In re: TERFs, transgender people make up a very small part of the general population, roughly .5%. The odds that any given TERF would get picked up by an UBER driver that is a transwoman are very low.

I suspect–and I’d need to be checked on this–that you would need to have gotten your gender marker changed on your driver’s license in order for Uber to correctly identify your gender. And that makes it an even smaller subset of trangender people that could trigger TERFs. OTOH, I could absolutely see a TERF going ballistic over a cisgender woman that wasn’t fully gender-conforming…

The good news is that, relatively speaking, a water heater isn’t too expensive, and you can usually do it on your own without too much trouble. Assuming that you’re moderately handy. Roofs are… A different matter. Depending on your roof type, pitch, and geographic location, it can either be fairly easy, or require a high degree of expertise.

Go to an actual archery store to get fitted and try some out; read reviews in Bowhunter magazine. A lot of the differences are pretty marginal for new users. Current bows have a pretty amazing drop-off rate, which makes it very easy to hold at full-draw. But you do need upper body strength the get to the drop-off point.

If you’re talking real, serious, the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it apocalypse, then I’d recommend getting either a fiberglass recurve bow in the 80#+ range and a few spare strings, or a Mossberg Shockwave and a single shell. The fiberglass recurve bow will be difficult to learn to shoot effectively, but it essentially maintenance-free. The Mossberg will prevent you from having to learn to use the bow effectively.

I have a very strong preference to the silicone triple-flange ear tips. They help block outside noise and fit comfortably. Unfortunately, they also don’t work with many ear buds. Shure is one of the few brands that they work with for certain.

Wut.

Susan Collins IS NOT A DEMOCRAT. She is a REPUBLICAN. I don’t mean that she’s a DINO, she’s literally a Republican.

I live in Maine. Every week I get email alerts telling me where Platner is going to be, and what I can do to help. (I’m currently doing huge amounts of OT, so I don’t have the time to volunteer.) He’s doing town halls weekly (I think that he’s doing Millinocket soon; I should be able to make that one), and constantly doing outreach. I see his campaign posts on Bluesky all the time. He came to a town near me, a town with a whopping 6000 residents, and treated everyone respectfully, including the MAGAt that was there trying to poke holes in his campaign.

I have seen ONE Bluesky post from Mills’ campaign. AFAIK, she’s done exactly zero town hall meetings, certainly not ones where she’s taking questions directly from the audience. I haven’t seen any campaign signs, no radios ads (altho I only listen to Maine Public Radio; but I also haven’t heard anything about her campaign there), and I’ve seen Collins’ ads on the TVs at the gym, but nothing for Mills. Oh, the Collins ad? It’s got a great snippet from Mills saying that Collins has done a lot of great things for Maine. Oops.

So I don’t fucking know where Mills is spending the money that she has.

The fact that the cancelled in the face of public pressure means nothing; they can always resume the partnership once the pressure subsides.

10% is pretty close to a controlling interest, since many shares never vote at meetings.

In my job, I need to use materials that have a mil spec; that means it’s literally military grade, but it’s just saying that it meets or exceeds a certain specification for X product that is used in the military in some way. IMO, if something says ‘military grade’, but isn’t listing the mil spec(s) that it complies to, then it’s essentially meaningless.

I do have a compass that I think was advertised as military grade. It’s the same lensatic compass that is currently used by the military (…when they aren’t using GPS…), except that it doesn’t use tritium on the face. The half-life of tritium is about a decade, so it didn’t seem like a great idea to pay a ton extra for something that would barely glow in the dark in 20 years or so.

That’s like saying that it’s inevitable that murder and rape will happen.

Just because someone is going to do it eventually doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have the death penalty for doing it.

Removed by mod

The proprietary cartridge design kills it, IMO. It’s like making a super-gucci AR-15, but then it only uses your mags, and your mags cost $150/ea., v. $20 for a Magpul.

Don’t fucking buy Mira products; they’re overpriced Czech surplus. The OM-90 is the Czech designation for Mira’s CM-7M, and you can get them for $90 on eBay, vs. the $450 or so that Mira charges.

Honestly, get yourself an M-40 that’s in good shape, buy a 40mm-to-3M-bayonet adapter, use some 3M P-100 cartridges (you can get them for about $2/ea. when you buy in bulk). P-100 will filter out all particulates–even finer particulates than a HEPA filter or N-95–and will also filter out water- and oil-based aerosols. That covers all riot-control agents, because CN, CS, and OC are all aerosols, and not true gasses. Almost any surplus gas mask that’s been made in the last ~30 years, seals, and uses a 40mm NATO cartridge is going to be just fine for riot-control agents.

If you are really worried about a P-100 filter being insufficient, get a few new old-stock NBC filters. NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) filters were phased out about 15-20 years ago in favor of CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) filters, but if they haven’t been used, they’ll be absolutely okay for riot agents.

If you wear glasses–and many people do–get a spectacle insert for whatever mask you have. Glasses break the seal, and while you will probably be fine with contacts in, that’s not necessarily a good risk to take. Supposedly the Kris Optical Mag-1 glasses can be worn under a mask without compromising the seal, but I can’t personally attest to that. I think that they’re one of the older styles of BCGs that were issued, but I’m not sure.

Oh, and get GOOD hearing protection. Consider high-end electronic ear muffs, and wearing ear plugs under them. Some places are using LRADs to disperse crowds, and those can wreck your hearing.

N95 is insufficient. You want a P100 filter cartridge; P100 will filter out oil-based and water-based aerosols, as well as all particulates. They will not filter out true gasses, but, good news!, CN, CS, and OC are all aerosols, not gasses.

No. Avon still exists, they have the current contract to make the M-50 gas mask. (Which, BTW, is not compatible with standard NATO CBRN 40mm cartidges.)

Yeah, no. The religious nutter part is utterly irrelevant.

What IS relevant is that the ATF entrapped the dude; they wanted him as an informant, so they spent a long time cajoling and threatening him into cutting a shotgun down for them (“short barrel shotgun”, a National Firearms Act of '34 violation), and when he did, they immediately fucked his life. He ended up getting arresting him, he bonded out, and then got multiple differing dates for a court hearing. He didn’t trust the courts because he thought the gov’t was out to get him (spoiler: they were), and so skipped court. The judge issued a warrant improperly, and then the US Marshalls showed up, and everything went downhill.

It was a very, very clear case of entrapment, and what the gov’t did was inexcusable. It doesn’t matter that they wanted him to spy on the Aryan Nations, what they did to try and bend him to their will was evil.

Don’t minimize that shit.

The gov’t can, and will, crush every single person that they can get away with crushing.

If nothing can convince you, then it’s a religion. How is that different from flat-earthers and 9/11-truthers that insist that all of the evidence they are given is a lie?

I have known people that were the appropriate gender for me, were interested in me, that were nice, healthy, great smiles, genuine, fun, smart, kind… And I had absolutely no attraction to them.

Sometimes you just aren’t attracted to someone, even when everything should be right. Sometimes you’re attracted to people that you know for sure would be absolutely terrible for and to you (like the person I felt limerance toward that was a literal crack addict, probably sleeping with people for drugs, definitely a mean person, deeply mentally ill… …and none of that affected how I felt). You can’t control your feelings; feelings just are. The best you can do is control what you do with them.

I’ve worked in sewn products for >15 years now. I’ve never heard them called that, by anyone.

Yes, my recommendation for a home defense shotgun is DON’T.

Shotguns have very limited capacity (unless you have a 3-gun shotgun with an extended magazine, but then you have a problem moving it around indoors), and loading them efficiently takes a lot of practice. Also, at home defense ranges–under 10y–spread on 00 buckshot is going to be pretty minimal. And you shouldn’t be using bird shot at all.

I would suggest instead getting a PCC as an SBR. That gives you capacity, the ability to easily mount a light, and far more controllable than a pistol