This blog has lost all focus on the national labs and their status. It has been taken over by political trolls on both sides and Scooby apparently doesn't care anymore, or have any pride in what he created. Some of the recent posts are so outrageously ridiculous and nonsensical, having nothing to do with any stated purpose of this blog, yet they get posted and not moderated. I would ask Scooby to reiterate his blog purpose statement, or repudiate it. Not much reason to visit here anymore. Pretty sad.
12 comments:
What do you suggest we do?
"Some of the recent posts are so outrageously ridiculous and nonsensical, having nothing to do with any stated purpose of this blog, yet they get posted and not moderated"
I have to disagree, like it or not the labs are often in the center or least a part of the current political climate. You seen to throw this accusation whenever something is posted that you politically disagree with, you can disagree with anything you like but from what I can tell Scooby tries to pot stuff that is related to the labs in some way. For example putting stuff about Russia particularly stuff related to nuclear weapons is very relevant to the labs for obvious reasons. Putting stuff about UC is relevant as UC runs the labs. Putting things related to society and diversity in jobs and STEM is also very relevant since as you may know the labs are STEM labs. Talking about AI and how it can change STEM again is relevant for obvious reasons. In other words I simply disagree with you and think you have a very narrow view of what is relevant, simply cannot make the obvious connections, or simply want to silence discussion you do not agree with it. Every few months for the past 10 years you say the same things so you keep reading. How about this start some thread about something you think is relevant rather than complaining about threads you do not like.
“This blog has lost all focus on the national labs and their status. It has been taken over by political trolls on both sides and Scooby apparently doesn't care anymore, or have any pride in what he created. Some of the recent posts are so outrageously ridiculous and nonsensical, having nothing to do with any stated purpose of this blog, yet they get posted and not moderated. I would ask Scooby to reiterate his blog purpose statement, or repudiate it. Not much reason to visit here anymore. Pretty sad.”
How telling it is when the “Lost all focus” commenter elects not to “focus” on any specific “outrageous” or “ridiculous” post examples. One could argue comments sometimes shift away from the topic, but to complain about blog focus and to claim
topics are outside of Scooby’s front page definition, tells me one or more new posts have touched on a subject this person would rather not discuss.
I suggest deleting posts that do not conform to your stated blog purpose:"This BLOG is for LLNL present and past employees, friends of LLNL and anyone impacted by the privatization of the Lab to express their opinions and expose the waste, wrongdoing and any kind of injustice against employees and taxpayers by LLNS/DOE/NNSA."
Pretty clear that random political posts by random crazies wanting to vent about their political cause du jour, whether it be right wingers supporting Trump or left wingers supporting woke, do not conform.
Delete them, and if that leaves you nothing to post, that should tell you something about the future of your blog.
And there is no hope in getting a compass from a box of CrackerJack to find that focus.
It seems that it his blog started at a time of massive changes in the employee handbook, massive layoffs and low morale. Now we are at almost the same place in employee moral, there is much division created by decisions made by project driven management at all levels creating an us vs them atmosphere. When the director essentially tells a group you don’t matter... guess what apparently they don’t and now people are leaving or unengaged in droves. Unfortunately this blog should be a place that these first line employee / management issues are brought up just like issues that arose during the transition from UC to whatever we have now. Some of the responses to these issues and diversion from the original issue are almost as bad as the original management response... makes you wonder sometimes. Then again it seems that some posters are just way out of touch of what is happening with employee relations in 2023.
All of the responses here make the point of the OP and 5:41. There will not be any return to the original purpose of this blog, because of political hacks who want to bloviate about their cause du jour. Ok, then. Sentence delivered and carried out. Rrequiescat in pace.
I hate this blog, I never read for the past several years. I keep reading these crazy political stories and posting that this does not belong on this blog. No one reads the blog anymore anyway.
Hello 5/10/2023 3:37 AM
Thanks for visiting. Please feel free to stay away since this blog causes you so much pain. Don't let the door hit you in....
"No one goes there anymore. It's too crowded." - Yogi Berra
I got the following selected text from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism
Francis Bacon, an early promoter of empiricism and the scientific method, argued that absurdity is a necessary component of scientific progress, and should not always be laughed at. He continued that bold new ways of thinking and bold hypotheses often led to absurdity, "For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity."
In his paper, The Absurd, Thomas Nagel analyzed the perpetual absurdity of human life. Absurdity in life becomes apparent when we realize the fact that we take our lives seriously, while simultaneously perceiving that there is a certain arbitrarity in everything we do. He suggests never to stop searching for the absurd. Furthermore, he suggests searching for irony amongst the absurdity.
An important component of the absurd on the practical level concerns the seriousness people bring toward life. This seriousness is reflected in many different attitudes and areas, for example, concerning fame, pleasure, justice, knowledge, or survival, both in regard to ourselves as well as in regard to others.[2][7][13] But there seems to be a discrepancy between how serious we take our lives and the lives of others on the one hand, and how arbitrary they and the world at large seem to be on the other hand. This can be understood in terms of importance and caring: it is absurd that people continue to care about these matters even though they seem to lack importance on an objective level.[15][16] The collision between these two sides can be defined as the absurd. This is perhaps best exemplified when the agent is seriously engaged in choosing between arbitrary options, none of which truly matters.[2][3]
On a more theoretical view, absurdism is the belief that the world is, at its core, indifferent and impenetrable toward human attempts to uncover its deeper reason or that it cannot be known.[...]Some theorists also link this problem to the circularity of human reason, which is very skilled at producing chains of justification linking one thing to another while trying and failing to do the same for the chain of justification as a whole when taking a reflective step backward.[2][13] This implies that human reason is not just too limited to grasp life as a whole but that, if one seriously tried to do so anyway, its ungrounded circularity might collapse and lead to madness.[2]
It is certainly absurd that chatbots may be the world's greatest threat now, isn't it?
Perhaps we need someone like Teller to make sense out of the "absurd" chatbot and AI threat. As you know, he was often angered by the Dr. Strangelove movie which mocked nuclear weapons and the arms race, as Teller had dedicated his life to dealing with this in some ways admittedly paradoxical and absurd subject, doing our nation a great service by the way in doing so.
Of course, von Neumann, Kahn, Kissinger, efforts at RAND, were important, also Linus Pauling's advocacy for the above-group test ban treaty, and Sakharov's efforts to advocate rational policies in the Soviet Union.
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