askchapo

Is it an hexadecimal bear? A hexagonal bear? I am curious but I will also choose the funniest answer as the real one

Was the development of absolutism a response to the rising capitalist class, or off republicanism? My knowledge of late medieval history is really not as strong as it could be so I’m interested to hear what people think

Old school, broadcaster style parapolitical research guy from the 90s and earlier. Still active today. I got turned on to him some time back, and have been giving another listen to Emory/Nip Tuck on the Iran-Contra scandal. It's voluminous. Emory is pretty voluminous generally.

Lots of stuff about the Bush family, Iran-Contra, the CIA and drugs. He still produces content but I haven't listened to much of the new stuff. His old stuff is all pulled from published sources, books, newspapers, etc.

I'm not doing him justice with my description, but I surely can't be the only one here to have heard of him, at least amongst the older Chapos here.

usually don’t think about alternate timelines much, but this in particular sticks with me. would the world really be better off, as I see several people (not here) say it would have

My mother has been experiencing back pain for a few months now, and insists her chiropractor is making it "tolerable."

Whenever I plead with her to see a doctor or a physical therapist, or suggest that maybe the chiropractor is the problem she gets very upset with me. There is no convincing her of any alternative, she won't even get a second opinion and I'm not quite sure how to help at this point.

My sister got her got her an appointment to see a massage therapist, which she went to and said nothing but good things about, but she will not budge on the chiropractor.

I dunno maybe I'll just shut up about it, but it all just seems like quackery to me.

Been running a film night for a few months, mainly documentaries but the odd historical fiction like Battle of Algiers. I’m looking to get a bit more reach for it, maybe do some boosted ads on instagram and stuff.

Does anyone have any good ideas for a name? The best broad appeal I can think of is like “[City] Lefty Film Club” or something lol. Trying to go for something that progressively politically minded people might be interested in attending if they see an ad, make the left wing slant clear, but have a broad appeal.

Like does "Steve" sound like the word for "Big Boobs" in Basque or something.

Doesn't necessarily have to be about leftism

users must vote or be banned as we all take electoralism very seriously here

A few days ago, I called my GF "mod" by mistake when I was asking her to do something for me; I didn't even notice that I uttered that word in the moment, she had to point it out to me later on. The only other incident of this occurring was yesterday, where I accidentally called her "jannie" during sex instead of saying her name. It's only happened twice and in my opinion it's no big deal whatsoever. I'm only bothered as she keep bringing it up once in awhile, but I don't see any reason in discussing it. I just want to tell her drop it without upsetting her.

Like, really I’m not tryna be a dick here. I’m genuinely curious what yall think it will take for the majority of ameriKKKans to recognize this?

Apologies in advance for this being part rant.

I have a group of people who, in theory, are pumped up to go out and fight ICE. My local org is full of people who claim they want to do things, but what they actually do is endlessly bicker about theory minutae, criticism of other orgs or politicians, but rarely showing up.

I mean the org has turned out for some things but the most activity was one anti-ICE protest and then tagging along to a bunch of PSL events.

So we had a minor win with our immigration campaign the other day and were trying to pick a next action. I suggested several low-lift activities like canvassing local Hispanic businesses, handing out whistles and getting to know our community, or showing up to yell at Lib candidates to do better on fighting ICE. Doing more advocacy at local city council meetings. Going door-to-door in a local Hispanic neighborhood and getting to know people... and instead I get people saying we need a "mission statement" and wanting to plan out something perfect.

I feel like my local org doesn't know how to do anything! They mean well but I'm tired of sitting around waiting for buy in to do things I thought we should have been doing for six months now. Every little event is a huge ordeal and feels like pulling teeth!

IDK what to do. Am I personally being a poor organizer? Is there something I can do to convince people to start doing things and stop just talking about them? I could go out alone but I'd rather build a group that will go out together vs. my awkward ass walking into some Panderias.

Is there a manual for how to do this that actually works? I believe we had a reading group for No Shortcuts a year ago, but I guess that either didn't apply or people didn't learn anything from it.

I used to do odd jobs around my neighborhood as a teen and I actually kind of liked it, I got walking around money and the work was actually kind of fun and was maybe even a bit educational and enriching. I mean I guess this is also sort of the role Scouting/Pioneer organizations filled in society, since a lot of it is getting kids to do some free charity labor but it's for like nice stuff like cleaning up the park and not working in a factory.

IDK about having kids bag groceries and or be cashiers and shit. I think that's basically just a way for retail businesses to cheap out on labor.

I'm thinking Engels. Responsible, reliable, motivated, has money, knows how to manage it and is incredibly generous (he died with more than he gained from the factory sale despite supporting the whole German/communist underground in London).

Also who'd be worst? Would Marx ever catch up with his chores? Would Che disappear suddenly for months at a time?

(Not a very serious question obviously)

Podcasts sure, but I'm mostly thinking of good tv shows and webseries here, movie franchises and documentaries too. I want to set it going in VLC and turn the screen off, which is basically how I watch YouTube slop.

I feel like nightmares in media often involve a monster of some sort, but IME nightmares tend to be more grounded and involve someone I know personally doing something bad.

Alright, so the scenario is, I've got a bunch of MKV files with SRT subs that I want to edit together as follows:

1. Do a bit of trimming on each clip
2. Slap them onto a timeline
3. Render out to a single video with a single SRT, still with the correct timing relative to each clip (exporting the subtitles separately and muxing them myself would also fine)

I fumbled around with DaVinci Resolve for a while, but it doesn't seem to recognize the subs when they're embedded, and I couldn't figure out how to lock them together after the fact to allow the editing flow I described. I guess in most cases, the workflow is going to involve subtitling after editing, but idk, it doesn't seem like it'd be that difficult to support.

Most likely I'm just going to do the editing first and then sync the subs in AegiSub by noting the absolute offsets for each clip (along with how much has been trimmed from the beginning/end), pasting in each sub file separately, and then shifting them to the appropriate offsets (come to think of it, I can probably write a script to do it for me, although that could be a classic blunder). Kind of annoying, especially since you kinda have to do the math manually with AegiSub—wish you could just paste onto an existing sub line and have the subs start relative to that timecode. That being said, I only need to do like 8 videos at a time, so I'll live, and it's still waaaaaay faster than making the subs myself.

But...if there is a way to do what I wanna do smoothly and intuitively, I'd love to hear about it!

Spring Festival sucks because everything closes, all your friends go out of the country and there's nothing to do. I can't leave the country or I'll invalidate my immigration paperwork. Where would you go if you were in China and had a couple of weeks? Not the usual Great Wall Terracotta warriors stuff, but the cool things people want to do but can't. Maybe Red tourism? That's a whole tourism category in China but it's made for domestic audiences and is usually boring. Few artifacts, just lots of dioramas and photostats of old newspaper articles. More educational for CPC cadres. I've got the nationwide highspeed rail network at my command and enough money to keep me for the holiday. It'll be crowded because everyone else is traveling too but it's better than being stuck in my apartment. No beaches or sun, it's winter and Sanya is overrun with Russians anyway.

This is being spammed all over LinkedIn by one of the paper's authors. I can't say I've read many papers before but is this just rambling nonsense or am I too dumb to understand the point of this?

I was just reading the Guardian reporting on the ongoing anti-ICE protests across the US, and the word 'hundreds' kept coming up. Isn't that very very few people? In Spain you get a few hundred people protesting over niche local issues and it doesn't make the news.

What's it looking like where people are?