Hey, there! Log in / Register
Jeffrey Epstein not the MIT Media Lab's only problem
By adamg on Fri, 09/20/2019 - 8:57am
WBUR reports state environmental officials are looking into allegations that the lab dumped polluted wastewater into a well in Middleton as part of its attempts to build "food computers," a program already under fire for other reasons, such as that the "computers" didn't work.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Comments
late stage capitalism
listen, im no socialist by any stretch but Marx had it right when he described (this is lazy paraphrasing btw) how capitalism eventually eats away at everything from government and education to eventually the bulwark of capitalism, the middle class.
Then and Now
1980s: Let's go get Sushi and not pay!
2000s on: Let's be disruptive, avoid appropriate planning and ignore health and safety rules!
Return to form
Before they got involved with running interference for billionaire pedophiles, the folks at the Media Lab were best known for blowhardery and vaporware. It's good to see them returning to their strengths.
I'm sure there is some "rational" way that they did no wrong
I'm sure that a certain someone will be here with his combative rationalizations about it all being cancel culture soon enough.
...yes, and also...
Yes, a whole range of techie-sounding baloney, shielding themselves with the "it must be real, it's at MIT!" mantle... but also outstanding for sheer jerkery. That toxic culture didn't come out of nowhere... Nicholas Negroponte, a co-founder of the Media Lab, was one of the most obnoxious people I ever had the misfortune to meet.
Classic Yellow Journalism
Did anyone read the alleged story in the alleged journal -- before getting excited about this story? I doubt it.
https://www.wbur.org/edify/2019/09/20/open-agriculture-initiative-middle...
This is all about a disgruntled former employee [Babak Babakinejad] trying to dig some dirt on a project involving hydroponics [i.e. growing plants without soil] in which he had a small role and which with he then got disillusioned with the project and its leader. [my highlights in BOLD]
So lets put this into perspective -- this is not industrial waste pouring from some pipe into river -- nor is it the discharge from a combined sewer overflow into Boston Harbor.
While no specifics are provided as to the well itself [e.g. how deep, how well it is connected to underground aquifers and any flows into near-by streams] -- and as a result we have no idea of what actually became of the water containing fertilizer [that's what we are talking about] which was disposed by pouring it into a well. We also don't actually have any details on the total volumes of nitrate and nitrite containing water which is involved in the disposal of the hydroponic fluids.
Despite the specificity -- the amours seem trivial --- a few hundreds to a couple of thousands of gallons of water and the stuff itself is which sounds pernicious [Nitrates and Nitrites] is Fertilizer. Its source is that it bathed the roots of plants -- and then its poured into a well designed to handle the discharge of waste water. This is very similar to the Fertilizer -- dumped in vastly greater quantities on lawns, gardens, golf courses, parks, athletic fields, etc. throughout Massachusetts and especially immediately adjacent to the MIT Facility. Note that the water from fertilized ares then enters either the surface runoff to local streams or percolates into the ground to join the ground water -- with no measurements whatsoever!
The only issue here involves some permit for some arbitrary concentration of fertilizer in the water and whether it was exceeded. So we have a case of someone complaining to a superior -- not getting satisfaction and taking it upon himself to Warn the Authorities and then going to the compliant and un-critical media.
Give it a Rest -- the the lab in Middleton is using the site of the now decommissioned Bates Electron Linear Accelerator
https://bateslab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/featured/featured_about.jpg It is very near to the Ferncroft Golf Club, Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School, Essex County Sheriff's Department [County Jail], Department of Youth Service - Northeast Regional Office, North Shore Community College -- all of which together have hundreds of acres of land undoubtedly fertilized and generating run-off and groundwater percolation of water containing lots of nitrogen compounds -- none of which are monitored.
The lab's only mistake was to hire a consultant and then listen to what was recommended
They should have just taken a hose and a sprinkler and sprayed the fertilizer containing water on the lawn near the parking lot -- there is nearly 80 acres of land on the site which is in the midst of hundreds of acres of other fields and forest. No one would have noticed anything!
Finally -- This whole story wouldn't even raise a blip of interest if not for the connection between the Media Lab and the sex pervert Jeffrey Epstein.
Yes, it was nitrogen
Not some carcinogen. But nitrogen's not really something you want to dump into aquifers. And if you read the WBUR story, the issue is not just the dumping itself but the refusal to cooperate with state investigators trying to find out what was going on (it's always the coverup).
As for the "food computers" not being an issue without the glare of Epstein, I don't know. The Chronicle of Higher Education, not one of those journals prone to sensationalism, has been researching the food computers for awhile and finding the same sort of problems as the article linked above.
Then again, maybe you're right that the whole Epstein affair is bringing a new light to the lab's other practices: The problem with sugar-daddy science (the author of that piece describes her interactions with the Media Lab and its "food computers" in more detail in this Twitter thread).
Caleb, is that you?
Get back to work.
Hey - over there!
Q-anon just posted something entirely new! You should go read that rather than be so bothered by fact-based reality!
Magoo sez
Rise so high, in mud you lie. - Karnus au Bellona. Magoo.
Huh?
Minor point, but why is a "media lab" -- presumably concerned with the internets and communicationStuff and things like that, y'know, "media" -- why is it dabbling in agricultural research in the first place?
Programmable farming
The idea was that the climate piece of farming could be reduced to a program ("data") for a specialized food computer with a bunch of specialized peripherals (lamps, CO2, nitrogen, temp, etc). Optimal crops become a matter of seed selection and parameter optimization. Disseminate a better program, improve crop yield globally.
Pretty awesome idea. How much truth is in it is now a big question.
That's the thing
It's not a new idea. The only thing new about it is that the Media Lab rediscovered it and in the techbro circles it revolves around that means it could pitch this as revolutionary when, in fact, it isn't. See this thread (referenced above) by a food scientist.
Media Lab is?
MIT Media Lab is mostly unlike the sound of the name
in their own words
There used to be an initiative called Bits and Atoms*2 which was kind of a play group for Gnurds -- So you can see why OpenAg might fit right in
*1 Members:
a quite diverse group which does in fact include some companies traditionally associated with media
https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/member-companies/
*2 -- the CBA seems to have graduated to enough autonomy that it now has its own website
http://cba.mit.edu/
and a most impressive set of tools [essentially a Hardware-Gnurds ultimate wish list] which are available to its favored
some of the tools are the product of several 3D Printing equipment companies [Mark Forged, Form Labs] which began as part of the CFA
http://cba.mit.edu/tools/index.html