Hi everyone.
It’s me again, Tom L…the bad penny that it seemed had finally vanished forever. Then John tweaked me on Bluesky and here I am. Unintended consequences and all that.
I’ve been absent for a bunch of reasons. For most of the last two years I’ve been under the gun finishing a book that I really wish weren’t as timely as it is. There’s been a lot of stuff in my personal life too..and, well, you know–current events.
And now, there’s another obstacle which I’ve decided to see as the lemon out of which to make lemonade. I’m putting more effort than I ever have in trying to get word out about the new book (called So Very Small, in case you were wondering. To that end I’m trying to write op-eds, get active on Linked In, start to get a handle on short form vertical video (which until the Trump surrender my social media coach (sic) and I thought were bound for TikTok (sic) but will now show up somewhere; I’ll let y’all know, assuming I don’t make a 100% fool of myself). And I’ve started a Substack, which may also migrate to another platform*. That’s a lot of extracurricular writing. but, of course, my home in the blogosphere is here. So I’m just going to post here in parallel with anywhere else. If what I’m talking about ain’t your jam–well, at least it’s worth what you paid for it.
So here’s tonight’s angst, prompted by reports of of a planned ransacking of the National Science Foundation, cross posted at Linked In:
The latest news to cross my desk of the Trump/Musk-led assault on federal agencies and spending has been a on a plan to cut NSF funding in half. (Caution: Politico link):
…”if the White House and its so-called Department of Government Efficiency are serious about slashing NSF, the result would be catastrophic, the same program manager warned. Cutting the $10 billion grantmaking agency in half would “gut the intellectual center of U.S. leadership in science and technology”…
Such a move can–probably should–be read as a unilateral surrender of US to China, which is emphatically not cutting its investment in basic science. The Chinese NSF budget rose 10% in 2024 over the preceding year, and for well over a decade top leadership has seen support for technical research as a strategic imperative.
Which is to say: in this as in so many areas the Trump administration is eating the seed corn the US needs to maintain our wealth and power. Basic science is both a money maker–estimates on the return on each dollar of curiosity-driven research funding run from just over two to eight bucks–and (as implied by those numbers) where we get a keep our technological lead on the rest of the world.
I wrote in The Boston Globe about growing Chinese ambition during the first Trump administration and republished that essay at Inverse Square–my new Substack newsletter–a week or so ago. It remains tragically and unnecessarily on point. (It can be found here: https://lnkd.in/ejgF6an9)
Last, adding to what I posted at Linked In…I’ve become a broken record on Bluesky saying that the actions of Trump, Musk and their minions are indistinguishable from what you’d expect from paid operatives of one or more foreign adversaries. Gutting US basic science does nothing to suggest I’m wrong.
*I know that Substack is a–what’s the word?–contested platform. Adam S. sees it as a platform for and profiting off Nazis, and he has urged me to stay as far away from it as possible. Another front pager here (forgotten who, sorry) has made the argument that we can’t surrender every successful platform to the right. I note that a lot of people whose work I respect are there and have chosen to stay there through some of the controversies. My current response is to stay there and to try to take advantage of the network effects of the platform while doing nothing to profit them. Which is to say: Inverse Square is and will remain free for the foreseeable future. If it slides into (Adam and others would say continues to move towards) X/Twitter territory, then I’ll have to abandon ship. But for now, that’s my uneasy compromise. Feel free to weigh in below.
PS: I do plan to show up with some silly stuff. The current crop of active front pagers is doing so much to cover the present moment that I don’t think I have a ton to add. But, after all, I do put the Tom in tomfoolery.
Open thread.
Image: Joseph Wright of Derby, The Orrery, 1766
DaveLHI
One quibble: they’re not eating the seed corn, they’re just burning the granaries.
Suzanne
After thinking about this periodically over the last few years, I eventually concluded that abandoning platforms just lets the loudest voices have the floor. The choice, for me, is more personal. If you no longer feel good engaging on it, for any reason, then leave and don’t look back.
I may change my mind on this, but I don’t have any judgment toward anyone on this issue.
sab
Just grrr. I am not anti-Chinese. Some of my favorite in-laws are Chinese. I just love my country and very much wish we hadn’t voted to fuck ourselves up so badly. I wish we were still a pretty cool country. Obviously those days are gone, but it pains me.
The economic effects of what they are doing will pain me more, bur can’t fix it, so, whatever.
tobie
Cutting NSF funding is also a way to destroy universities, which Thiel, Musk and others seem to hate for two reasons: universities tend to be liberal and techbros believe that academics are intellectual midgets compared to the titans of industry. Americans have no clue about the years of research that go into every medicine they take or product they use and the fact that the research always begins with someone that is not product-oriented at all.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
Well, according to Chinese history, China has been the center of human civilization for the past six thousand years.
Lately, and for just the past few centuries, the Middle Kingdom been upstaged by certain barbarian countries in the west, similar to the Manchu takeover in the 17th century and the Japanese invasion in the 20th.
This era appears to be coming to an end. Just as the Manchus’ refusal to modernize and the Japanese refusal to accept the limits of their empire did them in, the western barbarians’ inherent flaws have automatically and naturally put an end to their hubris.
As a result, China will do no more than resume its natural place as the center of world civilization.
Why is this a problem? For an example, just think how much better food will be world wide if Chinese culture comes to dominate the planet.
Kay
A coalition of unions is now asking a federal court to block far-right billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the internal systems of the Department of Labor (DOL)
With just a few hours of notice, a crowd of about 300 federal workers and union members — many sporting navy American Federation of Government Employees bomber jackets and assorted union swag — gathered in front of the Frances Perkins Building this afternoon to protest the planned arrival of Musk and DOGE to the Department of Labor.
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler spoke alongside members of Congress, including Democratic Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Suzanne Bonamici.
“We are here today because Donald Trump and his unelected co-president Elon Musk are waging a war on workers and a war on federal employees,” Bonamici said to boos from the crowd. “We’re here to say no.”
inthesetimes.com/article/elon-musk-trump-doge-labor-department
Thor Heyerdahl
Someone told Trump about the Morgenthau Plan and he decided to try it on Americans first.
Belafon
bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3lhhatd25fc2e
Kay
There’s video on TikTok of a state rep in VA (Loudon County) holding a town hall. Federal workers are going to the microphones relating how Musk/Trump have stopped all work getting done, how they haven’t seen anything this bad in 24 years of service, etc.
State rep is sympathetic so I assume he’s a Dem. Smart to hold the town hall – they won’t forget he was there for them.
PsiFighter37
I think today was truly the first day where it really has sunk in – there is no going back, as Bouie put it. One of the old Daily Kos frontpagers whom I am connected to on Facebook said that the country that we knew is gone, and the jury is out on whether we will ever be able to put it back together again is out.
What an asshole like Elon Musk and the rest of the startup bros never get (because they never get told NO), is that government is not like private industry, and that once you break government, it is exceedingly difficult to put it back together. Just look at how hard Donald Tusk and his anti-extremist coalition are trying to put Poland back together – they are struggling because the institutions there are under the sway of the previous regime, and without breaking the rules themselves, they cannot be rid of them.
250 years is a decent run, I suppose, but the world is going to look immensely different going forward, and especially if democracy in this country truly is dead. If the outlook gets bad, I expect there to be a massive intellectual outflow from this country to others. Already in the back of my mind, I am trying to think about where my family and I could contemplate going if America is going down the tubes. Singapore comes to mind, although it has many problems of its own (not least one of which is that it’s more of a democracy on paper only).
Very, very depressing.
Van Buren
My son is now in a race to get his PhD before funding is cut off. His field of Chemistry is pretty far removed from anything political, but for the fact that out of the 5 graduate students working under his advisor, he is the only American; the rest are either from India or China. Whether valid or not, he has concerns that they will be targeted.
Just preordered the book. I have Money for Nothing sitting on the shelf in front of me.
schrodingers_cat
It is reminiscent of Robert Clive’s takeover of Bengal for the East India Company as I have said earlier.
@TomLevenson
How is Tikka and his understudy?
NutmegAgain
@tobie: All that, and I’m guessing people at universities had the temerity to say, “no!” to each of these guys. Like waving a red flag.
PsiFighter37
@Kay: I think I mentioned this in an earlier thread this morning: the courts have zero enforcement mechanism, and it is clear that Pam Bondi is not going to lift a finger to stop Elon and his co-conspirators from continuing to break the law.
Without enforcement mechanisms, suing – and even winning – is going to have zero impact. All it is going to do is to expose that the safeguards of democracy was actually all built on people agreeing to do the right thing, and that when everyone agrees to do the wrong thing, there is zero way to enforce the proper outcome.
SCOTUS could rule 9-0 against the Elon and the felon, and they would simply ignore the ruling and keep doing what they are doing. The Republicans in Congress are feckless cowards who are happy being bystanders while watching their dream – the federal government being completely torched – happen.
FDRLincoln
With a disabled son and a wife with MS, my family is stuck here. There is nowhere to run to.
sanjeevs
@schrodingers_cat: Speaking of which , from WSJ
Ohio Mom
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: I am not a big fan of Chinese food but other than that, your comment tracks what I’ve heard elsewhere. The first time was years and years ago at a presentation on cultural literacy at our local Childrrn’s hospital.
A Chinese doctor was trying to convince attendees to have an open mind about Chinese folk medicine and then told us about China waiting out the west to once again take over its rightful place at the center of the world.
A very weird presentation. Stuck in my memory while I forgot the other cultures presented.
No One of Consequence
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: But given 5,000 years of culture, they never invented Jazz.
I’m not sure they could.
This is not an insult, merely an observation and opinion. My inlaws are Taiwanese, so, different-but-perhaps-close-enough?
I do concur, the cuisine would improve.
-NOoC
Joseph Patrick Lurker
Tom, in spite of you believing that you don’t think you have a ton to add, I hope you won’t be a stranger over the coming months. You always give me something useful to think about and I love all the outstanding works of art that you include in each of your posts!
Ohio Mom
@FDRLincoln: Ohio Family as well.
Back during the GW years I briefly looked into emigrating and quickly realized we were too old and not rich enough. Now I’m wondering, what was I worried about back then? What a sweet summer child I was, even with the Great Recession and the War on Terror, those were days of peace and prosperity.
And if we are too old to emigrate legally, we are also obviously too old to sneak over a border and have Ohio Dad drive a taxi while I clean homes. So here we will stay.
My question now is, how do we take care of ourselves in this new shambles of a world? Hoard every penny and…?
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@No One of Consequence: I thinking singing in a tonal language is harder than in a non-tonal language.
other than that, I’ve got nothing, except that if you don’t build your economy on slavery, you haven’t got a population to create the blues.
Ohio Mom
Earlier today I thought about those children’s books, the “So you want to be an astronaut” or a nurse, or fill in the blank. You know those books, they explain what an astronaut’s day is like, what you need to study in school, that sort of thing.
I feel like I need one titled “So you want to live in an impoverished dictatorship.” Well, not that I *want* to live in one, just feels like my/our future.
Another Scott
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: But, but, Chinese food was invented in America:
;-)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jay
nitter.poast.org/kenklippenstein/status/1887223602329882923#m
For those who don’t know Ken, he covered US Extremist organizations and Indigenous protests for Vice for many year.
No One of Consequence
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Oh, indeed on both counts. Our debt to African Americans is significant and not lost on me. The collective melting pot has certainly yielded some incredible results. The democracy it exists within certainly is looking a little rough around the edges these days though. I am beginning to fear that I shall die in a country much different than the one I was born into, and not in a better way, despite the advancements.
I suppose my take on the Chinese mind and spirit is one of discipline and dedication, but along with that rigidity and adherence. Thus, my opinion about the unlikely genesis of Jazz within the Chinese culture.
Peace,
-NOoC
Jay
@Another Scott:
So American Chinese food.
Donno about the US but here in Canada, in places like Richmond and Chinatown, one can find lots of actual Chinese food, restaurants, and it’s very popular,
not Canadian Chinese food, which these days, is mostly takeout or delivery.
RSA
Yes. From an NSF pub:
It’s not so much about permanent NSF staff (who are conscientious, well-informed and indispensable, in my experience) but about a foundation of the U.S. science enterprise being hacked away. We tend to look at industry these days for innovation and impact, but where do the scientists and engineers come from? Right, from universities, with government funding for graduate education.
bluefoot
I work in biopharma, and over the past year plus there has been a pivot toward Chinese biotechs for new early-stage (pre-clinical to Phase 2) drugs. If you had asked even 4 or 5 years ago, no one would have said China would be innovating. This is only going to accelerate. What Musk et al are doing to NSF, NIH, etc will completely cripple our ability to do science in this country, and they are giving away our primacy in science and scientific innovation.
Tangentially, if FFOTUS wants power, why is he giving it away? He and his minions and hangers on are torching our direct and soft power.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@No One of Consequence: I’m not expert but Daoism is Chinese & I guess could support a jazz musical culture.
at this point I’m just sh*t posting, though, so I’m going to shut up.
mostly
Citizen Alan
It would have required them to first kidnap and enslave a large number of Africans in order to “invent” jazz. Also Gospel, Rap, and Rock & Roll.
EDIT: See also what Chacal Charles Calthrop said.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Another Scott: Thks! Did not know about this
Kay
@PsiFighter37:
Disagree. Musk obeys the Delaware chancery court and a lawsuit actually succeeded in holding Giuliani accountable, twice.
You forget, I think, that laws are good for wealthy people. Laws protect property, create consistency, can be used against rivals, etc. Musk, and any other rich person, want a rule based order. They want protections for property and enforceable contracts.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Jay: and sometimes you find good Chinese food in interesting locations in Canada. I had a good chicken with black bean sauce in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan. I also had delicious off menu Singapore noodles in Brian Trottier’s hometown of Val Marie, Saskatchewan that would not feel out of place in Richmond or Markham.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@PsiFighter37:
Something like this was always coming down the pike. The right has been bending and bending for decades and now something’s breaking. It could’ve happened under better circumstances though.
Kayla Rudbek
@bluefoot: and they also want to force the patent examination corps back into the office which would greatly delay patent examination and issuance reddit.com/r/patentexaminer/comments/1id845l/running_the_math_on_examiner_rto/
pieceofpeace
@Joseph Patrick Lurker:
I second this, enthusiastically.
Aggieric
My job is funded by NSF grants. We’re all just waiting for the axe.
Mel
@FDRLincoln: i am disabled by several severe autoimmune illnesses. I am so sorry that your family is caught in this terrible trap as well, and so scared for all of us.
Mel
@Ohio Mom: Also in Ohio. Same here. Too sick and too old for anywhere to accept me now, and watching the safety net we all worked for and paid into and fought for years to protect being dismantled in days. Watching the future of my grand-nieces and nephews go up in flames.
I’ve gone from terror to rage to grief to numbness over and over so many times in the past week that I don’t know which way to turn.