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Comment by greeneggs | Hacker News Reader

It's funded by Jim Simons, of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies. A mathematician with money, trying to promote mathematics. Quanta magazine is a fantastic service.

But the other Renaissance magnate, Bob Mercer, as his own media hobby funded Breitbart News.

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I used to be part of a collaboration at a particle accelerator called RHIC. It was the most powerful accelerator of it's type before the LHC was built, and a lot of really great research was done there. One year, the budget got slashed and there just wasn't enough funding for it to operate. Simons donated a massive amount of his own money, and organized fundraising from other sources, both of which played central roles in the experiments being able to continue on with their research. There's now a road inside of Brookhaven National Lab called "Renaissance" in honor of him to celebrate his contributions. It's actually pretty sad that it was necessary for something like that to happen, but it certainly speaks volumes about Simons.

> But the other Renaissance magnate, Bob Mercer, as his own media hobby funded Breitbart News.

And was one of the major sources of funds behind Cambridge Analytica.

Yeah it's kind of sad to me. Quanta is amazing but I'm not sure if I could reasonably expect to exist without Simons or someone like him privately funding it

Why do you feel sad about the fact that an individual who values science is "privately funding" a great publication? surely you don't object to private wealth and/or activity?

Being dependent on the whim of a wealthy individual is saddening.

Would it be any less saddening to depend on the whim of an uneducated, innumerate and manipulable mob?

Better would be the considered preferences of an educated numerated mobs.

Could one be, instead, appreciative of and grateful to the considered, generous decision of that individual? how do you think he would respond to someone expressing one kind of feeling or the other?

I assume that he became a multibillionaire in part by not troubling himself with the opinions of nobodies.

Why do you think that I'm not? Lol

Please don't put opinions in other people's mouths. Not everyone believes that extreme levels of wealth controlled by one individual is good.

I was going to comment in here about how the Simons Foundation runs Quanta. Glad other people have mentioned it. Simons is an amazing guy.

I always wondered how Quanta put such high quality material out in a traditionally low-profit industry. Now I know!

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