#but it's not the elected gov doing this

[stargazing-zani]

*slides in a month late* can you imagine how wholesome the statehouse would be during the Olympics

[tanjir0se]

Ok not going to rb the original post bc i'm protecting my peace and don't want to get into a stupid argument with internet strangers but i just saw a post mocking someone saying that it's important to get out and vote this election, they were saying "LOL why hasn't anyone thought of this before? we can just flip the red states blue LOL! The way to win is just not lose! haha how stupid" and i'm like

I know "voting blue" isn't a longterm answer and I don't like Kamala either but...you guys realize historically red states..DID flip blue in the last election because of voter turnout, right? You guys know that, right? You guys know that voter turnout increased by 66% and very likely lead the historically red states of Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada to flip blue...right? You guys ... you guys were there, right? I just hate to see people mocking the concept of encouraging people to vote as a strategy to win because it. It literally just works. We have seen it work..you guys saw that, right?

[badolmen]

In high school one of our history classes (I think it was APUSH - Godspeed Mr. S) had us do an activity. We broke into groups and got a word bank full of infrastructure, institutions, and political buildings. We were supposed to rank them in what order we thought would be most effective to destroy military opposition. I don’t remember which group won (by having the most similar ranking to reflect whatever war we were studying at the time) or what my group ended up choosing for our ranking.

But I do distinctly remember looking at civilian hospitals, civilian homes, civilian schools and discussing them as targets with my group members. “good targets if we need to destroy morale” versus “we’re not invading, we’re just going after military targets.”

“If we were invading or trying to wipe them out, they’d be a priority - we would need to destroy places of community, places where safety is assumed.”

I’ve been thinking about that discussion a lot lately.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

As I leave the land of my spotty youth and leave behind most of the 2022 midterm elections, I do so with a real nostalgia for the following provision of the U.S. Constitution:

Article IV, Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

This was placed into the new Constitution as a further device to exorcize the evil spirits of the Articles of Confederation, which blew goats. The passage has gone largely unexamined almost since it was adopted with the rest of the Constitution. (For example, it’s hardly mentioned in the Federalist Papers, and the Supreme Court, when it has taken up the subject at all, is incoherent on it.) But whatever “a Republican Form of Government” means, it cannot possibly mean the situation as it stands in Wisconsin.

On Tuesday, the Democratic Party got 51% of the vote statewide. This got the Democrats…30% of the seats in the state legislature. Any reasonable definition of “a Republican Form of Government” cannot possibly include this kind of result. It is completely and utterly a product of grotesque partisan gerrymandering sanctioned by the Supreme Court in its disgraceful decision Rucho v. Common Cause three years ago.

The die was cast on this atrocity last April, when the state supreme court ruled that this year’s elections would be contested on the ludicrous maps produced by the state legislature, itself the product of past gerrymanders. The U.S. Supreme Court was a critical accessory after the fact. From Wisconsin Public Radio:

"It was a reversal for Hagedorn, who joined the court's liberals in early March to choose a legislative map drawn by Gov. Tony Evers. But after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Hagedorn's ruling based on the way it applied the federal Voting Rights Act to draw Black-majority districts in Milwaukee, it sent the case back to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to consider all over again."

You will note that the carefully manufactured conservative majority on the court was not shy about meddling with maps in this instance.

"'We could construct one ourselves or with the assistance of an expert, but time and our institutional limitations make that unrealistic at this juncture,' Hagedorn wrote. 'The remaining option is to choose one of the proposed maps we received as the baseline. Only one proposal was represented as race-neutral in its construction: the maps submitted by the Legislature.'

For Democrats, the decision was likely the worst-possible outcome. For the past decade, they've felt the sting of the 2011 map, which Republicans drew when they controlled all branches of state government. Even during years when Democratic candidates have performed well statewide, Republicans have maintained large majorities in the Legislature, thanks in part to a map that political scientists have said is among the biggest partisan gerrymanders in modern U.S. history. The new map, drawn by Republicans and made law by four justices on the state Supreme Court Friday, further entrenched that advantage, giving Republicans a realistic shot at a two-thirds majority that would let them override a governor's veto. It took effect despite being vetoed by Evers last year and being initially rejected by the state Supreme Court last month."

The best chance that Wisconsin has to un-fuck itself here comes next April, when an election could bring a Democratic majority to the state supreme court, which theoretically could open the door to maps that less closely resemble a game of three-card monte. Of course, John Roberts and the gang put the kibosh on the last attempt at un-fucking last April. The roundness and completeness with which extreme conservatism has deformed the American republic is occasionally stunning.

Maps are an indispensable tool for outlining natural features, human boundaries and transportation networks. But when it comes to depicting how many people are in a given place — how populations are distributed —a traditional map has distinct drawbacks. Mapmakers have sought to offset this limitation through an innovation that's known as a cartogram.

There are two types of cartograms. Distance cartograms are often used to show stylized bus or subway routes. They depict networks without strict adherence to location or range. The other type is called an area cartogram. In these graphics, the size of each shape making up the map — like counties, states or nations — is adjusted to represent a different variable, often the number of people living there.

Cartograms can highlight the difference between places with large populations (or large amounts of whatever variable is replacing area) and places with large amounts of land and/or water, but which have small populations. In other words, a cartogram shows population density in a graphic format.

There are many different ways to develop an area cartogram. In a contiguous cartogram, the shape of a specific area is altered to account for differences in population (or another variable), but shapes retain their positions relative to one another. This approach leads to distortion of the basic shapes. Another is a non-contiguous cartogram, which means that the shapes can move and resize without remaining in position with their neighbors. Rather, the shapes keep their usual form, and are scaled in size based on population (or other variable).

Cartograms can be helpful in interpreting data when the number of people is important. For example, area cartograms are often used to display election outcomes when the variable of interest is total number of votes — not some rate or percentage. An election results cartogram is an increasingly common tool used to help highlight dynamics related to population density. In conventional maps showing election results large areas that are sparsely populated take up the most space, and thus have the most visual impact, while more densely populated areas that take up very little land area have far less visual impact despite representing many more people.

In an non-contiguous area cartogram of Wisconsin, the state's counties have been resized according to their their populations. Counties with large populations grow bigger than they would appear on a standard map, and counties with sparse populations shrink in comparison.

These two maps of Wisconsin's counties highlight a few key points about the distribution of the state's population. First, the cartogram emphasizes how overwhelmingly large Milwaukee County's population is, relative to all other counties in the state. Dane and Waukesha counties stand out as the next two largest after Milwaukee. In addition, the other counties on the southern and eastern edges of the state together represent a preponderance of Wisconsin's total population. Another takeaway is just how different an area-based map and a population-scaled map look. It's easy to think of Wisconsin's rural areas as making up a lot of the state, but in terms of population they are quite small.

A cartogram can help make sense of any topic where the important information is in the number of people, and there is wide variation in population density in a region. For example, cartograms can be useful illustrations of economic activity, immigration, school enrollment, votes, jobs or housing numbers.

[jay-wasreblogging]

🗣️🙏🗣️ CAMBODIA MENTIONED!! 🇰🇭🪷 WHAT THE FUCK IS A DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT!??!! 🇰🇭🗣️ ARRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 🗣️🗣️🪷🙏

[littledead-ridinghood]

but he still exists in American society and he has to use the systems available to him- Like guys we are all agreeing on the same points. Please go back and notice the statement about Ollie turning himself in was not stated to be good or bad. It pointed out that turning yourself in does not automatically mean you serve the people. Ollie criticizes the system and is a part of the system. He lives in society and is a vigilante the harsh reality of his situation is nuanced.

Oh boy, So I stalk this one blog I like, like, every 6 weeks are so, right? I like their posts because they're very informative, yet they always seem like their being eaten alive by anons. So, I'm scrolling through her blog and I know now...I know what will happen if I engage, but the jury came back with a plea to continue so here I go.

(word of salt: I don't remember ever little thing that was said off the top of my head, even as I go back and forth to check to make sure I'm not reconfiguring my argument or placing words in anybody's mouth)

I agree with the sentiment of this ask that he’s still a victim of American society. As I added on to the reblog he’s working to fix the system given to him and we both know that simply dipping out of participating in society isn't an option as it doesn’t lead to anything productive changing for the better. But that doesn’t make Ollie a cop (as the other anon tried to argue) because we all only can work with the cards given. My philosophy and lens of life gets thrown around on my blog a lot and that is "sometimes it's not good or bad, it just is." That's what I feel like you're arguing, and I agree.

By no means am I, or anyone, calling Ollie “the most perfect little revolutionary known to man” there’s no such thing. And no one is saying it's not nuanced or that there aren't limits to what Ollie can do for others. No one can save everyone. But, again, Ollie is the one who actively takes a vigilante stance against the system. Many other characters call themselves heroes and that's the difference. Ollie acknowledges that he is working against the people in power, that he is inherently a criminal, and that being a criminal that doesn't inherently make him bad or good. Arrows are known for befriending their enemies. Many others work with that power and think themselves better than others who break the law because they're doing it "the correct way."

that's the broad view so that we're on the same page. It does seem on that fact we agree. Moving on more specifically to what you actually put in your ask , "to serve the people" it seems we all have different interpretation of what that means. By being a firefighter or a paramedic, you serve your community. They place their lives and time on the line for others. Ollie, in my opinion, serves the community by being a vigilante. And by holding himself accountable within his community for his actions he is serving the community because Ollie swore to protect them. He can't protect the people if the people don't trust him to do the right thing nor if they don't believe he doesn't hold their best interests at heart. I never said Ollie turning himself in was good or bad, I just agreed that time and time again, every time there's a revolution in history, the country once again falls because they have no plan for what to do after. Ollie is one who is trying to come up with that plan.

Ollie is the kind of person who thinks everyone has a moral obligation to vote. That is playing into the system, that is a vital part of his character. No one is saying he isn't a part of the system or that he isn't also a product of society, what we're saying is he's the kind of character who's trying to change those problems. And to make an active change you have to participate therefore by participating, he is serving.

[septembermonologues]

real actual photo of me this week going back and forth between my academic advisors trying to get my shit together because going from a private out of state college to a community college in state to one of the largest universities in the state all for one bachelor's degree is something of a nightmare

[simsfromupthere]

i love that my current favorite style and fixation both in terms of clothing/accessories/hairstyles/facial hair is British Post-Punk Revival/Art Rock/Prog Rock cause its either rlly simple clothing layered or just complete chaos like try and watch some early access cc creator ever have the guts to release a set based on these fits w/ a 2 month wait or sumthing, they wont 😎... not only bc im likely the sole niche demographic who wants and WILL unironically dress his sims like this (as soon as i get to play ts4 again baybee) and know i can just do it by simply frankensteining already free great cc to recreate these fits or at least very similar ones, cherish ur niches while u still can mhm 😌☝️

[miutonium]

Jsyk I've been anxious and doom scrolling my social medias since Saturday so it might take me a while to response to any ask/dms ;w; I haven't feel myself lately either but I think I'll be fine 🥲

[tunacharm]

oh fuck the hyperfixation is starting to become politics

[moonssugar]

the amount of usamericans on this site foaming at the mouth screaming at people to vote for genocide joe is reaching critical meltdown levels. truly a bunch of rabid animals

[matrixrry]

.

[qqueenofhades]

Obviously the main contrasting narrative of the Harris campaign is (rightfully, the ads almost write themselves!) prosecutor vs convict. But I keep thinking about how, in one of her first campaign speeches, she had Biden on the phone and he said something like "I'm here, I love you Kid" and she said "I love you too" and just... That compared to the Jan 6th Mike Pence situation. Like this election is about democracy over fascism but it's also about love and kindness and sincerity on the level of person-to-person relationships.

Well... yeah. As Minnesota governor Tim Walz put it when he was doing the TV rounds for Kamala the other day, the Republicans are just weird people. They are mean, petty, reactionary, focused on revenge and retribution and making people suffer, their rhetoric is about shame and violence and punishment, they are all about Who Your Enemy Is, and their drift into ever more extreme fascist positions is a reflection of that. And strongman/fascist authoritarianism is often popular during moments of chaos and upheaval in the rest of the world, because the unknown feels so scary and people keep falling for the lie that a helpful dictator strongman will turn up and make it all better. It never happens, but it is a powerful lie and it can work for several years at a time, as we have (unfortunately) seen. (And Tim Walz is definitely climbing the list of Old White Guys I Like; supposedly he is on Harris' initial VP shortlist, and while I certainly have favorites of my own, she could very much do worse.)

However, and this is why fascist movements always plant the seeds of their own destruction, this constant garbage spew of hate and vitriol never ever works forever, and usually not even all that long. Because once you spend your time destroying everyone else on your mean stupid crusade of mindless bigotry, you lose friends, you alienate the ordinary people who are more interested in having something to be FOR rather than just constantly against, and eventually you eat your own. And while it will shore up your ever-dwindling cult base, it will not be able to expand beyond the people who are already fully indoctrinated, and it will lose more people than it attracts. As I have said before, one of the key tenets of fascist movements is presenting themselves as powerful, inevitable, and almighty: just surrender to them now before We Crush You (tm) later! But they are not! They are goofy, stupid, mean, and just plain (thanks Gov. Walz) WEIRD! Nobody wants to be those guys!

So yes. With the whole fact of a party where one guy tried to get his first VP killed and now has picked another reactionary loser who is the least popular VP pick in 50 years, and the other is joyfully supporting his VP, a woman of color (after serving loyally to the first Black president, Biden has set the way for the -- knock on wood -- second, and that is also amazing), it's really easy to see the difference, and very clearly, people do. Kamala offers something to rally FOR, and that is always, always more powerful than mindless hate. Sucks to be the GOP. (As usual.)

[decolonize-the-everything]

The language (you can read it in full here on congress dot gov)

Resolved, That the House of Representatives— (1) reaffirms the State of Israel’s right to exist; (2) recognizes that denying Israel’s right to exist is a form of antisemitism; (3) rejects calls for Israel’s destruction and the elimination of the only Jewish State; and (4) condemns the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel.

House Bill 888.

Posted December 3rd, 2023

All 435 house seats are up for grabs this election.

34 seats in the Senate are up for grabs.

[hedgehog-moss]

Update on the French protests: we've had a well-known expert in contemporary political history call the situation we're in "the worst democracy crisis France has known since [the end of the 4th Republic]" and meanwhile the government is trying its hardest to maintain a façade of normal functioning by a) hiding from protesters, b) hiding protesters from view, and c) banning saucepans and other means of drawing attention to the protests that are being swept under the rug.

I mean casserolades are an old tradition in this country but they wouldn't have been needed if Macron &co hadn't started almost systematically banning protests in entire districts of the towns they visit and setting up police roadblocks to prevent peaceful protesters from going anywhere near them. (Too bad because these are the kinds of images the media get (these 2 are from Le Monde) when protesters get to talk to Macron <3) :

Protesters corralled away where they can be easily ignored started banging pots and pans so the protest could at least be heard in the background of TV footage, and then pans started being confiscated.

French courts have repeatedly struck down the bans as illegal but police prefects keep churning new bans out every time Macron goes somewhere anyway, trying to publish them at the last minute so there's no time for a judicial review. (I saw a sign at a protest last week that went "Stop with all the bans we no longer have time to disobey all of them")

After boldly banning saucepans by calling them "portable sonorous devices" last week, today a police prefecture banned "festive gatherings of a musical nature" in a town Macron will be visiting tomorrow. They're (ab)using counter-terrorist legislation for all this, so these days we get to read unheard-of court rulings that go like "We are suspending this prefectural decree as we do not consider festive gatherings of a musical nature to pose a significant terrorist threat to the President."

If Macron had people showing up in support I don't think we would see so many pissy protest bans because then the media could show backers vs. opponents and things would look normal (and not like 70% of the country is very pissed off with Macron). But there's not much for them to show if they don't show the angry people banging pans and it clearly rankles Macron—we learnt yesterday that he sent a letter to 200,000 political supporters of his essentially ordering them to start making appearances all over the country, to show they are "proud of what you are and of what our country has become [since I got elected]." That seems a bit desperate.

For months Macron &co have been predicting that people would get tired of taking to the streets in large numbers, and now that people are going like—right, let's try a new strategy, small local protests greeting gov members everywhere they go!—we're hearing a clear "no not like that, that's not what we meant :l " reaction from the government.

They've also been trying the strategy of announcing stuff at the last minute, like on Monday the Minister of Education announced at noon that he would visit a higher learning institution in Lyon 2 hours later, and a hundred of protesters still showed up and tried to force their way into the building. They were held off by cops using tear gas and trying to block entrances (there's a pic that made me smile, showing cops trying to barricade university gates with garbage bins—how the tables have turned...!) and the Minister ended up not showing up and moving on to the next step of his schedule (protesters tried to follow him there but police vans were blocking the street.)

The first half of the video is at the uni in Lyon; the second half is in Paris later that day. When he returned to Paris the Minister was greeted by protesters with saucepans at the train station, it's like a national relay race of protesting at times. He had to go back through the train to leave via the other end of the platform under police escort so as not to meet any protesters (god forbid).

Macron commented that this was "uncivic" behaviour and I agree, civic behaviour on the part of gov members would be to at least face the people they choose to fuck over, instead of hiding behind cops and fleeing. Obviously Macron was condemning the 'uncivic' protesters though, and the Minister said he felt "physically threatened" by the "violence of [the protesters'] speech" which is a shit thing to say considering on the same day that he was mildly inconvenienced by having to take a different exit and felt physically endangered by words, yet another protester was mutilated after being shot at by police with a rubber bullet. Not a peep about this incident (or previous ones) from the government. The Minister of Education never even condemned that time high schoolers trying to protest got tear gassed and threatened with riot guns by cops in front of their school earlier this month.

But while people continue protesting despite the actual violence from cops, our ministers are looking pretty scared of citizens banging pots and pans. Here's a list of official visits that got cancelled "for safety reasons" (saucepan terrorism) in the past week:

1. Minister P. NDiaye cancelled a visit in Lyon 2. Minister F. Braun cancelled a visit to Evrard Hospital 3. Minister Delegate O. Klein cancelled a visit in Bobigny 4. Minister Delegate O. Grégoire cancelled a visit in La Baule 5. Minister S. Guerini cancelled a visit in Castelnau 6. Secretary of State B. Couillard cancelled a visit in Rochefort 7. Minister S. Retailleau cancelled a visit to the Paris Saclay University (electricity trade unionists cut the power in the building she was supposed to inaugurate, so) 8. Minister C. Grandjean cancelled a visit in Toulouse (this article says it was probably because the visit was quite near a big highway protest where protesters among other things were building a concrete wall on a national road)

In the same bullshitting vein as "portable sonorous devices", gov spokespeople have been insisting that visits aren't being cancelled, ministers are just "adjusting the course of their trips" which is funny to me. I guess we never beheaded any royalty we just adjusted the course of their necks. I also read a newspaper article that made me laugh, that went like "Minister cancels visit; trade unions disappointed" and I thought it was because the cancelled visit was a meeting with the unions which they wouldn't get to have, but the article said it was actually because they had a good protest planned and wouldn't get to hold it...

Watching protesters mess with the government in small ways on a daily basis has been good for morale—on Twitter the hashtags #IntervillesMacron and #IntervillesduZbeul popped up (zbeul = chaos, mess, and Intervilles was a TV game show that aired for over 50 years, where French cities competed against one another in goofy challenges). I only mentioned cancellations above, but fun things also happen on non-cancelled government visits, like a Minister having to leave a building via the emergency exit because of protesters blocking the building entrance (which some people argued is worth more points than a cancellation as it's more entertaining):

Various websites were created to keep track of all these smaller protests and to officialise the point system that ranks cities on their efforts to fuck with the government:

(the first symbol means a protest, the second means a casserolade, the last one means protesters managed to get inside a building where a visit was taking place)

(Translation: Ruckus (saucepans, heckling...) 1pt Protest: 1pt Creative action (chasing minister in the woods, etc): 2pts Measures of energy conservation (= power cuts by unions) 3pts Action that leads to a political figure fleeing: 4pts Cancellation of a visit: 5pts — then there's a weighting system where the score is multiplied by 3 if it's a Minister, by 5 if it's the Prime Minister, by 6 if it's Macron.) (I also saw an interesting debate on Twitter this week—since our leaders often embarrass themselves, how should the government's own goals fit into the point system?)

Right now the Hérault department is winning because on top of protests, power cuts and casserolades, protesters greeted Macron with a giant "MACRON FUCK OFF" sign hung from a cliff (!) and took over a highway display so it'd say "Welcome to [region] Butthole Ist"

These past few days I've been discovering unknown French cities (and Ministers) thanks to them showing up in the hashtag after a good protest. I discovered a mediaeval castle I'd never heard of when unions hung banners featuring our most famous revolutionary dates from the castle's battlements. (Two days later, another protest with eloquent banners in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris:)

People are very creative—last week we heard that protesters got prosecuted for giving Macron the finger and insulting him during one of his official visits (< we are a healthy democracy), so protesters in another region tried a more sarcastic approach, and greeted a deputy from Macron's party at a strawberry fair this week with clapping and confetti and "Thank you for making us work 2 more years, thank you for police repression, thank you!" The deputy beat a hasty retreat. Then said he would file a complaint against the harassment and intimidation he had been subjected to. (The tear gas and riot guns and arrests and protest bans are not intimidation of protesters on the other hand. Or the fact that another deputy from his party recently said on TV that they were "ready for war"... They're ready to wage war, but run and hide when people clang saucepans and throw confetti.)

Anyway. I'm enjoying the fact that they can't even attend a small strawberry fair without getting heckled right now. In one of my first posts about the political crisis in March I wrote something like "How will Macron and his gov have any legitimacy to speak about any issues after this?" and it cheers me up to see a lot of people across the country agree that they have no legitimacy to talk about anything, not even the strawberry harvest.

The next nationwide protest is of course for May 1st, but in the meantime it's been really fun following the smaller protest actions all over the place. Members of government & Macron's party keep making whiny statements along the lines of this is terrorist behaviour, we can't go anywhere, why are people not getting tired of fucking with us and the answer is, because it's really entertaining!

This was the last sentence of a recent Le Monde article about Macron's situation and it has such a sinister, end-of-reign tone:

"I'm moving forward," Macron concluded, on April 20th in the Herault department, while behind his back echoed the sound of saucepans.

[queenwille]

Israelis frolicking around the beaches of Tel Aviv without a care vs Palestinians being bombed and murdered at the hands of the IDF

And you’ll sit there and be all “oh poor Israel my little bloorboos you go murder all of those people who could be Hamas members even the children”

yep, people in israel sure are trying to live their lives while being under constant threat, while palestinians can’t. know why? where’s the difference? because it sure isn’t israelis’ fault.

while the israeli gov, the IDF and the rest of the official offices do their absolute best to promise israeli civilians’ safety, you simply cannot say the same about hamas, the “elected government” in gaza. i say “elected” because that happened in 2006 and whoever calls that democracy is a hypocrite.

israel’s one of the most expensive countries to live in because most of its funds simply go to securing its civilians safety from the constant threats from its neighboring countries 🤷🏻‍♀️

should israelis be shamed for working so hard to promise it’s people’s safety or should hamas, the ruling party in gaza, an actual designated terror organization, be shamed for not making even the slightest effort to provide safety to its people, or even worse, using them as human shields?

honestly, not need for mental gymnastics. golda meir, israel’s only female prime minister in history said it best:

you may watch this interview with her, which is so painfully relevant to this day.