askchapo

This is not for sketchy reasons, I swear. All the primo spaces in our apartment building's bike storage room are taken up by rusting rotting flat-tired cobwebbed piece of shit bikes that clearly haven't been used in years. Half their owners probably moved out of the building and left them there. I have repeatedly asked building management to implement some kind of use-it-or-lose-it tagging system so if a bike isn't moved in a year it gets junked but they're basically useless and will never get around to doing even minor computer-only things unless you pester them at least six times, let alone something requiring actual effort like this. So.

I want to pick the locks on these bikes and either move them to the back of the bike room or if they're obviously junk just throw them out. How difficult is it to pick kryptonite u-locks? Is it also possible to re-lock them afterward? Is there any danger of damaging the bike locks? Some of the bikes also use tube-style combo locks which I know can be fairly easily cracked using the screwdriver tension method (and already managed to do this for a tiny 3-combo lock). Any general tips for getting started? Is it basically impossible to go from never having picked a lock to picking a u-lock? Assume time is no constraint, I can hang out there and pick them for however long is needed.

It might be a dumb question but I don’t want to risk fucking him up somehow—what I’m most worried about is his stuffing getting mildew-y or otherwise borked. I’m pretty sure, almost certain actually, he’s polyester inside. Do I just dunk him in some soapy water, scrub him, and leave him in the sun for a while? Can I throw him in the washer next time I do laundry? He’d fucking love that.

Whenever I’m really sad it feels like either heartburn, or this “tightness” or something just below my sternum.

Also Creamsicle says he’s sorry for making a dumb post. Here’s a picture of him with a noodle on his head.

Btw I take him to the vet when he eats cat food because that’s Gregory’s cat food. I tell the vet he got into some chocolate so they’ll give him an emetic and maybe he’ll decide the cat food isn’t worth it and there won’t be a next time, but he’s an idi—GOD DAMNIT CREAMSICLE COME BACK HERE.

”Yay!”

not really interested in the prager U version of the cold war so i wont bother typing "cold war documentary" into YT. if you guys have recs pls share, thank you

Obviously fuck these laws. And even if these laws state that universities cannot legally divest, they should divest anyway and say 'fuck you, take me to court'--but, with that aside, what are the actual details of these laws?

I know it varies state to state, but in PA, for example, where the UPenn encampment was raided this morning, the university says "Penn remains unequivocally opposed to divestment, and it is unlawful for institutions receiving funding from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."

From what I can tell, there's just a 2016 law that states that the government of PA essentially can't do business with entities that have divested from Israel--but how does that legally prevent the entity from actually doing so on their part?

I keep seeing this claim that "It's illegal to divest, so we as a university can't do so. Tough luck." Not only is it ethically BS, but it seems to be a straight up lie, too?

Was reading a university sub- and I saw the same two hypocrisy gotcha responses from chuds.

1 ) These protesters should go live in Gaza since they keep complaining. I don't see the logic here? The protesters don't like the place getting bombed so they should go to that place and experience the bombing themselves? If anything shouldn't it be the opposite? That people who think current treatment of Gazans is justified should go experience Gaza for themselves to walk a mile in their shoes? Now that I think about it, maybe the logic behind the gotcha is that alternative left-wing types would not be accepted in a socially conservative muslim country? Even if that were true, still doesn't mean kids from there should get bombed.

2 ) The protesters are against the walls and checkpoints encircling Gaza from, yet the protesters have barricaded their encampment with a plastic sheath so they can control who comes in and out. So are the chuds here saying they're against all barricades including the Gaza one? Or are they saying they agree all barricades are bad? Or just hypocrisy in and of itself is bad? Denouncing the wall is fine, as long you stay consistent and also don't use a plastic barricade yourself? How are these things even being equated in the first place? Oh you're against the Berlin Wall yet your apartment complex has a fence behind the dumpsters. You're a hypocrite which is the real crime here.

Anyway I know I'm preaching to the choir. How do you all deal with braindead smug gotchas? I guess it's time to touch grass?

Disclaimer: before you post anything ask yourself if you are going to dox yourself or someone else and if you are going to get anyone put on a higher priority watchlist than they're already on, yourself including. If the answer is yes, do not post it.

Some things are better talked about in an oblique way (and referencing Minecraft after the fact is about as useful in this regard as posting an image on Facebook saying that you do not consent to them using your personal information), some things are better off whispered in person, some things are better off not talked about at all. With that out the way...

What are some interesting things that you have come across?
What are you surprised about not being adopted more widely?

Shits getting real and it's worth having a discussion about what can make protests more effective. I'm talking group strategy, personal tactics, protective gear - anything really.

I don't know what I should do and this website is basically what goes for my social support system these days, so I'd like some advice please.

So I drive a very old car that until recently I didn't use much. It's from 2003 and it has less than 150k miles on it. It has a check engine light that I learned today comes from a tiny crack in the (a?) cylinder head gasket that's causing me to lose coolant. They quoted me 3-4k USD to replace it.

If they said 2k I might have been able to melt my debit and credit cards at the same time MAYBE. But 4k I need a loan for.

It's possible that this place is just a ripoff. I'm partially just talking this out right now so I should really get on the phone and find out if I can find something that won't break me.

Part of why it seems like it might be a ripoff is that I can find the parts (according to my completely uneducated and untrained figuring) on autozone.com for like 250 bucks. Maybe I can just do it myself? Maybe my landlord has tools? Or I can rent some maybe?

The guy at the car doctor said that if I wasn't going to do the repair I should probably trade it in sooner than later while it still holds value. Down this path I might really start crying about needing an adult though. A whole branching tree of decisions to make afterwards.

And to bring up an added complication: part of why I don't have a solid chuck of the downpayment of a house on hand to deal with this is that I was semi-homeless up until three months ago (friday is the anniversary). A downstream complication to that is that I never received my auto registration renewal from the state of CA. And by the time I realized it was a thing I should have had to deal with already, my shit expired. I'm pretty sure they're going to make me do a smog check which requires that I don't have an engine light on. So it's extra fucked to be driving with it right now. Oh and my insurance dropped me over a dispute over late charges I refuse to pay because they didn't tell me I owed them money and sent shit to the wrong address over and over.

So I guess an informal poll:

A: I shop around for a mechanic that's willing to fix my cars for the clothes off my back + fill up my credit card again ( T_T ) IF I CAN FIND ONE (and if not I guess take out a loan)

B: I buy the parts/find the tools and see if it's possible to do it myself, on like, a weekend.

C: I throw in the towel on my car and try to find a replacement somehow despite being broke enough to be here

D: Something I'm not thinking of.

I fucking hate this. I hate cars. I wish I could bike. I wish I could take transit. I hate having this single point of failure in my life that can completely sweep my still shaky legs out from under me, which I just now finally got up onto. I need advice because this decision could literally be the fucking end of the world for me. Yay.

edit: the specific car is a 2003 Suzuki Areio

I don't wanna have to listen to a Mattless episode to find out

looks like the nostalgia critic's even worse sibling (worse than his other already horrific sibling)

So @EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net had a nice comment here in a previous thread explaining the dynamic of Jewish people's attitude toward Israel.

I think everyone here understands that it is in Israel's benefit to (1) conflate antisemitism and antizionism to both silence dissent and (2) foster the perception that antisemitism is increasing, and even (3) encourage actual antisemitism/ally with antisemites so that Jews living in countries around the world feel under threat. Israel can then position itself as the final lifeboat for Jewish people to survive capitalism as it degrades into fascism that will almost certainly target them. Of course fleeing to Israel means becoming a settler-fascist yourself, but this is quite a tough choice to put in front of somebody and there are quite a few mental escape hatches one can use about working to change the system from within once you're there or whatever.

So the problem we face is this: Under the assumption that the support (enthusiastic or mere tolerance) of Jewish people in the US for Israel is important to maintaining US support for Israel, or at least for maintaining the veneer of legitimacy for this support, how can we convince people to give up their lifeboat? I think this is quite a large ask. Many of us here believe the imperial core is inevitably degrading into fascism under the repetitive two-step of overt slides to the right & neoliberalism slightly arresting this process but making people widely despise electoral politics. This fascism will target Jewish people, and the fascists are perfectly happy to have somewhere to ship Jewish people off to instead of killing them as they build their white ethnostate. Many other minorities will also be targeted but do not have the luxury of a similar lifeboat. How can we square this circle?

Obviously I've been hitting up LinkedIn, Indeed, and all that for remote jobs that fit my tech background. Also have been trying to get into nonprofit work as thats much more my speed, but here we are.

I've got about a month of unemployment left, and since getting let go in September, I've only had 3 interviews.

A few Hexbears have pointed me to this site for remote work:

https://www.dataannotation.tech/

But unfortunately, over a week after setting up my profile there, no work has been kicked my way.

Anything similar out there I can use to help myself out here?

Thanks comrades

Who wins?

• remove siding
• jack up house
• remove rotted material (rim joist and sill plate) and replace with pressure treated wood
• replace siding
• install subfloor (10 sq ft or so with some cutting)

High but not ultra high COL area

Can be anything from any source, movies, books, comics, video games, manga, anime etc.

Pic related is mine, the dragonslayer from berserk. I like it because it's simple. It's just a big fucking sword, no fancy bells and whistles like enchantments or spells.

Second runner-up is sting from lord of the rings, I like that it glows blue when orcs are around and it can be used in the dark as a light source.

I clowned a scratched lib recently for being french-canadian and proud of it, and that was pretty funny. But more recently someone else asked me about that incident a bit, and then she pretty much shilled for the French at me.

She said stuff like "well French canadians are a bit more complicated I guess... lots of them are metis or straight up native american" and "they had an alliance with them[indigenous peoples] and did marriages to strengthen it" ( ) and even "A lot of Acadians went to live with natives when colonies were disbanded by france". With a little bonus "Yes the French were really strong on defending Mi'kmaqs and saw them as the actual authority on the land" as a treat.

Now, I don't believe most of this nicey-nice pro-French shit for a second. But I sort of had to ask, how and why the hell were the French even there to start with? You rarely if ever hear about French colonists in North America; they still stole all the land like any settler-colonialists, right? Glancing at NATOpedia, I can see that Iroquois peoples were not overly happy at the french being there, which is about what I would expect. (although they did align with Dutch and English settlers themselves) The French government sent over "indentured servants" to their colony too, which, oof. Also

Enslaved men, women and children represented approximately 65 percent of the 6,000 non-indigenous population of Louisiana by the end of French rule.

Haiti pre-1791 moment. But funny enough, the NATOpedia article rarely makes mentions of any abuses of New France's indigenous populations, other than a bunch of wars with the Iroquois(started by Some Guy de Bastard murdering a few of their chiefs, it seems). That has to be a lie by ommission, right? Like

Modern historians have highlighted that despite largely functional relations with indigenous peoples, administrators in France viewed co-operation as a wholly irritating task. Geographically removed from the colonies, Parisian courtiers viewed indigenous peoples as 'sauvages', often criticising New French officials for even interacting with nations.

but mostly the NATOpedia article is about fucking fur traders, coureurs des bois, okay. Basically though the French populations of settlers shouldn't have any special consideration compared to Dutch or British settlers, right? Surely any european that shows up on north american shores, claims the land by alleged divine right and starts exploiting its resources is a bastard, yes?

E: sorry if I put my foot in my mouth anywhere

like in my head the four pillars of how you look are diet, exercise, skin care, and clothing/accessories. am i missing any big ones? also, where should i go for advice on how to improve on skin care and especially clothing? (i'm good on diet and exercise lol i used to see a nutritionist and she set me straight)

sorry if this is rambly and/or weird, im stoned off some weird european pseudo-weed

Death to America

I've been trying to go to the library and read more but I'm out of ideas for what to read next. Help plz.