The screwdriver trick is mid imo - you run a major risk of just shearing the filter body wall and now your problem is a leaky oil filter that’s much harder to grasp with other hand tools. Go buy a strap wrench that you can use to install and remove.

Or for the very stubborn filters, these kind of tools are very much a one trick pony that only takes the filter off, but it’s a good trick - it has worked every single time for me.

As a lurker who ends up rubbing shoulders with right wing culture spaces, can confirm. The right has heresy tests for their politicians, the left tests for their voters. However the left expects competency in government (because they actually believe in it) and will sacrifice ideals or policies, while the right can afford the luxury of rejecting good governance because they’re expressly transactional when it comes to politics.

Rightwing voters are willing to cut off their nose in spite and become single issue voters - and it works for them. Pro-life or you’re dead to them. Pro-gun or you’re dead to them. Non-Christian? Dead. They get the political rhetoric and efforts they demand, which has left them severely ripe for opportunist political grifters who say whatever gets them access power. Like the MAGAs who build nothing, but hand out bones to voting blocs. Abortion overturned. No new gun laws. Ten Commandments in school and state houses. “Hurting the right people”. Migrants deported. Culture wars.

Or in the more extreme examples, they’ll just outright co-opt the structures of power and governance to fit the voters whims. It’s why we have the political maximalist lobbying NRA of today, instead of the humbler sportsman’s advocacy group of yesteryear. Or Trump.

Everything I don’t like is a psyop

It’s not wrong to say that the right/outside actors made the issue more pervasive, but let’s not exonerate the “adults in the room” who decided it was better policy to unflinchingly support war criminals and a slow motion genocide, instead of defusing the wedge issue and forcing Bibi’s hand. Israel is nothing without US political support and weapons. Recognize “who’s the fucking superpower” and act like it when your client state gets out of line in a way that’ll cost you domestically. China does it with North Korea all the time when they got testy. Russia routinely interferes with domestic politics of CSTO members.

Nor should we pretend that all criticism was astroturfing. Some of us wanted to drop Biden before “we beat Medicare” made him obviously unelectable. And called it that Harris was going to lose swing states like Michigan for maintaining Biden’s posture on Israel. If team blue is all I can realistically vote for, I’m going to call out shitty policy that loses elections and kills voter enthusiasm. It’s up to you to listen and understand that we need to do better

Give them something to vote for.

This. We saw the energy and joy when Biden dropped out, and it was reflected by Harris almost matching Obama’s small donor numbers. Hope. Change. They were simple campaign slogans, but people coming out of the Bush era wanted to believe, and had a candidate to believe in.

It’s a damning indictment that my most genuine electoral engagement, in my entire adult life, was voting “Uncommitted” in the 2024 Democratic primary. That was my most enthusiastic, “I 100% support this” vote ever, because almost every other time has been against something/one, or accepting lesser. From ballot initiatives, Senate races, down to the local comptroller chair.

Contrast that to my vote for Kamala in the general afterwards. It’s so unbelievably hollow to say “our democracy is strong” when the choice is always ‘well they’re better than them’.

As Will Be Seen on TV

An even darker joke was missed here by the creator instead of the analog > digital gag