#i can't look at the electoral map

[laracrofted]

happy scream into your pillow tuesday 😁

[aropride]

ok story before bed time. everyone gather around

you are me at age 13. you are an 8th grader who just realized he likes girls and recently had a gender crisis in the home depot lighting aisle. it is november of 2016, and trump has run for president for the first time. you are watching the map change over your dad's shoulder. you aren't really sure how it works yet but you are seeing a lot of red on there and you are very frightened. you just found out you have free will, like, last year, and you are only beginning to grasp the gravity of the situation- the situation being the united states of america in general- and it already is looking very bad.

when you wake up in the morning your dad tells you trump has won. he's too happy about it. you're skipping breakfast to make the bus in time. the sun's barely risen, btw, but you are 13 so you have little to no autonomy or rights, so you are in the fluorescent-light torment-nexus they call a "middle school" by 7:45am on the dot.

you see your friend as you're walking to your homeroom. he's a fellow gay emo middle schooler, he sucks, and he really likes to guilt-trip you into skipping class to hang out with him by telling you he's going to kill himself if you don't. you have other qualms with him, but this illustrates enough. he says hi, you say hi, there is a sort of thick dread in the air despite barely anyone in the building being old enough to vote and most everyone completely baffled by the concept of the "electoral college."

he asks how you're feeling. you say bad, and he agrees.

he looks you in the eyes and puts both his hands on your shoulders. he says, "don't worry about gay marriage. they can't get rid of it."

you don't say anything; he doesn't give you a chance to.

"i ran into the senate at subway yesterday and i asked them. and they said trump can't repeal gay marriage."

you do not know much about the government. you are not quite sure what a senator is. however, you know there are one hundred of them. you also know that the only subway in your little corner of maine is very small- there's, like, three booths to sit in. only a few people can even get in line to order at a time. you were born recently but you are able to draw some conclusions here:

1) there is absolutely no way that subway could fit 100 people inside of it at all,

2) there is no reason that the entire senate would be in a little town in maine the night after the election,

and 3) this guy is making shit up again, more than anyone's ever made shit up in their life.

you say, "okay. that's good." you are aware that gay marriage is not the only thing to be worried about, here. you are aware that this guy lies recreationally and it is not worth arguing the matter.

"isn't that great?" he asks. it is not great.

you go to homeroom and you do not stand for the pledge of allegiance (you never stand for it again). you go to pre-algebra. you listen to my chemical romance instead of paying attention. you go to english class, you go to study hall, you go to lunch. you go to social studies and your teacher lets you and your other gay friend (who doesn't suck and in fact you have crush-adjacent feelings for them) sit out in the hall to talk about the election, because you asked nicely. they do not try to tell you that they ran into the entire senate at subway.

you think about this interaction several times a month through the next two election seasons. you are a 21 year old man and you are still thinking about this. you are still imagining ways the entire senate could cram themselves into this tiny subway. you regularly share this story with new friends because you just cannot stop fucking thinking about it. he ran into the entire senate at a tiny little subway in maine at 7 in the morning. and they said gay rights were safe forever.

[max1461]

I had a dream last night that I ran for president. In the Democratic primary I won California, Alaska, "Washington" (which was directly north of California) and another state whose name I don't remember because it doesn't actually exist, but it was east of Washington along California's northern border (you have to imagine the two of them shaped approximately like triangles, making up an approximate square directly to CA's north).

There was a brief moment when I was in the lead. I knew it wouldn't last, but I remember capitalizing on the opportunity to proudly tell my parents "I'm the front-runner in the race for president of the United States!". Again, this was supposedly the primary, but I recall the electoral map showing blue for the establishment Democrat, red for the Republican candidate (Trump I think), and yellow for me. So maybe it was the national election; I think this is just one of those dream inconsistencies.

Anyway, for whatever reason me and most of my campaign staff were down in a cave. We didn't have internet access anymore, so I was relying on my campaign manager (who was above ground) to clue me in to what was going on. We were in an upper chamber of the cave, and there had been some kind of near-disaster in a lower chamber where the fire department had to come and rescue a bunch of people who were trapped. I don't remember if any of them were part of my campaign staff. Anyway, as the establishment Democrat took the lead, I remember talking on the phone—a big, thick, 90s-style cellphone—with my campaign manager about what I should do. Should I give some sort of statement to the press about it? Should I congratulate the winner on Twitter? He said no, no, don't worry about it; everyone knows you're down in a cave and don't have service, so they can't possibly expect that.

I have no idea why we were in a cave, if it was intentional or we were stuck there. I guess we were just in a cave!

Anyway, then disaster struck! One of my staffers found a bunch of people in need of rescue in our (upper) chamber of the cave! Now, this wasn't as dire as the earlier rescue. These people were much easier to get to. They were like, sort of hanging upside-down from a horizontally suspended rope, like clothes on a clothes line, basically. I don't know how they got that way but they were in a dire state from hanging upside-down for some long. Some of my staffers insisted they could rescue the people themselves (I think they were worried that calling in the fire department again would be viewed as wasteful and damage my campaign). They managed to get some of the people down from the clothes line. I asked my campaign manager what to do (I was still on the phone with him) and he was like "no, call the fire department!". So he put me through to the fire department and I told them what was going on.

You have to understand throughout these events that I'm like, me. I have no idea how to run an electoral campaign, I'm 100% relying on my campaign manager for every cue, and I'm really nervous about figuring out the proper etiquette for everything. When I was asking him about whether I should congratulate the winner on Twitter you have to imagine it in this sort of tone. Like, first day on the job, nervous "I'm following your lead here" energy. And when I get on the phone with the fire department I'm super awkward (I've never called them before!) and as I'm explaining the situation I'm thinking like "good, good, that was normal, I sound normal to the fire department right now".

Anyway then they come down into the cave and start rescuing people. I get back on the phone with my campaign manager and he tells me confidently "look, here's what we do: on Monday you're gonna give a press conference. You'll announce that your bid for the presidency is over, congratulate the winners, and reiterate your policy positions." I don't remember what else he said about it, but basically this was the most graceful way to end the campaign and keep my political career strong. I was a popular candidate with lots of youth support and energy behind me, so it was gonna be easy to parley that into later success. Now, I didn't want a further political career—this campaign was 100% a one-off—but I agreed the press conference would be a good idea. Unfortunately that would mean I had to write a speech by Monday, which was annoying.

Anyway, the establishment Democrat won in the end, and turns out it was Obama.

Then I woke up.

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

nov 5 rambling

all week, i've been seriously considering taking a break from political news, and i can't tell if that comes from a place of maturing as i'm about to hit 40 or as a warning about my mental health, because for me numbness and avoiding my interests are usually tells for depression.

but mostly, the idea--even as it seems like a good one--just kinda hurts, because deep-diving into policies and governmental history and being a nerd about campaigns and candidates has been a core part of who i am for years now.

growing up, i was surrounded by adults who didn't talk about politics, who as far as i know never even voted, who insisted it didn't matter or change anything. when i came back from college with a new awareness that politics existed, i felt like i had a lifetime of missing knowledge to catch up on, and i dove in.

plus, as somebody autistic but also easily bored due to adhd, i don't just have a singular special interest--politics is one i developed later in life. fictional media, live news, memoirs and nonfiction books, and journalism have taught me so much. i've enjoyed the learning. it's my kind of fun, being a sponge.

but this year was the first election day i've spent not obsessively refreshing electoral maps and awash in existential dread. sure, i know doing that won't change any outcomes, but it's how i don't handle the stress anyway. except that wasn't an option this time.

@actuallylukedanes and i spent the morning busy with important errands, and we spent the afternoon and evening making trips to the vet, worrying about one of our cats who'd had surgery. i went to bed that night in the back room, keeping watch over him and barely sleeping.

when i saw my best friend the next morning, tragedy was written all over their face, and they greeted me with the election results. i'm pretty sure i blinked for a few seconds before i responded at all...but it wasn't because i was in shock, or devastated. i'd just forgotten about the election entirely, tucked in a small room with a sweet kitten who was bleeding.

and it feels weird, all of that, having a day that was so big and busy that for once something overshadowed epic political battles and narratives and fear. who knows, maybe that's what daily life is like for most people. maybe that's how so many people are comfortable basing their votes on vibes and not looking anything up: they're too busy caring about just what's in front of them.

i don't know how to live that way, and i'm not sure i would want to even if i could. everyone i love is too at-risk, depending on who has power in this country, for me to put my head down and completely check out. and something about my bipolar nature has always meant that i feel a weird duty to take in the pain, like i can't fix everything for everyone so i at least owe them my empathy, my constant pressing-on-a-bruise awareness of all the bad things i can't control.

so i don't like feeling numb. that switch still gets flipped sometimes, without me trying, when the alternative would be drowning in the overflow of emotions. when that happens, i know my brain's trying to protect me, in the only way it knows how. and maybe that explains my reaction now, maybe it's a depression tell or a protective mechanism--but it's just so different from what i would've expected.

there's a very firm wall up between me and the results of this election. i feel hyper aware of what it means, the rightward shift of our national and state and local elections this week, of what could happen to my family and my friends and everyone else who deserves so much better. so on a deeper level, i also can't feel it at all.

i was heartbroken in 2016, and in shock. i cried so much, and we ultimately moved to a state where we would be safer. but i stayed hopepunk, and kept learning, and participated in mutual aid. in 2020 i blogged my amusing thoughts about the democratic primary debates here, and was grateful for every good thing that the government has done since.

but with everything i know, and everything i've learned, i feel even less prepared for what's going to happen now--because what i've learned is how limitless the potential horrors could be. spreading out in all directions, the future is a black box that asks us what we want to trust (things they say? things they've already done? things we believed no one would ever really do?) before we can know what to do.

so this time, i've barely cried. i haven't watched the concession speech. i don't think i ever will. and i keep returning to my usual news websites, the almost-a-dozen publications that make up my routine. it's become an essential habit for me, the scanning of headlines and plucking out whatever interests me--an online version of the browsing i used to do, back when it was easy to lug a dozen books home from the library.

i normally read anything that gets my attention or interests me, which is a lot every day--but now, i either don't want to read people's election opinions and predictions, or i regret it when i do. everybody wants to argue about why we ended up here. who's to blame. what to do next. what's coming.

at this point, i don't feel like i'm learning anything anymore, just being painfully reminded of what i already know: america isn't the way i wish it was, or how i saw it when i was a young idealist first learning about democracy. we keep repeating the same patterns, and being surprised at the results. and publications that aim for truth give space to writers pushing hate and fearmongering, for the sake of imagined balance.

so if i stop soaking up the political podcasts, articles, and constant data that has always made me feel so informed and empowered...is that a good break for my mental health? or is it just me checking out and retreating into a bubble where i can pretend this all isn't happening? how can i tell the difference?

it's been four days, and i'm not any closer to figuring out the answer. all i know is that reading about the goings-on of the government, the little battles on subcommittees or the history of the secret service and voting...it all used to make me happy. now it feels like a thing i do, because it's a thing i do. and anything that's too closely related to the election itself, all the podcast episodes and op-eds that have come out since, those feel like salt in a wound.

so whether it's self-protective or not, i'm going to take that break. set aside my political ebooks for now, and narrow down my news websites and podcasts to the ones that aren't so politics-heavy. i'll see if the lack of them bothers me, or if i don't even miss them. maybe it will be a relief.

it'll definitely give me more time to read the old articles i have saved from years of tab hoarding--literally hundreds are in that pile, mostly because i like long stories that dive deep into things, which don't make for quick reads. i'll also have time freed up that should really be redirected to the tv shows and movies on my watchlists anyway.

who knows, maybe what i need is a little less reality and a little more indulgence in imagination. i've never been good at balance, and depriving the creative side of me never helps. the one thing i know for sure is that after i found out about the election results, reading the news made me feel worse. so i came here because i wanted to feel better.

and it worked. i did feel better. people's immediate reactions here were so much more like mine than anything i've seen or heard in the news. everyone i follow is sharing resources and cute animal videos and revolutionary quotes. this is still a hellsite, and i've been away too much to understand what's happening anymore, but tumblr is still my hellsite. you are still my people.

i've missed every one of you, and i'm sending you so much love and gratitude. hopefully we all make it through what comes next, together.

[undefeatednils]

On Twitter I legit saw people share the Jesusland map again...

It's been 20 years, and liberals still make the same stupid suggestion about having solid Dem states join Canada.

At the same time, it also reminded me that between 1968 and 2004, Virginia was a solid GOP state, and since 2008, it has voted for the Dems consistently.

At the same time, in the last ten US elections, Ohio has voted for the winner of the election (based on the Electoral College) every time. Except 2020. When Biden won but Trump still carried the Buckeye State.

In the 2004 map meme, both states were part of "Jesusland".

The new version I saw posted included Virginia in the list of states that "should" join Canada. Which would be legitimate border gore thanks to West Virginia.

At the same time, Virginia does feel incredibly volatile, like it's Democratic majority is largely based on DC-adjacent counties that are closely connected to government jobs. In a Trump 47 world, this could easily change, as these jobs will likely be reduced in number and become less career- and merit-based, but rather based on political affiliation with the current administration.

Any breakup of the United States is incredibly unlikely, yet it's also important to consider logistics for that hypothetical.

Ages ago, someone posted a semi-joking map of their most plausible US collapse scenario. It showed the US only losing the coastal states, with the rump USA consisting of the Greater Mississippi River Basin, including the Ohio River Basin and thus the Old Northwest/modern Midwest. Based on logistics and geography, it really does feel very reasonable. Though it lacks in cohesion when looking at demographics and economics.

In my mind, unless the US somehow first decides to move its capital into the interior (s. the 19th century proposal of creating a new capital, Metropolis, on the Kentucky-Illinois border), the only parts of the East Coast that might consider leaving are the states north of the Mason-Dixon-Line.

Maryland and Virginia are too connected to the political power center of DC to have an incentive to leave. The states south of Virginia with an Atlantic coastline meanwhile follow similar-enough politia and demographic trends to the Southern states bordering the Mississippi to go their own way if Virginia doesn't.

That would leave Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine in the northeast.

Delaware and Pennsylvania deserve an asterisk due to economic concerns. Delaware's economic niche of a domestic tax haven isn't unique. South Dakota is also competing for this niche. Pennsylvania, meanwhile, as part of the so-called Blue Wall/Rust Belt, is economically very similar to Michigan and Wisconsin and Ohio. But if Pennsylvania stays with the Mississippi Core, Delaware would effectively be surrounded by the rump USA. Plus, Delaware, too, is rather connected to the DC ecosystem.

Meanwhile, it should also be noted that climate change and internal migration can't be ignored either and need to be addressed.

The Great Lakes region is, together with the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, projected to "benefit" from it and to continue to enjoy high quality of life.

On the other side, parts of the Sun Belt will become less suitable for large-scale, safe habitation, and since it would become the primary center of economic and political power in such a scenario, that would be a recipe for disaster.

Anyway, this has been a geopolitics essay.

[zumpietoo]

From electoral-vote.com:

01:56 EST Reader D.M. in Asheville, NC writes: "'Does that mean that Democrats simply can't nominate a woman and expect to win the presidency?' When Harris was chosen as the candidate, my first thought was of imminent disaster for my party and my worldview because I did not think a woman could win much less a black woman. The enthusiasm her candidacy generated gave me hope, but apparently a false hope. At 79, I doubt I will live long enough to see a female president. In retrospect, I should have trusted my instincts and resigned myself to a second Trump presidency. My health is excellent, however, so perhaps I will live long enough to see Donald shuffle off to that great golf course in the sky, though in his case the fairways will be carpeted with nettles and the greens with crabgrass. Of course he will also have to carry his own clubs."

I'm not quite that old, but I do agree.....back in July, my very first reaction was "we're so fucked". Turns out, sadly, I was sadly right....the sad further irony, El Donaldo was wildly unpopular while in office, with just a 37% approval rating....

The whole, "don't like the country's direction/downright angry" in the exit polls today makes even less sense, cuz.....why? Is it because we beat covid? Is it because unemployment is low and the economy's strong again? And why would you think this senile, fascist clown can fix anything?

Again, sadly ironically, he'll fuck everything up reallyyyyy fast....since a lot of people voted for him cuz "inflation" (which is global and has been significantly curbed), they're about to find prices legit skyrocketing due to "tarrifs" and "mass deportations" would translate to the people who make goods here that are affordable all having left....

In reality? Trump's so batshit and incompetent, I think we're actually looking at "build the wall/make Mexico pay for it" across the board....

Electoral-vote also, a couple of weeks ago, talked about there being actual guardrails, etc, that will, in fact, hold.....and that in 4 years, the Dem's nominee (if we, you know, still even have elections) will be Gavin Newsom....who, honestly? Can't start his campaign soon enough for me...

[mmorpg-escapism]

It's time for dungeon number 2! Once again, placing the dungeon rant/review under a cut for folks who would rather skip that (and it's gonna be long, too).

Immediately, my thought is "oh my god look at the pretty purple". FFXIV's level design team has once again hit a grand slam. We're so high up that surreal things on the cliffside seem very at home.

I'll admit, my first thought at the sight of boss 1 was "is that a frosmoth?" because the design is similar. It's not exactly right, though Ryoqor Terteh is a snow spirit. The mechanics for this boss were really cool, if you'll pardon the pun. Summoned minions that get frozen to change the order of the AoEs? Snowball tosses? Definitely kept me on my toes and made me VERY appreciative of the fact that I'm not playing a caster right now.

Huh. Zoraal Ja is in here. We can't fight him (yet?) but he's here... and now we're above the cloudline. Those little crystal... elevator? things pack a punch for getting us around.

Boss 2 is the crystal bird thing we ran into right before the dungeon, Kahderyor. This one's gimmick is crystal shards all over the arena that resolve into fairly large aoes, plus donuts on every player's (or NPC's) head that they need to stack together so that no one gets hit. There was also a crystal trap thing that we had to break out, reminiscent of boss 2 in Dohn Mheg. This fight took me a couple tries... Worked out in the end. Onward and upward!

...I don't think even the Sea of Clouds gets this high up! Yowza! I'm gonna have to come back in explore mode and take ALL the screenshots.

Oh! Our final boss here? Is the elector. Looks like we're the first ones up to him? I don't see Zoraal or Koana here. The High Luminary is *massive* - he towers over every other Yok Hoy we've seen so far. He's got three "runes" that he slams on the ground - one's an arena wide push in one direction (water), one's a series of slamming AoEs (earth), and the last is a center push to the edges that also spawns tornadoes that wander the map before the push fires again (wind). There's also an "eat the orbs" phase before a big AoE - gotta keep him from getting more than about two damage up buffs from them or you're dead.

But he's down! Now, keystone?

[wackywriterwhowriteswhenever]

Surprise! You can now enjoy my latest fic, E Pluribus Unum, in its entirety!

I decided to go ahead and publish chapters nine and ten together to let my readers enjoy the story and find out what happened after chapter eight. In these two chapters, you'll find out who is responsible for outing Mike and Will in chapter eight, and how it impacts the election. Enjoy!

Below the read more are two images from my planning stages, an electoral map and list of states won by Karen and Brenner. Make sure to have a look after you've read the story!

I have plans for lots of stories in the coming weeks and months and can't wait to get back to writing soon!

Tagging some folks: @poweredbycreativityandcake @willthecleric @byliever @general-kj @seizetheedays @royaltraint

[irradiate-space]

(Copying a take I posted elsewhere, because I'm curious if @xhxhxhx might have a take.)

Ben Shapiro's nightmare scenario for the 2024 election

Via the Daily Wire.

Summarized: If you can argue that the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives after the 2020 Census was wrong, then a 270-268 EC win for Harris could be converted by the Supreme Court to a narrow EC win for Trump by reallocating EC votes from Democratic states (NY, Michigan, Delaware) to Republican states (Florida, Texas).

I don't think this works, but the why isn't clearcut so much as it is a bunch of arguing-in-the-alternative, which I lay out below:

Electoral College apportionment by state isn't set based on raw population numbers; it's set based on the number of senators and representatives they have. For the SC to throw out the existing apportionment of EC electors would require them to rule that the just-elected 2025-2026 class of the House of Representatives is not correct, and throw that entire class out (or at least the reps in the affected states), leaving those states without representation in the House during the vote counting.

Furthermore, The US does not have procedures for invalidating the results of an election or holding a do-over. The SC would be flying by the seat of their tighty-whities. It is generally accepted that members of the House of Representatives must be elected to that chamber. Because House of Representative seats are generally from drawn districts (although not required to be), to hold a new election would require those states to first draw new districts, which is a process that takes a year at the best of times. Except the SC would be ruling that the Census was wrong, and can't be used as the basis of that redistricting, so since the maps are drawn based on population distributions within the state, first you'd need to redo the Census, which is a process that takes a year when they've had a couple of years of prep time. Which means that it would take two years to get new maps, and then you'd need another year to run an election, which puts us electing the Representatives to the House for the 119th Congress (2025-2026) in 2027.

You could maybe condense that to two years, and elect the 2025-2026 House in 2026.

Now, a Trump supporter might say: Sure, but you don't need to have Representatives seated in order to have EC electors seated. And maybe the Constitution doesn't actually require Representatives to be elected, so states can use their own procedures to fill the empty seats in the interim, such as by appointing new representatives to fill the empty seats, and waiving residency requirements because their districts haven't been drawn yet. You just need to have the number of seats, so that electors can be appointed.

The rejoinder is that if you don't have Representatives in their seats on January 6, 2025, then those States whose Representatives were thrown out will lack representation in the House when the EC votes are counted. Therefore Ben Shapiro's SC scenario would leave the election in an unresolvable situation, where the House of Representatives would not be able to fulfill its 12thA duty to elect a new President if the EC does not have a winner.

The 12thA scenario probably doesn't change anything in the current election, since it seems extremely unlikely that the EC will lack a winner, no matter how it is apportioned. The SC could look at the reapportioned tally and say that a House vote would not be needed.

(also let's fix this by requiring the EC to have an odd number of seats)

However! The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2024 provides that, during the counting of the ballots, the gathered members of the House and Senate may file objections to the counting of any State's EC votes. If there are no Representatives from these changed states present in the joint session on that day, then their State will be unable to file objections, or join other objections, or vote on objections, and their State's interests cannot be adequately represented. This isn't a scenario that the Trump supporters will accept, because it removes the big Trump-supporting states from the votes to support Trump.

Now the SC could try to split the difference, and use the mis-allocated batch of 2025-2026 Representatives to vote on an EC batch with corrected numbers. To do so would be to say that it's OK to have a bad allocation in one situation but not in the other. I don't think the more-centrist Republicans on the court would join with the right-winger Republicans to endorse such a take. 4-3 conservatives for Shaprio's scenario, 2-3 against, 3 liberal against: results in at least a 5-4 ruling against splitting the EC count from the House apportionment.

Keeping the EC and House apportionment together means that the 2025-2026 House lacks representatives from major Republican states during the EC vote, and during the 2025-2026 Congress. This would not be acceptable to the right-wing SC justices, nor to the states which stand to benefit from reallocation, so it's not going to move forward.

Or maybe the SC finds that States can appoint Representatives to fill empty seats, instead of using an election. Then, swift action from the existing State governments would let the House sit with all Representative seats filled in the new apportionment, even without drawn districts. But the appointment scenario still requires the SC to invalidate the Census, and invalidate the apportionment, and invalidate the election that was done with districts based on the invalidated apportionment (which has never, ever been done before), and invalidate state laws requiring that Representatives be elected. Precedent and practicality don't bind the current Supreme Court, and Moore v. Harper might give them the power, but that set of invalidations still seems like way too much to ask. I hope.

With these paths foreclosed, I think that's the entire set of possibilities ruled out.

No, if the current Supreme Court wanted to hand the Presidency to Trump, they wouldn't fuck with the Electoral College. They'd find a way to throw out a bunch of Democratic ballots.

[college-girl199328]

A top minister in Premier Blaine Higgs's government says she is resigning from cabinet immediately and will also quit as a member of the legislature "in the near term says she made the decision "after much consideration and discussion with my family" but did not provide any reasons in a statement released Friday morning.

She said she made the decision "with mixed emotions. … Serving the people of New Brunswick and representing the wonderful people in my riding of Saint John Harbour has been a true privilege and honor of a lifetime."

The premier is not required to call a by-election to fill a vacant seat in the 12 months before a scheduled general election, which is considered a key battleground in the provincial election scheduled for this fall.

The Liberals have nominated Saint John City Councilor David Hickey to run there, while the Greens have chosen Mariah Darling, an activist and education coordinator with a local LGBTQ organization.

They both said Friday that Dunn's departure was another sign of the Progressive Conservative Party veering further to the right.

Darling said Dunn's resignation "shows some cracks in the Conservative party right now" and called it "a real sign that people in Saint John Harbour need new leadership and don't need to look to a party that can't keep their own members currently."

Dunn was seen as a star candidate when she was elected in 2020 and was handed several cabinet responsibilities, including economic development, immigration, and Indigenous affairs on post-secondary education, training, and labor, in June 2023 after Higgs shuffled his cabinet in the wake of a revolt over his changes to the education department's Policy 713 on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Dunn opposed the changes but was not in the legislature the day six other Progressive Conservative MLAs voted against the government on the issue.

Higgs said at the time the fact she was not there for the vote was why he kept her as a minister after dumping two of the others who broke ranks reporters Friday that he expected his internal critics to put Dunn's departure "in a negative light" but said, "I don't think that we should read anything more or less into the fact that it's an opportunity for others to get involved in politics."

Dunn's announcement came just hours after Natural Resources and Energy Development Minister Mike Holland announced he'll be leaving politics when the provincial election is called this year, a regional vice-president of the PC party who supported a push to remove Higgs as leader last year, said the two departures are a sign of "poor management and poor leadership in the PC party" that rests with Higgs.

He said there was no mechanism to remove Higgs at this point, but said he hoped the premier might still step down before the election.

Holland, however, said he was leaving because he's accomplished everything that was on his to-do list when he became minister in 2018 and it's time to pass the baton.

He added that his decision was "not whatsoever" influenced by divisions in the PC caucus and cabinet over Premier Blaine Higgs's handling of he wouldn't have been able to accomplish initiatives such as the doubling of protected areas on Crown lands without Higgs's support.

Elected politics "is meant to be, you come in, you do your work and you pass it on," Holland said.

The Progressive Conservative party has scheduled a candidate nominating meeting in the Albert-Riverview riding for Feb. 14. The riding on the new electoral map is a redrawn version of Holland's current Albert riding elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2020, said his decision was also driven by the fact that his partner lives in Nova Scotia.

Economic Development Minister Greg Turner will take on Dunn's responsibilities for post-secondary education, labor, training, and immigration, while Holland will absorb her Indigenous Affairs portfolio.

Higgs is facing the loss of other ministers when he calls the election this year said in October he will retire when Higgs calls the election, and Health Minister Bruce Fitch also hinted last fall that he will not run again.

[thebreakfastgenie]

OP is right. I think the fact that it was Supernatural specifically played a bigger role than they suggest, but that episode airing at any other time would not have had the same site-wide effect. It's also worth remembering what the collective mental state was eight months into the pandemic. It wasn't just fear of the future; being inside with limited social interaction and relying on the internet more had an effect on our mental health. We were probably all even more glued to the election results for that reason; what else we were supposed to do for two days?

You can't separate November 5th, 2020 from the context of 2020 or from the context of the Trump administration in general. When I look back on the number of insane things that happened daily from 2017 to 2021... there are so many we've just forgotten because there were too many to keep up with.

A lot of the write-ups that do talk about the election also get it wrong, and OP here is much more accurate. There were a handful of swing states that were very close, and there were a few different combinations that could lead to a Biden win. Destiel didn't go canon right when the deciding vote was called, as one post claimed. It was still ongoing; hence the period of frantic election-destiel memes, because we were still waiting but now instead of just refreshing electoral maps we were destiel posting. Biden winning Georgia was unexpected, so there were a lot of memes comparing that outcome to destiel.

I think Supernatural fans are reacting badly to this post because they would have reacted the same way to November 5th regardless, but OP is talking about why people from outside the fandom, who had either never been in it or had left years ago, reacted the way they did. I'm in that category too. I was a big destiel shipper in 2012-14 but had been out of Supernatural fandom for years. Public tumblr opinion of Supernatural fandom was fairly low by 2020 and changed dramatically after November 5th.

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[myweddingsandevents]

Ohio's House Bill 6 bribery case is the scandal that won't go away

Opinion by Charita M. Goshay, Canton Repository •

Some years ago, I took part in an FBI Citizens Academy, a six-week program which gives participants a close-up look at how the bureau conducts investigations.

One agent shared with the class that when it comes to public corruption, New Orleans is the heavyweight champ.

JJ's House Wedding Dress Bridal Dress Ivory Sleeveless Long V-Neck A-Line 2024

Ad

JJ’s House

During her unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2022, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley pointed out the FBI has identified the Ohio Legislature as one of the country's most corrupt.

No one paid her a bit of attention.

Because gerrymandered districts and bad electoral maps have created a supermajority which answers to no one, it's small wonder that two successive Ohio House speakers came under FBI investigation for corruption, with one of them landing in the hoosegow.

Charita Goshay© Provided by The Repository

Earlier this month, the feds arrested former Public Utilities Commissions of Ohio Chairman Sam Randazzo for allegedly accepting $4.2 million in bribes from FirstEnergy in exchange for bestowing favorable treatment, including helping the utility secure House Bill 6, a law which has you on the hook for a $1.3 billion bailout of its outdated nuclear power plants.

Loaded: 100.00%Play

Current Time 1:39

/

Duration 1:54Quality SettingsCaptionsFullscreen

Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted to be deposed in FirstEnergy bribery lawsuitUnmute

0

View on Watch

More videos

WJW-TV ClevelandProposed Bill controversy in Ohio2:26

WEWS Cleveland, OHOhio Gov. Mike DeWine addresses subpoena in bribery scandal civil case2:43

WHIO DaytonFormer state utility regulator indicted on bribery, embezzlement1:04

In a "deferred prosecution" deal with the U.S. Attorney's Office, FirstEnergy threw Randazzo under the bus by admitting it paid him the bribe.

Several FirstEnergy executives were fired, but no one from the company has gone to jail. No one.

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, former Ohio GOP Chair Matt Borges, Householder's political consultant, went to jail, but there were enough people involved to fill a cell block.

Ambivalence run amok: Larry Householder abused the public's trust...but do Ohioans really care?

Rather than handcuffs and a perp walk, Randazzo was allowed to surrender following his recent 11-count federal indictment on bribery and fraud charges.

You, on the other hand, would have been frog-hopped into a police van — live — on TikTok.

Husted, whose gubernatorial aspirations are the worst-keep secret in Ohio, claims he doesn't remember much about any discussions involving Randazzo's appointment.

How did we get here? Part of the problem is culture wars. Too many single-issue voters are willing to ignore the elephant trampling through the china shop if it means their particular cause has a chance of becoming policy.

We're also here as a result of gerrymandering, which transforms the democratic process into a shadow of itself. It enables unserious people and demagogues whose qualifications for office aren't as important as their willingness to be good soldiers, and it generates an arrogance that sees no need for restraint or compromise.

Gerrymandering makes mockery of the foundational belief that "Politics is the art of the possible."

DeWine, whose Macbethian ambitions have always been camouflaged by his homespun, mayor-of-Mayberry persona, somehow always manages to avoid direct blame, even though his decision to appoint Randazzo has resulted in the biggest political scandal in state history, and FirstEnergy customers in Ohio having to pay higher utility bills.

According to Cleveland.com, DeWine was warned to steer clear of Randazzo shortly after his 2018 election by J.B. Hadden, a longtime friend who served as his campaign treasurer.

Now, in an exercise of audacity that can't be measured, FirstEnergy just asked for a $1.4 billion rate hike through something called an Electric Security Plan. If approved, customers will start paying more next year, and every year through 2032, according to a report by the Ohio Consumers Council.

Meanwhile, a bill to repeal House Bill 6 has languished in Columbus like leftover potato salad.

It's often said that voters ultimately get the government they deserve, but the recent election and the passage of Issues 1 and 2 showed what can happen if enough Ohioans get fed up.

Yet, even as we speak, efforts are underway to undermine the will of the voters by elected officials who are choosing to ignore the very people for whom they work.

Charita M. Goshay is a Canton Repository staff writer and member of the editorial board. Reach her at 330-580-8313 or charita.goshay@cantonrep.com. On Twitter: @cgoshayREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Ohio's House Bill 6 bribery case is the scandal that won't go away

[yerbamansa]

it's election day in the US, and i've already voted, but election day fills me with deep, deep fucking dread, so today i am just... indulging in all the fic writing and reading my brain can handle. might even fuck around and write a spicy jim/oluwande bonus revenge ranch one-off ficlet (can't promise the spice but the one-off is in progress). also slowvember prompts! and there's more to work on with the smau! and i have ideas kicking around about a 'test kitchen' au that i might need to dump into the doc!

the bonus thing is based on a tarot card draw from samwisery (author of the once upon a summer in san francisco fic you have probably read because it's GREAT) and god it's pretty. i don't know shit but it's fucking pretty. so i'm writing about oluwande looking at the stars. i am not thinking about exit polls and electoral maps. it's called self care, okay?

[tanadrin]

I think this is wrong in the worst way--that it's superficially plausible, if you aren't really paying attention, but doesn't engage with the actual substance of the problem, and doesn't approach the problem in a way that would actually give us the tools to solve it. And it narrows the blame far too much! It exonerates the huge numbers of people in the US who think the current system is fine, who actively vote for it, but who don't happen to personally benefit from it.

Rural towns which bid for prisons to be built nearby, simply are not numerous enough--not even with prison populations inflating the size of their electoral districts--to shape law enforcement policy across the country. That policy is shaped by prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers, is reinforced by police departments and a media that is extraordinarily hostile to any attempts at reform (cf. the fight over bail reform in New York and the way media outlets have flagrantly lied about and misrepresented the consequences of bail reform, often repeating claims of cops and former cops without any kind of fact-checking). And the people who elect those prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers--whose opinions are shaped by stories in local news--are the larger body of voters, many of whom are urban and many of whom vote pretty reliably Democratic.Voters who are scared silly about the Crime Bogeyman, voters who often have strong implicit racial biases when it comes to imagining what the Crime Bogeyman looks like and where it comes from.

That this is a more diffuse phenomenon is important! Because the problem isn't a single set of greedy evil small-town racists, it's the general American media environment and the general American perspective on crime, which still believes that tough-on-crime approaches work and that progressive attempts to reform law enforcement do nothing but cause crime rates to spike. And while some of that can be blamed on bad reporting and cops lying (both of which are pretty common!), there is a broader and deeper cultural attitude that makes those lies and bad reporting particularly plausible to American voters, and particularly effective as political tactics. And unfortunately it's the same attitude that makes suburban whites in favor of school integration in principle, but causes them to freak out when you propose integrating the schools their kids attend, and it's not the product of shady manipulation by a small clique of oligarchs deliberately perpetuating racism to get rich.

Like I don't deny there are people who probably benefit from structural inequalities in American society. But there is a very big difference from being in a position to benefit off preexisting inequalities, and creating those inequalities. If you could somehow erase every small, racist Southern town from the map, you would not stop the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the US, because small Southern towns that are supported by prisons are a symptom, not a cause.

And this is what I meant in my response to @alkatyn. For someone like you, who must divide the world into Manichaean categories of good people and bad people, it would be enough to disempower or to punish the right bad people, because bad things come from bad people, and not from more diffuse social attitudes or incentive gradients. But that's a comforting lie: in fact, the world is full of people who are good in some respects and ignorant and foolish in others, and it is not a matter of identifying and dethroning the power-wielding bad people, because the obviously bad people are like at best 20% of the problem. They give you a satisfying emotional and rhetorical target, but the world is mostly bigger and messier and more complicated than that.

And I won't lie, it annoys me a little that you can't name specific examples, you can't even put broad ballpark figures to your attempt at arguing against my post, that all you have is vibes. Like my back of the envelope math shows that prison labor in the US just isn't that profitable! It's not that big of an industry! $11 billion a year, the estimated fruits of all prison labor, is like 0.04% of U.S. GDP--not 4%, 0.04%. 80% of that labor is spent in prison upkeep, so that's what, $2.2 billion available to line private pockets? This is not a load-bearing part of the American plutocracy. Even private prison contractors aren't that big a portion of the prison economy--only around 8% of U.S. prisoners are housed in private prisons.

And none of this is an apology for the American prison system, which is brutal and inhumane, or for the American justice system, which is deeply biased against poor and minority defendants. But I wish people who had been whipped up into a frenzy with rhetoric about the vast machine of the American prison-industrial complex would try to put some relative figures to their intuitions, because you talk about it like millions of prisoners are being worked to death in sweatshops, and that's. Uh. Not true.

This is not just dumb evil shit, but a hundred and fifty years old technique to control Black population and a tool for the white elite to compensate themselves for the loss of slaves.

This rhetoric just histrionics. The total U.S. prison population is about 1.2 million; IIRC about 800,000 prisoners are employed (again, 80% of those in prison upkeep!). So not only is the replacement for the whole system of slavery a fraction of the number of slaves held in the South at the time of the Civil War--about four million; and keep in mind 800,000 is the nationwide prison population regardless of race, not the population of prisoners in the South--it's gone from about one-third of the population of the South to 0.6% of the population of the south (again, if all prisoners in the United States were held in the South. Which they are not).

And what also annoys me mightily about this is that I paid attention in U.S. history in school, and I know that there was an actual system imposed to try to replace slavery in the post-Civil War era, and it was a combination of sharecropping and Jim Crow laws. Which were much more effective, because they actually worked to keep black agricultural workers working in agriculture--you know, the whole industry slavery existed to support in the 19th century! So not only is your rhetoric hyperbolic, it's historically erroneous.

Please read actual American history (there's some really good leftist American history out there!), and don't get your understanding of the American political economy from tumblr posts and twitter.

Saw someone claim in a comments section that something like 25% of Louisiana’s GDP comes from prison labor. Which would be insane if it was true. They must be running the most technologically advanced prisons in the country. They’re using prison labor to build microchips or some shit while everybody else is still using it to make license plates.

[froodycartographer]

A Small Complaint About Mapping Systems

Sasha get your head out of the way, we need to talk about maps.

So there's something that's bugged me for a while about the toad rulership structure. We are initially presented with Toad Tower, overseeing the entirety of the valley. However, we find out in Season 2 that Toad Tower is actually the South Tower, one of four. Now, the name implies that this tower oversees the whole southern quadrant. So does that mean that the entire south of the continent is contained within Frog Valley? Should be a simple answer, look at any decent topographic map and we're done. But, no, of course its not this simple, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this.

This might not be surprising to you Apple Maps users, but maps aren't truth. Especially pre-flight, maps had to make allowances for surveyor error, logistical issues, and the math problems that arise from describing a curved surface onto a flat plane. The further you go back, the more having an accurate map becomes a luxury reserved for the rich. And in the weird feudal-adjacent society that Amphibia seems to be in, we could accept that, sure. But that's an excuse, really. I mean, Hop Pop is just carrying a valley map around in Season 1, and despite how useless it is (seriously, you could have just pointed at some mountains on the horizon, you didn't need a picture that literally just shows a town surrounded by teeth to illustrate that point), we will still call it a map for the purposes of this rant.

And what does it show? That we have a valley, and contained within the valley we have Wartwood, and a tower that we will eventually learn to be the South Tower. This matches up with what we seen in Hop-Popular, where the entire valley votes for Mayor Toadstool. (By the way, Amphibia has electoral districts apparently, I don't have that rant prepared yet but Someday)

However, then we get to Reunion, where Sasha states, outright, that the toads rule over the valley. Not the valley and surrounding neighborhoods. The valley and only the valley. And this makes sense! Because otherwise how could you maintain control over regions when you are cut off from broader Amphibia for an entire winter? Even if the South Tower predates Amphibian unification, it still doesn't make sense to have an administrative base (and an incredibly important one, since we've seen that the towers process taxes) cut off from its own territory, it would be considered a necessary expense to keep a pass open all winter if taxes were on the line. So, okay, let's allow that the South Tower only controls the valley, for whatever reason. Going back to the map behind Sasha, we see that there are three other villages in the valley. Okay, sure it would be weird if Toad Tower only ruled over Wartwood, but wait! Didn't the entire valley vote for mayor? The map only says Wartwood, but it covers a pretty impressive slice of the continent. Why did these other towns get a say in the mayor of Wartwood. I considered that the position of mayor could be more akin to a governor, but let's be honest, Toadstool is a mayor of Wartwood and its surrounding farms, not of some far-off village too. It wouldn't make sense for his character. And the fact that he, an administrator, would be approached for "promotion" to Toad Tower shows that the Mayor of Wartwood is under, either directly or indirectly, the leader of Toad Tower. (Which also raises the question, would that have made Toadstool a captain? Or was Grime's military rank separate from his administrative position over the valley?) Alright, maybe it's some archaic voting system, weirder elected positions exist. But we know that the other towns have been chafing under the rule of the toads, and that they know Hop Pop stood up to tax collectors. Surely some of them would have voted for Hop Pop during the events of Hop Popular, even as a protest vote if they weren't on the revolution train yet. No, let's be honest, as far as the frogs are concerned there is one town in Frog Valley, and as far as the South Tower is concerned there are four. Something isn't adding up, and this should be a simple answer because most of what I said can make maps inaccurate are on a continental level, a single valley should be easy to have consistent maps of. But for some reason Frog Valley just can't make it happen.

Okay, originally I had a further rant about the map on the f'wagon trip and how it also doesn't make sense, but let's be honest the entire timeline of the road trip is off. In Anne Hunter they state that the journey has gone longer than expected and they've run out of food, but in Truck Stop Polly (the next episode) we see Polly ruin a massive supply of dried foodstuffs, and then two episodes later in Quarreller's Pass they imply its been two weeks since they've departed, which matches up with Hop Pop quipping in S1 how they have 2 wacky adventures a week, making the Pass as the first part of Episode 4 the start of their third week of travel. So that's a loss and I'm going to accept that the map doesn't have any use. But go look at it, it's in the first 10 seconds of Truck Stop Polly, and it doesn't match at all what I expected, either from the previously established geography or from the macroview of Amphibia we get in the title sequence.

So where does that leave me? Well, I'm assuming this is intentional. Its pretty good to cover yourself from continuity errors by being abstract in how everything is positioned relative to each other. but this is a bit gratuitous imo. I started off trying to figure out how much territory Toad Tower rules over, and now we're in a question of what even is the valley, which is a problem because the existence of this valley, specifically the mountains that make it such, are what give us the plot of season one. I don't have much expectations for season 3 to resolve this, so this is more just rambling for catharsis than anything else. But I'm gonna keep my eyes peeled, hoping that we can answer at least one of these questions come series end.

[nightswithkookmin]

OK I'M AWAKE

And I have A LOT TO SAY.

A. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED YESTERDAY?!

B. Anyone want to help me build a time machine?

No seriously, someone tell it to me why the most hard working artist in the galaxy the world have ever seen hands down didn't bag that stupid irrelevant pretentious piece of crap they call Grammy.

What's the criteria?

White?

American

European?

Oh Talent?!

Funny you should mention Talent you racist piece of shit.

It doesn't get more talented than this👄💄

Or THIS 💅🏾

Or this quite frankly 😌

I mean look at him. Beautifully talented I'd say😌🥂

If it's Talent they want, then I think BTS should have won several Grammys by now-

And yes, I saw all those categories and artists you gave trophies to...

Best dance, best contemporary blah blah-

Here you go.

Now were is the Grammy for Black Swan?🔪

In fact, WHERE IS THE TROHPY FOR THE ENTIRE MAP OF THE SOUL SEVEN ALBUM!🤺

What does BTS have to do???????? 😫

They be jumping through hoops for years, years now. And year after year, it's been fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you!!!!!

FUCK YOU.

I know y'all know damn well they can't work harder than they already do. They just can't kill themselves for this shit uno.

"They not asking for a free ride."

"At least they showed up."

"You showed them nothing' you fraudulent eurocentric bastards. Eat shit.

Rain On Me is a bop... in 1950? Come now😞

This gotta be a joke.

THE STONE AGE CALLED, THEY WANT THEIR SCHTICK BACK, you loser!

Seriously, how ancient is the academy!!!

Personally, I like the song. It's been done one too many times through generations. Nothing experimental. Nothing new. It's empowering and liberating and as a strong queer woman, I get it. The Academy have long been accused of sexism, with their nominations and voting process accused of being dominated by cis White misogynist and sexist men and so moves like this would be redemption ploy to salvage their stinking reputation. Bless their hearts, they thought they did something🤣

This ain't it. They just masking one nasty infestation with another- racism.

They wanna be dumb? I'll give them dumb-

ROM is not a popular song when untill it won the scamy last night no one knew about it💀

And those of us who knew of it had totally forgotten all about it in a span of months😵

How you gone win a pop duo song when your song is not even a pop song?

Gotta match their energy uno😌

"They have a good rhythm, a catchy melody, and are easy to remember and sing along to. They usually have a chorus that's repeated several times and two or more verses. Most pop songs are between two and five minutes long, and the lyrics are usually about the joys and problems of love and relationships."

Rain on me is about love and pains of life and relationships yadda yadda- but it doesn't have a catchy melody that is easy to remember and sing along.

If Yummy had won, honestly it would have made sense- and it wasn't even nominated in that category. Lmho.

Intentions.... that's pop music???😲

I think they need to expand the pop genre to make room for nuances within the category.

Intentions is not Pop music.

Rain on me is not Pop music.

I think Yummy is as deep as the scamy electors and voters muscial knowledge but at least it's catchy and memorable🤧

Girl you got that yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy. You got that yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy.

Girl you got that yummy, yummy- ok you get the point I'm trying to make. Lol.

Know what else is catchy and memorable?

Dy-na-na-na, na-na, na-na, ayy

Dy-na-na-na, na-na, na-na, ayy

Dy-na-na-na, na-na, na-na, ayy

Light it up like dynamite

I see it, I want it, I stunt, yellow-bone it

I dream it, I work hard, I grind 'til I own it

I twirl on them haters, albino alligators

El Camino with the seat low, sippin' Cuervo with no chaser

Just because a song has elements of pop music don't make it pop music.

Maroon 5, girl like you ft Cardi- that's Pop music. ROM sounds like an old school pop sound.

Is that why they nominated it? They were feeling nolstagic? They missed the 50s and 70s? Or early 2010s?

Most genres of music such as R&B are all sub genres of pop music. In my humble opinion, you dumb ass Academy, don't make the pop.

Blinding Lights, Intentions and Rain on me belong to the same category and they all don't belong to the Pop category regardless of whether Gaga is a pop singer or not.

Anywho, like the CEO of the Academy said, music is subjective and frankly what do we know. We come from modern times where Hogwarts is a myth.

In conclusion, the Grammy is trash, the Academy is trash, the voters are trash, the process is trash, BTS deserved better.

They are constantly being exploited in the industry by a bunch of nobodies of yore I don't care about, who are racist on top of their brain deadry.

Y'ALL SUCK ASS!

I haven't watched their post scamy VLive because I can't bring myself to watch it.

No one should bring it up or talk about or ask me anything about that Vlive else you will get blocked and muted.

All I want to see in my Ask are memes disparaging the scamy and cussing them back to whence they came from.

Signed,

GOLDY