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MIT Media lab "Invents" the Food Computer (https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1171895657872941056)
54

This made me really angry when I first saw it, especially the bit about land grant universities. They do so much good work and are getting starved by state austerity budgets and then this shit. Every time I see a story like this, I mentally increase my demand for a wealth tax by 1%.

They are just laughing at all of us at this point. The media lab was surveiling and blackmailing from go.

[deleted]

Care to elaborate?
[deleted]
You worked there and now want to burn it down. So... what happened? :)
[deleted]
I have no idea what it’s like as I’ve never worked in academia. Sounds like it was traumatic for you. Hopefully you’re in a better place now.

MIT isn’t actually filled with autistic savant genius types honestly. It gets that reputation because there’s a lot of WEIRD people there, or people who are absolute nerds, but the school basically tells them that they’re allowed to be weird and nerdy and that lets people express themselves more naturally I guess.

Sometimes it turns out well with people eventually growing out of being edgy and weird 24/7 and revert to being normal people most of the time and being jackass DMs for ther DnD sessions every other week. Other times you get true genius types so that’s pretty cool. And sometimes you get the Media Lab or whoever the fuck built Stata and Simmons.

“Tonight, on Look Around You…”

And most of all, it kind of looks to me like they also might have tolerated obviously crap projects- because their business model was more about playing to rich men’s fantasies about science than it was about actually doing science.

I like how this statement can be applied to all rationalist projects.

Good grift, rationalism is the wealth tax for rich people. It even gets pressure away from universities.

holy shit, this thread is a multidimensional turned-up-to-11 sneer that truly delivers

The MIT Media Lab? That’s sort of like Neverland Ranch only with computers, right?

Theranos for plants

turns out this toy version of a growth chamber DOESN’T EVEN WORK.

I mean, it’s there in the name.

Right, that is a rhetorical device used by the article. It’s not what it was marketed as.

Not a great look.

She lost me at the Epstein money thing though. Where was the guy directing his research 12859?

Hmmm. Little girls?