Baffled European

Category: Vandalism

  • Citation needed

    Science journals have a poor reputation among academics. The publishers have a cartel which controls the distribution of scientific papers. It’s not so much the content or the refereeing process that people complain about, although both of these are far from perfect.

    The main criticism is the high price and limited access. Sharp practices such as bundling journals to constantly introduce new journals that people are forced to accept if they want the high-impact publications. With universities as the major customer, there is a guaranteed source of income that the publishers exploit.

    Until now.

    The US government has cancelled the subscriptions for thousands of journals. They are apparently “exorbitantly expensive” and “not a good use of taxpayer funds”.

    This is being rolled out across agencies. The NIH claimed they were still subscribing, saying that the journals “promote transparency and replicability in research”. Indeed they do. However, they changed their minds a couple of hours later, saying that they don’t want to pay for “unused subscriptions to junk science”.

    This is not a move to get the publishers to behave and sort out their pricing policies. It is a straight attack on science. It is impossible for scientists to work without these references.

    They don’t want science. If science doesn’t say what they believe, they must silence it. AI produces something that looks and sounds like science and that is enough for them. They can always make AI agree with them. This is the future.

  • A kick up the arts

    Until recently, the Kennedy Center was a venue for performing arts. Opera, classical music, jazz, folk, theatre, poetry, stuff like that. These things don’t have huge popular appeal, but they all have an audience. The Center attempts to present a snapshot of the wide spectrum of culture in the USA.

    At least they used to. The president fancies himself as a connoisseur of the arts, a man with a finely-tuned sense for cultural taste. In order to enforce this, he removed the leadership of the Center and replaced them with maga fanatics to make appropriate adjustments to the programme.

    The first major alteration was to add a faith group, in order to reflect the artistic input that religion offers. So far, only Christianity is being promoted. Maybe other religions will get some attention in the future. At any rate, the new leadership is asking staff to pray before business meetings.

    Their first production will be Les Misérables, their patron’s favourite musical. No problem with that, but the new ticketing system is causing a stir. It’s all being arranged in the style of an election fundraiser, allocating corporate hospitality with “donors” buying blocks of seats. Corrupt hucksterism is the watchword.

    Ticket sales and attendances have collapsed. All this has alienated the existing audience, without appealing to a new audience that exists largely in maga’s imagination. They are asking for a five-fold increase in federal subsidies to cover the shortfall.

    These people are useless at everything.

  • Cancer in the USA

    Joe Biden has cancer. From the announcement, it sounds pretty terminal, so all we can do is hope that his final days are happy and peaceful.

    His successor responded to the news with a crude and paranoid tirade on Truth Social. I know these people despise empathy, but this is just plain bad manners.

    On the whole, cancer is not quite the death senstence it was 30 years ago. It’s a serious matter, but treatment and management has improved enormously. Literally millions of people are still alive as a result of the advances in medical science.

    Further improvements are now unlikely. RFK has cut billions from the cancer research budget and he doesn’t care. “It’s going to hurt,” he boasts. The arrogance of the truly clueless who happens to be in charge.

    A third of government spending for cancer research has been cancelled. Thousands of researchers sacked. Websites containing clinical data and other information have been shut down. Combined with the attacks on the pharmaceutical industry, RFK is destroying medical research in the USA.

    He wants to concentrate on “chronic illness”, which appears to be code for “nutrition and supplements”. This is the line taken by Casey Means, the nomination for Surgeon General. She runs a wellness company, is an anti-vaxxer and a loyal supporter of the president. The usual, basically.

    On top of this, massive cuts are coming to Medicaid. I don’t see how US medicine and health can survive these amateurs.

  • Management

    When it was introduced, Tesla claimed a ten year waiting list for the Cybertruck. This was based on preorders, which disappeared rapidly as the problems with the vehicle became clear. Tesla is now stockpiling Cybertrucks, with an estimated six months inventory parked in fields, unsold. Heavy discounting, attractive specifications, nothing works – nobody wants to buy them. It’s too expensive to close the factory, so they continue to produce them. The stockpile grows.

    Intergalactic superbrain and 4D chess grandmaster Elon Musk is the man responsible for this situation. Of course, he is also the man charged with raising the efficiency of the US government. Let’s take a quick look at how that’s been progressing.

    The head of FEMA was sacked yesterday and has been replaced by another lackey. He should have a good four or five weeks to get his feet under the desk before the first hurricane.

    All 37 divisions of the National Science Foundation are being abolished. The aim is to give more political control over the remains of what science is being conducted.

    The head librarian has been fired. She was also responsible for the Copyright Office and so stood in the way of the various AI machines trying to steal other people’s work.

    National parks are being hit with another round of layoffs, the science directorates being disproportionately hit. The remainder is subject to crippling bureaucracy and micromanagement.

    There’s more. Thank goodness they have such a gifted manager.

  • Fallen star

    Energy Star was set up in 1992 to reduce the energy requirements of computers. Its success led to similar standards for lighting, heating and other appliances. Loads of numbers are thrown around to show its effectiveness: TLDR; it costs little and saves a lot.

    Obviously, maga denies climate change as part of their general rejection of reality. However ignorant and irrational, it is at least predictable. For some reason, they are also rejecting energy efficiency measures as well. Presumably the two issues are so tightly linked in their brains, they are unable to see any difference.

    They are cancelling Energy Star in the name of government efficiency. There will be no further drive to reduce energy consumption of equipment, nor will there be any further ratings of new products. This will hit all consumers, business as well as private.

    What is striking about this is the extravagent, willful waste of it all. It’s not enough for them to convince themselves that reality is a left wing conspiracy, they have to behave in the most inefficient way possible.

    Surely even those who hate environmental politics must recognise the value of lowering your outgoings? Is it about owning the libs? Or is it because the country is being run by oligarchs who don’t care about the cost?

    Whatever, they think they can outperform the rest of the world by being less efficient and having higher costs. It’s an interesting idea. See how it works.

  • The first 100 days

    100 days of the new administration. Time to look at the successes.

    Fox News comes up with some irrelevant nonsense. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”. Ending the ban on plastic straws.

    Villain-in-chief gave a speech to maga fanatics, boasting about his crusade against woke ideology. A bunch of lies about his own achievements, topped off with more lies about Biden.

    A journalist interviewed the president and challenged him about the fake photos the regime cooked up of Abrego Garcia. The response: “I never heard of you. I picked you. You’re not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed… Just say yes!”

    It is pointless to try to refute the torrent of lies and misinformation from this administration. They are immune to facts, evidence and reason. As far as they are concerned, what they say is the truth, and that’s that. They have the full power of the state to back them up and they are not afraid to use this power.

    In 100 days, these criminals have ruined all their international alliances. They have destroyed large sections of the US state. Science is rejected. The rule of law counts for nothing. Rampant discrimination is official policy. Freedom of speech no longer exists. Insane economics have crashed the stock market and are wrecking the economy.

    Resistance to all of this has been patchy and wanting.

    100 days. They’ve got a lot of time left to make it all worse.

  • Just ICE

    “We will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.” This is Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, threatening judges. Not terrorists, or immigrants, or even transes, but judges. Two judges have been arrested in the last couple of days on the ridiculous charge of obstructing ICE agents from deporting somebody.

    Maybe difficult to top, but she has also issued a memo saying ICE can enter any home without a warrant. Who voted for that? Now they are deporting children – US citizens – while their parents are trying to stop the process.

    She got the job by being a presenter on Fox News, her boss’s favourite channel, and for taking a bribe from him to avoid an investigation into his diploma mill. At some point, she worked on his first impeachment trial, but she was only one of many. That Fox job – she was Florida Attorney General at the time. She was challenged on ethical grounds about this, but lied a lot and got away with it.

    Corrupt, obviously. Also racist, bloodthirsty and spiteful. And, as with so many others in the gang, a big fan of Russia. Part of her vandalism has been to disband the agencies that investigate or sanction Russian oligarchs.

    Since becoming Attorney General, her job seems to be to appear on Fox News as often as possible in order to tell many obvious and unfounded lies as possible. She’s the ideal person to destroy the justice system.

  • Tech solves everything

    As secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum has got everything he ever wanted.

    First, and perhaps most importantly, he has a supply of freshly baked cookies that his staff bake for him in the department.

    Secondly, he is responsible for the management of federal lands and natural resources. In principle then, he is looking after reservations for Native Americans, conserve fisheries, perform geological surveys and maintain monuments.

    That’s the theory at any rate. He has turned 600k hectares of Alaskan wildlife refuge over to oil drilling. This is in addition to demands for more drilling on federal lands, as well as coal mining. An off-shore wind farm in New York has however been cancelled

    The rest of his remit is simple: he’s got rid of it. He has handed over the National Parks to one of Musk’s minions, also an oil company executive. A safe pair of hands.

    Digging into his weird ideas led me to something I had never encountered before: de-extinction. The idea seems to be that it is not necessary to do any sort of nature conservation. Exploit the land as much as you want and kill all the life there. Later, you can use some magic tech to recreate all of those extinct animals.

    Do the tech bros actually believe this, or do they think other people believe their fantasies? They are so far removed from reality, I’m tempted to think, yes to both. And these idiots are in charge.

  • Lose-lose

    The USA has been the leading country for research and innovation since WWII. The government itself has done very little of this work. It decided back then to outsource the work to universities. There were a few steps between what the president wanted and what the universities did, but that’s what happens when you delegate and don’t try to micromanage.

    As with so many other things, it’s easy to take this success for granted, to assume it is the natural order of things. But what happens if the president does try to micromanage the research? What if the president doesn’t understand the system he is in charge of? What if he is a gangster as well?

    In this case, research money is not there for the good of the country, but as a means to threaten and extort. He thinks that everybody is like him and only interested in money, and that they will do anything to protect the precious government grant money.

    Harvard has done the calculation. If they give in, they will lose their reputation for academic independence and excellence. The brightest and best will go elsewhere, where they can pursue their research outside of a dictatorship. If they resist, the brightest and best will still go elsewhere, because there is no government money to pay them – but they retain their integrity and reputation. If they can weather the storm.

    They are suing the government. Other universities are taking note.

  • Did they lobotomise RFK as well?

    April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month in the USA. To mark the occasion, RFK has disbanded all the agencies working on prevention of sexual violence. All that remains are a few people to answer the phone and say they can’t do anything. Trade Unionists: beware of Labor Day.

    This falls under sacking people who are “DEI appointments”, a catch all for racism, sexism, transphobia, etc, which seems to be an acceptable term in polite society and the press. From the people sacked under this rule, about 20% have been rehired. RFK claims this is all part of the plan. Sorry, but what management strategy is this? How is it part of an efficiency drive?

    Whatever. RFK says it is all to do with the Deep State which has captured agencies. Does he really believe this stuff? Probably. He talks endless nonsense about the damage caused by vaccines and “environmental toxins”. His solution is nutrition quackery, but declines to do anything about it. Everybody has a choice about their health, he reckons. If they die, it’s their fault. Why should he do anything about it?

    Maybe the most unhinged idea is that people were healthier when he was a child than they are now. This is such patent rubbish he must only say it to waste people’s time refuting it. But maybe he genuinely believes there was an idyll when he was a child and all in the world was well? Is he really trying to recreate this?