#and SO much work goes into ballot measures

[madtomedgar]

5 states including kentucky (!!) voted to protect abortion access. 3 states did away with slavery (prison labor) as punishment for a crime. 3 states made massive commitments to affordable housing. illinois made collective bargaining a protected right. 2 more states legalized weed. connecticut is moving towards early voting. alabama removed racist language from the state constitution and is investing in statewide public broadband internet. california massively expanded funding for arts and music programs in public schools. colorado raised on the wealthiest in order to provide universal free school lunch to students. georgia may no longer pay cops who are suspended on a felony indictment. massachusetts massively expanded funding for public education and infrastructure, massively expanded dental insurance, and will allow residents to get a drivers license or state id regardless of immigration status. montana will now require a search warrant for access to electronic data. nebraska will increase its minimum wage to $15. new mexico will massively improve and expand senior facilities, public libraries, higher ed, special public schools, and tribal schools, residential utilities (water, internet, electricity). new york is putting 4.2 billion towards climate change mitigation. rhode island is increasing funding for public education and environmental protection. south dakota expanded medicaid.

[wartakes]

The Obligatory Election Essay (OLD ESSAY)

The following essay was originally posted on November 8th, 2020 (shortly after the 2020 Presidential Election was held). This one honestly didn't have much to do with any of my usual topics but was me being somewhat tipsy and waxing philosophic about politics. Not my best one. But here you go. (Full essay below the cut).

This is probably going to be shorter than most of the pieces I plan to write for here. I wasn’t actually going to have this be my second essay for the site. I hadn’t actually written anything for the 2020 election. I think that was partially because I had no idea how it was going to go, the thought of it stressed me out, and I also didn’t want to jinx anything or tempt hubris by making predictions. I’ve been focused on just surviving the election itself before doing anything else, stocking up on food and alcohol and waiting out the storm in my room the last few days.

Now it appears Joe Biden will in fact be the next President of the United States. There are still ways Trump and his supporters could try and rat-fuck this situation, so we’ll see if he goes out with a bang or a whimper in terms of his reaction to all this – and if the chuds and the fashies limp away for now or cause trouble. But currently, it appears that Biden has solidly won.

I won’t get into my personal feelings on Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democratic Party as a whole in this piece. Needless to say, my feelings are a mixed bag and predominately negative. That being said, I still think beating Trump is a good thing and anyone who somehow thinks this is a loss for leftism and that a Biden Presidency is just as bad as a Trump one really needs to log off for a bit and take a breather and reassess things. Yes, we still have a lot of work to do. Yes, we need to keep organizing. Yes, it will be a hard and long process. But for now, I’ll take this victory – and it is in fact a victory. It shows that things are not destined to always get worse.

Sure, this election has its discouraging parts. Like the fact that, even though Biden still won by a healthy margin, over 70 million people – more than who voted for Barrack Obama in his landslide 2008 victory against John McCain – still voted for Trump despite everything he’s done in the last four years. Or the fact there are now QAnon believers who will be sitting in Congress.

But there were good things for the left as well. Out of the 29 candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America this election cycle, 21 won their races – including two sitting Members of Congress and two new candidates. A number of progressive ballot measures also passed, such as the $15 minimum wage in Florida.  This all happened despite a Democratic party who consistently wishes to write off the left wing – and that looks like it won’t be changing any time soon. While there is good reason to be discouraged about certain outcomes, we also have a lot to be happy about, celebrate, and motivate us to further action going forward.

All that being said, this is supposed to be a blog about foreign policy and national security so now I should actually get to that part instead of still rambling about domestic politics.

As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had said before the results of the election were finally called, no matter what the outcome was we were going to need to keep organizing and making our voices heard and power known – not just for future elections, but for other important causes and struggles. This is all very true, and to that I’m taking the chance to tack on my rallying cry of  “please don’t forget to work on foreign policy and national security too!”

I wasn’t actually expecting to harp on this point again so soon after my initial essay setting the stage for this blog, so I apologize if this sounds repetitive. But, this is going to be a repetitive point anyway throughout all my writing here, and I felt I was squandering an opportunity if I didn’t make the most of these events while they were still fresh in people’s minds.

Leftists are already thinking about the future and what we’ll need to do to strengthen the movement and make this country and the world a better place. That inclusion of “the world” is not just a throwaway line. If this election made one thing obvious, it’s that the rest of the world was hanging on it even more than they usually do during a U.S. Presidential race. There was and still is real fear about what comes next here in America and how it may affect people where they live too. Both for good and for ill, we’ve seen how events in the United States can ripple around the world. For ill, in how an off the cuff Trump tweet or comment can cause crises, and for good when we saw how movements like Black Lives Matter spread across the globe.

As leftists continue to fight for real change for the better in this country, they need to learn more about the rest of the world and how our actions impact it. This will need to go beyond the ways those who do think about this conceptualize it – usually along the lines of solidarity with movements and activists in other countries. Leftists will also need to learn about and better understand diplomacy, statecraft, intelligence, and even war – all things that we will still need to deal with if we ever really hope to govern someday, as they’re not going away.

National security and war subjects in particular leftists will need to need to become more knowledgeable on going forward. These have been realms that have typically been dominated by groups such as tankies, campists, and disarmament proponents – which I’ve already ranted about before so I’ll leave alone for now. I understand why many leftists either lack knowledge in this area, are uncomfortable with it, or both. But that has to change. When I spoke of the people around the world, worried about the outcome of the election, I wasn’t speaking just about those who were afraid of what might happen to them, but what may not happen. There are also marginalized groups fighting against oppression, or smaller states at risk from larger, aggressive, authoritarian neighbors. If we are going to be good leftists in a situation where we can actually govern, we will need to know how to wield all the levers of power and that will include war.

Likewise, leftists need to better understand the military and its service members. Like with war in general, I understand why many leftists often take a hostile attitude towards the military and its personnel, given some of the actions of the military in the past. But leftists need to understand how important it is to bring servicemen and women into the fold as they have done with other groups. We need to understand the challenges and struggles that military personnel face, like how they are recruited to begin with and how they are treated. We need to understand how valuable their perspectives and skills are, and how important engaging with them will be for reshaping and rebuilding both the country and the military to be better and more just in the future. Keep in mind, many more servicemen and women are sympathetic to the causes we fight for than you think. After all, Bernie Sanders beat every other candidate for President – including Donald Trump – in political donations from active duty troops during the primaries. The military is something we will still need if ever elect our theoretical President Leftist. We need to put in the work now to understand it and its service members and start to change it for the better.

Alright, its late on Saturday night, I’ve had a bit to drink, and I’m tired, so I’m gonna cut things off here. I promise the next one of these will be a more in-depth analysis of something different, but I just wanted to get these thoughts off my chest while everything was still fresh. Aside from posting this essay, I’m spending the rest of the weekend tuning out from politics and giving myself time and space to be happy. I highly suggest the rest of you do the same thing.

[xtruss]

Psychology: Do Political Ads Influence Voting Behavior? One Question For Donald Green, A Political Scientist at Columbia University.

— BY Katherine Harmon Courage | November 7, 2022

Do Political Ads Influence Voting Behavior?

I Would Say, YES!—But to a much more limited extent than people might imagine.

At this time of year, voters are bombarded with ads. And it’s easy to interpret the victory after the fact as resulting from the advertising. But one has to be extra careful in drawing that interpretation, for a number of reasons. One is that it tends to be that candidates who are favored to win attract more money. And donors want to curry favor with the next incumbent. So this is just a reflection of their overall, well-positioned stance. When candidates try to make up a deficit by spending a lot of money on ads, they’re often disappointed that they can’t climb very far in the polls.

When academics attempt to assess the effectiveness of advertising, they often find relatively small effects—when they do it rigorously. What is a rigorous test? Ads are placed in a “treatment” area and not in “control” areas. This is done at the precinct level or zip code level. And a range of academic experiments show relatively disappointing results. It’s not that ads have no effect, but they have effects that are often too small to detect. In order to come up with even more precise tests, another set of academics have exposed survey respondents to commercials. So the question is: What happens to respondents’ vote preferences after they’ve been exposed, point-blank to these TV commercials? The answer is: not very much. They move a little bit, but it’s a lot less than you might think. On average it is less than a percentage point.

“Political Ads Are Mostly Ineffective. Campaign Consultants Push Them Because They Get a Hefty Commission.”

Sometimes campaign consultants look at that and say, “Oh, that means we have to deploy hundreds and hundreds of airings of every ad in order to have cumulative effects.” But another uncomfortable fact is that, to the extent that there are effects, they tend to dissipate rather quickly. So there’s a problem of saturating the market with sufficient numbers of ads to move people, while at the same time, a bit of time goes by and people forget what they’ve seen. So, in general, although advertising is the darling of campaigns everywhere, there’s not a whole lot of evidence that it moves mountains. It might move molehills.

The conclusion is somewhat disappointing for those who avidly study general elections: Persuasive messages are relatively ineffective down the homestretch of a general election. In part that reflects the hardening of partisan loyalties in the United States. And, in part, it reflects the fact that the very people who are undecided are often the least responsive to these kinds of messages. So it’s an uphill battle for partisan conversion messages. To the extent that there are effects, you tend to see them, for example, in ballot measures where party cues are either absent or more subtle, in primary elections, or nonpartisan elections. It’s not exactly that ads can never work—it’s just that they tend to produce disappointing effects.

That Might Lead You to Ask: Well, Why, Then, Do Candidates Spend Billions of Dollars on Ads?

I think part of it reflects that the people who commission these campaigns are not very discerning about assessing what works. Moreover, campaign consultants are quite incentivized to sell these kinds of packages to candidates or to parties because they receive a hefty commission on the ads they purchase. So even though many of them are ardent partisans and really want their side to win, they have talked themselves into some dubious propositions about the effectiveness of these ads.

It’s not uncommon for post mortems on any election to parade a montage of ads to say: “This is why the winning candidate won.” And I want to encourage people to think critically about how that post hoc storytelling might be flawed.

Photo Courtesy of Donald Green! One question for Donald Green, a Political Scientist at Columbia University, who studies voting, campaign finance, and media to try to better understand how voting behavior is influenced by political groups. His books include Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout.

I would say the thing to think about is, what those ads are doing for the parties that deployed them once the election is over. The answer is, probably not very much. It would be a lot more cost-effective to spend that money on people, such as precinct captains and workers, so that one can have something enduring to show for that money—not only for that particular campaign in that particular election, but also over subsequent election cycles. The thing is, that kind of approach is not cost effective for campaign consultants because they don’t reap any rewards from building infrastructure. So the decentralized nature of campaign consulting helps contribute to the very present-focused orientation of advertising.

— Lead image: Master1305/Shutterstock

[lamm97russo]

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[sapphixxx]

I think, like, whether your definition of democracy hews strictly to the established current state of affairs of voting for president every four years, representatives every midterm, and local comptroller and assistant port authority seemingly at random intervals, or if you are talking about workplace democracy with unions and cooperatives, or working towards a communist, anarchist, or other radical vision of democracy involving more avenues for direct involvement, one of the primary threats to democracy is a lack of time. Even if we improve the poor resources for understanding the powers of any given office, or open more avenues for community discussion, or even unionize every workplace, it will have a very very limited impact if people continue to lack time to actually engage with any of it. Which means primarily fighting against the 40 hour work week, of course, but even moreso fighting for better public transportation, denser, more affordable communities where people can actually get anywhere without an hour drive, and childcare so parents can get involved.

My union meets on Friday evenings. My shift ends at 1pm. It's an hour drive, so we're talking about an hour drive there in the morning, and either an hour drive back home for the afternoon, then an hour drive to the meeting, then another hour home, or I have to just stick around close to work for five hours. Either way we're talking an extra 2-5 hours taken out of my day even on top of work and however long the meeting goes. If you know much about my life, you know I don't really have that kind of time to piss away. I have lots of important shit to do! And I don't even have the worst of it. Commutes are even longer for people who take public transportation, and if there's a meeting that ends after the buses stop running they just defacto cannot go. When I had a second job, and many staff members where I work do because there are so few full time positions, usually I'd have a second Friday evening shift to get to. In grad school I had classes then. Before grad school and pandemic happened, I'd be wanting to attend shabbat service. So between all of these things, I basically just could not attend meetings. Even though I talked to our union reps a lot at work, it just wasn't feasible to juggle everything in my life and go to meetings, let alone do anything outside of just the meetings like volunteering, fundraising, outreach, planning, and so on. Moreover, with lean staffing being the norm at most workplaces, many work environments leave little time at work to get to know coworkers well enough to build bonds of trust and cooperation, let alone well enough to take a big chunk of their limited free time to get together and talk about work even more.

But even when it comes to basic voting. Between all of these demands on time, I haven't had time to research who everyone on the ballot is, let alone what any of these positions mean (does anyone actually know what a comptroller is without looking it up?), let alone the history of what they've been doing to know if things need to change or be maintained, let alone keep up with them regularly so I know how my city and state run and can be informed the next time the ballot rolls around or get involved more directly. After all, even if someone does their research, cares a lot, and wants to make change in their community, can't schedule a meeting with city hall if they close at 5 and the last bus runs at 3:30.

With the vast majority of people's time and mental resources dominated like this, democracy dies, no matter how it's structured. These would continue to be the case even if the electoral college were abolished and we enacted preferential voting, and we can see proof of that in countries where such measures are already established.

[virtualcarrot]

I posted 2,186 times in 2021

62 posts created (3%)

2124 posts reblogged (97%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 34.3 posts.

I added 888 tags in 2021

#good omens - 247 posts

#ineffable partners - 139 posts

#art : good omens - 124 posts

#capitalism - 74 posts

#activism - 63 posts

#video rec - 60 posts

#art - 48 posts

#fandom - 47 posts

#tumblr - 47 posts

#not!fic : good omens - 39 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#(ok so it happened twice in five years. after a month or so caprice got over it and came back. he kept eating my cat's food until i moved)

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

How do people think change is enacted anyway ?

''we need reasoned productions that don't pollute the earth'' BUT ''organic production is an evil white hipster classist concept''* AND ''there's no ethical consumption under capitalism so might as well not bother''

I mean...

*or, for the more measured, simply not ideologically pure and ''free from sin'' enough

How do you think cooperative initiatives and/or producers transitioning to an organic production establish themselves in the marketplace? By virtue of values and faith alone? No, they sELL THEIR STUFF.

Listen I hate the ''vote with your wallet'' argument. Hate it. That's not voting, for starters. And it's so often used to silence whistleblowers. But we shouldn't be naive either. Civic and political responsibility does not stop when you hand in your ballot paper.

If you don't have the money to buy organic food, or ethical clothes or ethical stuff, that's fine. Survival first - and survival even means indulgences, truthfully.

But if you hide behind a slogan (no ethical consumpt-) to justify wilful ignorance and to spread that ignorance, I both understand that awareness and questioning one's habits is difficult and painful, but also... I'm sorry, but that's...

You do see there's an issue, right?

42 notes • Posted 2021-09-25 16:18:13 GMT

#4

GO Human!AU Flower shop Delivery relay not!fic...

...that nobody asked for, yadda yadda

A stream of consciousness not!fic I inflicted on @goodduckingomens​, and attempted to give a readable shape to so less practiced souls could still understand it.

*

Human!AU Crowley has a flower shop. A fandom classic, right? only well, it's not like flower shops are particularly in vogue, so he also doubles as a delivery relay point. Due to a misunderstanding with that blasted internet, Aziraphale messes up an order and gets it delivered to the nearest relay point.

[...]

See the full post

48 notes • Posted 2021-10-28 16:43:16 GMT

#3

GO human AU breakup makeup not!fic

(sometimes I brainstorm fics-i’ll-never-write with @goodduckingomens)

they get married because they're young and they're very close and it's the "done thing" and they don't really think much abt it, don't talk, don't build something together, and definitely never sit down to actually have a proper conversation about their own issues and family dynamics

and it all goes up in flames because of that, because when they're "only" friends/dating, family doesn't find much reason to give their opinion and it's to each their family to deal with, but once they're married it's like everyone and their mother (hah!) starts pushing expectations on their couple and choice of partner. who do u spend Xmas with, birthdays, etc.

[...]

See the full post

101 notes • Posted 2021-02-21 22:56:28 GMT

#2

Ages ago I read entanglednow’s Only Face to Face, drew this, intended to add companion sketches to it, got interrupted by Life and Work, and did not post it. Months later, might as well share it as a stand alone.

(go read the fic, it’s great!)

106 notes • Posted 2021-10-24 00:01:27 GMT

#1

Aziraphale has taken to keeping a herbarium over the years, and Crowley has grown fond of finding new specimens for the angel to add to it. I did the art and the lovely @serafaina delivered the fic for the @do-it-with-style-events Reverse Big Bang event !

Many thanks to the organizers, and much love to Fuuma​ both for her patience and chill in the face of my cutting-it-quite-close-there-aren’t-you time management, and the soft heart-warming story !

You can read it in all of its glory here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29402391

351 notes • Posted 2021-02-13 16:47:13 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[argumentl]

The Freedom of Expression Ep 14 - The Party To Protect The People From The NHK (N Koku Party) commences "Same sex, same name stealth operation".

K: Hi this is Dir en grey's Kaoru, starting this episode of The Freedom of Expression. Joe san, Tasai san, welcome....Well, recently, who knows whats really happening?

J: Yeh, its troubling. I've been spending a lot longer looking at my phone and computer. I've been getting a lot of coupons. My favourite shops or brands are all going online...well, no ones going into the shops, so they can only sell online. So i've been getting coupons like, if you spend over a certain amount, you'll get 20,000yen off.

T: I see.

J: I think like, 'Waa, I wanna spend!'..but then I think, actually since April, I've had less work so I need to restrain myself. I experience this conflict every day for about 15mins. Like, whats wrong with me?

T: I see.

J: Thats thier strategy.

K: If you have free time...

J: Thats it.

K: You'll end up spending money.

J: Normally, they have expirations, and I just think 'Aghh', so its really...

K: You can't help buying stuff, right?

J: I do end up buying stuff!

K, T: *laugh*

J: I really do! I bet there are people out there addicted to coupons! Aren't you? Are you ok?

K: Well, im ok. I just shop by mail order.

J: Ahh

T: I see

J: People are shopping like that a lot right now.

T: Hiranabe san, who works at our place, he's got a lot of offers from night time establishments, and he's troubled as to what to do.

J: Oh, to get him to go there?

T: Yeah. He got an unprecedented amount of messages.

K: (quietly) Unprecedented?

T: Like, 'please come, please come, please come'.

K: He only gets them now? Cause he'll be quick to spend.

J: How is Hiranabe san doing?

T: Well, as expected, he seems scared. He's in his 50s, it looks like he finally understands that his life might be in danger if he caught the virus. He wears a mask, he wears pollen protection glasses. When he goes outside he's like..'the virus won't get in my eyes'.

J: Sounds like a terrorist! Thats just like him.

T: He flipped 180°. He used to be the guy who says, 'Im not wearing a mask'.

J: Oh, really?

T: He's that different now.

J: Well, Im a similar age to Hiranabe san...

T: I can't believe it!

K: I can't believe it.

J: So, what was it?..Its risky, if you are over 50 its more dangerous?

K: Ohh right, yeah.

J: If you catch it, there's a higher death rate at this age?

T: Also, men are more at risk, right?

K: Yeah.

T: They are saying the death rate is higher for men.

J: Well, we are among that group. Shall we get on with the main topic? I thought we'd go with a topic that is unrelated to corona this time.

' "N Koku Party's 'same name, same sex' stealth strategy for Shizuoka no.4 district Lower house by-election". With the death of Mochizuki Yoshio, the LDP's former environment minister, candidates standing for election are the LDP's Fukuzawa Youichi, an independent group of the unified opposition's Tanaka Ken, independent candidate Yamaguchi Kenzo, and the Party Against the NHK (N Koku Party)'s Tanaka Ken, whose name is the same as the unified opposition's candidate. N Koku's Tanaka Ken uses the same kanji, and has the same reading as the unified opposition's Tanaka Ken. The opposition parties, electoral commission, and local media are racking thier brains about it. If a vote is for 'Tanaka Ken', there will be no way to distinguish between the two. Its a proportional division system, so ambiguous votes will be split according to the overall percentage of votes. The electoral administrative committee have taken measures to change the rule that makes a ballot paper invalid if it includes anything other than a candidate's name, to allow a candidate's age to be written aswell. As a result of this, with the aim of reducing ambiguous votes, the unified opposition are promoting 'Tanaka Ken - Age 42' in thier election cars, posters, and online in order to attract votes. On the other hand, N Koku's Tanaka Ken surprisingly hasn't taken any action. He has refused pre-election interviews with the media, hasn't published an campaign bulletin, he doesn't appear in election posters, he has no plans to visit the area. There are expected to be people voting who are unaware that two Tanakas are standing for election. As for N Koku's aim, their leader, Tachibana, had this to say.."We want to test how the votes will be split when there are candidates with exactly the same name. We are not appealing for votes either online or on the ground. We are a weak political party, and want to know how we stand *1'.

There's also suggestion of running another female candidate named Koike Yuriko for Tokyo governer. I thought we could talk about this kind of same name/sex disturbance strategy which the N Koku party has set up.

T: Its amazing, isn't it?

K: So are they doing it to siphon votes?

J: It seems like it, yeah. Especially, that would be the aim if it was for Tokyo Governor.

T: They said they wanted to test how the votes would be split, so like you said Joe, for Tokyo Governor, if it was someone else called Koike Yuriko, they would want to get the data of how the votes are split.

J: Well, its not about freedom of expression, but there is nothing illegal about what they are doing in terms of the election, so its totally ok for them to do this. What do you think, Kaoru?

K: Well..*laughs*, even if you ask.....its interesting but...how will it end up? But, well, hmmm...its fine, isn't it?

J: As it happens, I've been on a radio event with Tachibana san once. And also...well, in this kind of election, a candidate who no one is expected to vote for is called a bubble candidate, the most famous example is Mac Akasaka. I've worked with Mac Akasaka before, so I've listened to what these kind of guys have to say. I mean, certainly, these guys are laughed at and made fun of a lot, but apart from the question of what Tachibana Takashi is doing, to be a candidate for Tokyo Governor, you have to pay a deposit of at least 3 million yen. And if you recieve under a tenth of the total valid votes, you have to forfeit your deposit. The Tokyo Governor elections get about 5 million votes, so if you get under 500,000 votes, you will lose your deposited 3 million yen. As for national elections, the deposit is 6 million yen. So you can call it a prank all you like, but they are spending a lot of money to do this. What a lot of bubble candidates will tell you is, its not free, so they are doing this with the intention to win, they do think thier ideas will improve the country, improve thier party. If there was no financial risk, it would end up at the level of annonymous postings on SNS. But after they've actually paid money, most of them will start electoneering. Making election posters costs money, and there's the cost of gas to run a car to go handing out flyers, and all sorts of things like that. It will end up costing another huge chunk of money in election costs. So in doing this, there is another side to these guys other than, 'they are just idiots'. Maybe they are trying to get people to change the way they see elections, instead of just routinely voting for the faces they know.

T: Well this case has great advertising effectiveness.

J: It does, yeah.

T: Tachibana san's name has really been sold with this.

J: It has.

T: Like, with his own business, and on you tube and stuff *2.

J: Well, as for my personal opinion, I remember Uchida Yuuya running for Tokyo Governor. You can still find his political broadcast on youtube, its great. If you compare Yuuya san to Tachibana san, honestly, Tachibana san seems to have more of a knack for it.

T: Its interesting seeing that kind of political broadcast on NHK. ????*3

J: Well, even in times such as these, we are still having elections. From now on, due to corona we'll probably see new ways to vote and new ways to do all sorts of other things.

K: Its created a need to re-think things, like with the custom of personal seals...in Japan there's a big custom of 'You have to do it this way', or 'You need it on paper'.

J: Yeah, as you mentioned Kaoru, the custom of using personal seals...in the end, even Japan's IT minister also stands as the head of the organization to retain personal seals. Somehow in Japanese society, one of the things companies insist on is the personal seal. There are those who ask why they can't just settle things digitally, but if the minister responsibile for advancing IT is also the head of a group advocating to retain the personal seal, there is a clash going on now. This is the kind of time to think about changing the political system.

T: Things would change a lot if we switched to online voting.

J: They would change, yeah. If young people started voting a lot online...

K: Yeah, right now, in the situation we have now, I think people are starting to think about future.

J: Yes, in that respect, although its very difficult with corona around, I feel like we are starting to wake up to the things we have just put up with till now. I mean, what comes next? In particular, with coronavirus, a lot of countries' governments have taken on huge powers, and in some countries its almost like a corona dictatorship. So, its very difficult, but we really need to slightly re-think the way we carry out elections and the way the state operates from now.

T: We, ourselves are a part of it, right?

J: Yes, yes...Yep, so, same sex, same name...it even hard to search for him. I wonder what this candiate actually intends. ?????*4

K: He's not showing his face much.

J: What will he do if he wins? ...Eh? Hello??

K: Is he sleeping?

Kami: Yes, yes.

J: Were you asleep, Kami?

Kami: No, I was waiting till you called on me.

J: Oh, you were waiting? Oh, sorry.

Kami: I've had a thought.

J: Oh, have you?

Kami: I have...Um, Joe should run for the N Koku Party.

J: *laughs*

K, T: Ohhh

J: Me?!

T: Thats a good idea.

J: Would it be ok, though?

T: In the Tokyo Governor election.

J: In the Tokyo Governor election? Which election?

Kami: It would be ok, yeah.

J: Would it?

Kami: Yeah, anything is ok.

J: *laughs* You couldn't participate in the election could you, Kami? You don't have voting rights?

Kami: No, I don't, but instead, I can make myself into substance.

J: What?

Kami: By pretending to be a citizen.

T: Prentending to be a citizen?

J: Oh, is that it?

K: So that means you could pile up votes for someone?

J: Right?

Kami:...No, I can only do it once.

J: Oh, so you can only take on substance once?

Kami: Yeah, yeah...a bit like Devilman.

T: Ah, like Devilman.

J: But if you could do that, surely you'd be able to do it will two or three people? I feel as if you've just made that up.

*K laughs*

J: Did you just make that up, Kami?

Kami:...Yes, I did.

K: *laughs*

J: He did.

K: I feel like his heart hasn't been in it for a while now.

T: *laughs*

J: Kami, has your mind been elsewhere?

Kami: Ye...uh, no no no.

K: He said yes!

J: *laughs*

Kami: Crush the NHK.

J: Yes, crush it.

K: Well, on that note, I think we can finish here. Thank you, please tune in next time. Please subscribe, thank you very much.

J: Please do.

Kami: Vote for Joe!

*1 I think the confusion arises here, because rather than ticking a box, Japanese voters have to actually write down the name of the person they are voting for.

*2 Think thats what he meant.

*3,4 Couldn't catch these bits.

[juanmccord]

The Top 5 Best CBD Oil Brands Reviewed for 2021

In the event that you are in a great deal of torment, you have most likely had a go at everything to mitigate it! Possibly you haven't yet attempted CBD oil, yet it gradually has become a very famous health choice generally in view of the recuperating properties of the cannabis plant. As the world attempts to recuperate from COVID and the worldwide pandemic, it's an ideal opportunity to take a gander at some elective enhancements you can add to your way of life in 2021.

CBD oil is otherwise called Cannabidiol, which has been demonstrated to be a successful type of help with discomfort for some, in light of recounted proof. CBD oil can assist with numerous diseases to your wellbeing like irritation, constant agony, and even joint inflammation and headaches.

CBD can accomplish something other than help calm agony, as it likewise attempts to help improve the nature of your rest, can lessen uneasiness, and may improve your invulnerability.

You should realize that not all CBD items are the equivalent, and it very well may be overpowering attempting to figure out the numerous choices that you can purchase. How would you realize where to begin and what the correct item is for your necessities?

We have done the examination so you don't need to and we will give a breakdown of our most ideal decisions for CBD oil in 2021. Comprehend that we assessed each CBD oil dependent on various components like the wellspring of hemp, intensity, and what kind of concentrates were utilized. We did likewise consider customer audits and how much value for your money you are getting.

Best CBD Oil: The 5 Top CBD Products for 2021

In case you're searching for the best CBD items in 2021, you can unquestionably purchase any of these brands on our rundown.

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 1. Regal CBD

In the event that you need a powerful alternative, Royal CBD conveys the most intense CBD oil you can purchase for help with discomfort. That, yet Royal CBD ensures that the entirety of their items are non-GMO, dissolvable free and sans pesticide, guaranteeing they are sourced from morally delivered modern hemp, which is wealthy in both cannabinoids and terpenes.

This organization began little. Established in 2017, they promptly centered around the nature of their items and on making an incredible client support group. Their attention on client care paid off as they are quite possibly the most famous CBD organizations around. Illustrious CBD has gained notoriety for making unadulterated, exceptionally powerful CBD items.

They utilize a heatless CO2 extraction measure, which causes them save the virtue of the last CBD item. Since it is full-range, Royal CBD makes certain to have the entirety of the normally happening phytochemicals that can be found in hemp, permitting you to accomplish the company impact.

You can purchase anything you need at their online store like colors, chewy candies, oils, containers, pet items, and even skin creams. There are a wide assortment of potencies, so there makes certain to be something for you, as their colors range from 250 mg to 2500 mg for every jug. Their flavorings are somewhat restricted, offering just regular, berry, or vanilla flavor, yet clients rave about it.

 This is some solid CBD oil, and individuals that need something solid and effective will profit most from utilizing Royal CBD oils.

For the best CBD oil in the USA, go with Royal CBD. You will not be disillusioned.

Snap here to see the most reduced cost

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 2. Gold Bee CBD

Another extraordinary competitor for the best generally speaking CBD oil available that is incredible for relief from discomfort and furthermore tastes extraordinary is Gold Bee CBD. The first concern for Gold Bee is client support, and they exceed any and all expectations to ensure their clients get all they require.

Like most CBD oils, Gold Bee was set up only a couple years back in 2019. Their vision for cannabidiol items was to make items that you could undoubtedly fuse into an ordinary way of life without causing you to feel high or out of it. Advertising endeavors are focused on youthful grown-ups needing to look into deterrent health.

You can anticipate a prizes program, and you can likewise acquire credits in the event that you allude companions to utilize Gold Bee's items, or do things like leave a survey or monitor the brand on your online media accounts. You would then be able to utilize your focuses for limits on your #1 Gold Bee CBD items.

You will discover many flavor alternatives and power decisions too. Gold Bee sells all that you can envision like colors, topicals, vape cartridges, and you can even purchase CBD-mixed canine treats for your pooch.

The full-range CBD oil is generally well known and you will discover this color accessible in centralizations of 600, 1200, and 2400 mg, which means you have a ton of alternatives. A few people struggle with the flavor of CBD oil, yet this brand offers a great deal of flavors like citrus, mint, berry, and vanilla flavor, so you will have a lot of alternatives.

You'll discover the hemp separate oil from this brand is incredible if your objective is discovering colors and chewy candies that taste the best. This is by a wide margin a standout amongst other tasting items we tried. In case you're searching for another solid and set up CBD brand, purchase from Gold Bee CBD.

Snap here to see the most reduced cost

3. Vibes CBD

At whatever point you put anything into your body, ensure the fixings are best in class, and this goes for food, beverages, and items like hemp. This expansive range CBD oil by Vibes CBD is high on our rundown generally as a result of its boss quality.

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  Vibes CBD was established in 2018 by a family-run group that needed to make unadulterated CBD accessible to the majority. This family-claimed organization values selling drug level, hemp items that are ensured natural and just accessible through their site (not in high road stores).

They basically sell top notch CBD as colors, creams, gels, chewy candies, and balms. In the event that you need something to help quiet your canine during a tempest, you can purchase CBD pet items also.

Vibes CBD accompanies cannabidiol content in the colors of 7.5, 15, 30, or 45 mg for every serving, so you can pick your solidarity. There flavors accessible are common, serene mint, summer lemon, and orange happiness flavor. Remember that the chewy candies are accessible in both strawberry lemonade and green apple and have 10 mg for each sticky.

Vibes CBD items are outsider tried for quality and they make a point to just utilize natural, economically sourced, and safe materials. All clients get a duplicate of the outsider lab test results with each request for added true serenity.

On the drawback, Vibes CBD is situated in the UK, and in this way delivery to the United States can take between 7-10 working days.

4. Favored CBD

Clients love Blessed CBD's oil for its capacity to treat torment. This is ostensibly the most elevated appraised CBD oil on the worldwide market, as clients reliably leave positive audits for this item.

A group of UK-based business people searched out to give a successful, premium hemp-determined CBD that could be bought at serious estimating. Favored CBD sells a great deal of excellent items, yet figures out how to keep the quality predictable all through.

You can likewise effectively see the testing records of their items. Clients can filter QR codes from the items that show the particular lab testing results for that particular item.

Interestingly, you can buy oils, softgels, powders, chewy candies, containers, topicals, and even pet items at their online store, which means you shouldn't need to go to an excess. You'll additionally see they have oils that are comprised of equivalent measures of CBD and other cannabinoids.

On the off chance that you like the flavor of unflavored oils you can get them in potencies of 500 to 1800 mg of CBD, so there is something for everybody. You can likewise take part in a "Buy in and Save" program, which will give you a markdown on each request and you don't need to pay for transportation.

Like the past brand, Blessed CBD is situated in the UK. Delivery to the United States can require as long as 3 weeks, however it merits the stand by (Blessed CBD has likewise been casted a ballot "best CBD oil in the UK" by Manchester Evening News, Reader's Digest, Mirror, Birmingham Live, Leicester Mercury, Express, My London, Hull Daily, Stoke Live, LA Weekly, Bristol Post, Yours, Daily Star and QuitNet).

5. Cheef Botanicals

What sort of torment do you have? In the event that it's ongoing and continually repeating, you need to consider the CBD oil from Cheef Botanicals. They make all-normal items that are very moderate.

 Made by natural food specialists in Colorado, the Cheef Botanicals group takes a gander at CBD comprehensively. Utilizing just hemp filled in the U.S., they value morally sourcing every one of their items.

On the off chance that you are worried about quality, you will value that all that they produce is outsider lab tried for both quality and wellbeing. Furthermore, for those worried about cash, they back their items up with a 30-day unconditional promise, making all buys practically zero danger on your part.

Assortment is something else going for Cheef Botanicals since you can purchase practically any CBD item you might actually need. No more shopping at more than one retailer, as you can purchase CBD colors, edibles, hemp blossoms and pre-moves, cases, concentrates, vape cartridges, and topicals all at a similar online store.

Their full-range CBD oil can be bought in potencies of 300, 600, 1200, and 3000 mg for each container giving you a ton of alternatives. Lamentably, their oils are unflavored, so you may have to become accustomed to the taste which can be very natural and severe. Concerning their chewy candies, you can get them in centralizations of 300 to 3000 mg for each jug.

Some different brands in the CBD business who additionally make quality CBD oil yet didn't exactly make our rundown are Nutra CBD Olie, Spruce CBD, Nuleaf Naturals, Charlotte's Web, Fab CBD, Lazarus Naturals and CBDistillery.

What is CBD oil?

There are a couple of things to think about CBD oil, which is a phytocannabinoid that is known as cannabidiol.

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[rotationalsymmetry]

How to Vote

(the other half -- ie, not about how to register, the complicated mess of voting during a pandemic while the USPS is being sabotagued, disability accommodations etc but rather: how to go about deciding who and what to vote for.) (focused on the US) (lefty wavering dramatically between obvious bias and attempts to be politically neutral)

You can probably get info from your county and/or state’s Department of Elections (website, phone number, email, etc) and/or from the library or 411, if there’s info that you want but don’t have yet, like finding out who and what is on the ballot so you know what research to do. (Or where to deliver your ballot because you’re worried the post office won’t -- but that’s not what this post is supposed to be about.)

I desperately miss California’s voter guides -- when I lived in CA that was always my starting point. They’re not perfect. But, like Wikipedia and school research projects, they’re a perfectly good place to start. Anyways: if you got a voter guide or can access one online, start there.

If you’re not sure about a post or issue, or don’t care, it’s OK to only vote on the things you care about and leave the rest blank. You might be asked if you did that on purpose, but that’s it. It’s not going to disqualify your ballot or anything, and it doesn’t mean you’re doing democracy wrong. I mean, I think it’s generally worth voting on everything? But if not knowing who to vote for county dog catcher is stopping you from voting for us president, or vice versa, the important thing is that you do vote about what you care about.

Endorsements: which newspapers, advocacy orgs and other politicians like which candidates and propositions, and why. There’s two ways you can go: you can just go “OK, I trust this group/newspaper/org, I’ll vote how they say” (voting all Democrats or all Republicans is the most straightforward example of this) or you can pay attention to their reasoning and see if you agree with it. Local newspapers are especially useful for local candidates and ballot measures, and if you’re significantly left of center (hi) there might be an alternative weekly newspaper in your area that you can look at. (Dunno about other places, but the San Francisco Bay Guardian routinely rises from the dead to make election endorsements.) There’s advocacy groups for LGBTQ+ people, women, racial and ethnic groups, the environment, renters, disabled people, and people who have strong opinions on other specific issues like gun control and campaign finance reform. Oh, and labor unions make endorsements, so if you like labor unions, you can look at who they endorse.

Friends’ and family members’ opinions and reasoning, similar but less official. Incidentally, if there’s someone whose political views you can’t stand, you can just decide to vote against whatever they’re for and vice versa -- once in a while this can backfire, but most issues and candidates are very partisan. This goes for groups too: there’s some SF groups where if they spoke out against a ballot measure, I almost always ended up voting for it and vice versa.

Looking at history: has a proposition like this come up before, how has this politician voted in the past, to what extent did this politician keep last election’s campaign promises, how do they respond when you send them an email, etc. Kind of like cramming for a test vs paying attention throughout the semester, this is easier the more you’ve been following what your representatives have been doing in between elections. But, cramming is better than nothing. (In this case by “history” I mean like what’s happened in the last 4 years or whatever, not what you’d find in a history textbook, but you’re welcome to take that kind of history into account too.) If you’re young or especially bad at following politics, asking the opinion of someone who’s older or better at following politics and shares at least some political views with you can help.

Reading the actual legal text (for propositions.) Honestly, ime this is one of the least effective things you can do, but it’s an option.

Platforms -- generally candidates say what they stand for and what they intend to do in office on their website. There’s sort of a stereotype of politicians as never fulfilling their campaign promises, but it’s still good to know what politicians say they’re going to do.

Debates, town halls, speeches, rallies, following candidates on social media, etc. Basically: what do the candidates say, and/or do you have a good gut feeling about them. (Gut feelings can be miseading. But so can literally everything else. It’s OK to take a politician’s character into account, as far as you can tell what their character is, in addition to how they stand on the issues.)

Political ads: will probably not tell you anything useful, and will distort your emotional “read” of a candidate. If you can avoid exposure to these entirely that’s ideal; if not, you might want to deliberately give mental points to candidates who are being slammed and take them away from candidates doing the slamming. This stuff has nothing to do with reality. (People putting up signs in yards/windows might give you some sense of whether a candidate is electable in local elections where a dark horse independent or third party candidate is running and will give you a very approximate sense of how popular major candidates are, but that’s about it.) Ads are not really intended to convey meaningful information, they’re intended to create emotional reactions.

If you’re new to voting, this will get easier with time. I mean, it’s always a bit time consuming, and there’s also “the more you just follow one group or person’s endorsements exactly the easier it is, and the more you make each decision individually the harder it is”, but also, you’ll pick up patterns and get a sense of how different groups stand relative to your values (and probably get more confident about your own political beliefs in time as well) and you’ll get a good sense of where you can cut corners and still be happy with your choice, vs where you really should spend the time to do thorough research and reflection.

If you’ve got executive function issues or very limited time, do what you need to do. Set a timer? Do the research with someone else? Ask someone else to do the research for you and tell you what they found? Put a time limit on how much research you’re going to do, and at the end of the time just make a decision whether you feel ready or not? Give yourself lots of get-psyched-up time before and unwind time after? I know I was making test analogies earlier, but there really is no cheating here.

Maybe you’ll make a mistake and regret a voting decision later on. This is OK and it happens to everyone (at least, everyone capable of admitting they made a mistake.) Mistakes can be learned from.

It’s OK to be uncertain. People can be certain and wrong. The whole idea with democracy is that, while any decision-making mechanism can spit out wrong decisions, democracy will overall involve fewer wrong decisions because the people affected by bad decisions are part of the decision-making process. (Which is why being convicted of a felony should never remove someone’s right to vote, but I digress.) It’s an attempt to cut power imbalances, oppression, and cruelty out of the system. Obviously it doesn’t always work in practice. But that is why if you can vote you probably should, even if you feel unsure. Young people should vote. People with mental illnesses should vote. People who have less access to information and resources should vote. Learning disabilities or developmental disabilities? Take your time, ask for help/accommodations if necessary, and vote.

Because, here’s the thing: sometimes it’s hard to figure out who and what to vote for and you have to do a lot of research and thinking it over, and other times it’s really really easy. Because you need healthcare. Or because you know you should be able to get married to your partner. Or because you know that you should be able to use public restrooms like everyone else. Because you’re swimming in thousands of dollars of college debt. Because ludicrous numbers of people are dying from a contagious illness and relief checks are being treated as optional, because your city got wiped out by a hurricane, because your state got wiped out by a derecho, because your state is on fire, and because you know who isn’t handling all that the way they should be. Sometimes the decisions are really, really easy. But only really really easy for some people.

[bomberfriend01-blog]

Comprehending Nevada'S Pre

Employees and also employers in Nevada often have questions about the kinds of info a background check can lawfully discover. All frequently we choose based upon little, if any, knowledge of the subject. Failure to do so will comprise a major crime and also as much as a year behind bars. This facility, void, and overly challenging adjustment locations more bureaucratic limitations on legislation abiding people while not affecting offenders. So, while Bloomberg would certainly turn obedient residents into offenders, the genuine lawbreakers on our streets will certainly have a less complicated time eluding capture. Our law enforcement agencies and also workers are already stretched thin as they strive to make our communities secure. SB143 moved the obligation of history checks to the state's Division of Public Safety And Security, whereas previously, voter-approved language in the regulation contacted the FBI to conduct the background checks. The Associated Press reported that the FBI's data source has actually proven unstable as well as insufficient in other states. Language in the 2016 initiative called on the FBI to conduct the background checks straight, however the FBI stopped at executing a state-sponsored required, and also the law could not be applied. The costs repealed that stipulation and also changed it with a technique of history checks with licensed dealerships. History checks on potential staff members are a routine component of handling employment risk. Effectively conducted pre-employment testing gives independent confirmation of candidate details, as well as can catch disputes, voids, or misrepresentations that might disqualify a seemingly great prospect. For that reason, having to concentrate time and also sources on otherwise law-abiding weapon proprietors will only make matters worse. There are more than 35,000 guns for sale in Nevada every year on simply 4 web sites-- and also no background check is needed for the majority of these sales. The Fair Credit Rating Reporting Act which governs background checks across the country only permits an evaluation of the past 7 years. Nonetheless, specific states might pass regulations which need more disclosures. When workers will be working with seniors or children, numerous states do have different background check requirements. This is why you require to review your private state regulation to recognize what will be consisted of in your background check. Nevadans were not alone in their enhanced gun investing habits last month as the pandemic forced colleges and also organisations across the country to shut down. Throughout the week of March 16-22, the FBI processed virtually 1.2 million guns background checks nationwide, an all-time high given that the system released in November 1998. Nevada is just one of 12 "Point of Call" states where all retail background checks are performed on a state-run system that includes points such as mental-health records, exceptional warrants and also other criminal proceedings. 2 government laws give some defenses for applicants with criminal records. The seller/transferor is restricted from offering or transferring the gun to the buyer/transferee. Less high-profile than history checks, a new "red flag" legislation-- based upon a principle authorized and examined in other states-- is gathering perhaps one of the most reaction of the new weapon control legislations. State-run background checks of private celebration sales and also transfers are anticipated to leap drastically this year, since they are obligatory. In the initial 25 days under the brand-new legislation, 151 private party history checks have actually been completed. Las Las vega has the misery of being the website of the most dangerous mass shooting in tape-recorded U.S. history, and testimony from survivors helped drive an initiative in 2019 to increase compulsory background checks to more gun sales as well as transfers. On or after January 1, 2007, such a shop may enable smoking because public area just if the area has a technique of ventilation which considerably removes smoke from the area. The law mainly mirrors the ballot measure but eliminated language that would certainly have required the FBI to perform the background checks. Under the new law, which will work next year, the state will certainly conduct them. Concern 1 goes even better than that. If passed, this brand-new regulation would certainly need Nevadans to show up jointly at a federal firearms dealership that may charge a fee anytime they relinquish ownership of a gun and to have it returned. Right here at ASG, our team of certified private detectives specifies history investigations much differently than our rivals. do dropped charges show up on background checks nevada believe that history checks should be personalized to our customer's specific worries and needs. We do not want to provide you with the useless fluff as well as obsolete details that is many times delivered by our online database broker competitors. The accredited dealer needs to notify the seller/transferor as well as buyer/transferee of the outcomes of the history check. The supplier has to return the gun to the seller/transferor if the buyer/transferee is not eligible to have the weapon or purchase.

[dandymeowth]

On the outskirts of the city, power lines sag and buzz, overloaded with electrons as the demand for air conditioning soars and the entire grid is pushed to the limit. In an Arizona heat wave, electricity is not a convenience, it is a tool for survival.

As the mercury rises, people die. The homeless cook to death on hot sidewalks. Older folks, their bodies unable to cope with the metabolic stress of extreme heat, suffer heart attacks and strokes. Hikers collapse from dehydration. As the climate warms, heat waves are growing longer, hotter, and more frequent. Since the 1960s, the average number of annual heat waves in 50 major American cities has tripled. They are also becoming more deadly. Last year, there were 181 heat-related deaths in Arizona’s Maricopa County, nearly three times the number from four years earlier. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2004 and 2017, about a quarter of all weather-related deaths were caused by excessive heat, far more than other natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes.

...........

“What will the Hurricane Katrina of extreme heat look like?” he wonders aloud as we sit in a cafe near the ASU campus. Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005, resulting in nearly 2,000 deaths and more than $100 billion in economic damage, demonstrated just how unprepared a city can be for extreme climate events.

“Hurricane Katrina caused a cascading failure of urban infrastructure in New Orleans that no one really predicted,” Chester explains. “Levees broke. People were stranded. Rescue operations failed. Extreme heat could lead to a similar cascading failure in Phoenix, exposing vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the region’s infrastructure that are difficult to foresee.”

In Chester’s view, a Phoenix heat catastrophe begins with a blackout.

..........

When the city goes dark, the order and convenience of modern life begin to fray. Without air conditioning, temperatures in homes and office buildings soar. (Ironically, new, energy-efficient buildings are tightly sealed, making them dangerous heat traps.) Traffic signals go out. Highways gridlock with people fleeing the city. Without power, gas pumps don’t work, leaving vehicles stranded with empty tanks. Water pipes crack from the heat, and water pumps fail, leaving people scrounging for fresh water. Hospitals overflow with people suffering from heat exhaustion and heatstroke. If there are wildfires, the air will become hazy and difficult to breathe. If a blackout during extreme heat continues for long, rioting, looting, and arson could begin.

And people will start dying. How many? “Katrina-like numbers,” Chester predicts. Which is to say, thousands. Chester describes all this coolly, as if a Phoenix heat apocalypse is a matter of fact, not hypothesis.

“How likely is this to happen?” I ask.

“It’s more a question of when,” Chester says, “not if.”

Extreme heat is the most direct, tangible, and deadly consequence of our hellbent consumption of fossil fuels. Rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere trap heat, which is fundamentally changing our climate system. “Think of the Earth’s temperature as a bell curve,” says Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann. “Climate change is shifting the bell curve toward the hotter end of the temperature scale, making extreme-heat events more likely.” As the temperature rises, ice sheets are melting, seas are rising, hurricanes are getting more intense, rainfall patterns are changing (witness the recent flooding in the Midwest). Drought and flooding inflict tremendous economic damage and create political chaos, but extreme heat is much more likely to kill you directly. The World Health Organization predicts heat stress linked to the climate crisis will cause 38,000 extra deaths a year worldwide between 2030 and 2050. A recent study published in Nature Climate Change found that by 2100, if emissions continue to grow, 74 percent of the world’s population will be exposed to heat waves hot enough to kill. “The more warming you have, the more heat waves you have,” says Michael Wehner, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “The more heat waves you have, the more people die. It’s a pretty simple equation.”

.........

Extreme heat is already transforming our world in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Disney executives recently voiced concern that rising temperatures will significantly reduce the number of visits to their parks. In Germany, officials were forced to put a speed limit on the autobahn because of fears the road would buckle from heat. The U.S. military has already incurred as much as $1 billion in costs during the past decade — from lost work, retraining, and medical care — due to the health impacts of heat. The warming of the planet “will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security,” a recent DOD report said. Forests and soils are drying out, contributing to explosive and unprecedented wildfires. Habitation zones for plants and animals are changing, forcing them to adapt to a warmer world or die. A U.N. report found that 1 million species are at risk of extinction in the coming decades. Another study by researchers at MIT suggests that rising temperatures and humidity may make much of South Asia, including parts of India and Pakistan, too hot for human existence by the end of the century. As scientist Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute in California, told me, “There is a shocking, unreported, fundamental change coming to the habitability of many parts of the planet, including the USA.”

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But the greatest risk to human health may be in areas that are already hot, where temperature increases will strain habitability. In the U.S., the fastest-warming cities are in the Southwest. Las Vegas, El Paso, Tucson, and Phoenix have warmed the most, each by at least 4.3°F since 1970. Globally, many of the hottest cities are in India. In May, a deadly heat wave sent temperatures above 120°F in the north. The desert city of Churu recorded a high of 123°F, nearly breaking India’s record of 123.8°F, set in 2016. There were warnings not to go outside after 11 a.m. Authorities poured water on roads to keep them from melting. A 33-year-old man was reportedly beaten to death in a fight over water. The preliminary death toll in India for this summer’s heat wave is already more than 200, and that number is likely to grow.

How hot will it get? That depends largely on how far and how fast carbon-dioxide levels rise, which depends on how much fossil fuel the world continues to burn. The Paris Climate Agreement (which President Trump pulled the U.S. out of) aims to limit the warming to 3.6°F (2°C). Given the current trajectory of carbon pollution, hitting that target is all but impossible. Unless nations of the world take dramatic action soon, we are headed for a warming of at least 5.4°F (3°C) by the end of the century, making the Earth roughly as warm as it was 3 million years ago during the Pliocene era, long before Homo sapiens came along. “Human beings have literally never lived on a planet as hot as it is today,” says Wehner. A 5.4°F-warmer world would be radically different from the one we know now, with cities swamped by rising seas and epic droughts turning rainforests into deserts. The increased heat alone would kill significant numbers of people. A recent report from the University of Bristol estimated that with 5.4°F of warming, about 5,800 people could die each year in New York due to the heat, 2,500 could die in Los Angeles, and 2,300 in Miami. “The relationship between heat and mortality is clear,” Eunice Lo, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol and the lead author of the report, tells me. “The warmer the world becomes, the more people die.”

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The psychological impacts of extreme heat are obvious to anyone who’s ever felt cranky on a hot day. But the impacts go beyond crankiness. When temperatures rise, suicide rates can go up at a pace similar to the impact of economic recessions. Some aspects of higher cognition are impaired. School test scores decline, with one study showing decreases across five measures of cognitive function, including reaction times and working memory.

The link between heat and violence is particularly intriguing. “There is growing evidence of a psychological mechanism that is impacted by heat, although we can’t yet say exactly what that is,” says Solomon Hsiang, a professor of public policy at Berkeley. Some scientists speculate that higher temperatures impact neurotransmitters in the brain, resulting in lower levels of serotonin, which has been shown to lead to aggressive behavior. So rising heat may literally alter the chemistry in our brains. One study showed that police officers were more likely to fire on intruders during training exercises when it was hot. Andrew Shaver, a professor of political science at the University of California, Merced, analyzed data about conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and found that attacks by insurgents involving RPGs and assault rifles increased with higher temperatures, while planned attacks did not. “During conflicts, higher temperatures seem to provoke more impulsive aggression,” Shaver says. One speculative paper projects that by 2099, due to rising heat, the U.S. could see an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 rapes, 3.5 million assaults, and 3.76 million robberies, burglaries, and acts of larceny.

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A recent poll found that two-thirds of Arizonans accept that climate change is happening, but most elected officials in the state, including Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, are hardly climate activists. Arizona is one of the sunniest states in the nation, and yet only 6.5 percent of the state’s electricity comes from solar power. A statewide ballot initiative in 2018 to require 50 percent renewable power by 2030 was soundly defeated, in part because the parent company of Arizona Public Service, the big public utility in the state, spent more than $37 million on false and misleading arguments about how transitioning to renewable power would raise power bills and destroy the Arizona economy.

“We have a large number of elected officials who don’t believe in climate change, period,” says Stacey Champion, a longtime Phoenix energy and climate activist. “How do you get effective, data-driven policy if you have people pushing hard against it because they are batshit crazy, or they are afraid it will spook companies like Nike who want to come here?”

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Air conditioning is one of those paradoxical modern technologies that creates just as many problems as it solves. For one thing, it requires a lot of energy, most of which comes from fossil fuels. AC and fans already account for 10 percent of the world’s energy consumption. Globally, the number of air-conditioning units is expected to quadruple by 2050. Even accounting for modest growth in renewable power, the carbon emissions from all this new AC would result in a more than 0.9°F increase in global temperature by the year 2100.

Cheap air conditioning is like crack cocaine for modern civilization, keeping us addicted and putting off serious thinking about more creative (and less fossil-fuel-intensive) solutions. Air conditioning also creates a kind of extreme heat apartheid. If you’re rich, you have a big house with enough air conditioning to chill a martini. And if you are poor, like Leonor Juarez, a 46-year-old single mother whom I met on a recent July afternoon when the temperature was hovering around 115°F, you live in South Phoenix, where sidewalks are dirt and trees are few, and you hope you can squeeze enough money out of your paycheck to run the AC for a few hours on hot summer nights.

On hot days, Juarez’s small apartment feels like a cave. She has heavy purple curtains on the windows to block the sun. “I could not live here without air conditioning,” she tells me. Because she has poor credit, she doesn’t qualify for the usual monthly billing from Salt River Project, her utility. Instead, to pay for electricity and keep her AC running, SRP has given her a card reader that plugs into an outlet that she has to feed like a jukebox to keep the power on. Juarez turns on her AC only a few hours a day — still, her electric bill can run $500 a month during the summer, which is more than she pays for rent. To Juarez, who takes a bus five miles to a laundromat in the middle of the night because washing machines are discounted to 50 cents a load after 1 a.m., $500 is a tremendous amount of money.

She shows me the meter on the card reader: She has $49 worth of credit on it, enough for a few more days of power. And when that runs out? “I am in trouble,” she says bluntly. Juarez, who works as an in-home caretaker for the elderly, says she knows of several people who lived alone and died when they failed to pay their electric bills and tried to live without AC.

[uk-news-talking-politics]

The last day of Jeremy Corbyn

By Ian Dunt

Finally, it's done. This is Jeremy Corbyn's last day as Labour leader.

The experiment has been a disaster of biblical proportions. That is a point of electoral fact which cannot be negated by insisting that he 'won the argument' or with limp suggestions that the coronavirus response is somehow a validation of his political ideology.

He failed at the ballot box. He failed to provide opposition during one of the most crucial periods of British political history. He failed to even have a policy on the only debate taking place in the country since the referendum. He failed to tackle anti-semitism. He failed in his ideas, he failed in presenting them and he failed in implementing them.

His failures are legion and could go on for pages. It was the worst possible moment for it. Labour went absent just as the country was facing a powerful resurgence of reactionary nationalist sentiment. It meant that internationalists were denied an effective parliamentary vehicle to fight back and were instead reduced to rebellious MPs and a protest movement.

Those two groups fought a brave, principled campaign, under constant attack from left and right. But without the opposition party behind it, it was always an uphill battle. When the history books are written, it will be Corbyn - not Theresa May or Boris Johnson- who is treated as the main explanatory factor in Britain's deluded festival of hara kiri.

But we know all that. It's done. So today is a useful opportunity to ask a different question. What did we learn from the Corbyn movement which might stop us making similar mistakes in the future? And at the heart of that is not policy, but attitude.

The Corbyn machine was based on denial of reality born out of faith. And it is the faith that must be killed. There is no place for it in politics. It does not nurture hope. It encourages hatred.

Corbyn pursued politics without any suspicion that he might ever be wrong. His views were fundamentally unchangeable. They were set in the 70s and they lasted until today. No evidence against them could ever permeate the certainty with which they were held.

Organisations take on the character of those at the top and this was equally true for his movement. Corbyn was the saint, the prophet, the man whose inability to scrutinise himself was rebranded as unshakeable conviction. So many of those who followed him - not all, by any measure, but enough to define the movement - adopted the same approach.

Saint Jeremy could not be challenged. If events went against him, it was not because he failed in some way. That was unthinkable. It had to be because of a conspiracy against him, from the media, or opponents in the Labour party, or the Remain movement. The motivations of those who criticised him could never be genuine or their opinions truly held. They had to be cynical, scheming, in-it-for-themselves, liars, cheats, hypocrites, in league with big media or big money.

The Corbyn movement was an example of epistemological breakdown. It's psychologically identical to what happens to conspiracy theorists. You accept your truth. It becomes unchallengeable. Then everything which might disprove it must be put down to a shadowy effort by powerful forces to undermine it. And soon reality falls away. The world is degraded in order to shore up one's faith.

It is no coincidence that Labour fell victim to anti-semitism, the oldest of all the conspiracy theories. The structure of that form of thinking is identical. It is just a short step from questioning the motivations of those who challenge the leader to deciding that anyone who interrogates their record on anti-semitism is in the pay of Israel. The culture which fostered anti-semitism is the same which constructed mental defences against objective reality. And the party structure which failed to deal with it was the same which treated any criticism of itself as suspect.

The Corbyn movement was motivated by decent sentiments about helping the poor, nationally and internationally. But this messianic approach to politics never ends in kindness or gentleness. It always ends with tribal hatred. And you can see it today. The remains of the Corbyn movement online are behaving now precisely the way they behaved in the early days: with threats and abuse against those who disagree with them.

Anyone who has ever criticised Corbyn on social media knows how this works. They know the constant stream of hatred which follows. For many people - especially Jewish people, especially women - that became a nightmare that followed them into the real world, requiring security protection or forcing them from the party.

But when that happened, there was no moment of self-doubt, no flicker of moral recognition about the severity of what had occurred. There couldn't be, because the mental walls were too strongly set. So this too had to be translated into an attack against the leadership. The Corbyn movement became a self-perpetuating system for moral justification. Even when the things it witnessed were the direct results of its own actions, they had to be reformulated as evidence of conspiracy against it.

That's the lesson we can take from this. It is not about policy. Any number of Corbyn policies - although perhaps not all of them at the same time - could win in a British general election if presented in a convincing and competent way. It's not even about presentation, even though that left much to be desired. It is about how you conduct yourself in politics.

That goes no matter where you are on the political spectrum. We must never give in to the pull of hero worship. We must temper our support for a leader with a commitment to objective reality. We must resist the allure of conspiracy theory. We must leave ourselves open to doubt. We must reject faith.

We've lost so much over the last few years. But if we can take that from this debacle, at least we'll have gained something.

[phroyd]

Well, Thank You California! No more can the App Based Multi-Million Dollar Companies make their fortunes off of the backs of under-paid employees, and an avoidance of essential payroll taxes! - Phroyd

SACRAMENTO — California legislators approved a landmark bill on Tuesday that requires companies like Uber and Lyft to treat contract workers as employees, a move that could reshape the gig economy and that adds fuel to a yearslong debate over whether the nature of work has become too insecure.

The bill passed in a 29 to 11 vote in the State Senate and will apply to app-based companies, despite their efforts to negotiate an exemption. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, endorsed the bill this month and is expected to sign it after it goes through the State Assembly, in what is expected to be a formality. Under the measure, which would go into effect Jan. 1, workers must be designated as employees instead of contractors if a company exerts control over how they perform their tasks or if their work is part of a company’s regular business.

The bill may influence other states. A coalition of labor groups is pushing similar legislation in New York, and bills in Washington State and Oregon that were similar to California’s but failed to advance could see renewed momentum. New York City passed a minimum wage for ride-hailing drivers last year but did not try to classify them as employees.

In California, the legislation will affect at least one million workers who have been on the receiving end of a decades-long trend of outsourcing and franchising work, making employer-worker relationships more arm’s-length. Many people have been pushed into contractor status with no access to basic protections like a minimum wage and unemployment insurance. Ride-hailing drivers, food-delivery couriers, janitors, nail salon workers, construction workers and franchise owners could now all be reclassified as employees.

But the bill’s passage, which codifies and extends a 2018 California Supreme Court ruling, threatens gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft. The ride-hailing firms — along with app-based services that offer food delivery, home repairs and dog-walking services — have built their businesses on inexpensive, independent labor. Uber and Lyft, which have hundreds of thousands of drivers in California, have said contract work provides people with flexibility. They have warned that recognizing drivers as employees could destroy their businesses.

“It will have major reverberations around the country,” said David Weil, a top Labor Department official during the Obama administration and the author of a book on the so-called fissuring of the workplace. He argued that the bill could set a new bar for worker protections and force business owners to rethink their reliance on contractors.

California legislators said the bill, known as Assembly Bill 5 and proposed by State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat, would set the tone for the future of work.

“Today the so-called gig companies present themselves as the innovative future of tomorrow, a future where companies don’t pay Social Security or Medicare,” said State Senator Maria Elena Durazo, a Democrat. “Let’s be clear: there is nothing innovative about underpaying someone for their labor.”

She added, ”Today we are determining the future of the California economy.”

Ride-hailing drivers hailed the bill’s passage. “I am so proud of rideshare drivers who took time out of their lives to share their stories, stand up, speak to legislators and hope they take a moment to bask in a victory,” said Rebecca Stack-Martinez, a driver and an organizer with the group Gig Workers Rising.

Uber did not immediately have a comment. Earlier on Tuesday, it laid off 435 workers in its product and engineering teams, the company’s second round of cuts in recent months.

Lyft said it was disappointed. “Today, our state’s political leadership missed an important opportunity to support the overwhelming majority of rideshare drivers who want a thoughtful solution that balances flexibility with an earnings standard and benefits,” said Adrian Durbin, a Lyft spokesman.

Gig-type work has been under the spotlight for years as companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash in the United States — as well as Didi Chuxing in China and Ola in India — have grown into behemoths even as the contractors they relied on did not receive the benefits or minimum pay guaranteed to employees. Many of the companies have worked assiduously to beat back efforts to classify their workers as employees, settling class-action lawsuits from drivers and securing exemptions from rules that might have threatened the drivers’ freelancer status.

While regulators in California and at least three other states — New York, Alaska and Oregon — had found that ride-hailing drivers were employees under state laws for narrow purposes, like eligibility for unemployment insurance, those findings could be overridden by state laws explicitly deeming the drivers as contractors. About half the states in the nation had passed such provisions.

But more recently, the tide began changing. Two federal proposalsintroduced since 2018 have sought to redefine the way workers are classified to allow more of them to unionize. Those proposals have received support from candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, including Senators Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The presidential hopefuls also lent their endorsement to the California bill.

In Britain, Uber has appealed a decision by a labor tribunal that drivers must be classified as workers entitled to minimum wage and vacation. The country’s Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the case next year.

“Some form of benefits to some population of drivers seems inevitable,” said Lloyd Walmsley, an equity research analyst at Deutsche Bank who follows the ride-hailing industry.

A critical question is how gig economy companies will react to California’s new law. Industry officials have estimated that having to rely on employees rather than contractors raises costs by 20 to 30 percent.

Uber and Lyft have repeatedly warned that they will have to start scheduling drivers in advance if they are employees, reducing drivers’ ability to work when and where they want.

Experts said that there is nothing in the bill that requires employees to work set shifts, and that Uber and Lyft are legally entitled to continue allowing drivers to make their own scheduling decisions.

In practice, Uber and Lyft might choose to limit the number of drivers who can work during slow hours or in less busy markets, where drivers may not generate enough in fares to justify their payroll costs as employees. That could lead to a reduced need for drivers over all.

But Veena Dubal, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, said it would still generally be advantageous for Uber and Lyft to rely on incentives like bonus pay to ensure they had enough drivers on the road to adjust to customer demand much more nimbly than if they scheduled drivers in advance.

“It doesn’t make sense for them” to drastically limit flexibility, she said.

Some of the companies are not done fighting the bill. Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have pledged to spend $90 million to support a ballot initiative that would essentially exempt them from the legislation. Uber has also said it will litigate misclassification claims from drivers in arbitration and press lawmakers to consider a separate bill that could exempt them from A.B. 5’s impact when the legislative session begins in January.

California cities will have ways to enforce the new law. In last-minute amendments to the measure, legislators gave large cities the right to sue companies that don’t comply.

The bill was not universally supported by drivers. Some opposed it because they worried it would make it hard to keep a flexible schedule. After Uber and Lyft sent messages to drivers and riders in California in August asking them to contact legislators on the companies’ behalf, legislative aides said they had noticed a spike in calls.

As the bill wound its way through the Legislature, the ride-hailing companies sought an agreement that would create a new category of workers between contractor and employee. They met with labor groups and Governor Newsom’s office to negotiate a deal to give drivers a minimum wage and the right to organize, while stopping short of classifying them as employees.

But in July and August, labor groups balked, and the proposed deal disintegrated. Some company officials have expressed cautious optimism in recent days about striking a deal with labor after the bill’s passage.

Phroyd