One Under-appreciated Breed Of Fic Writer Are The Ones Who Hyperfocus On Logistics To The Exclusion Of

I went to see Parasite completely blind besides being aware (unavoidably) that there was a hard tonal shift at some point. I saw the poster and stuff, but that was it

the entire time I was bracing myself for it to shift into some sort of alien parasite psychological horror movie, which seems really presumptuous, except I saw Bong Joon-ho's The Host and that movie actually did have a giant monster in it, so I wasn't putting it past him

Interstellar by Matt Walker Via Flickr: It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Milky Way shot on Flickr, so here is one from our recent trip to the PNW. This place is called Secret Beach in the Samuel H Boardman area. It’s no secret though, and it has been heavily photographed in recent time. It’s a really cool beach with tons of sea stacks. We shot into blue hour, and captured a pretty decent sunrise too. Thanks for looking!

be pro-aging but wear sun screen. sun protection is not beauty industry propaganda it will save you. wear it. or else.

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.

"Star Trek Deep Space Nine already did this in the 90's. It's not as special or original as you think." I say loudly to be heard over the din of the sportsbar where a baseball game is playing on a TV.

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

i’m like touch starved but for a river

for whatever reason I have found it much easier to simply block people and avoid obnoxious bad faith discourse on cohost vs tumblr. i must fix this

answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:

tl;dr:

israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.

with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.

the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.

as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.

the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.

ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.

and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.

all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!

long answers under the cut!

if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks

not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices

i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.

unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.

this was posted on abc a few days ago

it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.

even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.

with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.