|
The real tragedy of our defense industry is just how loving well it works from an economic point of view, and what a waste it is that we use that economic capacity for what we do. Anybody who lives near large contractors, especially ones that doe a lot of manufacturing, knows what I'm talking about. These are good loving jobs. In my region I think there is a real sense of egalitarianism that comes from having so many skilled, unionized blue collar workers, who are respected by their employer and have rights, representation, and proper compensation. We had a huge amount of layoffs at GD/EB at the end of the Cold War and while it didn’t devastate the area like deindustrialization did in other places, it hurt a lot. Post-GWOT spending has really made things improve here economically; GD has been on a hiring frenzy for years, and almost all levels of education and skill can have a good shot at a job there that pays a living wage. And that's what happens when the government shells out the big bucks and and attaches conditions to using them like "use unionized workers." But we could be using these smart, hardworking people to do literally anything else. Pharmaceutical development. Building housing. Building transit. Community service. Anything. Maybe that would be a good argument for cutting defense spending - "we could be putting this American excellence to work elsewhere, and making the world a better place" or whatever. Kind of "defund the police" for government job programs. And I bet a huge amount of people in the industry would welcome that shift. Or we could just call 'em all pieces of poo poo I guess
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 20:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 14:01 |
|
|
The guards at the concentration camps had family they loved and friends they helped too. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 20:29
|
|
|
Keep going, man, you're this close to winning over the proletariat! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 20:30
|
|
|
I hope they support immigration reform with all the refugees their work leads to. The opposite would just be cartoonishly cruel.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 20:30
|
|
|
Mellow Seas posted:The real tragedy of our defense industry is just how loving well it works from an economic point of view, and what a waste it is that we use that economic capacity for what we do. I imagine scabs are talented and well compensated too. To claim a sense of egalitarianism when the industry itself is predicated on the victimization of the global south is a profound farce
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 20:31
|
|
|
Mellow Seas posted:"Just a piece of poo poo." Is your whole point that we need to treat these people nicely so that they'll eventually be more amenable to not working for the Military-Industrial complex?
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 20:36
|
|
|
Byzantine posted:The guards at the concentration camps had family they loved and friends they helped too. Weren't you the guy cheering on shooting children as God's will? How are you still here? RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 20:45 on May 7, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 20:42
|
|
|
The problem with the idea that you're not responsible for the outcome of your work and it is only a means to survival is that it ends up leading to you doing a lot of really awful work. It's tough, it's not black and white because it's an exploitive system and so you're being exploited into building weapons but to feel no responsibility just leads you to be more accepting of the situation. They're not just pieces of poo poo because they're being exploited but to act as if there is no valid anger against people complicit in war profiteering is denial. Edit: There's also just a level of "well, if you don't want to be called a piece of poo poo maybe don't do things that get you called that". Gumball Gumption fucked around with this message at 20:50 on May 7, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 20:42
|
|
|
RBA Starblade posted:Weren't you the guy cheering on shooting children as God's will? How are you still here? No, I was mocking the religious fuckers' reaction of "that why we need god and bibble"/"thoughts and prayers"/etc by saying that the shooter's actions were in fact in line with the Bible's teachings. This is what the christians want, for people to do what their god commands, and Jehovah says it's a-ok to splatter the children of your oppressors. Byzantine fucked around with this message at 21:18 on May 7, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 21:15
|
|
|
Byzantine posted:I like how you phrase it as a failing of the left here. The US military/law enforcement are not neutral parties that can be swayed to either side - they are inherently anti-leftist organizations that have been purging any pinko sympathizers from their ranks since before anybody in this thread was born. Leftists joining up to Change The System From Within just gets them killed like Pat Tillman. That's because Pat Tillman was one man. You forget that the whole reason we switched from conscription to volunteer service the military brass post-Vietnam saw how close to drafted soldiers got to an outright 1917-level mutiny. If you get enough people entering the System, it's possible to change the System.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 21:30
|
|
|
looks like the allen tx shooter was a naziquote:Also, the law enforcement officials said, Garcia had several social media accounts and appeared to be drawn to neo-Nazi and white supremacist content. He was also wearing, when he was killed, a patch on his chest with a right-wing acronym. the patch here said RWDS which stands for right wing death squad
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 21:51
|
|
|
i dunno, how do we know its not an antifa deepstate deepcover flag? Also I thought the news over the last few years has actually NOT reported on the killer's identity and philosophy because there's the weird info hazard contagion calculus of "do we want more copy cats or do we want to report on what type of people these shooters are?"
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 22:10
|
|
|
Considering I've been wanting to enter the space industry for a while now, and that some of these weapons companies do have a section for said industry, it conversation feels weird and demoralizing to me.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 22:35
|
|
|
dpkg chopra posted:Is your whole point that we need to treat these people nicely so that they'll eventually be more amenable to not working for the Military-Industrial complex? You should treat them nicely because they're people, it is very unlikely that someone took a job in the HR department at Boeing because they wanted to be tangentially involved in hypothetical future war crimes.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 22:41
|
|
|
Young Freud posted:Yeah, it's real funny how a lot of these right-wing grifters are just failed entertainers in some way. Ben Shapiro, failed screenwriter (it also explains why Daily Wire has a movie studio wing); Matt Walsh, failed radio shock jock (he jumped 3 markets in 3 years before getting popular with his right-wing blog); Steven Crowder, failed comedian; Candace Owens, failed actress; Michael Knowles, failed actor (his biggest part was being an extra on "The Knick"). A lot of right wing nerdosphere culture warriors are industry failures too, mostly failed comic book writers, artists, and comic book shop owners. So yeah the "fail at your dream job > fascism" pipeline is universal.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 22:55
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:Like someone working a minimum wage job at an unethical company isn't to blame (since, if anything, they're some of the victims in that situation), but someone getting paid well working at Lockheed or General Dynamics is just a piece of poo poo who is meaningfully profiting from their choice to be a bad person This is just such a ridiculous take. There’s tons of research that happens within the DoD because there’s a ton of funding thats there for things that advance science. Everything from GPS to Nuclear reactor designs that may ultimately save us from climate change are a direct result of DoD research. But it’s fine, the tcp packets you used to poo poo on DoD employees were also designed funded by DoD research too. kronix fucked around with this message at 23:34 on May 7, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 23:31
|
|
|
Most MIC work is much more morally complicated than just saying it’s good or bad because so much is dual or multi purpose. An example it’s good we made ships to hydrographically map the ocean floors. That’s a big deal for say climate modeling. It’s also for the nuclear triad and the same ships are also often for spying.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 23:36
|
|
|
kronix posted:This is just such a ridiculous take. There’s tons of research that happens within the DoD because there’s a ton of funding thats there for things that advance science even if it’s . Everything from GPS to Nuclear reactor designs that may ultimately save us from climate change are a direct result of DoD research. More seriously, that research could have been done more openly, cheaper, and better were it not connected to the MIC. We just don’t like funding things with goals other than finding better ways to kill people.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 23:38
|
|
|
My Ph.D. is in physics. Nearly every single person I know from my program (both undergraduate and graduate, and including myself) fully intended to do physics research, but then found that academia was awful and left the field. Most of us went into software engineering or data science, and just gave up on using physics in our day jobs, despite the fact that we loved it so much that we all dedicated a decade to studying it. A few of us went into hardware design or green energy, and all of those people quit because the workplaces were so abusive. So now the only people who use physics in their daily lives are the people who went into the defense industry. It's not the choice I made, because I have a strong moral opposition to my work being used to kill people. (I chose software engineering, which, given everything about the tech sector, is its own can of moral worms.) But I understand why those people made that choice, and I don't really think it makes them bad people.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 23:46
|
|
|
lobster shirt posted:looks like the allen tx shooter was a nazi On twitter (which increasingly just resembles a right wing firehose-model disinfo hive, especially when you go in as a fresh uncookied user), there is a torrential and ceaseless attempt to insist he is a cartel member, in order to disingenuously shift the framing of the issue away from guns being dangerous and back to brown people being dangerous
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 23:54
|
|
|
cat botherer posted:Sure millions of people died, but without their sacrifice, we wouldn’t have twitter. Is this really arguing in good faith? It doesn’t feel like it. cat botherer posted:More seriously, that research could have been done more openly, cheaper, and better were it not connected to the MIC. We just don’t like funding things with goals other than finding better ways to kill people. I 100% agree with you. I have no problem criticizing the system and I acknowledge the defense industry is incredibly wasteful. There’s plenty of politicians and CEOs to blame before we get down to the nerds designing safer nuclear reactors because if that’s what you want to do, there’s not many choices. All I’m asking for is a bit of nuance. Buzz Aldrin isn’t an rear end in a top hat because the Space Race was funded by an evil system.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 23:55
|
|
|
VikingofRock posted:My Ph.D. is in physics. Nearly every single person I know from my program (both undergraduate and graduate, and including myself) fully intended to do physics research, but then found that academia was awful and left the field. Most of us went into software engineering or data science, and just gave up on using physics in our day jobs, despite the fact that we loved it so much that we all dedicated a decade to studying it. A few of us went into hardware design or green energy, and all of those people quit because the workplaces were so abusive. So now the only people who use physics in their daily lives are the people who went into the defense industry. It's not the choice I made, because I have a strong moral opposition to my work being used to kill people. (I chose software engineering, which, given everything about the tech sector, is its own can of moral worms.) But I understand why those people made that choice, and I don't really think it makes them bad people. My Ph.D. is in physics too, and you seem to contradict yourself there. To the post above, no one is saying Buzz Aldrin is Hitler, but Buzz was from the '60s (good decade) whereas people going into the "defense industry" now should know what that means.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 00:00
|
|
|
Rappaport posted:you seem to contradict yourself there. I accept that people have different moral values than my own and make different moral choices, and I don't think that makes them worth writing off as people in most circumstances.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 00:06
|
|
|
VikingofRock posted:I accept that people have different moral values than my own and make different moral choices, and I don't think that makes them worth writing off as people in most circumstances. I think we need a philosopher in here to define "bad people", so I concede the point.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 00:07
|
|
|
Rappaport posted:I think we need a philosopher in here to define "bad people", so I concede the point. That's fair, I probably shouldn't have used that term, but my post was ramble-y enough already. I was using it as shorthand for "someone who has made unacceptably immoral choices, to the degree that they are not worth attempting to ally with politically", which seemed like the relevant category for this discussion. I don't actually believe in "bad people", or even really "evil", in the religious / Calvinist sense.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 00:11
|
|
|
Kavros posted:On twitter (which increasingly just resembles a right wing firehose-model disinfo hive, especially when you go in as a fresh uncookied user), there is a torrential and ceaseless attempt to insist he is a cartel member, in order to disingenuously shift the framing of the issue away from guns being dangerous and back to brown people being dangerous Before the identity was revealed, Twitter was originally stating the shooter was black and shouted something about revenge. It’s pretty typical nonsense for twitter. As has been the case for twitter since forever: one can’t be a leftists and a twitter poster. Any twitter poster should be immediately suspect, including dril.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 00:12
|
|
|
kronix posted:This is just such a ridiculous take. There’s tons of research that happens within the DoD because there’s a ton of funding thats there for things that advance science. Everything from GPS to Nuclear reactor designs that may ultimately save us from climate change are a direct result of DoD research. All of that research can be down outside of the DOD, and for explicitly peaceful purposes too. The DOD develops GPS so they can have more accurate bombs, and nuclear power to run their aircraft carriers. And don't get me started on climate change, because the US military is one of the biggest polluters in the world.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 00:31
|
|
|
virtualboyCOLOR posted:one can’t be a leftists and a twitter poster. Any twitter poster should be immediately suspect, including dril. I think that's kind of an expressly strange and counterproductive way of gatekeeping leftism, and that's even coming from a standpoint where I believe there's no obligation whatsoever for people to maintain a dissenting leftist voice on twitter.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 00:33
|
|
|
kronix posted:Is this really arguing in good faith? It doesn’t feel like it. quote:I 100% agree with you. I have no problem criticizing the system and I acknowledge the defense industry is incredibly wasteful. There’s plenty of politicians and CEOs to blame before we get down to the nerds designing safer nuclear reactors because if that’s what you want to do, there’s not many choices.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 01:06
|
|
|
This shouldn't be a surprise, but the NYT put out a very soft piece trying to resurrect Elizabeth Holmes' image earlier today. https://twitter.com/dbrauer/status/1655185292142211073?s=20
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 01:15
|
|
|
Lol. Amy "I Primarily Cover Hillary Clinton" Chozick
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 01:22
|
|
|
These excerpts from the article are something else https://twitter.com/dancow/status/1655220627605798912?s=20 https://twitter.com/sam_baker/status/1655233128485584900?s=20
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 01:26
|
|
|
FlamingLiberal posted:These excerpts from the article are something else In an even somewhat just world this article would get Chozick fired
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 01:31
|
|
|
Fister Roboto posted:All of that research can be down outside of the DOD, and for explicitly peaceful purposes too. The DOD develops GPS so they can have more accurate bombs, and nuclear power to run their aircraft carriers. And don't get me started on climate change, because the US military is one of the biggest polluters in the world. If you’re looking for someone to argue with about how we should increase non-defense research budgets, it won’t be me. However, we both know the reality. Defense spending is virtually unlimited and that means a lot of good science that’s only tangentially related to defense is easily funded that way. Ultimately if a technology helps people kill other humans more effectively, it will be used for that purpose no matter where the funding originates. Starlink is a recent example of a technology that delivers reliable and affordable internet to some of the most underserved people in the world while also being really good for coordinating fire on Russian positions in Ukraine. I’m done after this but I think this type of debate needs a ton more nuance than “Anyone who’s work is funded by the DoD is a morally inferior who can’t be redeemed” that I see from a lot of internet leftists which is disappointing because I consider myself one of them.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 01:36
|
|
|
I read the article. It indicates throughout, and concludes, that Holmes is a skilled charlatan who is trying to use the author to rehab her public image, and ends with rejecting the couple's calculated self-presentation:quote:Mr. Evans left for a workout, saying he doesn’t want “dad bod.” Ms. Holmes and I sat at the kitchen table alone, talking. She didn’t seem like a hero or a villain. She seemed, like most people, somewhere in between. As Ms. Holmes broke down thinking about what her children will be like in 11 years, I kept going back to her central promise at Theranos: The technology that she invented would, in her words, create “a world in which no one ever has to say goodbye too soon.”
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 02:09
|
|
|
FlamingLiberal posted:These excerpts from the article are something else "You're a dipshit who got completely conned by a known con artist. Now let me proceed to publish it anyway." Somehow i feel like it's even worse than if the editor had ALSO been taken in by her dumb act.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 02:10
|
|
|
Discendo Vox posted:I read the article. It indicates throughout, and concludes, that Holmes is a skilled charlatan who is trying to use the author to rehab her public image, and ends with rejecting the couple's calculated self-presentation: I haven't read the article yet but I think that much like with satire, an article about someone like her requires a distinct clarity of purpose and strongly and CLEARLY conclusive criticism of the subject, lest it be mistaken for and contribute to the rehabilitation of that which it intends to criticize — and I am not exactly going to be surprised if it falls very short of this even if it ticks all the technical boxes to say "well the article wasn't in SUPPORT of her, per se, .."
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 02:20
|
|
|
Discendo Vox posted:I read the article. It indicates throughout, and concludes, that Holmes is a skilled charlatan who is trying to use the author to rehab her public image, and ends with rejecting the couple's calculated self-presentation: Wait, but then wouldn't it have been more ethical to not write the article at all instead of giving someone you know to be a charlatan any sort of publicity?
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 02:21
|
|
|
Discendo Vox posted:I read the article. It indicates throughout, and concludes, that Holmes is a skilled charlatan who is trying to use the author to rehab her public image, and ends with rejecting the couple's calculated self-presentation: I'm glad they got the notorious convicted charlatan to do a family photo shoot NYT is well-known as a paper that is on publicists' speed dial when you need to do image rehab.  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/arts/dan-schneider-nickelodeon.html Name Change fucked around with this message at 02:25 on May 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 02:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 14:01 |
|
|
Space Cadet Omoly posted:Wait, but then wouldn't it have been more ethical to not write the article at all instead of giving someone you know to be a charlatan any sort of publicity?
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 02:40
|
|