Scandal in Russian military town as new school is decorated with F-16 images | Hacker News Reader

Scandal in Russian military town as new school is decorated with F-16 images

thebarentsobserver.com

26 pointstype036 comments

This one is very common as every (insert your country) designer googles images of jets, tanks, what have you.

Happens every year on every side of multifaceted aisle.

This is true, but it probably remains a real faux pas in an autocracy that's currently invading a country which is defending itself using... F-16's.

For example, a few months ago the Canadian conservative party made a political ad talking about fighter jets conducting a training mission to defend Canada...

On top of video of Russian fighter jets: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservatives-video-deleted...

You can tell it's American because Russia doesn't make single engine fighters.

Interesting that the school officials felt they had to lie, despite it being so obvious to anyone who can Google "SU-27".

"It didn't happen but we fixed it" so no one needs to be help accountable.

It's not like they want to send the kids who did it to prison. Russian society operates as an efficient unaccountability machine.

>It's not like they want to send the kids who did it to prison.

You have a very weird impression of Russia.

In this case they don't want to.

Funny. And in which case kids were sent to prison?

They can’t make an engine reliable enough to only have one.

If Russia isn't bluffing about the Su-75 (fat chance), then supposedly they've got a design that can suit the task. But nothing is in operational service yet, so it's all one big nothingburger until then.

That embedded video is equally hilarious and depressing, especially at 1:26. Starship-Troopers-level cartoonishness.

I found it interesting that the F-16 is now flown by Ukranian pilots:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting...

> The F-16 is the fighter jet that has been used for several decades by nearby Nordic neighbors Norway and Finland.

Just to be clear, Finland has never operated F-16. Royal Norwegian Air Force retired their F-16 fleet few years ago, replacing it with F-35.

That's an international problem)

Su-27: https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/pr6ppb/us_air_for...

Typhoon submarine: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2021/04/01/april-...

So. Can we put the idea to bed about bad Putin, poor Russians ? This is a marketing video aimed at parents enrolling their kids. That they want you to see this tells a hell of a lot about societal values. Go look up some of the surviving Hitler jugend footage, or the militaristic scouts clubs in later East-Germany. Isn't it getting a little too close for comfort ?

It’s a matter of poor brainwashed people. So, yes — it is the people of Russia’s fault, but not everyone has access to sensible information. And any given individual, quite rationally, doesn’t want to risk their life to make a pointless stand.

Also, I guess many find it hard to believe their beloved country could really be so corrupt and perpetrate such evil. And that’s understandable.

Letting yourself buy into the regime narratives takes, at the very least, complicity. The people in Russia know the state narrative is unreliable. They know there exist other narratives out there. They choose not to seek them out. It's wilful oblivion.

Wired published a great recount of what choosing oblivion looks like, and how it fails you: https://www.wired.com/story/russia-invaded-ukraine-choice-pr... (https://archive.is/ZkYzd).

> They choose not to seek them out.

Some of them. And the answer to "how many?" is incredibly hard to answer.

Being $bad because of $ideology is no excuse for being $bad. That causal vector can be amazingly helpful for forgiveness at a later point in time, but forgiveness cannot start before being $bad stops. Preemptive forgiveness is a terrible idea.

Government propaganda tells you very little about the society as a whole, especially in authoritarian countries. That said ordinary Muscovites seem to have no qualms about running an imperialist state that concentrates wealth from ethnic minorities into only two regions. Corruption is widely accepted, and self-promoting lies are tolerated as just vranyo. Alcoholism is a massive problem. There’s a pretty high tolerance for violence, since Russia’s casualties in this war dwarf the numbers Americans saw in Vietnam. Plus, the safety regulations are atrocious; important people keep falling out of windows.

I think it’s safe to say Russian values are at at the heart of their social problems.

Aren't you forgetting someone?

Just as individualising Putin 'evil' (for a lack of a better word) is dumb, and you are right to call it out, pushing it on something such as 'values' isn't great either. The material conditions that enable Russian society to be this violent (and this isn't a new thing btw, it's hundreds of years old) are complex, and imho 'values' have pretty much nothing to do with it.

If you are going to characterise hundreds of years of behaviour in Russia as excessively violent, wouldn’t that indicate a problem with its values?

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