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Amazing aurora spiral captured by David Cartier.

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So much of criticism against Biden right now is "I don't understand why Biden just can't be a dictator and do everything I want" meanwhile Republicans have been amassing power in all 3 branches of government steadily since the 1980s and are now wielding that power with unabashed glee.

Biden can't even get a new income-based student loan program off the ground without Republican governors suing him because those lower payments might help black people too much.

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This is the thing with the "I won't vote for Harris" supposed leftists.

None of them will tell you how allowing Trump to be elected helps.

Because they don't have an answer.

Because they don't really care about anything other than how they personally feel.

Actual leftism involves making pragmatic moves. The public will for revolution doesn't exist, and we live in a two party system. If you want to fight that system, great. There are things like ranked choice voting and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact we need to be fighting for. But those are fights that have to happen year round, at the state level, and not just in an election year.

And in the meanwhile, you vote defensively and strategically, in an attempt to save as many people as possible.

Saying you aren't voting for Harris isn't taking a stand against genocide. It's putting your head in the sand and admitting you care more about your own comfort than making a difference in the world.

Why aren't you getting involved in your local politics? Why aren't you running leftist candidates at a local level, so you can move them up in the system and eventually move the political discussion left. You want to know why politics have moved right? It's because the right wing has been doing that for decades.

Your refusal to participate won't save a single life.

It only means you're abandoning everyone else.

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"voting makes you complicit in US war crimes"

that's not how anything works. if you live in the US, if you pay taxes, if you are using a cell phone, if you drive or ride in a car, if you own anything with a rechargeable battery, you're technically complicit in war crimes.

not voting for Harris is, in effect, a vote for Trump. (mathematically you could argue it's half a vote for Trump but that's still voting for Trump)

I heard a National Parks employee a couple weeks ago say he wasn't sure the National Park Service could survive another Trump presidency. Federal agencies across the government are racing to get money out the door before January - EPA climate justice grants. USDA grants to Black and Indigenous farmers. immigration courts are racing to process as many citizenship applications as possible before January.

They're doing this because they know what will happen if Trump is elected again. We all know. Because we've done this before. There's no "he's just saying stuff he won't actually DO anything" this time around.

Not voting does not keep your hands clean. Not voting is not a principled stand for anything. If you have the ability to vote and choose not to, you have if anything increased the amount of blood on your hands.

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sometimes I think about how red is the first color in the visible light spectrum to be absorbed in ocean water

and how many deep-sea creatures evolved to be red as a stealth adaptation, making them near invisible when there’s little to no light present

and it makes me think. If there’s never any visible light present in these animals’ lifetimes, if no ROV shines a little flashlight in depths that would otherwise not have light, would these animals ever get the opportunity to actually be red? that might be a stupid question.

imagine being a little deep sea creature and having no idea you’re red until something comes along and shines a light on you except you still wouldn’t be able to tell because you’re probably colorblind. anyway. I don’t know where I was going with this post

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there are enough tumblr users who can vote in US battleground states to literally swing the election, do you realize that?? the election is going to come down to like 80’000 votes in those states — that could be your vote! so if you live in pennsylvania, georgia, arizona, nevada, north carolina, wisconsin, michigan, etccc your vote is going to make a huge, huge difference. please for the love of god vote (and if you live in a different state, you still need to vote too)

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It’s wild the number of posts I come across where people act like voting for or supporting Harris and Walz in the election is tantamount to implicitly supporting genocide. You know what actually helps genocide? Doing nothing while pretending you have the moral high ground. America is deeply tied to Israel and there will be no candidate who is as critical of their actions as we want them to be. We as private citizens do not have the power to make the USA suddenly cease all activity with Israel and demand an uncompromising ceasefire deal. Instead, we have to get our hands dirty and decide what path forward will mitigate as much harm as possible. You have one presidential candidate saying Israel needs to finish the job and another saying that we can’t ignore the tragedies in Gaza while vocally supporting a temporary ceasefire. These are your two picks. Thinking any third party candidate has a shot when none have any wide-reaching name recognition less than 100 days before the election is a fever dream.

The question then becomes, are you willing to say you voted “correctly” by voting for someone who has no shot of winning but is most closely aligned to you? Or are you going to vote for who will do the least harm? The idea that voting for a president involves liking them is a fairy tale. The establishment will always be the enemy of civil rights and safety. You’re voting for which opponent you want in office. The writing is on the wall about which candidate will be less of an uphill battle to fight against, and sidestepping the responsibility of making that decision by throwing away a vote isn’t moral or intellectually groundbreaking - it’s cowardly.

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Some very eloquent notes on violence as a necessity for resistance.

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I can think of a really easy solution to this problem.

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Red-tailed Comet (Sappho sparganurus), male, family Trochilidae, order Apodiformes, Bolivia

If you noticed the generic name, you also might be interested to know that the subfamily is Lesbiinae.

photograph by Wilder Córdova

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Northern Cardinal

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The oldest living tree ever found was a pine named “Prometheus.” It had been alive since before the Egyptian pyramids were built. Some guy cut it down in 1964. Source

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@/imperfectidealist on TikTok

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Alt-text included.

That's tracypaula@erinregananimalsanctuary.com

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I wanna start drawing and documenting every new bird I see, I saw a Palm Warbler in my yard today ! 🌱