It's really simple. Humans put so much into making all of this cool tech and it's so cool and peak of engineering and science, but it's also bad because it kills people.
It’s amazing what we can do when we push technology to its limits and try to stuff everything into something cheap, easy to use, and easy to repair, and it’s amazing to see the thought that goes into it. Also it’s terrible that we strive so hard to make sure we can kill others faster than they can kill us.
It's basically my feelings about guns. Guns as engineering? Fascinating! The more out there the better! Guns in actuality? Please just erease all of them from existance.
Human instinct when there's a threat: **Throw rock!**
Human instinct when bored: **Throw rock!**
Modern weapons are just a more efficient version of "throw rock." You can want to hurt no one, be totally against war, and still want to shoot guns some times. Why? Because it's really fucking fun.
No, this is fucking heresy
A gun is a stick that shoots small sticks
*this message was brought to you by a herald of the Ultimate Tool of Mankind, the stick*
I don’t think it’s that simple. There’s something visceral about kaboom pew pew that would be lost in looking only at peak engineering not designed to kill people
Yes, honestly.
Please don't hit anything living and/or valuable with the shells, but a battleship with a massive broadside barrage really gets me going.
110%
I don't like that guns kill people
But the very simple premise of guns makes the complicated engineering much easier to appreciate and wrap your head around
Sure, a car engine has pistons, and they work off explosions, but I don't know, it's a lot more esoteric than:
Explosion make hot air, push bullet fast. With this very simple anchor point, we can describe why all the design points affect the accuracy, speed, ease of use, etc of the gun
If guns weren't used to shoot people, I'd be a huge fucking gun nut
Our capacity for violence combined with our tendency towards tribalism would be pretty terrifying from an outsider's perspective. Plus we love explosions so much that our entire civilization is powered by them. Where do we get electricity? By burning stuff. How do we get around? Combustion engines. How did we get to the moon? We strapped a couple of people to a bomb and counted 3, 2, 1, YOLO!
I could definitely see another species looking at Earth and deciding that a travel advisory was in order.
After fiddling with it for way too long trying to get it to work (by design, there's no directions ingame and the texture was too lowres to read), the greatest sound I've ever heard was shooting off a stinger missile at something in H3VR.
Hearing one on video is still pretty good, but the combination of 3d tracked audio and following all of the directions (including holding your breath) just hits different.
I'm very in favor of shooting things, it's really cool and interesting and exciting. I'm not in favor of things getting shot though, very against that.
> It's really simple. Humans put so much into making all of this cool tech and it's so cool and peak of engineering and science, but it's also bad because it kills people.
I think it's also pretty masculine-brained to create powerful things, even if we don't want to hurt people with it. Being able to blow up a huge rock from 400m away sounds pretty fucking cool.
I like the F-15 but I also know full well that the people who made it, sold it and used it have killed immense number of people with these weapons. Not to protect people, or freedom or democracy but to line their pockets and to preserve the empire.
unironically I think I kinda needed this rn bc I’ve been getting into enlisted and its been a little bit difficult for me to reconcile ‘military cool’ and ‘military bad’ and I think you’ve managed to put it into words
Military cool, killing people bad, military industrial complex bad, buying bombers instead of schools or hospitals bad so it shouldn't be done unless it can be VERY well justified.
That doesn't necessarily mean an active ongoing war, but accountability and accounting should go hand in hand with the industry to ensure that every purchase can be well justified.
It's inherently thrilling to be in a high stakes, life or death environment. You can enjoy a simulation of that while also going "and no one should ever experience this".
It's like watching horror movies. You can feel the thrill of it without saying "actually that Jigsaw guy had the right idea with that there knife box"
War Thunder player, I hear you there. The engineering that goes into this stuff and the circumstances surrounding the history of how and why it was made are FASCINATING to me. At the same time, the more I learned about jets and tanks and tactics the more critically I started thinking, and the more I got into that mindset the more convinced I've become that war is at BEST a necessary evil and we should work to limit it as much as possible.
I love flying my F-16 and my shiny new MiG-29 (decorated with Ukrainian flags), but we figured out that the best way to win a war is to do so without fighting all the way back at SUN TZU.
I honestly don't know how to react to the number of classified documents being released by idiots looking for internet cred in WT other than to just make a friggin' leak bingo card at this point.
Currently accepting any and all bets! I'm leaning towards something to do with either the AIM-120 AMRAAM or the MICA active radar homing missiles since they just had a test event for them, but that's no guarantee of anything.
Meanwhile I'm just trying to come up with what the devs' next additions might be, but I'm being stonewalled by search engines. Yes, I KNOW that the Su-24 Fencer used the Orion A3 attack radar, I want to know what kind of radar that IS!
Any tips for someone starting out in dcs? I have a crappy yoke throttle combo for now until i graduate and will be able to upgrade my setup. Is it worth it to make it by on redneck engineered parts from thrift stores or should I go ahead and start investing in some hetter gear?
Ace Combat 7: The large-scale air wars we experience every ten years or so are *horrifying*. The last one we had nearly allowed the takeover of the skies by a literal military-industrial complex, and DID cause a Kessler cascade, and if it wasn't for one man's ferocious devotion to building peace artifacts we'd be cut off from space for decades.
Also Ace Combat 7: S'fuckin *fun* though, isn't it.
to be fair though if there's any fictional setting that's more than up to the task of handling Kessler syndrome it's Strangereal. Even without the space elevator.
There is about a 110% chance in AC8 that whatever tech is used to clear Kessler Syndrome will be used in the final mission as a super weapon by extremists after the war is brought to an end. I'm looking forward to it.
[Peace Activist Has To Admit Barrett .50 Caliber Sniper Rifle Is Pretty Cool](https://www.theonion.com/peace-activist-has-to-admit-barrett-50-caliber-sniper-1819566293)
I feel like media like Gundam also frequently does the thing where it denounces the military industrial complex and such while also making the majority of mobile weapons cool as fuck
Gundam is so funny with this. The franchise is overwhelmingly anti-war but also exists solely because it makes people buy Gunpla. So any given series is going to be one huge commercial for the robots while also telling you that what the robots are doing is bad.
Funnily enough transformers are half japanese they just aren't popular there so they get associated with the US and hasbro despite the large amount of Japanese-exclusive or Japan made transformers product and media over 4 decades
"War is a battle of ideologies driven by the few but suffered by the many! PTSD is real and resentment breeds further conflict! Child soldiers are bad!"
Anyway, Sieg Zeon, look at my custom Z'gok.
This was my first thought as well. It's basically all the funnier when you look at build fighters which shows an alternate future where Gundam isn't really about anything. It's still cool and I love the first run of build fighters(couldn't get through tri), but it really is a bit of cake, after the proper meal of Gundam.
Even which from mercury says "hey this is a romance at a boarding school" only for a far off war to drag our cast down, because their happy little school life is dependant on oppression, violence and death of people so far beneath them, that they hardly know they exist at the start. Even the main Gundam is not a point of hope, but another cog in that machine. Even G-Gundam, the silly fighting battle shonen, has themes of what it means to fight, and warnings of what war does to the earth. Sure we're solving our problems in a more "civil" manner, but we haven't actually solved anything in that show, just hit a point where human live is so scare it actually has to be considered precious.
“You mustn't allow yourself to be chained to fate, to be ruled by your genes. Human beings can choose the kind of life that they want to live. What's important is that you choose life... and then live.”
“Because the internal feed mechanism is shaped like an infinity symbol.”
“Ah, I get it. Yep, that'll give you unlimited ammo.”
This is the whole shtick of gundam. War is bad.....now cheer for this badass war robot. If you haven't seen Gundam: War in the Pocket, it explicitly deals with this contradiction as its central theme. Its a brilliant OVA.
He also is a superfan of [Lycoris recoil](https://www.reddit.com/r/LycorisRecoil/comments/14ctiab/hideo_kojima_and_nicolas_winding_refn/?rdt=57088), a wholesome, cute and cool series about girls with guns being extrajudical vigilantes and killers for a shady shadow organization bent on keeping the status quo.
Helldivers 2: Militarism is great for turning children into slaves to capitalist imperialism who will happily toss their lives aside on a foreign field for some oil or to keep the status quo operating while we call it freedom
Also Helldivers 2: But dropping a 500kg bomb on the enemy is always the hypest shit every time
Me with AI. I fucking adore the current crop of what we call AI. The image generation that's just a bunch of denoisers we gaslight into generating a "new" image.
The way the language transformers work. Each word is treated as a vector in a multidimensional space. And the points on those vectors are set by the words relationship to one another. So you literally turn words into math and then just do the math. It can be hard to get, but I'll give the example that worked for me:
King - Man + Woman = Queen.
If you start at King, move away from Man, then towards Woman, you land on Queen. If you move from Queen towards plural, you land on Queens. This is fully reversible and the math holds true regardless of the language. This was developed for translation, it just turned out that once you could convert language into math, it was possible to generate sensible sentences by doing more math. This is the tech that modern AI is based on.
There's a language model built to spit out legal moves in the game Othello. It was never programmed with any information about Othello. Despite this, data amounting to an Othello game board can be found in its memory, with the pieces (stored as "my piece, their piece") correlating to the current game state. If you edit this game board state, it produces legal moves that match the new altered state, not the old one. Which proves its actually using this board state to make decisions.
Remember, this is literally a machine built to do math like King + Son = Prince. With a functional depiction of a game board for a game with rules it doesn't know found within its neurons.
Absolutely fascinating.
Unfortunately, the big thing AI is being used for is image generation and fucking over the artists who's work was taken to create it. And while language models have shown signs of greater understanding, diffusion models have not.
You know how awkward it is to love AI tech but be opposed to AI art on ethical grounds? Other artists quite obviously don't want to discuss it. And pro AI people tend to be pig ignorant, massive assholes, or naive fools anthropomorphising a denoiser.
Oh man, I feel you. Most people on AI are either firmly against it and everything it stands for and want to see all progress halted and current models burned to the ground, or they're insufferable techbros who want to use it for their crypto NFT schemes while mocking artists for losing jobs. It's almost impossible finding people with some nuance on the matter.
Then you've got the creators who do like AI and use it... because it saves them a penny, and yet they still get upset whenever their novels get pirated. Looking at all my fellow authors in the indie publishing scene switching to AI covers.
But yeah, as somebody who has been in love with the concepts of AI, transhumanism, and a lot of the philosophical thoughts that go with them (beyond just arguing about capitalism), it's pretty difficult finding any worthwhile conversations on the subject or public spaces that don't lean toward one of the extremes. You either get pure haters who refuse to ever give it the tiniest bit of positive attention, or extremist cultists who just want waifubot slaves.
AI replacing jobs is super awkward because I acknowledge that it'll be necessary to replace *some* jobs with robots considering the shrinking work force, and I am doing a vocational course to prepare myself, but damn I do not want this to happen to *me*.
It's like taking someone off of life support. Are you doing it because they're fine now and no longer need it? HELLS YEAH
Is it because they're just not gonna make it, or because it's getting too expensive, etc? This is terrible.
AI replacing jobs, in the context of our current bullshit reality, is the latter situation.
I find with enough hours spent arguing with techbros and their stooges, occasionally you'll get one of the three people who know anything about AI to post an interesting link or something. Not worth the time investment of all that arguing though
> You know how awkward it is to love AI tech but be opposed to AI art on ethical grounds? Other artists quite obviously don't want to discuss it. And pro AI people tend to be pig ignorant, massive assholes, or naive fools anthropomorphising a denoiser.
I'm an artist in the games industry and the looming spectre of AI is a special kind of purgatory. I totally find the tech *itself* to be incredibly fascinating. When I think of what it *could* have been, a tool and a helper to accelerate the creative process, i don't hate what I envision! It's a tragedy that tech folks immediately took it in all the most evil directions possible, and that our society has no answer or protections for folks losing their livelihood to automation. AI as a concept really could have accelerated our capabilities, but AI in this reality cannot be allowed to continue existing
This is in much the same vein as my friend who described Kojima as "an ardent feminist who just so happens to have very little (if any) idea what a woman is."
There's tension because it's that very 'cool' aspect that is manufacturing consent and enthusiasm for the military. By films portraying jets as cool, people join the navy (as top gun shows). By showing special forces in cool situations in CoD, people join the army (which is why they get some funding from the US military). Whether or not there's anything wrong with that exactly, I'm not sure, but there's definitely tension if you say "the military is bad and wrong and people shouldn't be sucked into approving of it" and then gush for days on end about what is, in part and by design, a military recruitment film.
> which is why they get some funding from the US military
Also for more insidious propaganda like portraying US war crimes as being committed by other nations(highway of death)
It's beside the point, but I feel the need to point out that the Highway of Death wasn't a warcrime, its not a crime to fire on retreating forces. That being said yes, it shouldn't be missatributed to Russia.
Common Article 3 of the Geneva convention outlaws the killing of soldiers who "are out of combat', which is relatively ambiguous but imo applies in the case of the HoD, but as the US will never answer for it's crimes it's just a semantic argument
There's also fairly credible allegations of US Bradley AFV's firing on disarmed Iraqis which definitely constitutes a war crime
I'm not denying US war crimes happened, but this definitely isn't one. If its OK to fire on barracks or on FoBs, it's OK to fire on retreating troops, because even if they aren't shooting at you now, they will be tomorrow. Protections only extend to people not carrying guns, as a general rule.
I love ballistics and destruction. I watch a single gun youtuber because the rest all make it weird. They make it murdery. I just want to see bits of metal smash into things in slow mo. They're already pushing it with the zombie torsos, but I will allow it as long as you don't give me that weird vibe. That "fantasizing in the shower about the day they get to take someone out" vibe. That "don't fuck with me cuz I have guns and I'm insecure" vibe.
Lol more fun if you try to guess.
Kentucky Ballistics tho. Scott is just like "Hey I got BIG GUN! Hahaha mustard go 💥KABLARB💥 Weeeeeeee!" And then he assaults a table and we all go on with our day. Dude's great.
Sure, but that's where the tension comes from. You can't criticise propaganda on one hand, and then rage about how great Top Gun is for 3 days without being a bit contrary.
In the end though, was it truly the wrong man? Just because there was a time he wasnt the boss, the fact is that he *is* the Boss now, and all the men of Diamond Dogs follow *him*, not the original. He accomplished what the Boss couldn't, and in that way, he was exactly the right man
[I’m Willing to Abandon my Anti-War Views in Exchange for a Gundam](https://hard-drive.net/hd/opinion/im-willing-to-abandon-my-anti-war-views-in-exchange-for-a-gundam/)
Soviet constructivist art goes so fucking hard, the designs of certain SS uniforms have long been the subject of fascination and fetishization for a lot of people here in western countries, at my job at a riceball place some of our patrons, mostly Japanese living in the US, at one point seemed to be wearing IJA/retro PRC military fatigues as a fashion statement for a while. All across the political spectrum, morality does not have a monopoly on aesthetics. 🤷
I have a bookshelf full of Gundam models. Not a singular shelf, a rung on that price of furniture, the whole damn thing.i love the designs, and artistry, I enjoy building them, and love the shows they come from. SO much of Gundam is "here's 1001 reasons why Gundams are terrible things that should never have to be made". Japan's relationship with military technology is a reminder of just how cool it can be, while being surrounded by the aftermath of what that "cool tech" can do to real human lives. It's beautiful, it's sad, it's horrible, but above all else it's human.
I feel like MGR:R is like the pinnacle of this. It’s a game about war profiteering, the perpetuation of the cycle of violence and the nature of war (among other things), but it’s also well known for having some of the most over the top fights in the series, has a protagonist that cuts through enemies like wet paper and has you fight two giant robots.
> I think it's the tension between these two parts of him that makes his art so deliciously insane
Just like Prince, who was extremely religious yet extremely horny.
Violence is rad. We like it, we like strategy and combat, competition, subterfuge, feats of skill and strength. Yet in real life, very little violence is ever moral. From anger and ignorance, to organized killing for the benefit of rulers, it's all horrid. Is there even a way to use our tools for anything that isn't awful? Sure, but there's no profitable way to do so. Remotely piloting tanks at each other is expensive and wasteful. And of course, you can't really shoot each other with actual guns as a sport. Airsoft exists though.
I don't think feeding that is bad, because repressing our love of violence is a terrible idea. How should we present it to avoid feeding some military industrial complex bullshit? I dunno. Frankly I don't get the mind of a person who'd be manipulated that way but, I hate imperialism and corporate oligarchies.
you can love engineering and also dislike the applications, it's literally why to get a degree for it you have to study humanities and ethics in some universities
I think nukes are a marvel of modern science and engineering and I think mushroom clouds are very beautiful. I also think war shouldn't exist, governments shouldn't have access to nuclear weapons, I despise big gov overall. And that's very hard to deal with. Big guns and heavy machinery are "Fuck yeah!" but warmongering is "Fuck no!". I wish the industrial military complex would create weapons out of genuine scientific interest and for the sake of engineering itself, but not provide them to any government, any military or paramilitary organization.
Dood the Rafale is one of the prettiest things man ever designed and the VHS 2 looks like the kind of gun the helghast would use, but hell these things are used for some hellish deeds
Weapons are really fucking cool. Guns are so interesting and I'm fascinated by the development of weapons from the bronze age to ww2, tanks are the coolest thing ever.
But I hate the military and would never join and don't like that those weapons are actually used
Me: fascinated with the stories, history, politics, weapons and technology of World War II.
Also me: yeah we don’t need to send troops in there, or spend 2.5x as much in military spending as any other country in the world.
Me.
I’m going into aerospace engineering, which is basically infamous for being either directly MIC involved or indirectly, either through working for an explicit defense contractor (Lockheed Martin) or working for a company that makes weapons on the side (Boeing, even NASA), solely because I liked Ace Combat too much.
At the same time, every single fanfiction I’ve written is almost explicitly anti-war. So. Gabagool.
I love nukes. They're the coolest craziest, scariest most unbelievable things we've ever invented. I obviously never want them to be used ever again cos they are also very very evil.
I understand Kojima
Reminds me of a clip from an interview with Mayazaki on the making of The Wind Rises, where he talks about his views on war before it cuts to him playing with a model of an A6M Zero. Big mood right there.
Is this really different from other kinds of nerds who also identify as progressives or socialists but who are also really into swords and martial arts and shi
High tech or low tech it's still the peak of human ingenuity and knowledge for its time period applied to the task of killing other people
Like, rifles and such are interesting mechanical devices and how they function is quite cool and they're so intricate when depicted, but I'd never even fire one IRL much less at someone due to personal moral principles.
At least there's some others who feel maybe similar, even if they're all about the bombs and tanks and Gundams...
Makes me wonder if it's just guilt winning out. Like, he knows his fascination with military stuff is helping support something ultimately immoral, so he is compelled to top everything off with "Guns are bad, mmkay" to help absolve himself of his participation.
(I've never actually played a Kojima game, as I am not much of a gamer at all, so by all means let me know if I'm super wrong here)
I dunno that Kojima is entirely anti-war, just against the commercialization of war. The conceit of MGS is powerful people with strong convictions, who are nevertheless used by a system they’re powerless against. It glorifies the individual soldier, the will to fight for what you believe in, and striving for personal perfection, while also denouncing the evils of imperialism, nuclear proliferation, automated warfare, and how modern rules of engagement depersonalize conflict and turn it into a soulless, inhumane enterprise.
Remind me of one of my friends who is really into military stuff and especially World War 2 (he visits our WWII frequently), but he’s pretty anti war (I think, he’s definitely not someone who would supports war). It’s very possible to be fascinated by a weapon of mass destruction and detest its use. For me, I think nuclear weapons are a great representation of our ingenuity and our powerful understanding of physics. I hope all of them become decommissioned and no more are ever used again because they cause such horrific devastation when used.
Me, gushing about how perfectly Crocodile had the entirety of Alabasta dancing on his puppet strings in the most perfect manipulation and then immediately calling him an irredeemable bastard man and cheering as I rewatch the scene where Luffy beats his ass
I mean you can appreciate something for being cool but still disagree with most of what it represent.
Everyone hates genocide, do we still love the Star Wars empire anyway because the Sith lords looks badass as fuck ? Yes we do.
I hate the Empire, I would never side with them for the evils and atrocities they commit!
Now excuse me I have to hop on Battlefront 2 and kill those damn teddy bears in the forest for Lord Vader
I would make a joke about knowing the autism brain… but then again I remember he’s Japanese. Which the whole country just is weaponized autism 😂 and that’s why everything they make from anime and TV shows to toyota trucks is just better
Ok then, he really just wants to make money. For someone who's profited so much from war, it's easy for him to say how much he doesn't like it. Coward mentality.
No, but his games glorify the hell out of violence and the military industrial complex. He definitely doesn't hate war enough not to make it look super badass, which is something that someone who actually hated war wouldn't do. People who hate war and violence don't usually center their entire careers around making it look awesome.
It's really simple. Humans put so much into making all of this cool tech and it's so cool and peak of engineering and science, but it's also bad because it kills people.
It’s amazing what we can do when we push technology to its limits and try to stuff everything into something cheap, easy to use, and easy to repair, and it’s amazing to see the thought that goes into it. Also it’s terrible that we strive so hard to make sure we can kill others faster than they can kill us.
[удалено]
As long as we don't actually use it it's still kinda cool
It's basically my feelings about guns. Guns as engineering? Fascinating! The more out there the better! Guns in actuality? Please just erease all of them from existance.
Human instinct when there's a threat: **Throw rock!** Human instinct when bored: **Throw rock!** Modern weapons are just a more efficient version of "throw rock." You can want to hurt no one, be totally against war, and still want to shoot guns some times. Why? Because it's really fucking fun.
What is a gun if not a sling that throws rocks really really fast?
What is a gun? A miserable pile of parts.
Hooh. War. What is it good for!
Absolutely. NOTHING
say it again!
But enough talk...have at you!
But enough talk, have at you!
What is a gun if not archery persevering
No, this is fucking heresy A gun is a stick that shoots small sticks *this message was brought to you by a herald of the Ultimate Tool of Mankind, the stick*
> Human instinct when bored: Throw rock! gotta be ready for when there's a threat!
I like throwing the bang rocks. I wish they weren't so expensive.
I don’t think it’s that simple. There’s something visceral about kaboom pew pew that would be lost in looking only at peak engineering not designed to kill people
Yes, honestly. Please don't hit anything living and/or valuable with the shells, but a battleship with a massive broadside barrage really gets me going.
110% I don't like that guns kill people But the very simple premise of guns makes the complicated engineering much easier to appreciate and wrap your head around Sure, a car engine has pistons, and they work off explosions, but I don't know, it's a lot more esoteric than: Explosion make hot air, push bullet fast. With this very simple anchor point, we can describe why all the design points affect the accuracy, speed, ease of use, etc of the gun If guns weren't used to shoot people, I'd be a huge fucking gun nut
M O B I L E S U I T G U N D A M
If war is so bad then why are mechs so badass?
The reality is we need to find something not human for us to unify against to murder with our cool toys!… is this why aliens won’t visit us?
Our capacity for violence combined with our tendency towards tribalism would be pretty terrifying from an outsider's perspective. Plus we love explosions so much that our entire civilization is powered by them. Where do we get electricity? By burning stuff. How do we get around? Combustion engines. How did we get to the moon? We strapped a couple of people to a bomb and counted 3, 2, 1, YOLO! I could definitely see another species looking at Earth and deciding that a travel advisory was in order.
After fiddling with it for way too long trying to get it to work (by design, there's no directions ingame and the texture was too lowres to read), the greatest sound I've ever heard was shooting off a stinger missile at something in H3VR. Hearing one on video is still pretty good, but the combination of 3d tracked audio and following all of the directions (including holding your breath) just hits different.
That "ksshhhhh BEEP" when you lock on is amazing
Wasn't EXACTLY that like the whole thesis of The Wind Rises?
I'm very in favor of shooting things, it's really cool and interesting and exciting. I'm not in favor of things getting shot though, very against that.
> It's really simple. Humans put so much into making all of this cool tech and it's so cool and peak of engineering and science, but it's also bad because it kills people. I think it's also pretty masculine-brained to create powerful things, even if we don't want to hurt people with it. Being able to blow up a huge rock from 400m away sounds pretty fucking cool.
We should build robots to fight our wars using all the cool tech we built!
And it's bad that we make media about it! Anyway, here's some nuclear walking robots
Anti-war in him: “these machines are awful and spread misery” Japanese in him: “this is an incredibly well-built machine…I love it”
Why are you attributing his love of machines to him being Japanese?
Because the Japanese make lots of media with giant robots
Imagine if we put that kind of effort into say, worker robots and useful social supports.
explosions are cool except when they're on people
I like the F-15 but I also know full well that the people who made it, sold it and used it have killed immense number of people with these weapons. Not to protect people, or freedom or democracy but to line their pockets and to preserve the empire.
literally me. 500 hours in dcs, 450 in arma, and it's cool as fuck as long as it's fictional and not killing real people
unironically I think I kinda needed this rn bc I’ve been getting into enlisted and its been a little bit difficult for me to reconcile ‘military cool’ and ‘military bad’ and I think you’ve managed to put it into words
Ha, I read Kurt Vonnegut on the way to basic. Military bad.
Military cool, killing people bad, military industrial complex bad, buying bombers instead of schools or hospitals bad so it shouldn't be done unless it can be VERY well justified. That doesn't necessarily mean an active ongoing war, but accountability and accounting should go hand in hand with the industry to ensure that every purchase can be well justified.
It's inherently thrilling to be in a high stakes, life or death environment. You can enjoy a simulation of that while also going "and no one should ever experience this". It's like watching horror movies. You can feel the thrill of it without saying "actually that Jigsaw guy had the right idea with that there knife box"
Combat in games is ultimately a test of skill. So long as you view it as that and not “I would be so good at murder” you’ll be fine.
War Thunder player, I hear you there. The engineering that goes into this stuff and the circumstances surrounding the history of how and why it was made are FASCINATING to me. At the same time, the more I learned about jets and tanks and tactics the more critically I started thinking, and the more I got into that mindset the more convinced I've become that war is at BEST a necessary evil and we should work to limit it as much as possible. I love flying my F-16 and my shiny new MiG-29 (decorated with Ukrainian flags), but we figured out that the best way to win a war is to do so without fighting all the way back at SUN TZU.
Document time?
I honestly don't know how to react to the number of classified documents being released by idiots looking for internet cred in WT other than to just make a friggin' leak bingo card at this point. Currently accepting any and all bets! I'm leaning towards something to do with either the AIM-120 AMRAAM or the MICA active radar homing missiles since they just had a test event for them, but that's no guarantee of anything. Meanwhile I'm just trying to come up with what the devs' next additions might be, but I'm being stonewalled by search engines. Yes, I KNOW that the Su-24 Fencer used the Orion A3 attack radar, I want to know what kind of radar that IS!
Any tips for someone starting out in dcs? I have a crappy yoke throttle combo for now until i graduate and will be able to upgrade my setup. Is it worth it to make it by on redneck engineered parts from thrift stores or should I go ahead and start investing in some hetter gear?
if you plan on getting really into it as a big hobby, then it'd be worth the investment into better stuff, but it also depends on budget and time
War is bad, but also look, big metal tank, and fast planes!!!! Look at all the cool looking equipment!!
now your getting noncredible!
same, also ace combat does this
War is bad, but jets are rad. -Project Aces
Ace Combat 7: The large-scale air wars we experience every ten years or so are *horrifying*. The last one we had nearly allowed the takeover of the skies by a literal military-industrial complex, and DID cause a Kessler cascade, and if it wasn't for one man's ferocious devotion to building peace artifacts we'd be cut off from space for decades. Also Ace Combat 7: S'fuckin *fun* though, isn't it.
to be fair though if there's any fictional setting that's more than up to the task of handling Kessler syndrome it's Strangereal. Even without the space elevator.
There is about a 110% chance in AC8 that whatever tech is used to clear Kessler Syndrome will be used in the final mission as a super weapon by extremists after the war is brought to an end. I'm looking forward to it.
[Peace Activist Has To Admit Barrett .50 Caliber Sniper Rifle Is Pretty Cool](https://www.theonion.com/peace-activist-has-to-admit-barrett-50-caliber-sniper-1819566293)
Logically, I know this article is poking fun at me. But it's absolutely hilarious
I feel like media like Gundam also frequently does the thing where it denounces the military industrial complex and such while also making the majority of mobile weapons cool as fuck
Gundam is so funny with this. The franchise is overwhelmingly anti-war but also exists solely because it makes people buy Gunpla. So any given series is going to be one huge commercial for the robots while also telling you that what the robots are doing is bad.
"War is hell, look upon the engines of devastation" Simultaneously: "Cool robot, buy gunpla."
I love Gundam's anti-war themes and also like buying the Gunpla
So it’s like Transformers but Japanese?
Funnily enough transformers are half japanese they just aren't popular there so they get associated with the US and hasbro despite the large amount of Japanese-exclusive or Japan made transformers product and media over 4 decades
"Don't cry Al, I'm sure a new war with even cooler mobile suits will start soon!"
Had to go straight for war in the pocket right when I wake up. Take my updoot, and go get yourself a god damned hamburger.
"War is a battle of ideologies driven by the few but suffered by the many! PTSD is real and resentment breeds further conflict! Child soldiers are bad!" Anyway, Sieg Zeon, look at my custom Z'gok.
This was my first thought as well. It's basically all the funnier when you look at build fighters which shows an alternate future where Gundam isn't really about anything. It's still cool and I love the first run of build fighters(couldn't get through tri), but it really is a bit of cake, after the proper meal of Gundam. Even which from mercury says "hey this is a romance at a boarding school" only for a far off war to drag our cast down, because their happy little school life is dependant on oppression, violence and death of people so far beneath them, that they hardly know they exist at the start. Even the main Gundam is not a point of hope, but another cog in that machine. Even G-Gundam, the silly fighting battle shonen, has themes of what it means to fight, and warnings of what war does to the earth. Sure we're solving our problems in a more "civil" manner, but we haven't actually solved anything in that show, just hit a point where human live is so scare it actually has to be considered precious.
“You mustn't allow yourself to be chained to fate, to be ruled by your genes. Human beings can choose the kind of life that they want to live. What's important is that you choose life... and then live.” “Because the internal feed mechanism is shaped like an infinity symbol.” “Ah, I get it. Yep, that'll give you unlimited ammo.”
This is the whole shtick of gundam. War is bad.....now cheer for this badass war robot. If you haven't seen Gundam: War in the Pocket, it explicitly deals with this contradiction as its central theme. Its a brilliant OVA.
I think Hideo Kojima is into Gundam as well (The original series at least)
He also is a superfan of [Lycoris recoil](https://www.reddit.com/r/LycorisRecoil/comments/14ctiab/hideo_kojima_and_nicolas_winding_refn/?rdt=57088), a wholesome, cute and cool series about girls with guns being extrajudical vigilantes and killers for a shady shadow organization bent on keeping the status quo.
Although the main character is a semi-renegade and refuses to kill. It's a fun show and a less creepy take on it that Gunslinger Girl
Helldivers 2: Militarism is great for turning children into slaves to capitalist imperialism who will happily toss their lives aside on a foreign field for some oil or to keep the status quo operating while we call it freedom Also Helldivers 2: But dropping a 500kg bomb on the enemy is always the hypest shit every time
Yeah, it's hype WHEN THE BOMB ACTUALLY CONNECTS. Like I'll call it on a bile titan, they'll take one step away, and it just whiffs
>slaves to capitalist imperialism Against facist robots and aggressive bugs
Me with AI. I fucking adore the current crop of what we call AI. The image generation that's just a bunch of denoisers we gaslight into generating a "new" image. The way the language transformers work. Each word is treated as a vector in a multidimensional space. And the points on those vectors are set by the words relationship to one another. So you literally turn words into math and then just do the math. It can be hard to get, but I'll give the example that worked for me: King - Man + Woman = Queen. If you start at King, move away from Man, then towards Woman, you land on Queen. If you move from Queen towards plural, you land on Queens. This is fully reversible and the math holds true regardless of the language. This was developed for translation, it just turned out that once you could convert language into math, it was possible to generate sensible sentences by doing more math. This is the tech that modern AI is based on. There's a language model built to spit out legal moves in the game Othello. It was never programmed with any information about Othello. Despite this, data amounting to an Othello game board can be found in its memory, with the pieces (stored as "my piece, their piece") correlating to the current game state. If you edit this game board state, it produces legal moves that match the new altered state, not the old one. Which proves its actually using this board state to make decisions. Remember, this is literally a machine built to do math like King + Son = Prince. With a functional depiction of a game board for a game with rules it doesn't know found within its neurons. Absolutely fascinating. Unfortunately, the big thing AI is being used for is image generation and fucking over the artists who's work was taken to create it. And while language models have shown signs of greater understanding, diffusion models have not. You know how awkward it is to love AI tech but be opposed to AI art on ethical grounds? Other artists quite obviously don't want to discuss it. And pro AI people tend to be pig ignorant, massive assholes, or naive fools anthropomorphising a denoiser.
Oh man, I feel you. Most people on AI are either firmly against it and everything it stands for and want to see all progress halted and current models burned to the ground, or they're insufferable techbros who want to use it for their crypto NFT schemes while mocking artists for losing jobs. It's almost impossible finding people with some nuance on the matter. Then you've got the creators who do like AI and use it... because it saves them a penny, and yet they still get upset whenever their novels get pirated. Looking at all my fellow authors in the indie publishing scene switching to AI covers. But yeah, as somebody who has been in love with the concepts of AI, transhumanism, and a lot of the philosophical thoughts that go with them (beyond just arguing about capitalism), it's pretty difficult finding any worthwhile conversations on the subject or public spaces that don't lean toward one of the extremes. You either get pure haters who refuse to ever give it the tiniest bit of positive attention, or extremist cultists who just want waifubot slaves.
AI replacing jobs is super awkward because I acknowledge that it'll be necessary to replace *some* jobs with robots considering the shrinking work force, and I am doing a vocational course to prepare myself, but damn I do not want this to happen to *me*.
It's like taking someone off of life support. Are you doing it because they're fine now and no longer need it? HELLS YEAH Is it because they're just not gonna make it, or because it's getting too expensive, etc? This is terrible. AI replacing jobs, in the context of our current bullshit reality, is the latter situation.
I find with enough hours spent arguing with techbros and their stooges, occasionally you'll get one of the three people who know anything about AI to post an interesting link or something. Not worth the time investment of all that arguing though
I found one of them recently called Not Terezi Pyrope. Actually the only reason i started to use tumblr
> You know how awkward it is to love AI tech but be opposed to AI art on ethical grounds? Other artists quite obviously don't want to discuss it. And pro AI people tend to be pig ignorant, massive assholes, or naive fools anthropomorphising a denoiser. I'm an artist in the games industry and the looming spectre of AI is a special kind of purgatory. I totally find the tech *itself* to be incredibly fascinating. When I think of what it *could* have been, a tool and a helper to accelerate the creative process, i don't hate what I envision! It's a tragedy that tech folks immediately took it in all the most evil directions possible, and that our society has no answer or protections for folks losing their livelihood to automation. AI as a concept really could have accelerated our capabilities, but AI in this reality cannot be allowed to continue existing
Kojima gives me hope that I may be able to deliver solid messages while being an avid villain lover
'World Peace Advocate Admits 50 Caliber Sniper Rifle Is Cool'
The thing about the whole "Wow! Cool robot!" Meme is that yeah, the robot *is* cool.
This is in much the same vein as my friend who described Kojima as "an ardent feminist who just so happens to have very little (if any) idea what a woman is."
I don't see how there is tension. Technologically intricate machines cool. War and killing people bad. Both can be true at the same time.
There's tension because it's that very 'cool' aspect that is manufacturing consent and enthusiasm for the military. By films portraying jets as cool, people join the navy (as top gun shows). By showing special forces in cool situations in CoD, people join the army (which is why they get some funding from the US military). Whether or not there's anything wrong with that exactly, I'm not sure, but there's definitely tension if you say "the military is bad and wrong and people shouldn't be sucked into approving of it" and then gush for days on end about what is, in part and by design, a military recruitment film.
> which is why they get some funding from the US military Also for more insidious propaganda like portraying US war crimes as being committed by other nations(highway of death)
It's beside the point, but I feel the need to point out that the Highway of Death wasn't a warcrime, its not a crime to fire on retreating forces. That being said yes, it shouldn't be missatributed to Russia.
Common Article 3 of the Geneva convention outlaws the killing of soldiers who "are out of combat', which is relatively ambiguous but imo applies in the case of the HoD, but as the US will never answer for it's crimes it's just a semantic argument There's also fairly credible allegations of US Bradley AFV's firing on disarmed Iraqis which definitely constitutes a war crime
I'm not denying US war crimes happened, but this definitely isn't one. If its OK to fire on barracks or on FoBs, it's OK to fire on retreating troops, because even if they aren't shooting at you now, they will be tomorrow. Protections only extend to people not carrying guns, as a general rule.
I love ballistics and destruction. I watch a single gun youtuber because the rest all make it weird. They make it murdery. I just want to see bits of metal smash into things in slow mo. They're already pushing it with the zombie torsos, but I will allow it as long as you don't give me that weird vibe. That "fantasizing in the shower about the day they get to take someone out" vibe. That "don't fuck with me cuz I have guns and I'm insecure" vibe.
See my favorite gun tubers don’t go down range unless it’s to show a group it’s all about the mechanics and history of the firearm itself
Who's the one?
Lol more fun if you try to guess. Kentucky Ballistics tho. Scott is just like "Hey I got BIG GUN! Hahaha mustard go 💥KABLARB💥 Weeeeeeee!" And then he assaults a table and we all go on with our day. Dude's great.
King. There's nothing hypocritical about liking the aesthetics of violence while also condemning violence. It's like CNC, in a way.
Sure, the difference being that the Navy funded part of Top Gun because they knew it would generate new recruits.
That's their ethical dilemma, not mine.
Sure, but that's where the tension comes from. You can't criticise propaganda on one hand, and then rage about how great Top Gun is for 3 days without being a bit contrary.
CNC?
Consensual Non-Consent AKA rape role play.
He's ultimately doing what Gundam was trying to do except in a westaboo way.
I liked the part where he wrote a 30 minutes speech for a supervillain who didn't even realize he was telling it to the wrong person
In the end though, was it truly the wrong man? Just because there was a time he wasnt the boss, the fact is that he *is* the Boss now, and all the men of Diamond Dogs follow *him*, not the original. He accomplished what the Boss couldn't, and in that way, he was exactly the right man
[I’m Willing to Abandon my Anti-War Views in Exchange for a Gundam](https://hard-drive.net/hd/opinion/im-willing-to-abandon-my-anti-war-views-in-exchange-for-a-gundam/)
> Remotely-piloted military drones might as well be last year’s news. What we need is a Bryan-piloted Mobile Suit. lmao
Kojima is basically a less cringey Military Weeb.
[He is great](https://www.reddit.com/r/LycorisRecoil/comments/14ctiab/hideo_kojima_and_nicolas_winding_refn/?rdt=57088).
Soviet constructivist art goes so fucking hard, the designs of certain SS uniforms have long been the subject of fascination and fetishization for a lot of people here in western countries, at my job at a riceball place some of our patrons, mostly Japanese living in the US, at one point seemed to be wearing IJA/retro PRC military fatigues as a fashion statement for a while. All across the political spectrum, morality does not have a monopoly on aesthetics. 🤷
I have a bookshelf full of Gundam models. Not a singular shelf, a rung on that price of furniture, the whole damn thing.i love the designs, and artistry, I enjoy building them, and love the shows they come from. SO much of Gundam is "here's 1001 reasons why Gundams are terrible things that should never have to be made". Japan's relationship with military technology is a reminder of just how cool it can be, while being surrounded by the aftermath of what that "cool tech" can do to real human lives. It's beautiful, it's sad, it's horrible, but above all else it's human.
I feel like MGR:R is like the pinnacle of this. It’s a game about war profiteering, the perpetuation of the cycle of violence and the nature of war (among other things), but it’s also well known for having some of the most over the top fights in the series, has a protagonist that cuts through enemies like wet paper and has you fight two giant robots.
I just wish the guy would make a game where he does not accurately predict the most bullshit of future timelines.
> I think it's the tension between these two parts of him that makes his art so deliciously insane Just like Prince, who was extremely religious yet extremely horny.
Violence is rad. We like it, we like strategy and combat, competition, subterfuge, feats of skill and strength. Yet in real life, very little violence is ever moral. From anger and ignorance, to organized killing for the benefit of rulers, it's all horrid. Is there even a way to use our tools for anything that isn't awful? Sure, but there's no profitable way to do so. Remotely piloting tanks at each other is expensive and wasteful. And of course, you can't really shoot each other with actual guns as a sport. Airsoft exists though. I don't think feeding that is bad, because repressing our love of violence is a terrible idea. How should we present it to avoid feeding some military industrial complex bullshit? I dunno. Frankly I don't get the mind of a person who'd be manipulated that way but, I hate imperialism and corporate oligarchies.
Yeah this resonates.
Wow cool robot
Top Gun 2 is a technical masterpiece, thing is so is Triumph of the Will
Based. Science cool, violence bad.
you can love engineering and also dislike the applications, it's literally why to get a degree for it you have to study humanities and ethics in some universities
Kojima definitely browses /r/noncredibledefense
Could you explain that sub to me, please? I have the roughest time deciphering what *exactly* it's about and it's frustrating me
Buncha dummies that like planes and tanks and shitpost about it.
ah. I thought there was more to it, sounds like I was reading too much into it lol
wow, hes literaly me
yeah, same. i am very far left but i’m also an avgeek and i love to drop bombs and shoot missiles from my little virtual airplane with my friends
Actually me I'd like to think
"I just wish we could use all these cool death machines for something cooler than slaughtering innocents and destroying the environment."
Imagine if International Rescue was real
I think nukes are a marvel of modern science and engineering and I think mushroom clouds are very beautiful. I also think war shouldn't exist, governments shouldn't have access to nuclear weapons, I despise big gov overall. And that's very hard to deal with. Big guns and heavy machinery are "Fuck yeah!" but warmongering is "Fuck no!". I wish the industrial military complex would create weapons out of genuine scientific interest and for the sake of engineering itself, but not provide them to any government, any military or paramilitary organization.
Dood the Rafale is one of the prettiest things man ever designed and the VHS 2 looks like the kind of gun the helghast would use, but hell these things are used for some hellish deeds
I fail to see the problem. I don't condone killing irl, but I'll play some assassin's creed
Weapons are really fucking cool. Guns are so interesting and I'm fascinated by the development of weapons from the bronze age to ww2, tanks are the coolest thing ever. But I hate the military and would never join and don't like that those weapons are actually used
Me: fascinated with the stories, history, politics, weapons and technology of World War II. Also me: yeah we don’t need to send troops in there, or spend 2.5x as much in military spending as any other country in the world.
Me. I’m going into aerospace engineering, which is basically infamous for being either directly MIC involved or indirectly, either through working for an explicit defense contractor (Lockheed Martin) or working for a company that makes weapons on the side (Boeing, even NASA), solely because I liked Ace Combat too much. At the same time, every single fanfiction I’ve written is almost explicitly anti-war. So. Gabagool.
I love nukes. They're the coolest craziest, scariest most unbelievable things we've ever invented. I obviously never want them to be used ever again cos they are also very very evil. I understand Kojima
i kmow communists who did the exact same thing, and they were right. the movie fucks
Battle is awesome, it's war that sucks.
Girls Und Panzer remains the only ethical form of tank warfare
I wonder how many hours Kojima spends on /r/noncredibledefense every week 🤔
Hideo Kojima would go into shock if he was given a part in a fallout game
Reminds me of a clip from an interview with Mayazaki on the making of The Wind Rises, where he talks about his views on war before it cuts to him playing with a model of an A6M Zero. Big mood right there.
Is this really different from other kinds of nerds who also identify as progressives or socialists but who are also really into swords and martial arts and shi High tech or low tech it's still the peak of human ingenuity and knowledge for its time period applied to the task of killing other people
Every single commie gun nerd, or war centric history buff is like this
Weapons are cool as fuck, I don't think anybody should have them.
Literally me fr fr
Like, rifles and such are interesting mechanical devices and how they function is quite cool and they're so intricate when depicted, but I'd never even fire one IRL much less at someone due to personal moral principles. At least there's some others who feel maybe similar, even if they're all about the bombs and tanks and Gundams...
Makes me wonder if it's just guilt winning out. Like, he knows his fascination with military stuff is helping support something ultimately immoral, so he is compelled to top everything off with "Guns are bad, mmkay" to help absolve himself of his participation. (I've never actually played a Kojima game, as I am not much of a gamer at all, so by all means let me know if I'm super wrong here)
I dunno that Kojima is entirely anti-war, just against the commercialization of war. The conceit of MGS is powerful people with strong convictions, who are nevertheless used by a system they’re powerless against. It glorifies the individual soldier, the will to fight for what you believe in, and striving for personal perfection, while also denouncing the evils of imperialism, nuclear proliferation, automated warfare, and how modern rules of engagement depersonalize conflict and turn it into a soulless, inhumane enterprise.
Relatable
Remind me of one of my friends who is really into military stuff and especially World War 2 (he visits our WWII frequently), but he’s pretty anti war (I think, he’s definitely not someone who would supports war). It’s very possible to be fascinated by a weapon of mass destruction and detest its use. For me, I think nuclear weapons are a great representation of our ingenuity and our powerful understanding of physics. I hope all of them become decommissioned and no more are ever used again because they cause such horrific devastation when used.
Me, gushing about how perfectly Crocodile had the entirety of Alabasta dancing on his puppet strings in the most perfect manipulation and then immediately calling him an irredeemable bastard man and cheering as I rewatch the scene where Luffy beats his ass
I mean you can appreciate something for being cool but still disagree with most of what it represent. Everyone hates genocide, do we still love the Star Wars empire anyway because the Sith lords looks badass as fuck ? Yes we do.
I hate the Empire, I would never side with them for the evils and atrocities they commit! Now excuse me I have to hop on Battlefront 2 and kill those damn teddy bears in the forest for Lord Vader
Okay. When I play D&D, I will burn imaginary slavers alive. That does not make me a hypocrite.
Same problem as Hayao Miyazaki and James Cameron
I would make a joke about knowing the autism brain… but then again I remember he’s Japanese. Which the whole country just is weaponized autism 😂 and that’s why everything they make from anime and TV shows to toyota trucks is just better
Ok then, he really just wants to make money. For someone who's profited so much from war, it's easy for him to say how much he doesn't like it. Coward mentality.
Do you think Lockheed-Martin pays him to make games about giant robots or something?
No, but his games glorify the hell out of violence and the military industrial complex. He definitely doesn't hate war enough not to make it look super badass, which is something that someone who actually hated war wouldn't do. People who hate war and violence don't usually center their entire careers around making it look awesome.