• rational_lib@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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:

    1. “Insurrection Barbie”
    2. Celebrating the defunding of useful scientific research by a new government efficiency agency
    3. This new agency is named after a cryptocurrency
    4. The cryptocurrency in question was created as a joke to satirize cryptocurrencies, but became a top prominent cryptocurrency itself.
    5. The “Department of Government Efficiency Agency” has 2 heads, both of whom have other primary jobs and were chosen in return for political support.
    6. There is also already an existing government agency that does the exact same thing, called the “Government Accountability Office”. But most people seem to be unaware of it, likely because it’s not named after a cryptocurrency/dog meme.
    7. This whole scheme was the idea of the richest person in the world.

    Idiocracy didn’t happen because of unnatural selection, it happened because social media unlocked a runaway chain reaction of stupidity.

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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.

  • Ethalis@jlai.lu
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    1 month ago

    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

  • pH3ra@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    China is going to devour the scientific world if we keep it like this

    • psud@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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

  • mac@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • psud@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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

  • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
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    1 month ago

    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