• @[email protected]
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    433 hours 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      93 hours ago

      Why are people saying that it was named after a cryptocurrency?

      Isnt the dog the first thing people think of when seeing “doge”?

      • @[email protected]
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        202 hours ago

        Its reasonable to make the connection to the coin, as this particular cryptocurrency was propagandized and manipulated by musk, who will be running the agency.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 hour ago

          Wouldnt it be possible that he just likes the doge meme, promoting a cryptocurrency that is named after it?

          • @[email protected]
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            36 minutes ago

            No, he likes money. Remember a few years ago when he tweeted about how great dogecoin was? Then a week later he tweeted about how stupid is was and that he was done with? He probably made millions buying and selling dogecoin as he made those tweets. There a huge conflict of interest when it comes to celebrities endorsing crypto coins. If you have the pull, you can just buy a bunch of some shit coin, talk it up and then all the people who look up to you to will go buy it, pumping up the price while you sell and make a huge profit. Then the value crashes back down and everyone who bought is left holding the bag. Whenever some famous person talks about a crypto, 100% of the time it is a grift to skim money from their follower’s pockets.

      • @[email protected]
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        72 hours ago

        True! It was then technically named after a meme…which the coin named itself after, as it was supposed to be a “meme coin”.

        Still stands though.

        “Government agency named after meme. Such dumb. So chaos. Woooooow.” Lol

  • @[email protected]
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    193 hours ago

    Neolib idiots don’t see the (immense) value of fundamental research because it doesn’t directly generate profits, more at 11

  • @[email protected]
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    42 hours ago

    Goddamn, it really is impossible!
    How the fuck am I gonna filter US politics out of my feed when it creeps in through Science Memes?

  • @[email protected]
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    284 hours ago

    Like the dead don’t realize they’re dead, they don’t realize they’re stupid. They’re just everyone else’s problem.

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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        43 hours ago

        We’ve built a society with full guard rails. There’s very little a stupid person can do to remove themselves from the gene pool before they procreate. Being stupid seems to actually increase the odds that they’ll procreate early, and often.

  • JackbyDev
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    3 hours ago

    “Haha, I’m insurrection barbie, get it? Because the libs think when Donald Trump lets a massive mob of his supporters to the Capitol to disrupt the election certification process the libs thought it was an insurrection!”

  • @[email protected]
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    826 hours 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

    • @[email protected]
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      53 hours ago

      You say that but I’ve heard concerningly many people say that there is no point in teaching everyone stuff like basic math because chances are they won’t use it

      • @[email protected]
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        111 minutes ago

        I also hear that argument often and I absolutely hate it. They always say “tech them things like insert manual labor work. Nobody needs Math.”

        It always depends. A lot of people will likely never use a saw outside of school. Especially in a time where a lot of people go to university the skills that complex math teaches you are basically the bare necessitys. Also school usually is teaches you the basic broad knowledge and skills required to get more specific education on a specific topic. This includes studying all different subjects and also getting training as a woodworker. It is literally impossible to focus on everything and that also isn’t really the use of school. Its just the first and universal form of education.

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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        22 hours ago

        India just removed pythagorean theorem from their educational curriculum for the very reason you mentioned.

    • qyron
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      13 hours ago

      I agree no research is useless but some just goes straight into the bonkers folder.

      • @[email protected]
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        19 minutes ago

        Yeah, but just because a scientist calculated what would happen if we replaced the earth with blueberrys doesn’t mean we should defund him.

    • @[email protected]
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      53 hours ago

      Elon isn’t even religious. Like always religion is just a fucking disguise for enriching themselves, both with money and power.

    • @[email protected]
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      23 hours ago

      Stupidly funny, right? Like watching a movie, where something dumb is about to happen. You are watching and screaming in agony, pleading for the characters on the screen not to do the dumb thing. But you watch in horror, as all your words are without any effect, you can’t reach anyone.

      But now with the added bonus, that the dumb thing might affect your life. Or that of your loved ones, neighbours, friends.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 hours ago

      I’m thinking this too… let’s hope Renaissance mk2 only takes a few years to blossom - but my confidence is not high.

  • @21Cabbage
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    235 hours ago

    Hell can we mention that the cold war era these fucks idolize was also the golden age of the government throwing money at side projects?

  • @[email protected]
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    827 hours ago

    “preventing next corn plague” with resources used being a box of soil and bunch of underpaid grads seems pretty efficient to me, but i guess that since the common clay of the new west already voted they can be safely disposed of

    at USDA, they’re turning beetles kinky! 😡

    • alex jones fuming aimlessly while being stored in some container
  • @[email protected]
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    2468 hours 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

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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      22 hours ago

      help humanity as a whole

      And here you’ve identified why they hate it. They cannot stand the idea that resources might benefit other people, resources that they could hoard instead.

      • Miles O'Brien
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        277 hours ago

        For OTHERS, yes. But many want the cutting edge for themselves, at no cost to themselves.

        • @[email protected]
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          225 hours ago

          The Department of goverment efficiency was Musk’s meme idea and Trump is apparently just rolling with it.

          • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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            22 hours ago

            Maybe. Apparently trump is already bored with him, and mocked him on-stage, in front of an entire room full of people, just a couple days ago. I guess trump already got his money, so now it’s time to back-out of any agreements he made to get the money.

  • @[email protected]
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    1018 hours ago

    In addition, government research in the sciences is miniscule. You could cut ALL of science funding and be no where close to the 1 trillion that Musk claims he’ll be able to reduce the budget by

    • @21Cabbage
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      95 hours ago

      The goal’s more about cutting all the science funding than reducing spending. These are people who bitch about Ukraine when they don’t even plan on spending that money on something else they’re just guzzling Russian propaganda.

      • @[email protected]
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        276 hours ago

        My bet is that if he expects to cut 2 trillion, he will end up increasing the budget by 4 trillion.

        • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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          32 hours ago

          He’ll cut 2 trillion out of the general budget, redirect it into his own holdings, and demand praise for his genius leadership. Oh, and he may or may not actually eliminate some programs along the way.

        • @[email protected]
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          53 hours ago

          No no, you don’t understand. This is what people have actually been asking for this whole time. Nobody wanted the budget randomly cut, they wanted it distributed

        • @[email protected]
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          196 hours ago

          I don’t think he even attempted to do math. Someone asked him about it and said what the current budget was, and he just rectally sourced 2 trillion. I assume he said that because it’s big enough to sound huge, but less than half of spending so people don’t panic that everything will be cut.

          It’s meaningless bullshit until he actually says specifically what will be cut. Republicans have been claiming they can cut huge chunks of spending for years, but it never materializes. They only know how cut government income without paying for it.

          • @[email protected]
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            75 hours ago

            Still waiting for that ACA replacement promised on week 1 of trump’s presidency. It was supposed to be so easy. Now we’re 8 years out and they have “concepts of a plan”.

            • @[email protected]
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              14 hours ago

              I’m sure with control over all government branches again they’ll have the ACA completely replaced in no time. For real this time.

              • @[email protected]
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                13 hours ago

                The plan is to repeal it first, and then figure out what to do from there.

                Probably whatever makes the most money for insurance companies.

  • @[email protected]
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    1038 hours 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.