iwritethingssometimes

[iwritethingssometimes]

Make the most of the next two months

Get all your vaccines

Travel while we have a functioning DOT

Read and buy books on feminism, anti-racism, pro-lgbt

Attend drag shows

Don't skip any of your classes

Read and buy history books

Find your out-of-state networks

Learn to carry cash

Get birth control solutions

Support the Biden/Harris administration

Postpone large purchases and save money

Be careful of what you say online, like un-ambiguous attacks against the incoming administration, especially in spaces that contain your full name or personal information

Feel free to add on.

[iwritethingssometimes]

Also worth noting, if you already have various types of mental health issues--like depression, ADHD, Autism, etc. Then you are going to be far more vulnerable to burn out. You'll need to take care of yourself even more.

On twitter I’m seeing dozens of threads from Black activists warning people against burnout, giving all sorts of useful tips about preventing and managing it for the sake of a long-term, sustainable effort.

On tumblr I’m seeing a hell of a lot of young white kids yelling at anyone who actually follows those steps, and acting like burnout is a moral falling rather than a well-proven psychological phenomenon.

Be careful who you get your information from. Don’t let guilt lead you to make choices that will harm both you and the movement.

[iwritethingssometimes]

I'm seeing some posting about a feeling of fishiness about the recently completed US Election.

In the attempt to do something more productive than my last post, I'm gonna do an adhoc examination of how feasible I think a "rigged election" actually is, looking at a few methods that could have been used. So, to start with, what is the actual evidence here?

Most of it is... honestly vibes based, which I get, but don't put a lot of stock in, There was a lot of energy around the Harris campaign, and she had some good polls, but Donald Trump has proved nothing else in the past fucking decade, its that the polls literally do not matter for him, and he can outperform them by a hundred miles.

But. There's also some numbers.

None of this has been verified yet, and I want to make that clear, but this year has largely reported record turnout in a ton of states, especially the swing states, and yet, so far.

The number of votes seems much lower this year.

Not republican votes, not democrat votes, all votes. Hell, third party voting collapsed this year--whatever else you take from this election, this was not a case of the left splitting the vote.

Now, it's true that the vote count hasn't been completed, and it's possible that the numbers will make more sense once that's done. It's also true that the states didn't have quite the same turn-out as last year... but it was only a percentage point or two lower.

Add that to the frequent postings about people having their ballots rejected for... questionable reasons, and.

Well. It starts going from a "the moon is fake!" conspiracy to "Epstein had sex slaves" conspiracy.

But, okay, is it even possible for Trump to have faked the vote like this? People talked about it, but it was mostly in terms of legal challenges trying to overturn a Harris victory, or pulling in the supreme court to decide narrow districts. This, by all accounts, seems to be a straight forward Trump sweep.

So if there is shenanigans afoot, how could he have done it?

There's three feasible(ish) pathways, in my opinion:

Voter suppression and manipulation pre-ballot: Yeah this happened. It's also irrelevant to any possibility that the vote counts were tampered with. Look, this election was flooded with misinformation, legal suits, court cases, and election officials doing everything in their power to fuck with people's right to vote. It was filled with ballot boxes being lit on fire. Elon Musk did a fucking paid vote scheme! Of course there was voter suppression! But there always is, and although it was worse this year than many others, it wouldn't cause any numerical mismatch between turn out and votes, and there's not much that can be done now for this election. Even if someone voted because Musk slipped them $100, no court will ever be able to prove they didn't just happen upon $100 bucks and then voted for Trump.

Voting machines were manipulated: A few hours ago I would have said this was practically impossible, but apparently a bunch of election officials and cyber-security experts were sounding the alarm about this a few months ago, so, uh. That being said, I've seen people claiming that Starlink or whatever hacked voting machines, and no. No, Starlink did not hack voting machines. No one "hacked" voting machines. They weren't connected to the internet, or any wireless communication systems, because anyone with any degree of cybersecurity knowledge will tell you that's how you create an insecure system. Now, it's not impossible, technically speaking, than Elon Musk or fucking Russia managed to hire engineers and somehow bribe enough officals to get access to the machines and install hardware that would allow external access, but in that case we live in a Bond movie and somehow have bigger problems. So, if the voting machines themselves were compromised in any technological way, it would have required direct, physical access, which should be basically impossible, unless...

Ballot officials fucked with the vote This is the one I think is plausible. Basically, in this case, what could have happened is that various election officials at different levels of the process more or less lied about the vote count. This could have happened in a lot of different ways--they could have found reasons to reject mail-in ballots, which several states attempted to make legal, they could have found reasons to reject in-person ballots, which several states attempted to make legal. They could have, if the corruption ran deep enough to make this feasible, just... not counted or reported votes that swung for Harris. They could have, if the election machines work similar to the ones up here in BC, seen the results from the machines, then called the central election office over the phone--because remember, the ballot boxes should not be connected to anything. I don't know. There's a lot of options, and it varies from state to state, because remember, each state runs their own elections, and has their own rules and procedures.

So yeah, three explanations, only one of which is really plausible.

Now, I want to be clear, I don't think this election was fraudulent. Not yet, at least, I need to see actual evidence, or this is nothing more than a theory, but I also want to be clear.

...3 makes sense.

3 would explain why urban areas seemed to be underrepresented in this election, while rural areas surged. 3 would explain a discrepancy between voter turn out and votes counted. 3 would fit the strategy Trump and MAGA loyalists have been describing for the last four years, of infiltrating the election machinery and manipulating it to their own ends.

So I'm not saying it's likely that Trump fucked with the vote, not without evidence. Not yet.

But I will say this looks a hell of a lot more plausible than any claims made in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

[iwritethingssometimes]

it's wild to me that people see Ronald Reagan staffers supporting Kamala and instead of going "wow, this signifies that she too represents the interests of the bourgeoisie and neoliberal order as a whole, including some of the far right elements" they go "wow, Reaganites hate trump so much! poggers!! This signifies a positive trend for 'our democracy' that the 'left' party is supported by the most infamous bigots in the country's history"

[iwritethingssometimes]

Here are some hotlines to call

Here are some ppl pointing out about how something not feeling right about this election

And here’s a link you can use to contact Biden about doing a recount and or revote. Spread the word on every social media platform, friends and family members.

[iwritethingssometimes]

Just to be clear, Kamala conceded with grace and dignity but it is still well within everyone’s right to demand an investigation and even a recount with due cause despite a winner being declared. U.S.Americans have the right to demand free and fair elections (we don’t have a right to, say, start an insurrection like certain people did after the 2020 election).

Many, including major swing states, (Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and more) have already admitted to data and ballots not being recognized or lost and are recounting or calling for a recount. It usually takes days to count and record votes, a day after a bunch of election tampering is not enough.

If you used a mail-in ballot and haven’t yet, check if it was actually counted and “recognized.” A lot of mail-in voters from swing states found out that their ballots were uncounted today.

[iwritethingssometimes]

I hate the idea of voting for the liberals strategically instead of the ndp but I am actually terrified of what would happen if pp won next year

~~~~

[iwritethingssometimes]

the world is a scary place when you are a small and edible thing

[iwritethingssometimes]

I need to get off the internet soon, because this day has been a fucking hellscape, but I wanted to say something first, as a Canadian who isn’t directly affected by the US presidential election.

I’ve already seen a lot of people pulling off a post-mortem of Harris’s campaign. Talking about how she went too far to the right and turned off the leftists. How Biden should have dropped out earlier—or never should have dropped out at all! How Gaza ultimately proved to be too great of a hurdle for her to overcome.

Maybe these are all true. I don’t know.

But I don’t want to talk about this right now. I don’t want to talk about how this isn’t the end, how we can still fight, how we can survive, because sure, you know, those are probably all true too, but you know what else is true?

I just watched everything I believed in get torn apart.

Because people did fight. Whatever you want to say about Kamela Harris, she did gather support. People did rally behind her, she raised millions of dollars of donations, surged to the national spotlight in a matter of weeks, seemingly managed to best Trump at every step.

And people believed in her. It’s easy to say “oh, she appealed too hard to Republicans”, but I remember her rallies. I remember the DNC. I remember the friends who worked in her campaign, who fought in the swing states to try and get people to the polls. I remember the first political commercial she put out, before she even had a running mate, and I remember—I still remember—how for the first time since Trump re-entered the race, I felt hope.

I believed that the fight wasn’t over. That people could come together and work together to make a better future for themselves.

And today, I woke up and found out I was an idiot for thinking that.

I found out it doesn’t matter how hard you fight. How much you believe in a better tomorrow, how hard you try to make things better. None of it matters. Monsters will regain power, they’ll strip away whatever progress you’ve made, people you love will suffer and possibly die.

I learned that nothing you do matters. That you can’t stop the inevitable march of dictators and fascism, no matter what you do or how hard you try.

And yeah, I know. Doomerism doesn’t help. I can’t give up fighting. No one can. There’s a federal election coming up next year, here in Canada—assuming no one forces it to happen sooner. I have to pick myself up and do everything I can to keep us from sliding further into a nightmare.

But for today, I need to just sit and grieve over the fact that the woman who promised to make things better—who for the first time in my life, had a plan to genuinely improve some of the worst parts of American life—lost in a landslide. I need to grieve my childish, naïve belief that people are good, that they’ll do the right thing.

I need to give up on the idea of hope.

Maybe it’s because I’m young. Maybe this is a lesson everyone learns someday, just like everyone eventually watches their parents die.

But. Just. Let me, let us, have a moment to grieve what we lost.

Please.

[iwritethingssometimes]

the most depressing part is that it's not even kamala's stance on genocide that is costing her the elections. i wish it were. it's people genuinely shifting for trump. but it's the pro-palestine movement that's going to get the blame for it.

[iwritethingssometimes]

reblog if you need a hug

[iwritethingssometimes]

I hope none of you disappear in the coming days. Seriously don't do anything that can't be undone.

[iwritethingssometimes]

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'm not even remotely close to fine what the fuck just happened.

[iwritethingssometimes]

Tim Houston has called a snap election to be held Nov. 26. The Progressive Conservative leader is trying to win a second term, despite legislation he personally introduced three years ago that gave Nova Scotia a fixed election date of July 15, 2025.  Houston visited the lieutenant-governor Sunday to dissolve the current House.

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[iwritethingssometimes]

vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote

[iwritethingssometimes]

Does anybody else get legitimately worried when a fanfic author who was updating regularly just suddenly disappears with no warning? Like, is it a serious case of writers block or are they in a coma? Did they just up and quit? Was it me? Were my reviews not good enough?! Did they die 😳?! Were they kidnapped? Do I need to file a missing persons report? Excuse me officer, there’s been 13 weekly updates and now nothing for months! Find them! What’s their name?! Name!? I don’t know their name but they write 3k+ chapters and I need them safe and back in my life!

[iwritethingssometimes]

Vote Harris.