• jballs@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    One of my friends is a mechanic and also a life-long Republican. He posts to Facebook several times a day, so the last few months have given me a fascinating view into his thoughts.

    At the beginning of the war, he laughed because he had a customer ask if they should stock up on motor oil to avoid price increases. His post was really dismissive - calling the customer a nut job for being concerned about the price of oil.

    A few weeks later, he made a post asking other mechanics for advice. He’d noticed that oil prices shot up, but he was still sitting on some oil he’d purchased previously. He asked if he should keep his oil change prices low, or if he should raise his prices to prepare for when he had to buy oil next.

    His recent posts have been about leaving MAGA. So maybe there is some hope for him yet? However, he still doesn’t seem to be leaving the Republican party. Just maybe realizing the Trump is not his lord and savior. I suspect in a couple more years, there will be no one left that claims to have lived Trump. Kind of like how Republicans now denounce George Dubya, even though they were all in at the time.

    • altphoto@lemmy.today
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      3 days ago

      This oil thing is gonna slap hard in November. People still use oil burners in some places as the main means of heating. Too bad this year will be a wet winter with no oil to heat. I’m prepared for a good couple of weeks thus year. A couple of years ago we lost power for an entire 2 weeks.

        • altphoto@lemmy.today
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          2 days ago

          I’m in the PNW. It doesn’t get as cold as the east coast but I promise you that heating is definitely an important factor of life up here.

      • sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        Different oils are used for different things. Heating oil is getting expensive, yes, but this article is about motor oil for lubrication, which have been in crisis the entire war.

        Any high performance synthetic motor oil (which this post is about) has seen shortages and price increases, because Qatar is a major exporter, through the Strait of Hormuz, of the base oils used as feedstocks for those synthetic motor oils.