A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Sure, that's great but it's not even the point. Fundamental research and other type of "useless" scientific endeavors help humanity as a whole to better understand our universe but would never be privately funded because they don't have any concrete and immediate financial benefits. This is precisely what a government should finance, because no one else would do it and yet it's small stuff like that that make us collectively move forward as a species
Musk fans don't want humanity to advance. They hate technological progress.
For OTHERS, yes. But many want the cutting edge for themselves, at no cost to themselves.
The world just keeps getting more and more efficient at being dumb. Let's just count all the appallingly stupid things crammed into this small meme with 2 million views:
Idiocracy didn't happen because of unnatural selection, it happened because social media unlocked a runaway chain reaction of stupidity.
Why are people saying that it was named after a cryptocurrency?
Isnt the dog the first thing people think of when seeing "doge"?
Its reasonable to make the connection to the coin, as this particular cryptocurrency was propagandized and manipulated by musk, who will be running the agency.
True! It was then technically named after a meme...which the coin named itself after, as it was supposed to be a "meme coin".
Still stands though.
"Government agency named after meme. Such dumb. So chaos. Woooooow." Lol
Isnt the dog the first thing people think of when seeing “doge”?
It used to be so, but in recent several years Doge has lived and pretty much been defined in public consciousness by the cryptocurrency, which Musk has openly endorsed/memed.
In addition, government research in the sciences is miniscule. You could cut ALL of science funding and be no where close to the 1 trillion that Musk claims he'll be able to reduce the budget by
Now if he could start making cuts to the military…
How dare you threaten the poor defense contractors.
also, entire military is just under 1tn - all of it, including completely nonmovable things like nuclear silos and submarines. ripping enough copper from the walls to get 2tn would involve massive cuts to social security and healthcare, and maybe education. but nooo heavens forbid that progressive tax on income be introduced
The DoD itself spent $820B in 2023. To get over $1T, you also have to include veterans benefits, like the VA hospital system.
The full bill for Vietnam started coming 20 years after the fact as all those veterans got older and started heavily using the benefits they were promised. From the start of the War on Terror, we're about at that same point right now. So unless the plan is to rug pull those benefits from people who really need them, then there's going to be a huge bill coming that no amount of efficiency trimming can ignore.
If Democrats did the rug pull, Republicans would cry bloody murder. If Trump did it, they will cheer him on while veterans suffer.
Regardless, he'll claim he cut 500 bajillion dollars no matter what he ends up doing
My bet is that if he expects to cut 2 trillion, he will end up increasing the budget by 4 trillion.
He actually claimed 2 trillion.
I knew Elongated Muskrat was a dumbass but I didn't know he also can't do math.
I don't think he even attempted to do math. Someone asked him about it and said what the current budget was, and he just rectally sourced 2 trillion. I assume he said that because it's big enough to sound huge, but less than half of spending so people don't panic that everything will be cut.
It's meaningless bullshit until he actually says specifically what will be cut. Republicans have been claiming they can cut huge chunks of spending for years, but it never materializes. They only know how cut government income without paying for it.
Say it with me:
No. Research. Is. Useless.
If we say that research is useless because it doesn't bring you mo ey we could stop teaching children math beyond the absolute basics because "it doesn't brinf them anything". This is stupid, because those are the fundamentals that tech children to thing logically and become useful member of society. Same with research. It teaches us the things necessary to maybe invent some of the most useful stuff ever seen
Republicans want drones and cannon fodder, not scientists and intellectuals.
And so the US lost decade becomes the medieval dark ages
It'd be fascinating as an outsider if the choices made by the US didn't basically impact everything, everywhere.
"preventing next corn plague" with resources used being a box of soil and bunch of underpaid grads seems pretty efficient to me, but i guess that since the common clay of the new west already voted they can be safely disposed of
at USDA, they're turning beetles kinky! 😡
The Onion buying Infowars is the only good news I've heard this week.
China is going to devour the scientific world if we keep it like this
China has a problem. It isn't good at finding the best people and putting them into science (or whatever else). Instead it gets the loyal people and gives them the best jobs, they then select people below them however they will
People then strive for recognition and advancement so scientific fraud is rife
Won't happen, or at least won't be useful if it does. Lotta Chinese authors are faking data for the sake of the CCP and their studies don't replicate. If that takes over, it'll be like a global Dark Age.
The appointment of Elon Musk to lead the proposed department of government efficiency raises concerns, given his track record of business management.
His handling of Twitter/X after its $44 billion acquisition has resulted in a significant decline in its value, with some sources putting the valuation around $9bn.
Doesn't seem very efficient to me.
This idea has been around for a while. Make government more efficient by putting a private enterprise person in charge
It never worked because the private enterprise person got efficiency by having a cool project or forceful personality in the private enterprise which let them pay their employees poorly. Or maybe they paid their employees well and had excellent success. But then they have government employees who are hard to fire, have highly specialist knowledge, aren't in it for profit and so the private enterprise maverick is usually [worse than] useless
I don't expect it to work this time either, especially as Musk is more interested in Tesla, SpaceX, and his other companies
Neolib idiots don't see the (immense) value of fundamental research because it doesn't directly generate profits, more at 11
Like the dead don't realize they're dead, they don't realize they're stupid. They're just everyone else's problem.
the 2010s science bazinga man being the reason all the cool science gets cut is darkly funny.
Yeah, we've been studying the sex lives of various different animals (including ourselves!) for centuries now, yet nobody bat an eye until now. 🙄
It's also helped develop advances in flight, metamaterials, physics.
But Barbie makes a good point with a meme about how she treats her cuck husband.
Yes! I was just reading a few scientific articles about the mating patterns of darkling beetles. (not a gov't employee tho)
