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Comment by Kyragem | Hacker News Reader

What a nonsensical article. Similar to Malcolm Gladwells revisionist podcast (episode: My Little Hundred Million) these awards predominantly go to well connected faculty at elite schools who are already well funded and who don't need the money (other than to add to their palmares). Many of these awardees are already millionaires. They should just split this award into smaller grants and give it to faculty/teachers at smaller unknown schools in the midwest. You don’t have to be a genius to see this would do more good.

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I’ve known a few MacArthur grant winners, and none of them were wealthy, or even upper middle class. Most were stably employed, but some extra money with no strings attached can really help a lot if people want to set aside time to work on their own projects, not beholden to some employer or grant agency expecting quarterly or yearly status reports with well-defined short-term project goals.

Personal art projects, long-term research projects, etc. are often difficult to get funded because they are risky and may not have an immediate path toward revenue. There is surprisingly little money available in the world designated to fund people’s green-field creative work, with project leads allowed to just hire smart people and tell them to work on whatever interests them for 5+ years without worrying about immediate payoff.

This

> other than to add to their palmares

I learned an interesting, though obscure, word today:

palmarès: a list of races a (bicycle) rider has won. (French, meaning list of achievements or list of winners).

Thank you! You saved me a) a quick Google search myself, and b) the attendant self-conscious wondering about whether this is a word everyone knows and that I too should know by now.

I don't think it's that obscure in British english usage, even outside of cycling contexts (source: American living in the UK)

Interesting. It's not in the Oxford Dictionary of English powering the Dictionary bundled with macOS, and it's not known to dictionary.com, so I'd say it's fairly obscure.

http://www.dictionary.com/misspelling?term=palmares

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