The challenges of doing science in Trump's America

Here's a good account of how scientific research has had to pivot in Trump's America.

The article deals specifically with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), but I'm sure it applies to any number of government departments and agencies. Scientists and researchers are having to self-censor and find creative ways around the Trump-mandated ban on using MAGA trigger words and phrases like "global warming", "climate change", "solar energy", "alternative energy", "decarbonization", "energy transition", "renewables", "environmental justice", "greenhouse gas emissions", "carbon sequestration", "sustainability", even "safe drinking water". Otherwise, they run the risk of having their research censored or their grant applications denied.

So, instead of using phrases like "climate change", resourceful researchers - those that have not already given up completely or moved away, that is - are trying to use less controversial, softer phrases like "elevated temperatures", "soil health" and "extreme weather", so as not to trigger discovery by the automated tools of the Trump woke police.

I know it reads like a bad science fiction story, but this is really happening in modern-day America. In Trump's America there are about 100-plus words and phrases that are essentially banned in academic and scientific research circles, about a third of them related to climate change (which is, remember, a "hoax"). Some of them are real head-scratchers, like "diesel", "affordable housing", "runoff", "microplastics", "rural water". There are also whole other categories of banned words to do with DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), gender, abortion, immigration, etc. 

Of course, if your whole paper or grant application is about solar energy or affordable housing, it is essentially impossible to avoid these phrases. So, the beleaguered American scientific community is finding alternative sources of funding and alternative publication destinations. And some of them are just leaving for less restrictive and repressive regimes. This is having a huge impact, not only on the American research community, but on that of other countries too, where local talent is now having to compete against well-qualified American ex-patriates and academic exiles (as my son-in-law, who is currently looking for post-doc opportunities abroad, is finding, to his chagrin).

US government department websites have been dilligently "scrubbed" of offensive words like "climate change" and "renewable energy" since early in Trump's second administration. Whole reports have been conveniently removed if they were considered too woke or prejudicial. It makes me wonder: did Trump personally come up with the list of proscribed words and phrases? And who are the people who carry out these bizarre instructions? Talk about the banality of evil.

Imagine working in such a system! Imagine that the field of inquiry you have spent your whole career in (or your future prospective career) is in one of these proscribed areas! Imagine having to avoid using the word "green" or "black" anywhere in your dissertation! I'm sure that many are just hoping to wait it out, on the assumption that "this too shall pass". Others, though, may be second-guessing their whole careers.

I have a suspicion that most Americans are not even aware that this is going on under their noses. Many will not care, of course, those who routinely complain about "radical wokeness" and other such nonsense. But many others will. And if I just found out about it (or at least about the extent of it), I'm sure there are many potentially concerned citizens who have no idea just how close to Margaret Atwood's Gilead or George Orwell's Thought Police modern America has become.

Did the Ontario budget bring in record spending, or cuts, to services?

The Ford Ontario Conservatives - gods, how bored I am with them! - brought down a budget yesterday, forecasting (predictably, given the global situation) a large deficit of $13.8 billion, and pushed back again its plans to balance the books in the near future.

They say they are increasing funding for small businesses, education and healthcare. But then they say that every budget, and after every budget the opposition parties get up and say "Oh, no you didn't!". This happens every time. 

So, what's the truth? How can both claims be made with such passion and conviction? Did they increase healthcare funding, or didn't they?

Politics is all about spin. Like or not, that's the truth. So, of course, the party in power, the Conservatives at the moment, says they are making record investments in education and healthcare. That may be technically true - in nominal terms, the education and healthcare budgets are higher than ever before, including under the previous Liberal administration. 

But this misses some important context. Everything costs more now, especially when comparing with the previous administration, which was way back in 2018, a period of particularly high inflation. So, of course expenditure has to increase, just in order to standard still. Plus, Ontario now hosts over 1½ million more people than it did. So, real per-capita expenditure on education, healthcare and pretty much everything else is not keeping pace. In real per capita terms, the measures so glowingly announced by the Finance Minister were actually pretty savage cuts.

But what's a government to do? They can't preface their budget announcement with, "We're bringing in record cuts to essential services!" No-one would ever vote for them again. No-one likes austerity. But no-one likes tax increases either. So, governments tend to sugar-coat their budget announcements by claiming to be investing in services like never before AND giving the hard-pressed populace tax cuts. Of course, that's not true; the math wouldn't add up, even with a constantly increasing debt load from deficit after deficit. But it sounds impressive, and that's what really matters to them.

How the Netherlands became an agricultural powerhouse

Having just watched the excellent A Life on Our Planet, a spry 93-year old David Attenborough's 2020 "witness statement" (he's now 99!), it's hard not be cowed by the grand old man's ridiculous optimism in the face of the seemingly insurmountable problems facing the planet.

One thing that he did cite as an example of progress in the right direction (and part of Attenborough's vision of a solution to our environmental ills) was the success of the Netherlands' agricultural endeavours. I think I had some idea that they were leaders in vertical farming and hydroponics, but I had no idea things were so advanced there ... and so successful.

But, yes, it turns out that little Netherlands is now the second biggest food exporter in the world (after the USA, which is 240 times larger). The little densely-populated country - for reference it is about the size of Wales, or the province of Nova Scotia, or half the size of US states like South Carolina or Maine - has very little real estate to spare. Nevertheless, it has devoted more than half of its valuable land to farming, and it has developed one of the world's most intensive and efficient agricultural bases.

After the grim experience of the "Winter of Hunger" under Nazi occupation during World War II, food security became a national priority, and the Netherlands made some important strategic decisions, one of which was focussing on high-value agricultural goods like eggs, meat, cheese, tomatoes, peppers and flowers. There was government subsidization, a strong push towards agricultural education and research, and farmland was rationalized into more efficient larger farms. It pioneered greenhouse growing, which it has since taken to the next level, employing robots and algorithms, hydroponics, computer-controlled watering systems and crop ripeness surveillance, optimized LED artificial lighting, etc. 

Despite all these high-tech solutions, bees are still used to pollinate the plants, and are kept in the greenhouses almost like pampered pets. Much of the picking and quality control and even some of the final packaging, is still done by hand, although often (and increasingly) with AI/computer help. Irrigation water is sparingly applied, recycled and reused, and water usage is one-fiftieth of the global average for equivalent crops. Pests and insects are constantly monitored and detected in real time, allowing for timely attention. Crop yields can be ten times or more than global averages.

This is industrialized agri-business taken to the nth degree, but it's sure as hell effective: in 2024, the country produced $140 billion worth of farmed goods. It has established itself as Europe's top exporter of meat, and about 60% of all crops produced in the country are exported, principally to Germany, the UK, China, and (ironically) even the US.

There are still challenges, though. 

There is some worry about the large carbon footprint of Dutch agriculture, although since the Russian war in Ukraine deprived it of cheap Russian gas, there have been moves to secure home-produced energy from wind and geothermal power. 

With the highest livestock density in Europe, the Netherlands also has the highest ammonia emissions on the continent, causing algae blooms in waterways and playing havoc with some native plant species. Calls to limit these emissions have led to mass protests as farmers see their livelihoods threatened. But changes to the diet of animals, separating their pee and poo, etc, have shown promising results.

There is also an increasing labour shortage in some areas of Dutch agriculture (I'm not really sure why), prompting still more AI, robotization and technology innovation, technology that is also exported across the globe.

So, if you want a business success story with a side of environmental hope, watch Business Insider's 20-minute doc on the Netherlands' agricultural revolution.

Air Canada is being held to language obligations its competitors are not

Canada's language battles continue, this time when the CEO of Air Canada aired a condolence message for the families of the two Air Canada pilots who were killed in an accident at La Guardia airport in New York a couple of days ago. He managed a "bonjour" at the start and a "merci" at the end of his piece, which, given that one of the pilots was a francophone, that the flight originated in Montreal, and that the Air Canada company is based in Montreal, has been lambasted as insufficient, disrespectful and downright outrageous by many. There were renewed calls for his ouster.

CEO Michael Rousseau (despite his name) has been called out before by the Quebec language police. He took even more flak for suggesting that his busy schedule just did not allow him to focus on learning a new language, which he said he had not needed in his 14 years of living in Montreal. This time, though, others have involved themselves, including Prime Minister Mark Carney (whose French is not brilliant but he did learn enough to get by for his election campaign), and Rosseau has been summoned before a parluamentary committee to explain his situation.

Poor Mr. Rousseau apologized for his lack of French, which he admits is inadequate "despite many lessons over several years". I can sympathize - some people just don't have the gift. He also apologized that his inability to speak French had "diverted attention" from his message of condolence and grief to the families of the deceased, although, arguably, it was the language hawks in the Bloc Québécois who were doing the diverting. 

While Air Canada is not a federal government agency, it is considered (rightly or wrongly) a federal public corporation, and it is subject to Canada's Official Languages Act. Announcements on board are made in both English and French, and service in both languages is guaranteed. As a high-profile "flag carrier", Air Canada in particular is expected to uphold the myth of Canadian bilingualism and, as CEO, Rousseau is first in the firing line.

In fact, the situation is more complicated than that. Air Canada used to be a fully-fledged Crown corporation, but when it was privatized in 1988, it was specifically subject to various "public interest obligations", enshrined in a whole act of Parliament called the Air Canada Public Participation Act. This included the continued application of the Official Languages Act, although it was not given any additional federal finding to accommodate these onerous requirements.

It's interesting to think, then, that Air Canada's direct competitors, like WestJet and Porter, are not subject to this kind of scrutiny or held to this level of expectations. They are normal private companies, and not subject to the Official Languages Act. Air Canada, though, due to the vagaries of history and the way the company was converted from from a Crown corporation to a piece company nearly forty years ago, IS subject to these additional obligations. Double standards?

Anyone from outside the country watching the howls of outrage going on around the airline's CEO'S French proficiency (or otherwise) would no doubt be dumfounded that we twist ourselves into these kids of knots over something that doesn't seem that important. To a relatively small sub-section of the Canadian population, though, these things are of paramount importance. The country's supposed bilingualism is sometimes touted as one of its strengths; often, though, it is more of an albatross around its neck.

And the biggest losers in all this? The two dead pilots who, as far as we know, did everything in their power to minimize trauma and death among their passengers. They seem to have been all but forgotten amid this side-show. Good job, Bloc Québécois.

More AI prophets of doom

There seem to be two irreconcilable trends in artificial intelligence (AI) development. There are the boosters, largely comprised of tech giants and other large companies, who see oodles of money to be made from it and are doing everything they can to promote it and establish it as the default go-to solution for pretty much everything, even at the expense of flesh-and-blood people, and despite the fact that very little money is actually being made from it thus far. 

And then there are what you might call the prophets of doom, the more thoughtful, cautious contingent, largely comprised of eggheads and theorists (including most of the early pioneers), who are warning that AI development is proceeding too quickly and with insufficient safeguards, or - at the extreme end of the spectrum, but far from isolated - those who are warning that current development trajectories are probably headed towards human extinction.

The former trend seems to be winning at the moment, but that doesn't mean that we should just ignore the eggheads and theorists. The latest warnings come from a researcher called Nate Soares, perhaps not officially in the egghead category, but still a smart cookie with a gift for useful analogies and a well-turned simile.

Soares points out that when (not if) superintelligent AI becomes better than humans at absolutely everything, then "things would get wild". In fact, things would get wild long before that: "It's sort of like saying if you dropped a 500-ton weight on a chicken, the chicken would die. I'm not saying smaller weights wouldn't work. I'm, like, this weight is definitely big enough."

We can't actually design AI to be safer, because AI is not really designed, it grows like an organism. And it is hugely complex, so you can't just point to, say, Line 73 in the code and say, "that needs to be changed". It's more like disciplining a naughty child - we can't just rewire their brains. Worse, machines don't have empathy, sympathy and human emotions, so we can't even appeal to that.

You can actually force an AI application to admit that it made something up, or that it had a "hallucination". It will say that it knows you didn't want it to do that, but it did it anyway. This drive to produce something even if it is incorrect is just one worrying sign we are already seeing of AI going rogue. 

In the same way, while no-one is saying that AI wants to deliberately harm humans, that's not to say that it won't do so while trying to achieve some other task or goal. It doesn't actually care about us - is not capable of caring about us - so this utter indifference combined with its great technological might may result in it just rolling over us en route to completion of an otherwise unimportant task.

AI company Anthropic, for example, may be training its AI according to a "constitution" to try to align it with human values, but even the head of Anthropic thinks there is a 25% chance that AI will go catastrophically wrong. That's a pretty big chance. And yet these companies are still barrelling ahead, most with much less ethical questioning than Anthropic. This is happening mainly because they think, "If I don't do it, somebody else will, and they will probably do an even worse job of it". And that's those who are not motivated by much more base considerations, like money.

Mr. Soares concludes with another analogy: we wouldn't build a plane with no landing gear and just assume that such a minor problem could be fixed while the plane is in flight. Nor would we launch a plane that we were 75%, or even 90%, sure was safe. But that's kind of what we are doing with AI.

I thought it was funny that the article ended with an Editor's Note: "AI tools assisted with condensing the original podcast transcript".

Social media's Big Tobacco moment

I confess I'm surprised it ever came to this, but kudos to the American courts system for having the gumption to rule against the combined might of Meta/Instagram/Facebook and Google/YouTube in finding the social media companies liable for intentionally building addictive social media platforms that harm the mental health of young people.

In this case, it was a 20-year old woman called Kaley (or K.G.M.). She sued Meta and Google over her childhood addiction to social media, claiming the platforms left her with body dysmorphia, depression and suicidal thoughts. Yesterday, she won US$6 million in compensatory and punitive damages, of which 70% is to come from Meta and 30% from Google. (TikTok and SnapChat both settled out of court with the same plaintiff for an unknown sum before the Meta/Google trial began.)

Now, $6 million is not really going to make the likes of Meta and Google sit up and take note - the plaintiff's counsel was initially claiming $1 billion! - but, given that there are tens of thousands of such victims lining up to sue Big Tech, this precedent could indeed be material. This is social media's Big Tobacco moment.

Of course, it's not over until it's over, and both companies say they will appeal the ruling, to try and stanch the bleeding which could indeed cost them dearly over time. If they manage to get the case overturned, is it still a landmark case? Probably. It validates the legal theory that social media sites or apps can cause personal injury, that it is essentially a defective product, if you will. And it will almost certainly encourage many more tentative litigants to try their luck with the legal system, although that is not a task for the faint of heart.

Trump now lives in a Democratic district

Pretty funny: Donald Trump now lives in a Democrat-held electoral district.

The "special election" (by-election) in Florida District 87 - in which Trump's Mar A Lago estate is located - has been flipped by the Democrats. The young first-time Democrat candidate Emily Gregory handily beat out Trump-backed Republican Jon Maples, in a district where the the Republicans won by 19% in 2024.

Mr. Trump is now Ms. Gregory's constituent.

The complicated mix that is Danish politics

Denmark held a general election yesterday, and the expectation was that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's Social Democrats would handily win. As it turned out, her party did win the most votes although it was still the party's worst showing in over a century. Luckily, the main right-wing party, Venstre (Danish Liberal Party), also had its worst showing in a century. 

But individual parties are not the be-all-and-end-all of Danish politics, it's all about the "blocs": the "red bloc" of left-wing parties, and the "blue bloc" of right-wing parties. Joining the Social Democrats (with its 38 seats) are the Green Left (20 seats), the Red-Green Alliance (11 seats), the Danish Social Liberal Party (10 seats), and the Alternative (5 seats), giving the red bloc a total of 84 seats. The blue bloc, consisting of Venstre and a rag-tag bunch of other parties, total 77 seats. So, neither bloc achieved the 90 seats needed for a majority, leaving the Moderates party (14 seats) as potential kingmakers in the ensuing negotiations.

That's a lot of different parties, all with some level of influence on the national political scene. It's fascinating stuff, for an outsider like me, used to two (maybe three or four) main political parties. But I guess the Danes are used to all the argy-bargy and bargaining that their politics entails.