUiTi3STat6
Facts cease to exist because you ignore them. I think Huxley wrote that.
I'm not sure people realize just how dire this is. The politics of the largest, most powerful country on Earth are dominated by people who truly believe in dispensational premillenialism [2]. For these people their time on Earth is limited. Wrecking the Earth doesn't matter. The afterlife is forever. Senior government officials take seriously bringing on the apocalypse through a red heifer [3]. In fact, it's the cornerstone of Christian Zionism [4].
And what began this political movement? Racism [5], specifically a ruling that schools in the South couldn't be both tax-exempt and segregationist.
We live in the dumbest timeline.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkWl7NaGprE
[3]: https://medium.com/@nour_alhakk/the-red-heifer-and-the-u-s-a...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism
[5]: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-ri...
I didn’t see one word describing why the administration felt this was the correct decision.
All I saw was moral judgment and condemnation, as if describing the actual motivations of the actors would have been a pointless exercise.
I’m not defending the administration. I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project or the groups that operated it. But I do know that there are two sides to every conflict.
This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision. And the one-sided presentation makes me much more suspicious of the motives of the publisher and therefore of the validity of their position.
That's exactly why I never get tested for sexually-transmitted diseases. I mean, I'd rather not know, right??
/s
Climate Activist: The oceans are getting warmer & global currents are threatened by imminent collapse - we must do something! Big Oil: Prove it! Climate Activist: Data gathered between 2016 and 2026 shows ... Big Oil: That's old news! Do you have more recent data? Climate Activist: Well, no, because Trump2 dismantled the ocean observation system in 2026 ... Big Oil: So you have no data to back up your claims? Climate Activist: Not recent data, no, but ... Big Oil: Case dismissed! Why should anyone take action based on subjective opinion, not backed up by hard data? For all we know the oceans could have miraculously cooled & the currents are fine!
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatori...
A few points:
1. The ocean observation system began operating in 2016 and was expected to continue for 25 years.
2. It cost $48 million annually to operate the network. The Trump administration repeatedly tried to shutter it, proposing to cut its funding by 80 percent in both 2025 and again in 2026. Congress pushed back, restoring the money.
3. “One of the real tragedies here is that collecting data effectively at this site was a huge engineering challenge, and it’s not the kind of thing where you can just leave your notes for the next person who comes in,” Dr. Palevsky said. “There’s a lot of expertise that has the potential to be lost.”
The administration is, as I understand it, in violation of the constitution by shutting this down. It was funded by Congress, twice. The executive branch cannot just legally not spend that money.
...Why is Europe reliant on the US for monitoring oceans between Greenland & Iceland, i.e within European territory & therefore European monitoring? Shouldn't they have their own infra to work from?
Can anyone here, hand of heart, say "I agree with this decision"?
That wasn't arbitrary, and it wasn't for no benefit. It was so that landowners along the coast could continue to use faulty sea level studies to justify state road and infrastructure investments.
This, too, isn't mindless vandalism. It's worse. It's greedy, it's short-sighted, and it's cruel.
iiuc us per capita emissions are not far from 1910s levels
But like the east wing I’m sure they’ll do it before there’s a chance.
Fuck this timeline
It’s not surprising though. Manipulating data and availability data is a regular government practice now. And it’s not just a Trump or Republican thing either. For example crime stats in blue cities often tell a misleading story, and can be influenced by rule changes on what gets counted.
The same is possible in other contexts like crime stats. You can avoid crime data collection by creating friction in reporting crimes. Or change incentives to report crime by not doing anything with reports. Or not submit data to places that collect it. And so on.
I’m not saying “only democrats” either - they aren’t - but it’s a common issue in blue cities that have obvious crime issues despite government PR about crime rates.
Trying to "both sides" dismantling oceanographic science by equivocating it with "blue cities often tell a misleading story" is disingenuous at best and can easily be interpreted as deceitful by a reasonable person.
I don’t like any direction this administration has taken, but acting like it’s not the completely legitimate will of the people is BS.
I think liberals and progressives have a higher propensity to vote, so you can’t assume the non voters are less likely to lean Trump.
Zuck Musk Bezos Pichai Thiel
Add more
Let’s map their names to the companies they run. Then reflect on whether we buy their products: Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla/SpaceX, Meta.
* Using the FCC to control the press
* Arresting American citizens because of their brown skin
* Talking about menstruation
Unfortunately now we have both.
> just look at this for example https://xcancel.com/USDOL/status/1795879796599111997 and try to imagine the kind of people who wrote and/or approved that message.
What exactly is your problem with it? "just look at this" while pointing to a normal tweet doesn't exactly convey a point.
> Michael England, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation, said the decision to dismantle the network, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, “aligns with N.S.F.’s wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.”
1) it's not hard to do your own research. If you're here, I assume you know how.
2) does that answer satisfy you? The bullshitty word salad doesn't surprise me. With this administration I expect incompetence and double speak and am rarely disappointed. I wonder why at this point in time you choose to give them so much leeway.
Assume the opposite direction. If you don't bring the data, then you're not doing your part to convince others on your position. Assumption of "default data" is a significant contributor in the breakdown of communications.
> 2) does that answer satisfy you?
No, in fact it leaves open more questions than before. From the article provided (https://archive.is/fZ9CN):
>> The $48 million annual budget for the observation network was small compared with the value of the data it collected for understanding the oceans and the climate, Dr. McLean said.
- Why didn't aligned charities step in to plug the gap? Billions flow through charities each year, and yet none have stepped in? One or 2 stepping in and still not being able to plug the gap, I can accept. None at all?
- If the data is that important, then there should be multiple efforts in collecting it, not just one. Why did everything get lumped into a single basket?
That's the problem.
> This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision.
You shouldn't rely on just one article to make an "informed decision." Indeed, anyone who genuinely wants to make "informed decisions" must cultivate the habit of actively seeking out to be better informed rather than passively relying on a single article.
There's an entire chain of events that the links in this article lead to...
...The NSF is descoping.
...It's descoping because of federal funding cuts to science projects
...Federal funding cuts are due to the pro-fossil-fuel biases and climate change skepticism of the rightwing Trump admin and its backers. Their ideological strategy to redesign American society, Project 2025, specifically mentions disbanding this very monitoring project.
I was able to find that all out in about 15 minutes though I'm neither American nor reside there or anywhere close to it.
A performative pretense of informed decision making is not the same as genuinely making informed decisions.
You'd think this stuff isn't worth monitoring, but it paints a very interesting picture of where things were, where they are now, and where they're going.
We also do experiments on key species of the food web, analyze environmental DNA to see what's present and where, and generally try to figure out what this data says about living things and how they will handle these changes.
The bottom line is that something as significant as ocean currents will have massive implications for crucial things like transport, food, agriculture, and more.
This stuff is integral to the stability of everything you care about.
And it's not looking great. Acidity is increasing, temperature is increasing, oxygen is decreasing, food webs are transforming; we need to know what this means ASAP, and we need to figure out how to adapt. This isn't your kids' kid's problems alone. You will likely experience impacts in your lifetime.
A simple example: fat, nutrient-rich foundational species of the BC Coast's food web are gradually decreasing in population and presence, being replaced by less nutrient-dense species from warmer climates. Countless juvenile fish which underpin our commercial fishery stocks depend on the richer, more nutritious species to thrive. This could impact their populations and lead to even more expensive fish; and we're talking about species which were plentiful and affordable in my lifetime. As those species decrease in quantity, the higher trophic levels suffer as well. This will be reflected in countless ways.
We need to measure this stuff because it's the beating heart of our planet, and it's changing for the worse (as far as our well-being is concerned).
Even beyond that immediate need, the oceans are incredibly poorly studied and are of massive economic and military value to the United States. Baseline statistics on currents could be very useful for all kinds of as yet unknown science and applications. Countries that run a big navy do ocean science. It’s a form of dual purpose funding that benefits both civilian and military ships.
Ocean currents and temperatures are major factors in storms, economic activity like trade, and ecosystems across the country. Monitoring them costs virtually nothing, and the benefits are huge.
It's likely that a majority of the cost to collect the data has already been paid for...
But if you stop watching him for like a month, nothing of consequence happens (mostly).
Maybe these current watching is like that. If you keep looking at it,too closely and because we don't know all the variables, may be we keep making wrong "doomsday" predictions every time something moves. I have observed that this shows up in many places where we don't really know how things work..
I would much prefer if someone closely monitor the level of poisons and pesticides in the food and water we consume. For example, every store should be visited by a government agencey to collect samples and test them for poison levels...
It doesn’t matter what the reason, if you can’t do something you can’t do it.
Are you forgetting the bad neighbor that keeps attacking most of its other neighbors, even while under ceasefire agreements? And then moving onto the land and saying "this is ours, time to redraw the border again.".
Because that, to me, screams instability.
Iraq has for the first time ever entered in the high category of HDI.
https://www.undp.org/arab-states/press-releases/iraqs-human-...
Seems that sending a bunch of people with guns/bombs/etc to another country is almost always bad.
The military doing good things like ... um ... helping out during natural disasters or genuine peacekeeping is entirely a rare thing.
The logical conclusion then if despite everyone voting D then getting their votes tossed out is either violent revolution or liberation with the aid of another nuclear-armed state.
Let’s see, we’ve got:
Meta
Amazon
Appl… oh
the US spends AT LEAST $1T/year on military—and a lot of that is used to murder a lot of innocent people just minding their own business. Cut the military budget in half to start and then complain about reckless spending.
I’ll also add: abruptly killing programs costs more than it saves. The DOGE fiasco at USAID for example—the unruly unwinding of their finances incurred huge financial penalties. (I listened to an interview with a USAID whistleblower. It may have been interest payments?)
These ignorant and greedy billionaires destroying the people’s government based on vibes… a sick joke.
https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/104/6/1341/9774...
Oh, please, that’s not true. But yeah, you need 60 seats there in order to just ram things through. Right now Democrats don’t even have a plurality of the voting public so it’s not surprising that they are completely powerless.
> Democrats couldn’t even get a SC Justice…
On this one though I’ll fully agree with you, they were 100% ratfucked on Garland’s nomination. In no universe was that more than 0% ethically justified. That was a craven and cowardly scheme.
If the data is economically valuable, mbgerring, then the private market should be the ones shouldering the costs.
But lets say, for the hell of it, we take a wild guess and presume that to be economically valuable it has to be if not easily tradeable at least actionable, but for whatever reason the hypothetical here is it's only useful in the US if the government does it. I would presume, though not propose, they could sell it to US enemies, such as China. Now I am not promoting treasonous activities, but I'm quite sure, some capitalists would happily do them.
People can be bad at their jobs and/or can act irrationally.
I think that if these sensors were providing useful, actionable information more valuable than their maintenance cost is not well supported.
I hate divisive language like this, but Trump's only major concrete "policy" (if you can call it that) during his 2024 campaign was that he was going to somehow lower grocery prices by instituting tariffs, so basically "I'm going to lower prices by raising prices".
That kind of idiotic quasi-doublespeak should have been a disqualifier for anyone with at least a two-digit IQ, but apparently it's not. The only scenarios that I can see for this:
1) People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs.
This is so idiotic because even if that were true, which it's not, those costs would still be ruled into the price. "No such thing as a free lunch" is very literally the first thing I learned in high school economics.
If people are that stupid then they can be blamed for their idiotic decisions to vote for a despot.
2) They didn't believe in the tariff rhetoric, and wanted to vote for Trump based on a nebulous "personality".
This is stupid. If you really are voting for people because you think you'd "like to have a beer with them", then you should be blamed when bad things happen from that idiotic decision.
----
Kamala wasn't a great candidate, but I really hate this sort of "both sides"-ing people do to try and engage in apologetics for people's ridiculous decision to vote for the guy who, as far as I can tell, has literally no expertise in anything.
Resistance is one definition, I guess. A very loose definition.
I'd call it what it was. Career sociopaths decided to put a career sociopath on the ballot instead of someone the left's citizens would actually like.
Many believed this, think about how many Americans do not understand the Progressive Tax system. I believe it has been intentional for many years to keep up some of these misunderstanding of basic governance.
I don't really feel like I needed to be taught that tariffs would raise prices. I'm not some hypergenius, it really seems pretty obvious to me.
Or more practically and relevant to this? Number one Google search on Election Day? "Did Biden drop out?" Not the world's most informed electorate.
