c/Superbowl

For all your owl related needs!

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • For anyone else that doesn’t know this guy, here are the significant wiki bits:

    Of the major candidates in the 2024 United States presidential election he said (before Joe Biden withdrew): “I think they’re both too old. I think they’re both incompetent. There’s a good chance I won’t vote for president.” He later said he does intend to vote for one of the two major-party candidates.

    Osborn has been registered as nonpartisan since registering to vote in 2004. Although Democrats chose not to run a candidate in the Senate election, Osborn declined their endorsement. The state Democratic Party considered running a write-in candidate, accusing Osborn of misleading them about his intentions, but Osborn said he had always been clear that he would not accept endorsements from any political party. Osborn wanted to form an independent caucus in the Senate rather than caucus with either party. He has called the current system a “two-party doom loop”. The Reform Party of the United States endorsed him in September 2024. Senate Democrats did not engage with or help Osborn’s campaign.

    Osborn’s policy positions included raising the national minimum wage; lowering the tax rate for small businesses and overtime work; increasing border security and building the Mexico–United States border wall to stop illegal immigration; reforming the immigration system and exploring ways to legalize some long-term undocumented workers; ensuring resources for law enforcement and first responders; legalizing and taxing marijuana; improving railroad safety; guaranteeing access to abortion within the limits set by Roe v. Wade and opposing a national abortion ban; facilitating union organizing; and protecting gun rights. Osborn supported a “libertarian approach” to hot-button issues and said that government should be kept out of private lives. He supported the right-to-repair of consumer goods such as cars and electronics, raising the cap on Social Security contributions for those with higher incomes and moving the full retirement age for Social Security benefits back to 65.

    Osborn supported protecting gun rights and the Second Amendment, while also supporting gun safety education in schools.

    Here’s his current platform page where you can get more stances and details.

    Doesn’t seem too bad, all considered. I’d take him over my senators (Fetterman (D) / McCormick ®) in PA.

    I like he specifically calls out fiscal support for small farms/ranches, not the conglomerates. I dislike his strong support of military/police funding and his vagueness about “border security” isn’t reassuring. But for a strongly held Republican farming state, this guy is probably the best realistic type of candidate to bring in someone different.




  • Pennsylvania, so it varies. My friends are of diverse backgrounds, but my extended family is very red and that was how I was raised.

    Most people I talk to just follow what “their people” tell them and don’t learn about it any more. We’re on a political community because we’re into it, but the majority of people don’t know or care beyond the sales pitch they get from whomever their preferred media source is.

    I find them more politically ignorant than malicious. They’ll say stupid stuff, but if you can get conversation going to where you can present things in a way that is equitable to most people you get “that sounds like a good idea” but tell them that’s a lefty stance and they dig in their heals and won’t believe it.

    I’ll hear them say racist or sexist or homophobic things, but they’ve always been respectful to my girlfriends, my gay friends, and I’ve never actually seen them be rude to anyone they thought for their race. They’re just scared of shit they don’t know. Put something in front of them, they see it isn’t scary, and they can accept it because now it’s familiar.

    The in laws are worse than my family, but they all drove 6 hours to the one cousin’s lesbian interracial half Jewish, half Christian wedding. They hated the food because it had flavor, but they didn’t make a deal about it in public, and they had a great time and celebrated them as much as at any other wedding, and they love her and accept them both.

    Trust me, the cognitive dissonance blows my mind, and it’s hard to accept the duality that people can talk one way and support hateful things while they could turn around and be nice to the people they were just hating on, but that has been my years of experience with people here.

    I got experience outside my bubble and learned to love it. I stopped being selfish, learned empathy for strangers, and started trying to understand issues, even if they didn’t directly affect me. They are capable of that. It might never work, but they’re not hopeless. I can’t say I’ve ever met someone who would look at anyone else and to their face wish harm or struggle upon them. They might not be immediately comfortable around them, but I can’t say anyone would wish something negative for them.

    I know people that evil do exist, but I again say that is not the majority of people. Nowhere close to it. If we can’t see the potential of the other third to half of our country, we’re done for.


  • My patience is only for the everyday people in our lives. Most of them I think are poorly or wrongly informed or just have no interest or understanding of politics. I’m plenty interested in politics and the economy, etc, and I maybe have a solid grip on 1% of what all the government actually does or can do.

    Those who are public officials, elected or appointed, or in some other way active participants such as citizen “militias”, Jan 6ers, etc… those people can burn in hell for what they’ve done to this place. They’ve done irreparable harm and did it purposefully over decades. They know and understand what they’re doing. They have no excuse. They’re criminals and traitors to our country.

    I assume we’re all somewhere left of center here, so I may have not been clear on that distinction.


  • I agree with the assessment of willful/blind ignorance. This could hardly be proven more than by Rep. Kat Cammack blaming the Democrats for Florida’s abortion ban almost killing her. But while she almost got her own face eaten by the leopard, there would be some karmic justice there one could argue, but again, to see people in America suffer or die for very preventable conditions is insane to me.

    The real upside, if we wish to see one from this spiteful and asinine budget cut, is an opportunity to show we’re not whatever it is they’ve been told we are. Make sure your neighbors and family are ok, if they’re MAGA or not. We can look for revenge, or we can live in an egalitarian way that we’d want things to be. Don’t preach people your beliefs, show them why you believe it. You won’t always win people over, but most folks will remember if you gave them a hand when they needed it and didn’t guilt them or hold something over them, but were just a good human being.

    We’re allowed to be mad. We deserve to be mad. But we should still act right. Somebody’s got to be the adult in the room.



  • Agreed. While people should continue to fight politically as well, that is much slower and more stacked against them. They (the MAGAs) have been and continue to lose the lawsuits and civil cases against them. Mike Lindell just lost his $2.3 million defamation case and a Jan 6 rioter lost a $500,000 case for wrongful death of a capital police officer within just the last few days.

    While I hope Newsom wins this lawsuit, he’s not going to get my vote in a presidential primary. He can certainly be right in one circumstance and not in another.









  • I check periodically, but I don’t see anything within an hour of me. It’s a shame, as I’m in the more populated part of my state, between the biggest and third biggest cities and I read about these places and feel I’d really enjoy them.

    I have a milk frother for example, that burned out its stupidly non resetting thermal fuse because it got put on the base, something bumped the start button with nothing in and it burnt out. I’d love to have someone show me how to locate that bit and replace it, but I dunno where to go for that.

    Same with the 3D printer. I can afford one, but at this stage of life I’d rather someone give me a hands on run through and give me some of their wisdom from experience than me playing around and getting frustrated until I get it right.



  • That was my first thought, but it seems easier to run a few thousand more off the assembly line and make the original part than I’d think to have at least one person develop an adequate 3D part for an items that wasn’t originally designed to be 3D printed.

    Even for a relatively simple item like the trimmer guard shown, as someone who used those on their whole head for many years, they need to have decent rigidity coming from a number of angles so it cuts evenly, so someone needs to design a decent print, find what types of stock provide the right durability, flex, etc.

    So it’s doesn’t sound that free for them or quick, but it’s much cheaper than distribution for a bunch of random parts that may never get used.

    I’m curious to see long term effects if this catches on. Will more original parts be made with 3D printing if they need to design prints anyway?

    The big downside is even if this were available, I don’t have a printer. I don’t know anyone with one. I don’t know where I could go to (?) rent time on one. So to me at the moment, this is as useful to me as no available replacement part! 😅