I’m obviously not planning a Pennsylvania secession movement anytime soon, but just in case it ever comes to that

General policy, not necessarily Pennsylvania specific, in no specific order:

Universal healthcare (including all vision, dental, psychiatric, addiction treatment, gender affirming care, etc.) constitutionally enshrined access to abortion and birth control, abolish the death penalty, legalize all drug use with pardons for all non violent drug offences, huge corporate, wealth and inheritance taxes and major tax cuts for anyone making under 100k/year per person, major investment in nuclear and renewable energy, bans on fracking, free college or technical education for all up to a bachelor’s degree or equivalent certifications, UBI, low-income housing, major police reform, a ban on homeschooling except when necessary due to medical issues and a ban on private and charter schools except for very specific magnet schools that cater to particular vocations and enormous amounts of oversight and regulations on those schools, absolute separation of church and state (Churches and religions get no more legal recognition or exemptions than any other private social club would be entitled to,) a plan to phase out all reliance on non-renewable energy, down-payment assistance for first time homebuyers, high speed Internet access as a human right, major public health spending (we will get hit with another pandemic eventually, and there’s a damn good chance it will be far worse than covid,) a ban on corporate ownership of housing, basically all government services and requirements will be free of charge, legal recognition of poly marriage, election reform with ranked-choice voting, and major gun reform (too much to go into detail here but mainstream republicans and democrats would both hate my gun plans)

And probably a few dozen other major points, but thats what I could spout off from the top of my head

Pennsylvania-specific (disclaimer, I’m based out of the Philly area, so my opinions are the strongest about this region, and I’d need to read up on most of the rest of the state):

High speed rail connecting, at a minimum, Philly, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton, state college, and Erie

Commuter rail along the Schuylkill connecting philly and reading (side note/fun fact: the legal remnants of the old reading railroad company, yes the one from monopoly, that used to connect those two and other cities, is now a chain of movie theaters, with locations mostly in Australia, New Zealand, and California) probably as an extension of the Norristown high speed line which we’re also going to reroute to have a stop inside the King of Prussia Mall

Really more rail in general, but that seems like a good starting place and we can continue building out a network from there.

The sixers are staying put, if they want a new stadium they can put one in the existing sports complex. We’re also going to cover vine street and reconnect the two halves of Chinatown.

This is very low priority, but I’d like to find a constructive use to refurbish the SS United States instead of turning it into an artificial reef.

We’re doing away with the PLCB bullshit, you should be able to buy beer, wine, and liquor at any grocery store.

We’re getting rid of any remaining blue laws- not being allowed to hunt on Sundays, dealerships not being able to sell cars, etc.

An absolute ban on confederate imagery except for museums, historical reenactments, etc. I see more confederate flags being flown in parts of PA than I have in a lot of the actual south, what side of the mason-dixon line do these idiots think our state lies on? Especially in this hypothetical scenario since we’re not even going to be part of America after this is all over and I don’t want any of these shitheads getting the wrong idea that our movement is some sort of “the south shall rise again” thing.

Really we’re just generally going to finally drag a lot of Pennsyltucky kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Major infrastructure spending. I’d say this should be a general not-pennsylvania-specific issue, but holy shit have you seen the state of some of our roads and bridges? You can usually tell by feel the exact moment you cross over the state border.

We’re really going to lean into being “Penn’s Woods” and preserve our natural resources and wildlife. We have some amazing parks, forests, etc. here and I want to make sure it stays that way. You can barely drive 10 minutes through much of the state without crossing some small river or stream, and I want all of those waterways to be clean and teeming with life. I’ve never seen our state amphibian- the eastern hellbender, in person in the wild and I’d like to fix that.

Some goofy, not totally serious proposals

Mehmet Oz is not allowed to set foot on Pennsylvanian territory.

Any building in Philly taller than City Hall must have a William Penn statue at the top. We finally managed to break the curse with the Comcast building and we’re really going to cover our bases.

We may look into annexing the south jersey shore.

An official Pennsylvanian English dictionary covering the Philly, Pittsburgh, NEPA, and other dialects, covering definitions, spelling, and pronunciations of such words and phrases as : Yinz, youse/youse guys, jawn, Schuylkill, Bala Cynwyd, Conshohocken, heyna, jeet, water (“wooder,”) creek (“crick”) and many others.

Do they control a territory? Do they claim to be the official government of that territory? Can they back up and defend those claims? Do the civilians living in that territory overall recognize their authority as the government of that territory? Do other nations recognize them as the government of that territory?

It’s not a totally black and white issue

If I hypothetically rallied up a group of supporters who share my views and ideals and start carrying out terrorist attacks to force the government to address the issues I’m championing, I don’t think many would consider me to be a government. I’m still acknowledging the authority and legitimacy of the government, and am just acting in opposition to it.

If my goal is to seize control of a territory, let’s say Pennsylvania, I’m starting to look a bit like a country. But unless I have the support of enough Pennsylvanians, and have the resources and manpower to back up my claim, and can get other nations to recognize it, it’s a pretty empty claim.

If I manage to win over the popular support of the citizenry, they may start to regard me as the legitimate ruler of Pennsylvania, however just because they’re willing to follow me, doesn’t mean that anyone outside of the state is recognizing my claim. Other countries aren’t going to engage in diplomacy with me the same way they would with other nations, they’re going to continue regarding Pennsylvania as part of the US until I manage to actually have control over the territory. That means in some way removing the existing government from power, and more importantly defending my claim from the US government, who isn’t going to just roll over and accept my claim.

So let’s say we manage to take control over Pennsylvania, the citizens support me, we’ve ousted the previous government, and are generally filling all the roles you would expect a government to handle, and at least for now we’re somehow managing to hold off the US government and defending our claim to Pennsylvania.

At this point, we’re the defacto government of Pennsylvania. However we still lack recognition. The US government is still trying to retake control and has not recognized our independence, nor has any other country, we’re seen as rebels, warlords, etc. by the rest of the world. We’re essentially on our own, unable to trade with other countries.

From here let’s imagine a couple different scenarios

1. Some countries start to recognize my legitimacy. They offer to support my regime and to open up trade. Popular support from my citizens remains high, and we’re managing to hold off the US government. At this point we’re in a situation not unlike Taiwan or Palestine. Whether we’re a legitimate government is going to depend on who you ask around the world, with answers ranging from that we’re a group of rebels trying to secede from the US to having their full support and recognition as the legitimate government of an independent nation.

2. Our rebellion is a resounding success. The US backs off, recognizes our independence, other countries also recognize our independence, maybe we even join NAFTA. It would be hard to argue that we’re not a legitimate government at that point.

3. I start to lose the support of Pennsylvanians, and they stop recognizing my authority, even though I still manage to maintain control over my territory by force. Some countries, especially those that are not friendly to the US, may still recognize my claim, although in the eyes of most of the world, I’m probably just a terrorist or warlord.

4. The US government is successful in ousting me, I manage to flee to a country that recognizes me as the legitimate ruler of Pennsylvania or at least is willing to tolerate my presence, and I set up a government-in-exile. I continue to conduct myself as though I am the ruler of Pennsylvania, maybe some Pennsylvanians and other people and countries throughout the world continue to recognize me as such, but without the ability to actually exercise that authority over my territory, it’s a pretty empty claim.

Same goes for a lot of generic-sounding “A” business names- Acme, Apex, Ajax, A+, American-whatever, etc.

I work in 911 dispatch, it drives me nuts how many people lose consciousness for various reasons, and then when they come to they say they’re fine and don’t need to be checked out.

There’s maybe some very narrow exceptions for people with known conditions that they’re already managing with the help of a doctor and they know exactly what’s causing it.

But in general, if you’re losing consciousness that’s a bad sign and you need to see a doctor about that ASAP

Definitely, normally my skin is pretty resilient, never really been someone who needs to spend money on moisturizers and such, I could probably just about wash my hands with acetone and steel wool and be none the worse for it.

But there were a few times when I worked there that my hands were getting noticeably dryer than usual, pretty sure if my skin were any more delicate I would have been in pretty rough shape.

We definitely called them cardboard cuts, can’t say how universal it is but every job I’ve where I’ve handled a lot of boxes it seems to be in pretty common use

Cardboard cuts are absolutely a thing, like a paper cut on steroids.

I used to work in a warehouse and spent most of my day opening, resealing, making, and breaking down boxes. Spend enough time around them and the boxes will get you.

What you’re most likely looking for is amateur (ham) radio. The exactly regulations will vary by country, usually there’s some sort of testing/licensing required (at least if you want to transmit, you can listen without a license)

I didn’t look too far into it but it looks like the app you linked is basically a tool to let you use your phone as a controller for other radio equipment. You’d probably need to be licensed to actually use it, and there’s a good chance the equipment needed is pretty pricey. Ham equipment can kind of run the gambit from handhelds that run from about $20 up to thousands of dollars depending on what you want to do with it. You’re probably better off starting with some more standard equipment before you start trying to rig together other stuff controlled by an app.

There’s a lot of info out there for free on the internet and plenty of books have been written about how radio, so there’s a lot of resources out there to learn from, or if there’s a radio club in your area (there usually is) you can show up to a meeting and ask some questions.

Assuming you’re in the US (different countries again have different laws) there’s a few other radio options if all you want is to talk to people who are local to you. You can get a CB radio (think Smokey & the Bandit or truckers talking to each other) some places have more or less people actually using CB radio. The range and capabilities are more limited than a lot of ham options, but you can usually count on a few miles of range, and sometimes it’s nice to get a heads up from truckers about traffic issues and speed traps and such. I personally like to use them with friends in different cars when we’re on a road trip.

There’s also FRS radios, you can pick them up pretty cheap at Wal Mart, pretty basic walkie talkies.

Many of those FRS radios are also GMRS radios, there’s a GMRS license needed to use the GMRS capabilities, not test, just a licensing fee, so that’s something to be aware of.

MURS radios also exist, I honestly don’t know too much about it, but it’s another free, no-license radio service you can use.

Each of those have their own limitations and restrictions on what you can do with them, but in probably 99% of cases you’re probably not gonna run afoul of the law if you don’t try to modify the radio or do something obviously stupid and use it in a way that’s not interfering with other people’s uses.

If you have enough people, bulldozers, and money to throw at the problem, sure.

Does Israel have that available? I can’t really say.

Some of the things that would factor into how many people, bulldozers, and money you’d need to do so

How big of a city?

What kind of construction are we dealing with?

How much are we willing to ignore worker safety and such?

How much of that city has already been partially demolished by other means the time the bulldozers get there?

How bulldozed does it need to be? There’s a spectrum here that goes from something “crashing a bulldozer into every building enough times to make it unlivable” to “everything completely leveled, and all the debris cleaned up, neatly pushed into piles, loaded into trucks, buried, etc.” Do we need to bulldoze the entire city? Or just most of it? Or maybe just enough that pretty much every block is looking pretty wrecked? Or maybe just all of the structures and we can leave parks, parking lots, streets, and other open spaces intact?

Do we have to be picky about using specifically bulldozers? If the end result is essentially the same, you could also use excavators, guys with sledgehammers, cranes, wrecking balls, explosives, airstrikes, artillery fire, etc. there’s plenty of other options to work into the mix if we don’t limit ourselves to just bulldozers.

I don’t care about the death penalty as a deterrent. I care about it as a way to deal with certain people who will continue to pose a threat to others and for whom there are no other viable or humane options to rehabilitate them or otherwise render them safe to be around other people.

You can deal with a greedy pharma exec by seizing assets, injunctions against them participating in the pharmaceutical industry or serving in particular roles, stricter laws, regulations, and oversight on the pharma industry as a whole, etc.

You can’t just regulate someone out of being dangerously emotionally disturbed, and if they can’t be rehabilitated, what other viable options do you have left to keep them from harming others? You can lock them up in solitary, or perhaps take some drastic medical interventions like sedating them, lobotomizing them, or I guess chopping off their arms and legs, and at the point you’re considering those sorts of options, the ethics of just killing them start to sound much more attractive.

I’m not altogether opposed to the death penalty for certain crimes, but I think the evidence, chain of custody, record keeping, etc. needs to be absolutely immaculate to an almost cartoonishly paranoid extent before the death penalty can be on the table.

Like if the suspect was off camera for even a moment between the moment the crime was committed, that’s enough to make it intelligible for the death penalty because you can’t be absolutely certain they weren’t swapped for a body double when they stepped out of frame.

And that’s before you even get into the absolute insane security and storage requirements needed for that footage to ensure it couldn’t have been tampered with.

If there is any theoretically possible scenario, no matter how absurdly unlikely it may be, where the person in custody isn’t the same person who committed the crime, then you can’t seek the death penalty.

Yeah, astonishingly if you don’t wander into the crowded center city areas that are packed with people and bars, things are a lot more subdued.

There’s something 1½ million people in the city, a lot of whom are watching the game, either at home, in a friends house, or at one of the 1300 or so bars in the city, all spread out over about 140 square miles. If you don’t go seeking out the craziness, it’s easy to not see it in person.

Not to mention all of the eagles fans in the surrounding suburbs.

And take a good look at your video, how much actual violence or destructiveness are you seeing there? I’m seeing mostly a big crowd of people milling around outside chanting and yelling at no one in particular. Creating a nuisance or impeding traffic? Sure, hardly a riot or anything of the sort though.

You have, being generous, maybe a couple thousand people (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more people turn out to ride in the Philly naked bike ride) gathering around city hall, a major landmark located in the very heart of the city, and doing what? yelling? Maybe 2% of a city where “go birds” passes as a greeting, wandering around outside being a bit rowdy.

I’m a 911 dispatcher

Was once at a party where a motorcycle crashed right outside.

By the time I got outside, 911 had already been called, my friend was already performing CPR. I know he’s been trained, so I let him keep at it, made sure he was doing it right, counted with him to keep time, and basically repeated the same CPR script I’ve given over the phone countless times and stood by in case he got tired and needed me to take over.

EMS shows up, as they’re running over with their equipment they tell my friend to get the guys shirt open, he starts undoing buttons, I tell him to just pop them, a couple lost buttons are the least of this guys problems, and every second counts.

I’m 99% certain this guy was dead the moment he hit the ground, but regardless of what the outcome was (I’ll probably never know and am OK with that, I’m used to that from my job, after I hang up with my caller I often don’t get much if any follow-up on how a call turns out,) if you’re going to crash a motorcycle and go into cardiac arrest, short of doing it outside an ER, you can’t do much better than the house with a 911 dispatcher and counting myself and my friend who was doing CPR, no fewer than 4 eagle scouts.

There were a handful of bystanders pulled over not doing much of anything but standing around. I got the impression that they were already there not being particularly helpful when my friend started doing CPR. Looked like the kinds of guys who fancy themselves to be real rugged tough guys, driving big trucks and whatnot. The bystander effect was on display there. I’m pretty sure one of them was the person who called 911, which means they didn’t really check on the guy, because if they had they would have been on the phone with one of my coworkers getting CPR instructions and doing it themselves. Remember that people don’t usually rise to the occasion, they fall to their level of training.

As a philly native, I will say that the vast majority of philly fans are more reasonable levels of passionate, I’ve never personally been around anyone getting violent over a game, at worst just a lot of yelling and cursing directed at no one in particular.

But yeah, our worst fans definitely have a way of going the extra mile into the heart of crazytown.

Philly has a tough image and we’re proud of it and embrace it, but a lot of assholes don’t understand that being tough doesn’t mean being needlessly violent, offensive, and destructive.

Personally, I like the lunatics here that climb light poles and think of the city greasing them up as a challenge, that’s the kind of crazy fan I want to represent my city.

It seems like OP is probably pushing a bit of an agenda here (maybe a good one, maybe a bad one depending on where you land on the whole Israel situation, I’m not gonna go into that right now) but in case you’re just out of the loop

There’s recently been some incidents in Lebanon where pagers and radios have been exploding. Not just defective Samsung Note battery bursting-into-flames exploding, but packed full of actual explosives, detonating, and killing people exploding

Long story short, Israel intercepted a shipment of these devices going to Hezbollah, and planted remote triggered bombs in them.

And some people are concerned about this, and probably rightly so, first of all these pagers have caused some collateral damages, killing and hurting bystanders. Secondly, we don’t exactly know how widespread this has been- are there other people out in Lebanon or other parts of the world walking around with literal bombs in their pocket? What if those devices get lost, stolen, sold/traded in? What if the target had been onboard a plane or something when the pager detonated? What if the bomb doesn’t go off as intended- is it gonna go off in a trash truck, recycling facility, or incinerator when they decide to get rid of it?

I consider myself to be a fairly tech literate person. Not a professional, but better than average. The guy my family comes to to troubleshoot computer problems, basic working understanding of programming and networking but not nearly enough to do it professionally.

I think you’re shooting too high on some of these.

Basic hardware is good, but don’t spend too much time on it or go into too much detail, just kind of basic overviews. Boot chain is probably pushing it, but basic overview of operating systems is good.

I probably wouldn’t go so far as having them install their own Linux distro, that feels like you want to take a week of your class time to troubleshoot all the potential issues that come up, if you do it on school computers you’re probably looking at a nightmare getting that cleared by your IT department, and if it’s their personal devices you’re probably going to catch an earful from some parents for messing up their/their kids computer.

I do think it’s a good idea to have some computers running Linux for them to use so they can see what it’s like, and probably some macs too, I’m not an apple guy but there’s a lot of them out there and people should be at least a little familiar with both.

I don’t know what the current state of things in schools is, but you can certainly hand out some flash drives, but there’s a decent chance they already have some. I know over a decade ago when I was in high school pretty much all of us were already carrying around flash drives.

Programming is good to introduce them to, python is a solid choice, but unless these are kids who are pretty sure they want to go into computer science I wouldn’t go too deep. It’s not a particularly useful language for actual usage but I think that BASIC still has a useful role as a way to teach the fundamentals of programming to people in an accessible way to see if they may want to pursue it further. I know programmers hate it, but visual basic is also kind of satisfying because it makes it pretty easy to crank out something that looks like an actual finished product.

I’d keep networking pretty straightforward. Network stack and OSI are probably a little too high level to go into, but basics about WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, routers, switches, firewalls, etc. are good to know.

Basic typing and general computer use are probably something a lot of kids could use some work on. A lot of kids these days have a lot less experience with keyboard and mouse computer use thanks to smartphones and tablets. Don’t shun the touchscreen devices though, they’re more powerful than a lot of people give them credit for, and since that’s the way technology is trending figure out how to push the borders on what you can do with them.

I’m also bald, but even before I started shaving my head and had long hair I wore a lot of hats. Still helped keep the sun off me and I tend to run kind of hot so it helped keep sweaty hair out of my face.

I have a couple hats similar to those kicking around, they mostly get used when I’m camping, hiking, etc.

My main every day summer hats are a panama straw fedora, a linen flat cap, and very occasionally a trucker cap that I mostly use as my fishing hat.

I also have a straw cowboy hat that I only bust out occasionally, when I’m both feeling a little silly and I’m gonna be out in direct sun for a long time, like out in the middle of a lake on my kayak. It looks a little goofy, I’m certainly no cowboy, but it’s practically like walking around with a shade umbrella on my head.

I tend to run pretty hot and sweaty, so when the sun isn’t a concern, I often wear a bandana to keep sweat out of my face.

My wife has a very big, floppy hat she wears at the beach sometimes, looks like straw but is actually some sort of recycled plastic.

My mom would not be able to wear a hat during the summer obviously heat would stay in and she would get too hot.

I think you’re starting from a faulty assumption here.

In general, it’s often wise to wear a hat in the summer and can help you feel cooler providing a little bit of portable shade, and helps keep the sun out of your eyes and off your face/neck/ears/shoulders.

It’s just about finding the right hat, something lightweight, breathable, and preferably lighter in color (to reflect the sun’s rays instead of absorbing them) and maybe with a wider brim.

Straw hats are a fairly traditional option, something like a panama hat (actually made from palms, also made in Ecuador and not panama BTW) is a classic option, but this is 2024 so there’s lots of moisture wicking synthetic material options out there as well. For other natural materials, linen is also a good choice, certain types and weaves of cotton can be pretty light and breathable, and honestly even some lighter weight wool hats aren’t too bad.

Take a look at people who work or spend a lot of time outdoors in warmer climates, you’ll see a lot of people wearing hats or cultures where people traditionally wore a lot of hats even if they’ve fallen out of style. Baseball caps, visors, cowboy hats, fedoras, pith helmets, beater hats, various types of headscarves, big floppy sun hats, bucket hats, asian conical hats, sombreros, etc.

I wear hats pretty much year-round. The hats I like in the summer are different from my winter hats, but it’s pretty rare that I go out without some kind of hat, and when I forget to grab one on my way out the door, I feel less comfortable for it.

I haven’t, but I live in PA, so we have scrapple which sounds pretty similar.

I once drove through Ohio, don’t remember my exact route, but came up north from Kentucky to Cincinnati, then east into Pennsylvania

There may be more boring drives out there, but I haven’t made them.

Cincinnati seemed like a nice enough city though. Can’t think of any particular reason I’d ever want to go back, but I didn’t hate it, so that was pretty much the high point of my time in Ohio