I trust the “Gen Z autist”, who figured out how to read the burnt Herculaneum papyri from the Vesuvius eruption using AI, to preserve the data.
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I watched a video about that.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-ai-unlock-ancient-world-secrets/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/three-students-decipher-first-passages-2000-year-old-scroll-burned-vesuvius-eruption-180983738/
I had to look up what you were referencing, here it is if anyone else is interested
How is that related to the original topic?
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One of the doxxed DOGE team is one of the kids that won $700K for using data to decode the scrolls. He isn’t going to hit the wrong button and purge any current data .
I don’t.
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for what it’s worth, a dumb person accidentally pushing the wrong button is only one scenario in which data gets purged. is it the most likely?
if you’ve never heard of him, let me introduce you do Fritz Haber, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for developing the Haber (or Haber-Bosch) Process. one could argue that billions of people would not exist today if we did not have the nitrogen fertilizers made possible by that process. and yet, he’s also remembered for his development of chemical weapons during World War I. (he wasn’t the only smart person working on those. he recruited lots of other German scientists to work alongside him, and on the other side, there was a French Nobel laureate Victor Grignard – discoverer of the Grignard reaction and Grignard reagent, one of the most important tools of organic chemists – leading the French chemical weapons program.) although most countries have banned chemical weapons now and people today generally look back on that time as one of the worst periods of war, Haber always defended his wartime work, saying that death is death.
just before his own death in 1934, the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, and Haber, a Jew, fled the country. many of his felllow Jews who did not flee or did not flee far enough fell victim to some of the same chemical weapons that Haber worked on decades earlier.
now, i’m not equating purging documents to mass extermination of people, but my point is that bad things can happen in the absence of dumb people making mistakes. the mass extermination of people via chemicals didn’t happen because a dumb person accidentally knocked over a container of chemicals. it happened in the first case because a smart and influential man used his smarts and influence to purposely achieve a particular goal, and it happened in the second case because that same smart man didn’t have enough influence to stop others from using his work to achieve their own goals.
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A sample of the government webpages [redacted] doesn’t want you to see
Including:
EPA EJScreen: Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool
USDA Climate Change Resource Center
USDA Climate Solutions
USAID Entire website
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The denial of access to data is not happening by mistake. It is being performed as a matter of new policy.
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Yeah, I don’t think it’s tremendously helpful to talk about specific individuals or philosophies, just what is happening and how we can mitigate it. Whether or not the people responsible for removing datasets or defunding data collection are good and/or competent people isn’t relevant. What’s relevant is the removal of the data.
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I also don’t think an organization can be assumed competent just because a single employee is known to be competant
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One person who is part of a larger group doing one “good” (scientific) advancement does not make me trust the person or the group as a whole, so yes still concerned because the entire government isn’t one “kid”.
(I also think it is irrelevant that the person is autistic and what generation they are and has no effect on my opinion of them)
But thank you for sharing.
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@tiwane – you write: “If you’re a US citizen probably the most efficacious thing you can do…”
My reps are on board (two Senators and one Rep) and are doing the very best they can! The big problem is they’re in the minority in their branch of govenment, so we’re in HUGE trouble. I think the only thing we can do is to support the organizations that will take legal action and hope that the third branch of the U.S. tri-partate system of “checks and balances,” i.e., the courts, will step up to the plate to stop what’s happening and protect against “environmental data loss from public data sources.” Otherwise, that loss for sure will happen, and in fact, will accelerate.
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I will note that even private foundation money does not appear safe. HHMI, one of the larger, better bankrolled foundations supporting biomedical research/institutions, recently canceled a large, multi-year initiative to support inclusion in biological sciences (COI notice: I did [unpaid] work as part of this initiative last year):
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00396-6
https://www.science.org/content/article/hhmi-kills-program-aimed-boosting-inclusivity-stem-education
They also changed/scrubbed some language about existing programs. If HHMI is looking to get ahead of issues with the current administration, you can bet other orgs will be changing their funding/cancelling programs as well. I don’t think that’s directly applicable to iNat (thankfully!), but noting it as the general environment for funding is changing dramatically.
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“Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.”
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Anticipatory obedience.
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It does seem like it. The goal of the administration seems to be to create a climate of fear by moving fast and breaking things, before the courts can catch up and say you can’t legally do that.
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This is an administration that doesn’t respect huge swaths of humanity. What are the chances that it will give a second thought to animals and plants, or the environment in general, if they stand in the way of making another nickel?
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I have deleted this comment as a result of being reminded it may be too political.
I just retired from a state govt job in natural resources management that relies a lot on federal funds. Unclear yet if or how that agency will be affected. I didn’t plan my escape, it was coincidence.
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Sorry, should have included state and local government workers as well. I hope it’s a very good retirement. Congratulations!
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