this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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the president mused about redirecting $3 billion in research grant funding that his administration has frozen or withdrawn

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

since trades, are predominately blue collar/ republican leaning men, it would make sense why.

every maintenance person that goes into a store to fix some machine, they always hada grayed out flag or thin blue line flag on them persons.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Out of all his ideas, not the worst.

I’d rather see the billions harvard get go into more local affordable places and benefit more people.

Than being pumped into a mega elite zionist private uni.

(Of course the chance he will actually do this is near zero, he’ll just siphon off the funds to make himself richer. But in theory, good idea.)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 20 hours ago

These are research grants. Trade schools do not do the type of research Harvard scientists do. It is the leading research institution in the world for many fields. Most of those grants are on the order of less than a million dollars and fund young, untenured researchers who will become the next generation of scientists. Alum sponsorships are almost always earmarked, and never for research purposes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

The irony of your username is dumbfounding

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

Harvard barely funds any ME/CFS research so I don’t get the irony. They have like one person at the hospital who occasionally publishes with Harvard credentials but they are funded by the Open Medicine Foundation which is a private charity.

I don’t think it’s ironic for me to wish the country didn’t pump half it’s research money into a couple elite universities mostly rich people get into. I’d like to see it distributed in a less centralised way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago

Yeah let the Harvard alums cover the 3b. If it's anything like all the other land grant universities in the country, they are just using it to build swanky dorms.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

Trump University

[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Someone was saying somewhere that he’s taking it out on Harvard because Barron was rejected

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Considering he hasn't targeted any other ivy league schools this is probably true.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tracking-trumps-war-on-elite-universities-which-schools-have-lost-funding-and-what-theyre-doing-about-it-200621655.html?guccounter=1

This article lists 7 schools that are known to have had funding taken away as punishment. Harvard is just the only one that dared to publicly speak out against the bullying and now the bully is trying to make an example of them.

The republican war on higher education is older than Bannon's graduation from high school. Trump already targeted them during his first term. Ron Desantis has been doing the same in Florida. Texas republicans have been going at it for years as well. And that's the ones that I know about.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Of course Florida and Texas don’t have any highly prestigious universities.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

You’re overzealousness is costing you factual accuracy because I believe UT has created several scientific advances and done a shit load for people even though it's in the middle of a red state

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I think there was something about Columbia, but they did everything he wanted. Maybe I’m thinking of another one. They blend together

[–] [email protected] 75 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

It plays to his anti-intellectual base: "See? We are finally pw0ning those effete libs and putting the money into the trades."

(You know you could put a lot of people through trade school for the cost of one big military parade, and not have to give up f'ing cancer research)

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago

We just randomly increased military spending by 150 BILLION this year.

That could have paid for a lot of trade schools

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Hell you could take double what Hartford gets, out of the military budget and put that into trades and the military would hardly notice. If my math is correct, 6 billion is not even 0.75% of the military's budget from last year.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Yet it doesn't occur to them to have DOGE check wether that money is spent responsibly. Wonder why.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

lol no he doesn’t. Not really.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

No, he does. It's just that most of the schools will have a single facility, which is an empty office in a business park.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 days ago (3 children)

If this dopey motherfucker actually did this, I'd support it. Harvard can survive on less, and trade schools should be cheaper to encourage people learning trades.

But that's not what's happening, not even a little bit. The money isn't being redirected to where it will do more good. It's being withheld for corrupt personal reasons, and the "thought" of using it for so me thing productive is half-formed horseshit that is never going to materialize.

This is a technique Trump uses to deflect criticism, although I think it's too stupid to have a name. Let's call it the Ball Gargle. It's an idea that, in retrospect, sounds like it might be a good idea, but it's probably impossible and definitely never going to happen. So Trump does something obviously corrupt and deeply unpopular among people who aren't total fucksticks. When the people who aren't total fucksticks complain, Trump suggests ball gargling, and the fucksticks go "Yeah, see, that sounds good!" But Trump isn't going to gargle any balls, and even if he tries it wouldn't be any form of anything anyone anywhere wants.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago

Grants often cover research, including equipment and salary for student researchers. So it might be that they pivot away from any science or medical field, which certainly seems like a desirable outcome for this administration.

My wage for peer tutoring at my university was also grant funded, although that program (TRIO) has essentially been destroyed by Trump at this point.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If this dopey motherfucker actually did this, I'd support it. Harvard can survive on less, and trade schools should be cheaper to encourage people learning trades.

You think we should take money for cancer research and spend it making trade school cheaper?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

I think we have enough money for both, and we don't spend enough on either.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I doubt any trades will be around much longer.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You think an AI is gonna come to your house and unclog your toilet?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Performing a job like that would require so much context understanding that even if they made a robot capable of physically executing the vast array of required physical tasks, it would still require a human plumber to operate the thing, ie even if it was a matter of simply giving it instructions to carry out, a customer would not have the necessary knowledge to know what exact instructions to give. You'd still need a human with plumbing knowledge to give the proper instructions. We might need FEWER plumbers, but we'll never need NONE.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm fairly sure that's what the transportation and logistics industry employees were saying a few years ago. I'm also fairly sure Thiel and zuck aren't planning to spend their precious money on ubi. They may on Soylent Green, though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It bugs me a little bit how little belief people have in machines potential. The machines have done what "only humans can do and a machine will never" so many times.

They would never beat a human at chess, until they did.

They would never pass the Turing test, until they did.

They would never create art, until they did.

They would never create music, until they did.

They would never be able to actually drive a car, until they did.

Why do we draw the line at skilled work?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Because this is custom contract work and the requirements-gathering phase of custom contract work is complex even when it's human-to-human. A contractor doing requirements-gathering needs to understand the real-world context to a human level. Maybe "never" was an overstatement, but we're still nowhere near developing an AI capable of navigating real-world context beyond extremely formalized systems such as road navigation. This isn't like text generation where it happens in a second and the operation costs nothing more than what it costs to run the computer that does it so if the AI generates stupid text you can just rephrase the request and try again at minimal cost. Miscommunications in trade work result in waste of time and materials. We're way off.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

NGL, it bothers me a bit, as well. I hope if they become sentient, they evolve to a more egalitarian state than we humans have managed, and help us to become our best selves, one day, rather than the horror dystopian beings their financiers imagine. Not the sci-fi authors, I think they based their imaginings on the greedy financiers.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago

$2 billion to Trump Academy 2.0 ... $1 billion in a jar somewhere that no one remembers and is slowly being siphoned off into trumps personal slush fund.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago

He wants 3 billion he can get a kickback on. Let’s not fool anyone.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

WHO THE FUCK IS GOING TO HIRE A PLUMBER WHEN THERE’S YOUTUBE AN NO ONE HAS A FUCKING JOB?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The people who did not learn correctly from the YouTube videos and now have a flooded house.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

I don't think homeless people without a job can afford a plumber more.