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My brother in law is using his engineering degree to work for various arms companies, including DARPA. His wife justifies it by saying “He only makes things for good countries like the US”.
A few years ago, he, his wife, my wife, another sister in law and his kids were in a car, and he was talking about why it’s justifiable to drone-strike school buses. He said “Well, there were some really bad people on those buses.” I ask “What makes them bad?”, and he says “You know, they make bombs, that sort of thing.”
I turned to him and said “YOU make bombs. By your rationale, this car with your entire family is every bit as much a justifiable target as those school buses.”
The entire car went silent, and later, my wife thanked me for not going any further.
He’s the most morally-bankrupt person I’ve ever met, and I hate being in the same room as him. His wife isn’t much better, and is the epitome of the portion of the working class that’s been tricked into thinking they’re better than that. She’ll handwave away the fact that in her career, she’s been directly responsible for firing thousands of people “for the good of the company”.
For what it’s worth, I believe at the moment of death, people can no longer lie to themselves and have to face what they’ve done through the eyes of their inner child. Some people have these realisations at some earlier point, too. But I don’t believe anyone gets away with it.
That’s what “live each day like it’s going to be your last” means to me. Face up to the decisions you made as if you’re your own jury, because eventually you will be.I hope you’re right.
At the moment of death you make a gurgling sound (unless you get like, splattered or whatever) and then it suddenly goes black like the end of the sopranos because your consciousness shuts off. Well it’s not really that, it’s inconceivable, it’s nothingness, it returns to the state prior to being born. Your consciousness is not magic or mystical, it’s merely an illusory byproduct of very high quality stimulus processing and extremely intricate nervous system for sensory input coupled with the capacity for short and long term memory. There is no magic moment of reconciliation unless self induced through social conditioning (eg religious guilt) and people like Trump and musk ultimately win by having a life of hedonistic excess with no repercussions while the rest of us slave away for a half day off and an aliexpress trinket here and there.
(sorry for spoiling a show that ended 18 years ago)
Meh, your guess is as good as mine.
deleted by creator
Defense industry, law enforcement, and surveillance are all instant dealbreakers for me whenever a recruiter reaches out to me. And sadly that seems like the vast majority of positions for which recruiters are looking for candidates.
That or AI shit.
I’m so tired of the tech industry.
Science grad with 10 years engineering experience. I had to turn down a lot of jobs before I found one that didn’t involve killing people. It took two years. I’m paid about half of what I could get if I sold my morals. Totally worth it.
Depending on engineering discipline, oil & gas is another common one.
There’s positive tech stuff out here too, bud. You’ll likely need to look for yourself though, the recruiter reaching out to you is better funded for some reason.
I don’t think anyone with an engineering degree would believe there’s a hell. Neither should you.
True, these people will not face justice through any natural force of the universe, only by people holding them accountable for the harm they cause.
Although I can imagine what hell would look like: commuting for 1h to sit in an office that has more people than desks to have a zoom meeting over VPN with flaky wifi and AC that is set to overheat whoever sits under the vent and under heat everyone further.
Oh did I tell you that meeting could have been an email? And the coffee machine broke yesterday. And there’s a bathroom queue.
Well, tomorrow morning, commuting hell will be sitting next to me. I don’t know what those samosas had in them but I sound like a WWII machine gun nest and smell like aisle 3 at the spice store.
there’s probably an infinite number of paths, and an even greater number of perspectives to be considered across each moment and position along each of them. or absolutely nothing at all. most other possibilities seem so unlikely, they probably aren’t worth considering
Instructions unclear, I work at a prosthetics company.
I desperately wanted to get a degree in mechanical engineering so I could go to work for an arms company (like Heckler & Kock, FN Herstal, etc.). Never happened, got an art degree instead. Then I met a guy that owns a very small firearms company, and, well, yeesh. It’s a brutally hard business. He makes a good product, he has good morals and ethics, but the market is so saturated that anyone smaller than the largest arms companies are hemorrhaging money. Glad I didn’t try to live my dream now.
I may not like what governments do with arms, but good goddamn, the arms themselves are neat.
“He has good morals and ethics”
How could he possibly if he has devoted his life to creating weapons? What’s his response if and when his guns are used for violence, be it murder, suicide, armed robbery, etc? Even if he is “small time” for “enthusiasts” of the “sport” it is only a matter of time until this occurs. How does he reconcile this? That it’s not the guns fault? Just the glamorization of them, the obscene amount of them, the fact that they are readily available, pushing it onto “mental health”, or some other scapegoat that allows him to escape accountability for facilitating mortal violence.
I hope your friend goes out business and his entire industry collapses.
His response, as is mine, is that what people use his guns for simply isn’t his business. If people used Stanley hammers to beat people to death, would it mean that Stanley was an immoral company? Or would it mean that people used the product in an unlawful and immoral way?
I happen to very, very strongly believe in 2A, and I think that the US is in the shitstorm it is currently in in no small part because liberals–but not leftists–have been working their asses off to disarm themselves. And I will note that the person in question has consistently employed furries–he loves their work ethic–and strongly supports the rights of LGBTQ+ people to arm themselves.
I find that there’s a lot of overlap between people who like engines, clocks, and guns. They’re all machines with a concrete goal, harnessing an incredible force in a very controlled way, through precise, complex mechanisms and allow near complete freedom on how exactly you achieve that goal. There’s a beauty to it that’s hard to find anywhere else.
Not an engineer, but I have I have Asian parents, if I were an engineer and worked for a genocidal dictator, they wouldn’t care, that’s success anyways.
So… yea…
people value success over ethics
welcome to life
society…
Wouldn’t they still be disappointed that you are an engineer and not a doctor?
what are engineers, if not machine doctors?
💀
Do you think your Taiwanese background plays into that kind of thinking?
Also if you have any disabilities, like if you have depression. Oh your parents are gonna be so cruel to you. You are a “useless eater”.
What the fuck is this life. Why?
I wasn’t even supposed to be born. Why the fuck am I here. This fucking suffering.
Is there any chance to move out from your parents, and surround yourself with people with different ideals?
No chance. My brain is fucked.
I literally felt so much anxiety when I tried to live on campus so I ended up withdrawing from college altogether.
I’m just feeling so ashamed of myself for being such a failure I kinda think about killing myself all the time. Depression is so hard, I don’t have the energy to do anything.
It was already bad enough before, now I feel so anxious going outside because of ICE.
I have trouble dealing with other people. I don’t think I can handle roomates… I mean I did had roommates in college, and I kinda… everyone hated me. Well they didn’t say it, but I feel like I was unwelcomed.
I have a lot of health issues. I snore when I sleep and it annoys everyone.
Rent is so expensive these days you can’t be by yourself, but roomates is also a… no no.
I’d probably just get stabbed to death since I have no social skills (well not like zero, but I never really made friends in school, so… there… I doubt I’d get along with randos as roomates in like the adult world no-less)
I mean, I even have trouble finding psychaitric help and feel anxious af trying to schedule an appointment.
I need my parents’ money to even afford health related stuff. Y’all know how it is in the US. They say “seek professional help” but nobody ever mentions the money aspect.
This is years of emotional abuse and neglect.
They destroyed my ability to be independent.
I mean even my older brother 5 years older than me probably has problems being independent. He’s still at home with us.
I know I sound pathetic af
Our family is just a bunch of failures
Shitty parenting destroyed us
Thanks a lot, Confucious and your “filial piety” tiger parenting bullshit.
even just your awareness and ability to articulate yourself,as well as the capacity for consequential reasoning and your willingness to empathize with your brother all seem like priceless artifacts of your humanity which will become more precious and respected as we all start continue recognizing and discussing the realities we have seen throughout our twisted and tumultuous lives, and we are able to gracefully “live (well enough) and let die (or let go without bitterness)” the mistakes of these past few generations and all the shit they have been cooking for themselves and others all around them, to justify how they have been making it by, through all the thick and thin that they had all been making up and giving to each other.
I’m from mainland China (currently residing in the US), profile pic is because I hate the 5-Star Red Flag and the politics it represents.
Probably something with Asian cultures’s obsession with the idea of “success”. Like… my parents literally wouldn’t care if I became some corrupt government official as long as I don’t get caught. Success is worshipped, failure is shamed. I talk shit about trump, and like my mom said “at least he became president, can you do that?”
I’m like: “naturalized citizens can’t be president”
omg immediately less than 1 second later, mom goes: “but Gary Locke became Governor” (Gary Locke is a Chinese American)
And like you know Mamdani won, immedialy after, she told me “an immigrant managed to become Mayor, you are an immigrant just like him, why can’t you do the same?” bruh… maybe I could if I didn’t get so much emotional damage, mom.
Like they worship success, regardless of if they are “good” or “bad” people.
If you try to be a good person and you “fail” in life, you are considered worse than the bad person in power making a lot of money.
I’m like just so close to killing myself, even though I really wanna live, this is too painful, depression is too painful.
My parents are slowly killing my ethics and empathy, like one day I might just not care.
Either you die young with your morals intact, or you seek success and survival, and you corrupt your soul…
This world is cruel. The world wants you to be cruel to be able to even live a comfortable life.
Mate I hope you get hold of your depression and find a way to sort or ignore your problems in a healthy, guilt free way.
Look I’m from South America and I get what you’re saying. Many parallels although to a lesser degree. Probably because South America has had tough life but not as tough as South East Asia.
I’m not asian but that bsounds like a lot of what i’ve heard called Asian Guilt. I’ve heard American Asians get a lot of flak for not measuring up to the likes of Jonny Kim. --personally, i’m finding it easier to deal with familial disappointment while living an ethical life as oppose to living an unethical life while still dealing with familial disappointment because i’m not gonna measure up to someone elses standards. Anyways, be good to yourself, there’s no guarantee anyone else will. Have you gone for a walk lately?
Gods, I’m considering Job hopping and I saw Lockheed was hiring for my role, less experience, less certs, full remote, and quadruple my pay.
I had to block them on indeed and LinkedIn. I hated that I was considering it.
yeah they’re an option in my area and I’ve made the decision several times to not look at any positions they have
I sometimes wonder if we all truly have a price for our souls. I felt similarly when seeing positions at health insurance companies, pay was high enough that I paused despite how much I despise them.
That moment when you quit the arms company and joined the legs company:
I’m stealing this
This is why I focused on graphics hardware for so long… Then some arsehole came up with running AI on GPUs.
series of increasingly large dominoes where the smallest is “NVIDIA releases CUDA” and the largest is “the entire global economy has become dependent on running a useless computer program that tricks stupid people into believing it can do anything worthwhile”
Yeah, I got started in silicon thinking cheaper, faster, more power efficient chips would be a net benefit to the world… Then we became a social media surveillance state and AI dogshit is just the icing on the cake.
Now I drink to forget we’re boiling the oceans to ruin society. One day this capitalist hellscape will end.
There’s still a few of us out here using ROPs and texture units
I just use my skills to make gooner games. My soul is pure. To heaven I shall go. Unironically.
I would like to goon to some of your games
Thank you for your service.
Raytheon would be equally accepted here.
Yea I’m an LGBTQ+ ally:
The ally they’re talking about:
L ockheed Martin
G eneral Dynamics
B AE
T exas Instruments
Q inetiq
“our hiring system is even less discriminatory than our targeting system!” -their motto, probably
"our hiring system is even less discriminatory than our targeting system!" -their motto, probably
Bravo!
I know TI had a history of weapons manufacturing, but haven’t they stopped now?
I believe so. I guess a more appropriate one would be Textron since they still make helicopters?
How many children have they tortured with their graphing calculators?
Look man, making missile killing lasers is just way more interesting than building another pointless SUV to a price target.
Building the SUV would be more ethical though.
Then they become human ablating lasers as the tech keeps shrinking…
To quote Casually Explained:
"The only real question engineering students and new grads need to know the answer to is ‘When is it ok to violate your moral principles?’
…
Exactly. It has to be at least 6 figures."
I may be an engineer, but I am still too fucking stupid to get a job at an arms company
It’s easier than you’d think. The applicant pool doesn’t tend to be the best and brightest.
One of the guys I went to college with is an amazing programmer and had such a great understanding of C that hes why i got as far into CS as i did, couldn’t get a job after grad because 1) Covid and more importantly 2) he’s insufferable.
He got a job making $100k a year for I wanna say Lockheed because he quote “Wrote good looking code”. That’s all they needed because Tue DoD already told them that the project he was hired for was not going to be adopted, but they were still contracted for minimum 2 more years of development and Lockheed would be in breach of contract if they weren’t making progress even though it was already Dead.
The Military industrial complex is JUST a grift to put tax dollars in private hands.
He got a job making $100k a year
$100k per year writing code at a defence contractor isn’t very much.
There’s a monumental amount of waste in there. I’ve seen a department order a truckload of equipment from compUSA, a reputable vendor, and it shows up with open brown cardboard boxes of used equipment. Staff SGT rubber-stamped it. Somebody made bank. Shit like that was ALWAYS going down.
That’s why I work at a legs company
