askchapo

Boots on the ground or TACO as usual?

I remember when I first entered the adult world paying my bills online was super easy.

These days, I feel like half the time I log onto some doctors office or mechanics website to pay a bill the site is like "yeahhhh, idk why but I'm just not going to accept your credit card. Also the button to the 'finalize payment' screen is grayed out even though you filled out everything."

And they you email tech support and they're like "idk delete your cookies I guess? That didn't work? Guess you gotta mail us a money order."

Hi friends. Is it fucked up to flirt with someone with no intention of taking it further? I'm in a long-term monogamous relationship. Sometimes I crave a little validation from strangers. I'm not going to cheat on my partner, but I do have a need to feel desirable to others. I don't feel like a bit of flirting is a betrayal of my relationship, but I'm less confident about how other people feel. Like, I don't want to waste someone else's time, but I guess maybe I am leading people on a bit if I chat with them without mentioning my partner.

What historical figures (recent or ancient) can compare to Trump?

Liberals will of course say Putin (which of course they know nothing about), but in my limited knowledge, Putin gained support by reighning in oligarchs and stabilizing the country. Trump is doing the opposite of this.

In my limited knowledge, he seems most like Boris Yeltsin. A complete dolt and perfect avatar for the terminal stage of a failed empire.

I think certain traits are unprecedented. He may be the most anti-social leader in history. His administration is doing things that don't make sense on a societal level, like defunding research for extreme weather and disease prevention.

Maybe this is just the most extreme form of narcissism on history: the entire world can end as long as I get what I want.

I mean If ever there was a time, right? Might as well put a materialist understanding of the world to work.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11136332

Many leftist movements, legit or not, call themselves either Trotskyist or Maoist and keep dissing Stalin for his “socialism in one state” policy and “ruining” Comintern and Deng Xiaoping for his “liberal” policies.

I want to know what they are trying to do by distancing themselves from the USSR and PRC while fetishizing Cuba and Vietnam—you’ll only hear them talking about the Vietnam War, btw—and following either the guy who lost the power struggle or a literal Marxist-Leninist who supported one of the refused countries and founding the other.

Maybe this is too fedposty (and let me know if it is), but I've been thinking about this a lot, especially with how things are going in Iran. It seems like modern warfare is basically just "my drones strike your drones", and if either side has drones free to not strike other drones, they can instantly kill whoever they like. With this in mind, is it even really possible for a revolution in the US to escalate into a civil war without simply being air-superiority'd into oblivion with modern sensors? Is guerilla war viable anymore? The main counterpoint I can think of to this possibility is that the US military is A: incompetent and B: mostly a colonial garrison force, but I don't know.

(And yeah, I know a revolution in the US would have a whole laundry list of prerequisites and is significantly hindered by the fact it can't be tied with anti-imperial nationalism. I'm talking strictly in terms of if it actually happened.)

Mine is when someone tried to tell me that superannuation (my countries version of 401K I think) is communism

Serious replies only, please! I assume this is some pro-hitler anti-trans hate à la 4chan, but perhaps I’m wrong.

Cropped and censored some identifying info to make doxing myself slightly more difficult.

Graaaaaaaaainnsss

I did a reverse image search - I don't know a single concrete detail about the photo.

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Edit

Counted 25 ICE officers (most with ERO vests) during my 26-minute wait in the LGA Terminal C Touchless line this morning. every one of them was either standing doing nothing or slowly walking the length of the line doing nothing. at least four were in masks.

https://bsky.app/profile/greenwell.bsky.social/post/3mhsma252rk2q

"Make me one with everything"

Like I've noticed normal people can say sit down and watch a whole movie, or play long stints of video games. Myself on the other hand, if something exciting happens or I get too stimulated, I need to take a break and walk away. Weird right? I noticed it more as I got older, when I was younger I'd normally just binge watch things or play games all afternoon. Today I can only do so much in short spurts, like an hour at a time, or else I get too worked up and stressed out.

Is this on the spectrum or maybe auhd?

Explanations I've seen:

• to drive up oil / gas prices (the problem is that the prices are too high, which accelerates the global green energy revolution and the end of the fossil fuel industry while destabilizing western "society"; successfully seizing Iran's oil would have presumably lowered prices too);

• Trump's ego, bolstered by Maduro's kidnapping and the seemingly successful counter-revolution in Venezuela; the imperial ruling class thought they were invincible because they haven't suffered a really palpable defeat since Vietnam (I guess Afghanistan / Yemen doesn't count...);

• to protect the Zionist entity and the Gulf Monarchies and also to shore up American influence in the region;

• to slow China's rise (Iran supplies lots of China's fossil fuels);

• a distraction from the Epstein files;

• lots of powerful ghouls have been itching to do this since 1979;

• to stop Iran's nonexistent nuclear weapons program;

• to game the stock market.

Did I miss anything? What are the most plausible / implausible explanations? Are they all valid? I'm not sure, I'm asking because I want comments / critiques. Also, are we headed to a permanent nationwide blackout in the USA (as predicted by The Simpsons) and the Mad Max-ification of all but the top 10% or will things "go back to normal"? Or will this just become another Ukraine War?

Bonus Q: how are the libs and chuds you know reacting to the war? My spouse thinks that Iran is currently winning but the USA will eventually prevail 🥴

I'm gonna start doing watch parties of the popular anime series Uma Musume starting six weeks from now. Similar to my vow to create land acknowledgement videos whenever I show for-profit TV/film productions created on Indigenous land, I also want to make a short video before showings of Uma Musume that state in clear terms that the show was created to promote horse betting.

My current script looks like this:

Tonight's feature presentation has financial ties with and seeks to normalize horse racing, a highly exploitative industry predicated on the physical and mental abuse of animals. Horse racing, as well as this cartoon's tie-in video game, finances itself by vampirizing people's wallets through gambling: corporations exploiting human psychology to create a highly addictive waste of your time and money.

DON'T BE A SUCKER! Don't buy gachas! Don't bet on horses! Don't give your money to animal abusers! Your money is better spent on ending the cruel practice of horse racing! The only acceptable amount of money to spend on gambling is zero! Treatments for problem gambling are effective!

Which takes about 32 seconds for me to read out loud.

This script will be set to an instrumental of The Animals' "The House of The Rising Sun", cliché as that song may be; and the visuals may include statistics related to horse racing and/or gambling, and, more importantly, links and QR codes to organizations fighting to end horse racing, and support for overcoming gambling addictions.

And this is the main point where I'd like assistance:

• What should I link to, specifically? Especially bearing in mind that these videos will be aimed at an international audience.
• What sorts of statistics should I include?
• Are there ways the script can be improved? The balance of focus on animal abuse vis-a-vis gambling addiction? More focus on the "normalization" aspect of the show, or that pirating it still contributes to its value as a commodity? The length or brevity?

So with gas prices steadily rising, I'm wondering what my options are. A decent $2000 ebike is way out of my price range, but I've got a 29inch huffy with a bent rear wheel I was already looking to replace. So the thought of maybe trying one of these rear wheel ebike kits seems more within my price range. Anybody done it and had positive results?

This is what I'm looking at, that seems the most affordable.

https://www.amazon.com/INPAITOO-Bicycle-Conversion-Mutifunction-Display/dp/B0FCY26ZXP

Are there places where one can purchase aluminum tent poles or fiberglass poles with a larger wall size?

One of my tents, a Kelty Tanglewood 2, has split a second fiberglass pole on a camping trip this weekend while my daughter was sleeping in it.

I'm searching for a replacement, and I'd like to not give Kelty any more of my dollarydoos. The first one they seemed to begrudgingly send a pole by itself, but this time around they will not send a pole, they are requesting destruction of the tent, fly, and the other fiberglass pole before they will send me an entire fucking tent setup as a warranty replacement, with photo evidence.

That sounds like a terribly wasteful way to do business and frankly despite my second thoughts on purchasing Kelty products there isn't anything wrong w the tent/fly. I don't want to landfill a whole shredded tent because they won't warranty a lone pole.

Im aware abt the south korean troop buildup, border clashes, that the peninsula being split in the first place was due to US meddling and the fascism, mass murders and rebellions in the south but im struggling to tie it together in a way that 1) fully makes sense 2) that id be able to explain to a normie without sounding like

Also, if u have specific articles/sources abt the border clashes and general escalation from the south, id rly appreciate that

I've read that the CCP, observing how Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin was catastrophic for the Communist cause globally, never attacked Mao after his death but emphasized on separating "Mao Zedong thought" from Mao the man, whom they say made mistakes in his later years.

Of course it seems intuitive how such a vehement repudiation of the head of the biggest communist state would be detrimental for communism worldwide but how did it actually happen in practice?

Surely communists didn't just become liberals after hearing about le evil communist. Though it certainly must have been grist for the anticommunist propaganda mill.

I see Baltic states being used as an example of why soviet communism was ineffective and unequal, and I am finding it harder to argue using statistics and polls due to the anti-communism, and the GDP fall being less sharp, and recovering quicker (as well as me being unable to find GDP PPP graphs for pre-1991 dates)