Beyond And Back - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Roundtable [x]

i dont think you get it. 1980 was twenty years ago. 1990 was 10 years ago. 2000 was 10 years ago. 2016 was two years ago. 2018 was also two years ago. 2017 was last year. 2014 was four years ago. do you understand me now?????

this might be a hot take but i think we should still be required to wear masks on airplanes

I would like to play video games but unfortunately in order to be allowed to play video games I have to solve a secret puzzle inside my head that I do not understand and am only dimly aware of.

ettingermentum has just published an excellent guide to protest voting state-by-state. for those of you who are bemoaning your choice between biden and trump, for those of you who are against genocide, and for those of you want to utilize your civic duty to vote: this is how you can pressure joe biden for a ceasefire

ettingermentum.news

The Uncommitted Voter's Guide

How to protest the administration in all the remaining primary states.

Earlier this week, when I was talking with my girlfriend about the Michigan primary results, she asked me if we could also vote uncommitted in our state’s primary. Since we live in Georgia, I knew that we didn’t have that option, so I told her that it wasn’t possible and that I personally planned to use my ballot to write in Jane Fonda. Then she asked me if that vote would be counted, which made me realize something: I didn’t know if it would. I looked it up, and and after a bit of searching, I learned that the answer was no. As a Georgia voter, I have to either vote for one of the three names on the ballot or a “validated write-in candidate” or my vote will be discarded. My year-old plan to vote for Jane had always been DOA, and I had never known it until that moment. This got me thinking. If I, someone who writes about politics for a living, didn’t know the exact procedures for a protest vote in my primary in my own state, how many prospective uncommitted voters out there actually know what their options are? I presumed that someone out there had published a guide for how to protest vote in each state, but, at least as far as I can tell, such a guide does not exist. To remedy this problem, I decided to create a guide myself. The following is the first ever state-by-state, territory-by-territory cheat sheet for how you can, and cannot, cast a protest vote against this administration in your upcoming Democratic primary.

Category 1: Can Vote Uncommitted

This is the simplest and most straightforward category. In these states and territories, voters are given a Michigan-style uncommitted option on their ballots. These ballots are fully counted in the results like votes for any of the named candidates. If the total uncommitted vote reaches 15% statewide or in a congressional district, it will be awarded delegates.

Although some of these states have additional protest voting options in addition to uncommitted, selecting the uncommitted line is the most direct and straightforward way to register an anti-Biden vote. If available, it should be chosen over all other options, including write-ins, blank ballots, or votes for named candidates like Dean Phillips or Marianne Williamson.

State/territory list:

March 5th: Alabama, Colorado (Called “Noncomitted”), Iowa (Mail-only Caucus), Massachusetts (Called “No Preference”), Minnesota, North Carolina (Called “No Preference”), Tennessee, American Samoa

March 6th: Hawaii

March 12th: Northern Mariana Islands, Washington, Democrats Abroad

March 19th: Kansas

March 23rd: Missouri

April 2nd: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Wisconsin

April 6th: Alaska (Called “Undeclared”)

April 13th: Wyoming (Caucus, Called “Undeclared”)

May 14th: Maryland

May 21st: Kentucky

May 23rd: Idaho (Caucus)

June 4th: Montana (Called “No Preference”), New Jersey, New Mexico

June 8th: Virgin Islands

Category 2: No Uncommitted Option, But Can Vote Write-Ins

Following the set of states and territories that provide straightforward uncommitted option, we reach a small, unique category of primary contests. These states do not provide an uncommitted option, but they do allow for write-in votes, and they take the unique step of tallying every single one of these write-ins in their vote totals. This allows for voters to vote for whoever they want, from Abraham Lincoln to the demiurge, and still see their ballots counted in a broad “write-in” pile of general dissent.

Unlike uncommitted votes, write-in votes will not be able to win delegates as a category—they are only tallied together as a group convenience on election results pages for the sake of convenience. Legally, they all represent votes for entirely different candidates. While it would technically be possible for a write-in candidate to win delegates if they hit the required benchmarks through write-in votes for them, there are currently no efforts to coordinate this. As such, feel free to vote for whoever or whatever you want if you live in these states or territories.

State/territory list:

March 5th: Vermont

May 21st: Oregon

June 4th: Washington, D.C.

Category 3: No Uncommitted Option, Most Write-Ins Not Tallied, But Blank Votes Tallied

Right on the heels of the previous small list with very specific rules is another small list with even more specific rules. Like Category 2, these states do not provide an option to vote uncommitted, but allow for write-ins. Where they differ from the Category 2 states is that they do not count most write-ins in their overall tallies. To save time, only write-in votes for “qualified” write in candidates are considered valid and counted. This means that any write-in vote that says something like “ceasefire,” “uncommitted,” and, yes, “Jane Fonda,” will be discarded.

For most states that do this and don’t provide an uncommitted option, this rules out the possibility of a protest vote beyond voting for the named candidates. These states are the exception, however. Unlike most states, they count blank ballots in their totals. While blank ballots cannot earn delegates, they are counted as a bloc, making them a clear statement of opposition to Biden that avoids providing support for Phillips or Williamson. As such, it is best to send back ballots in these states.

State/territory list:

March 5th: Maine

March 30th: North Dakota (Caucus)

April 2nd: New York

April 28th: Puerto Rico

Category 4: No Uncommitted Option, Most Write-Ins Not Counted, Blank Ballots Not Counted

Category 4 states have easily the most delegates of any section on this list. Unfortunately, they’re also where the options for protest votes become sharply limited. These states have similar rules as Category 3 states. They don’t provide an uncommitted ballot line and don’t tally write-in votes except for those given to qualified write-in candidates. What makes them different from Category 3 states is that they also don’t count blank votes in their tallies.

To register a non-Biden vote in the tallies here, you have to vote for someone pre-approved by the state, whether that be a named candidates on the ballot or a qualified write-in candidate. For most states, this leaves you with Dean Phillips and/or Marianne Williamson if you want your vote to count. Feel free to choose between the two at your own discretion, although you can always vote for another listed candidate or even prick someone from your state’s list of qualified write-in candidates if you really want to avoid voting for either of them.

State/territory list:

March 5th: California (Both Dean and Marianne on ballot), Texas (D and M), Virginia (D and M), Utah (D and M)

March 12th: Georgia (D and M)

March 19th: Arizona (D and M), Illinois (D and M), Ohio (Dean only)

April 23rd: Pennsylvania (Dean only)

May 14th: Nebraska (Dean only), West Virginia (Dean only)

Category 5: No Uncommitted Option, No Write-in Option, Blank Ballots Not Counted

Category 5 is very similar to Category 4, except with one difference. Instead of just making the write-in option functionally useless, these states don’t provide it at all. There’s no way to get around voting for one of the named candidates of you want to cast a protest vote in these states.

State/territory list:

March 5th: Arkansas (D and M), Oklahoma (D and M)

March 12th: Mississippi (No D or M or anyone else. Biden will just get 100% of the vote here. They’re still holding the contest, though.)

March 23rd: Louisiana (D and M)

June 4th: South Dakota (D and M)

June 8th: Guam (Candidate list currently unavailable)

Category 6: No Primary

Here’s the strangest section of them all. These states just cancelled their primaries and handed all of their delegates to Biden. They won’t let you vote against him even if you want to!

State/territory list: Florida and Delaware

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voting 'uncommitted' aka utilizing the protest vote is now one of the key strategies to let the biden administration know exactly what you think of their policies. it doesn't affect your vote in november, but it does very much affect the US policies being enacted on the ground in gaza right now.

think of it as a "fuck you" to joe biden, in the most democratic way possible.

you're not abstaining. you're not voting third party. you're not voting for trump. this is a protest vote. you're exercising your civic rights and letting joe biden know: fuck you.

one can instantly free oneself from the chains of identity discourse by simply conceiving of sexuality as something that is dialectical and not metaphysical

the man who sold the world // a deal with the devil

the amazing world of kimball

to be honest there has never been a fictional character i’ve actually wanted to date. like. i want them to date each other. i don’t want myself as a person to be involved in this scenario whatsoever. what would i add to this narratively? what’s my thematic purpose in the narrative? immersion breaking. 

sometimes i am struck by the fact that there are people i follow on tumblr because we were friends on livejournal TWENTY YEARS AGO

Could you recommend other Latin American communists than José Carlos Mariátegui?

I should preface this by saying I’m mostly familiar with Mexican Marxism.

Ricardo Flores Magón and Enrique Flores Magón (extremely influential, communists in the rest of Latin America basically saw them as the ideologues of the Mexican Revolution),

César Vallejo (poet and associate of Mariátegui, his political writings are neglected),

M.N. Roy (very influential for the development of international communist anticolonial strategy),

Tristán Marof (was cooking some kind of insane things about Tawantinsuyu but interesting because of that),

Aníbal Ponce (historian and critic of education, a big missing piece if people only look at European critical theory and some of his takes on it precede Paulo Freire),

Aimé Césaire (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land is one of the greatest poems about the Caribbean)

José Revueltas (great analysis of the world significance of the Mexican Revolution and the repression of the social revolutionary elements of it),

Che Guevara of course (you’d be surprised how little Anglophone people actually read anything by him),

Walter Rodney (Groundings with my Brothers is a great book)

Pablo González Casanova (great sociologist, a lot of what he wrote goes well with Henri Lefebvre, influenced the EZLN),

Ruy Mauro Marini (one of the greatest dependency theorists, does a lot of interesting things with Marx’s Capital),

Beatriz Nascimento (one of the main theorists of the Movimiento Negro in Brazil and influenced a lot of the reassessment of maroons),

Michael Löwy (great for connecting critical theory, Latin American Marxism, and the concept of utopia),

Gustavo Esteva (critic of developmentalism and one of the better radical democracy theorists), René Zavaleta Mercado (also a great theorist of radical democracy),

Andaiye (formerly worked with Walter Rodney and influential for the development of feminist social reproduction theory),

Álvaro García Linera (one of the theorists who I think is the most consistent defending Lenin’s position on governance, for better or worse, and a meeting point between autonomist Marxism and indianismo), and

Aníbal Quijano (great work on the world historical significance of colonialism and imperialism in the Americas)

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (revolutionary decolonial theorist and critic of North American academic decolonial theory, has some very interesting interpretations of abstract labor and language)