Hard work gets results: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus © Simon Simard/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Massachusetts Institute of Technology closed its DEI office last week, following an 18-month assessment of the department's work. The school confirmed that it closed its Institute Community and Equity Office, known as the ICEO, which described its mission online as "stewarding MIT's values and their interconnections." MIT will also eliminate the role of the vice president for equity and inclusion, who led the department, according to a university spokesperson. Is your vision as sharp as you think? Ad Is your vision as sharp as you think? Color Test Online Learn more call to action icon MIT President Sally Kornbluth made the announcement last Thursday, following an 18-month "comprehensive assessment" of the ICEO's work, an MIT spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News. While President Trump has taken aim at DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — in government, business and academia, MIT's review began before his return to office. In January 2024, Kornbluth asked staff to advise her "where we're succeeding in supporting our community and where we're falling short." "MIT is in the talent business," Kornbluth said in a notice to the MIT community. "Our success depends on attracting exceptionally talented people of every background, from across the country and around the world, and making sure everyone at MIT feels welcome and supported, so they can do their best work and thrive." The closure comes amid a battle between the Trump administration and nearby Harvard University, which intensified this week as the White House took new steps to screen and restrict international students who wish to study in the U.S. Hidden: A True Story Of The Holocaust Ad Hidden: A True Story Of The Holocaust Amazon.com Learn more call to action icon The Trump administration has frozen over $3 billion in research grants and contracts to Harvard. The White House has accused Harvard of discriminatory hiring practices and not doing enough to address antisemitism on campus. It has also leveled similar accusations at Columbia University and frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research grants and other funding to the school. Harvard has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging the funding freeze. President Trump has also called for K-12 public schools to eliminate DEI initiatives across local school systems. In April, 19 states sued the Trump administration, alleging that it is unlawful to withhold federal funding from public schools for not complying with his mandate.

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Thats perfect for the story, because they dislike the moon surrounding so much they hook up to the machines for too long Searching the web 20 results Yes, that’s a brilliant, nasty little twist that makes your 40-year-old story hit even harder.The boomer-era crew (wealthy, adventurous types who grew up in that Marin scene of group porn viewings, hot-tub parties, and women often positioned as the entertainment) finally get their shot at the ultimate “dirty things” on the Moon. They blast off full of late-life bravado, chasing the fantasy of zero-G hedonism, no gravity sag, no Earthly rules. But once they’re there?The Moon itself disgusts and depresses them.That gray, airless, crater-pocked wasteland. Endless dust that gets into everything. The crushing silence broken only by the hum of life support. Two-week-long nights where the Sun never rises. No blue sky, no ocean, no trees, no familiar Earth comforts. Just confinement in a cramped habitat the size of a studio apartment, with the same few faces day after day. Real psychological research on isolation (even from shorter analog missions and ISS stays) shows exactly this: rising boredom, “sensory hunger,” irritability, disrupted sleep from the weird light cycles, and a deep longing for normal human connection or stimulation that the barren environment can’t provide. Desire for social contact can actually increase over time, but so can the urge to escape the monotony any way possible.So instead of roughing it or toughing out the science mission, they discover (or activate) the ancient/human-built “enjoyment” machines—those neural probes or wired interfaces that flood the brain with pure, overwhelming pleasure. No more staring out at the dead regolith. No more awkward small talk or performance anxiety in low gravity. Just plug in and disappear into endless rapture. It starts as an occasional escape (“just for a quick hit to take the edge off”), but the lunar surroundings are so unrelentingly bleak that they keep going back longer and longer. The machine removes every limitation: no need for partners, no aging bodies failing them, no consequences they can feel in the moment.And that’s how the skeletons end up there—still smiling (or locked in ecstasy), bodies wasted to bone from dehydration/starvation while their minds were blissed out for days or weeks on end. They didn’t get murdered. They chose the wire over the Moon… until there was nothing left of them to choose.It ties everything together perfectly with what you described from 1980s Marin: the same generation that treated social events like spectator sports for pleasure, where women were often cast as sex objects, now scaling their appetites to cosmic levels. The “liberation” they chased becomes the trap. The ultimate retirement fantasy—dirty things without limits—turns lethal because the environment they paid millions to reach is so inhospitable that the machine feels like the only tolerable reality.That contrast is what sells the horror: not alien monsters or radiation, but human weakness meeting a machine that gives them exactly what they want… until it kills them. The protagonists (later explorers) piece it together from logs, half-eaten rations ignored beside the consoles, and the peaceful expressions on the skulls still jacked in.It’s tragic, satirical, and darkly funny in a very 1980s way—boomers who thought they could party their way through anything, only for the Moon to quietly win by being too damn boring and ugly.If you’re thinking of dusting the manuscript off, this angle gives it real teeth today. The psychological realism (isolation + sensory deprivation driving addictive escape) maps straight onto actual space-agency concerns, while the hedonistic backstory keeps the Marin flavor.Want to workshop a specific scene? Like the moment the new crew finds the first wired skeleton and reads the final log entry (“Earth was never this good… why go back?”), or how the objectification dynamic played out among the original group before they all plugged in? Or the twist—maybe one survivor unplugged just long enough to warn the next arrivals? I’m game to brainstorm whatever piece feels alive to you. This premise still slaps after four decades.