Sure am glad that we didn't just cut $9 billion in funding towards PBS and other public broadcasting institutions that aired Reading Rainbow.
But no one has.
> (20) (A) Amounts made available for “Corporation for Public Broadcasting” for fiscal year 2026 by Public Law 118–47 are rescinded.
> (B) Amounts made available for “Corporation for Public Broadcasting” for fiscal year 2027 by Public Law 119–4 are rescinded.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4/te...
I would actually like to buy a climate change alarm clock
(It's a future generation's problem, right?...)
Hah I wish - hitting snooze would at least push it back.
We're just putting our heads under the pillow to try and ignore the blaring alarm.
So is sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the coming disaster. Next quarter thinking should not be the government policy.
This is clearly dog whistle langauge and not intended to be taken literally, but it is starting to be a common trope and it makes me very curious as to how this industry operates? What's their main source of income, who benefits from it, and how? And what is the supposed goal of it?
Raising the alarm about a conceieved threat could be a way to raise money for more research, which might indirectly benefit those scientists. But we haven't really seen a corresponding massive increase in scientists employed, and even if we did, they would have to find some way to leak money through publicly funded research to their own private enterprises because so far no one has suggested that we pay scientific researchers too much. The way to combat that would be to demand more transparency from universities, but they're already pretty good about that.
It also doesn't match very well what those scientists are actually saying. Which is mostly that the basic science is indisputable since the past century and more research is not required but action. Had the climate scientists been siphoning public money through alarmists schemes, wouldn't they rather say that things are very dire but "don't touch! We need much more expensive research before we can give any concrete advice"?
Rather, I think the allegation is that it's those involved in renewable energy development schemes that result from the raised alarm, from product vendors to site developers to construction contractors to energy trading firms to... See also: politicians pushing Green New Deal type policies. The scientists are enablers, not the primary beneficiaries, at least as I understand the allegations.
There's been plenty of extended circles around political interests that has lined their pockets in matters of alcohol and drug prevention, abuse prevention and health care, but very few people seem to be taking the local step to actually, alcohol are good for you and anyone that says otherwise should be labelled alcohol alarmists. It's pretty unique to climate research.
I seem to remember that there were was a enormous backlash against CFC bans, and lots of talk about how it would lead to the spread of preventable illness and economic disaster, but it never reached nearly the same levels of anti scientific discourse as we see today.
It's clearly just dismissive language that doesn't have to make sense. The only purpose is to make climate change seem like a fake concept thought of by groups with nefarious intentions. It's like asking the author of a short story what the main character's favorite color is. That detail simply wasn't considered because it's not needed in the short story.
as for NOAA, China could decide to undermine the profiteering of weather in the US (as it did with AI using DeepSeek) by simply expanding the Fengyun satellite constellation to cover the globe (as it did with beidou) thereby providing weather forecasts for North America as well via the web, social media, and mobile app free of charge as a form of Kissinger style "soft power."
Like I'm joking but that's the idea.
Reform is our version of MAGA and just as odious.
Back in the 90's and 00's, PBS had a show called "Irasshai" [1] aimed at high school students. It was a complete two year Japanese language education class filmed in conjunction with Georgia Tech.
They produced 140 30-minute lessons and produced two 500 page text books and teacher lesson plans. Study materials, homework, tests - everything.
It typically aired at 4 AM, so they asked you to set your VCR to record. If you couldn't do that, they could mail you the entire VHS boxed set of episodes.
But that's not the cool and powerful part. They actually let you register for classes and conference call in with an actual teacher. Twice to three times a week with class sizes of 4-6 students. Everyone took turns reading, answering questions, practicing dialogue. All year long.
There were tests and grades, and regular 1-1 proctored verbal exams. It was incredible.
The entire program was offered for free.
It was one of the coolest ways to learn Japanese and it was incredibly effective. This was such an amazing program for high schools that typically only offered Spanish lessons.
And now that's gone.
Thanks for that link though, a commenter says the vids are still there. (I'm too busy learning Chinese at this point though, I'm afraid!)
But even Elon couldn’t do that. I don’t know if any president can. Something is deeply wrong here.
I think that is the wrong framing. I'd be more surprised if someone with no real government experience has much success with that venture.
I'd rather have someone with years and years of experience with DoD budgets and the expertise to prioritize the right cuts.
Then again, goal was to destroy and harm and that was achieved.
The US's uniquely fucked healthcare situation is thanks to 1) administrative overhead of tons of competitive and extremely complex distinct health plans, and 2) the labor cost of doctors, much of which gets captured by the extremely consolidated health systems that employ them.
The US needs to dump money into training a lot more doctors. Not by subsidizing student loans, but by directly creating public medical schools that train doctors on the cheap and let them escape with no student debt.
Private parties are welcome to create and fund residency slots if they want. They typically don’t because it’s a totally nonsense investment — perfect example of a problem that private investment markets would fail to solve.
The “cap” refers to the fact that CMS doesn’t fund an infinite number of residency slots.
So you and I are saying similar things, which is that the government needs to fund more MD training.
Even the EU and Japan have massive increased amount of additional spend into military.
The free world is under WW2 levels of threat. Hundreds of millions of people are going to perish unless deterence works.
The challenge is that the next war wont look like the last one or the one before that. So you might decide that instead of sinking a gazillion dollars on a 25-year project to build some fighter jets or littoral ships, you spend half a gazillion dollars on cyber and drones.
Problem is that states and their leaders (politicians, business, resident voices) find it emotionally and politically hard to pivot from building X in state A to building Y in state B.
Right now, everyone is studying the lessons of the Ukraine war. That certainly should be looked at and learned from (build drones at mass scale, say) but it would also be possible to draw entirely incorrect conclusions for the next war. As a land war in Europe, Ukraine shows us the importance of essentially 1900s-style tools: shells and ordnance by the million. Tanks. Etc. If (god forbid) someone got into a hot war with China, the needs would be entirely different.
To your points.
Isreal just leveled iran without a single plane shot down, tech still dominates. The F35 is a terrifying weapon and Irans drone and missle attacks were ineffective. Ukraine shows us what two poor and land locked countries fight like.
The use of drones by both sides is in part because neither side could get air superiority, Ukraine because it barely had an air force and Russia because..well decades of corruption.
If the US had invaded Ukraine, Ukraine would have lost in under a month, the insurgency would be horrific and make Iraq look mild but militarily Russia was a complete basket case.
The lesson we should take is that ammunition stockpiles evaporate faster than you expect always in a full scale war, this has been true all the way back to the invention of the bow though.
The world is building military defense against a threat that will never materialize. That’s one half the story. The other half of the story is a big economic dick measuring contest where the country with the most military might (that they will never use) is the better country.
They actively threaten their neighbor and openly say force is being considered while also designing specialized equipment to enable this.
China actively is trying to expand territory and have plans to expand to the different island chains by certain years.
US military analyst have been warning for nearly a decade that china is planning for war between 2025-2030. All recent US actions under Biden and Trump both correlate with senior US officials taking this seriously.
Even JAPAN a openly pacifist country is increasing military spending. Europe just made a plan for like 800B$ of military spend.
Even a conservative viewer should see this as pretty clear sign that the world is preparing for war no?
The only reason for the US to continue its military spending is to enforce its will upon the world by force or going on conquests for land, neither of which is a good or righteous cause that nobody should be supporting.
Many countries that in actuality do not have nukes would have obtained nukes if the US hadn't made security guarantees to them. Those guarantees would not have been as persuasive (in getting countries to forgo getting nukes) if the US military wasn't as strong as it actually was. And the world is a safer place because only 9 countries have nukes.
Also, before now there's never has been an 80-year-long period without a major war between European powers. If the US military had been less strong, then the major powers of Europe would have felt the need to spend more on their militaries (at first to deter the Soviets / Russia, but then also to deter each other) which would have increased the probability of a war between European powers.
But it's not hard to prefer Pax Americana to WW3.
Super power gonna super power. Wether it is Romans/Arabs/British/US or maybe future China.
None of them play nice and there's generally always one. I'd prefer to live in the peak power of these countries over the total chaos in between their collapse. The entire world has gotten insanely rich and healthy under US dominance I don't think wanting that to continue is an immoral desire.
History will remember the US as the empire to bring about the modern era much like the british brought about industrialization and global trade.
Why should he? Who pays for Starlink? Who pays for rocket launches with satellite cargo? Who pays for advanced vehicle research?
Musk is benefiting of that by a lot. Where he cuts is oversight over his business and areas where one can provide commercial products.