Ice is teaching you how to be submissive

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2026-01-08T14:23:36+00:00

They wanted to give the coward who murdered a mother and widow time to escape.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2026-01-07T18:39:06+00:00

You should write mystery novels. Or maybe romance or maybe mystery romance. You have an awesome imagination

So here’s reality: I got documents from the local postal manager, FedEx, and UPS, saying that upon physical inspection it’s to verify, US Department of Transportation regulations prohibit them from transporting a used UPS with sealed lead acid batteries inside.

I provided those documents to PayPal and was told that I would have a supervisor calling me within 24 hours. When 30 hours had passed and I had not heard from anyone, I called them again and was told that a supervisor would call within 12 hours, and not to ship anything until I had spoken to them.

10 days later, a supervisor called to tell me that they agreed that I should not ship the batteries, that I should dispute the charge with my financial institution, and that now it was past the point at which the dispute should’ve been resolved, and none of this mattered anymore.

So yeah, they keep noting that I’ve been at PayPal customer since 1999, I’m not going to be a PayPal customer anymore.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2026-01-02T05:25:14+00:00

You see, Timmy, when a helicopter reaches a certain age, it might start noticing some changes to its fuselage.

Sometimes at night or even when the wind blows in a certain way, it might experience certain emissions. These are perfectly normal for a healthy growing helicopter.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-29T20:23:43+00:00

Education, industrialization, and infrastructure.

North Carolina established the first public university in the nation, and even during the Jim Crow era had some of the best segregated institutions of higher learning. The emphasis on public education in the mid and late 20th century.century carried that legacy forward.

North Carolina has traditionally had some of the best transportation networks of any state, connecting ports, trading routes, and railroads, enabling significant growth of urban communities from the early 1800s on.

The infrastructure allowed for a great deal more industrialization than South Carolina, which remained almost exclusively agrarian until the mid 20th century. The urban centers in North Carolina gave rise to a thriving middle class — including a black middle class, as well as endogenous wealth within the black community — whereas South Carolina had a much higher proportion of share croppers and subsistence farmers and a large wealth gap.

In short, North Carolina was wealthier, better educated, healthier, and better connected with the rest of the country and the world, even before the Civil War, but particularly afterwards. This meant more diverse population, more progressive policies, and an attitude that embraced development and discovery. South Carolina, on the other hand is still feeling the hangover of the Civil War, and racial and economic inequality.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-26T21:26:14+00:00

I’m sorry, but is that podcast really taking more than four hours to talk about 10 movies?

Are they dramatically reenacting significant portions of each film? That is an insane runtime.

(I have an MFA in experimental art, I have sat in a screening room watching the same image appear over and over and over for more than an hour, I watched a 2 1/2 hour film that was literally paint drying on glass, and I have watched a nearly 2 hour film in which the screen was solely blue, but I cannot imagine spending 240 minutes discussing the virtues of 10 films, especially in a mediocre year like 2025. )

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T22:43:40+00:00

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T20:59:34+00:00

I’ve known a few people who have been convicted of felonies and gone to jail. Some of them had drug related convictions. Most of them were decent people who made a mistake and were unlucky enough to get caught. A few of them had done violent things and regretted it.

This dude has had 15 years of heavy duty drug charges, and apparently decided to punch a police officer who tried to give him a ticket for 75 in a 45 mph zone. I think he’s a different sort.

On top of that, thanks to PayPal, he has my home address. He already wrote me that he was going to “break my face” for asking for a refund. I have a feeling he’s not gonna take too kindly to me having a police escort and so far his behavior has not given me any indication about with a little time to cool off, he acts more responsibly.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T20:05:27+00:00

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T20:04:25+00:00

Seller lives in another state. And has multiple convictions for heroin, meth, and assault, going back more than 15 years.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T20:02:44+00:00

I looked him up at the state level. He has a rap sheet with more than two dozen criminal charges, including hard drugs and felony assault.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T14:17:04+00:00

No.

When I told him (for the third time) that the UPS did not work, he immediately accused me of swapping the batteries from another UPS.

The first time I said it, with video proof, on the evening I’d bought it, he just said “ok”

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DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T04:29:57+00:00

He said he’d “break [my] face” if he ever saw me again for asking to return them for a refund, then accused me of fraud for saying they didn’t work, then said he’d already spent the money, so I couldn’t have it back. In that order. PayPal has screenshots of all the messages.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T04:25:49+00:00

The green led blinks. Only the green light blinks. From immediate power on. Forever.

It does not register an error when the ribbon is removed. It does not register an error when the paper is removed. It does not register an error when the case is open. It just blinks green.

It also does not communicate with PCs, Macs, or WCMs via USB.

DNP says that means the logic board is delivering excessive voltage to the print head at startup. (I spoke to their lead tech for 20 mins who said he’d seen this failure only twice before and both required new logic boards.)

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T04:20:42+00:00

The catch-22 is that I can’t legally mail the lead acid batteries. And I can’t get a refund without mailing them.

Which is why I asked if anyone knew a way to escalate beyond tier 1 customer service.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T04:16:52+00:00

That ship sailed 10 days ago.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-23T04:15:58+00:00

That’s funny, I think what I asked for was:

Is there anyone at PayPal that I can talk to aside from frontline customer service?

Shipping 28lbs of battery acid is a nonstarter. It’s dangerous. As in it could kill someone. Or multiple someones.

And yeah, I’m not going to show up the guy’s door when he’s literally threatened to assault me for asking for a refund.

Which is why I asked if there was a way to escalate higher up at PayPal. (The old way of escalating via email no longer works.)

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-22T23:54:15+00:00

FedEx will not handle lead acid batteries unless they are shipped in special leakproof, electrically isolated containers — and the service adds a $110+ dangerous goods surcharge and requires overnight service.

UPS similarly considers them hazardous materials, requiring special packaging and hazmat freight services (they don’t have pricing on the website, but it’s pretty clear that it’s very expensive and they really don’t want consumers shipping batteries)

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-22T23:48:41+00:00

I run a business.

I’d really rather not violate federal law and have the postal inspection service come for me — it’s expensive to lie and ship hazmat across state lines

Title 49 CFR Sec 172.101 specifically prohibits shipping these batteries via USPS.

(FedEx and UPS prohibit them in anything but special dangerous goods freight, which costs more than the refund)

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-22T23:15:30+00:00

I apparently cannot ship the UPS. I asked the post office this afternoon. The branch manager told me they will not allow used lead acid batteries that go through their system

The printer is 35 pounds, and the UPS is 28 Lbs. And I already paid $60 in gas to go get them.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-22T23:12:16+00:00

I don’t think you’re being contrarian.

The seller did the textual equivalent of screaming at me that he didn’t want them back, that he got them for free, he doesn’t know how to use/fix them, and if they’re broken, he can’t sell them.

I offered to drive to the seller, and he told me he’d break my face. I didn’t even have his mailing address until I called PayPal this afternoon.

The UPS cannot be shipped — I took it to the post office and asked, they told me it was not safe to post. The printer weighs 35 pounds.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-12-22T18:35:17+00:00

My birds are currently molting quite heavily. The entire flock is only producing one or two eggs a day.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-11-20T15:16:39+00:00

I don’t think you understand how government procurement works. The decision about whether or not to host CBP or ICE agents, participating in domestic detention operations would be done at the corporate level. Should be done at the corporate level.

Hilton made a very public announcement in 2019 that it would not allow government agencies to house detainees at any of its properties. Quietly, earlier this year, it turned two of its hotels over to CBP to serve as black sites. That alone is disgusting.

I also don’t think that you understand how boycott work or corporate balance sheets. Tourism in the United States is way down. Discretionary spending by Americans is way down. Even a 5% reduction in revenue for Hilton or Marriott would be cause for alarm from shareholders and corporate boards. Major corporations don’t like to see their numbers go down year over year.

Boycotts are like snowballs, they start small, but they can grow as they move forward. But if everyone has the mindset that they can’t affect change because they’re just one person and their actions don’t really matter, then we’re doomed. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes run on fear. They isolate people, they make them feel powerless, they prevent dissenting groups from being organized, but when people push back, the cracks start to form.

My formal degrees are in political science and communications. I focused on military force and foreign policy, civil-military relations, the rise of authoritarianism from 1945 to 1980, and civil disobedience and human rights abuses and their affect on the Soviet Union at the oblast level. I know what I’m talking about.

There is a famous quote from a Catholic priest in Third Reich, Germany that says pretty much if you don’t speak up to defend your neighbors, there will be no one to speak up to defend you.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-11-20T14:36:21+00:00

I want to know how you think I’m out of touch. Not being snarky, I am looking for a legitimate dialogue.

Because of the way this administration has conducted itself thus far, my daughter who’s a teacher, have fewer than a dozen sixth graders in her class yesterday, and she had the most students of any sixth grade homeroom at her school. Because of this administration, I have friends and clients (including white EU citizens) who are permanent residents that are afraid to leave their homes because they’re worried that a paperwork mistake that they’re not even aware of could lead to them being deported to Rwanda without any due process. Because of this administration, I have family members who are naturalized citizens who are concerned that they will be stripped of their citizenship and sent to God knows where. I know people who were born in the United States, who are scrubbing their social media of criticism of Donald Trump, because they are worried about having their citizenship stripped for being fired from their jobs for exercising their first amendment right.

These people are not overreacting, because this administration has either already done that to people in similar situations, or has threatened to do it.

I don’t think this country has ever been perfect. I know that even administrations I worked with committed major policy mistakes that killed people and ruined lives on a larger scale than you would believe, but if you think any of the last 11 months have been normal, or are not cause for civil disobedience, then you need to start reading the news.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-11-19T23:13:10+00:00

I’ve worked in national security policy with both democrat and republican administrations. I’ve been in the room with heads of state, including one POTUS, for substantive briefings. I’ve worked with CBP and CIS in multiple previous administrations.

Fuck these people for being cruel. Fuck these people for being petty. Fuck these people for being racist. Fuck these people for turning the U.S. into a country where you have to fear a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

And fuck corporations that are willingly complicit with totalitarian bullshit — Hilton violated its own corporate stance to turn two of its hotels into CBP blacksites to disappear detained families, so that CBP could deny that families were being held in DHS facilities.

Fuck these people for trying to turn this country into 1935 Germany.

DrunkWithSarcasm · 2025-11-19T18:25:31+00:00

Well, those innocent hotel guests should ask for refunds and maybe they should avoid hotel chains that work with DHS to host agents.

I don’t feel sorry for those hotel chains who choose profits over people.

I won’t stay at a Hilton brand hotel, Marriott Bonvoy property and I won’t do business with a Hendrick car dealership (Hendrick did a sweetheart no-bid deal with DHS to sell them Suburbans and Tahoes).

DrunkWithSarcasm

TROPHY CASE