Racing Turtles

He's so pleased with himself when he sees the sign on Streetview and gets to say the line but to be totally fair here he earned it

The state of Georgia did what with voter registrations?!

The friend who tipped me off to this said he hasn't seen anyone else talking about it so here's the elaboration.

Georgia added an online portal that lets you cancel other people's voter registrations if you have all the requisite personal information (like the stuff that keeps getting leaked in massive data breaches).

Supposedly this was so people could cancel the registrations of dead relatives, but like. There's apparently no requirement to prove that the person is dead.

just to give you a Crystal Fucking Clear idea of what the Republicans in charge of Georgia are doing I want to surface this from the first paragraph of the article:

So they 1)create a site where you can cancel ANOTHER PERSON'S registration, then they 2)~Accidentally Leak~ their citizens' voter registration info. I also remember, tho I don't have a link to verify, that on release there was a super-simple exploit that allowed you to bypass the verification check so you could cancel a registration even WITHOUT the information they'd just ~leaked~ to the public.

And at the same time Republicans in Georgia are doing this, Republicans in Arizona Are Trying to CANCEL the Registration of 40k+ Arizonans. Before the SC weighs in I just want to be clear: they have FOR YEARS allowed illegal district maps to stand in elections because "changing them so soon before an election would cause chaos"... up to 15 months before said elections. For them to allow Arizona to RETROACTIVELY(retroactive legislation is unconstitutional) CHANGE VOTER REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS 3 MONTHS BEFORE AN ELECTION would be against all precedent, contradict numerous rulings the sitting justices themselves handed down, and be JUST the sort of lawless, partisan hypocrisy they've shown themselves capable of time and time again.

So, apparently this bill won't take effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends (I am not a lawyer, but I think this is common practice for laws), so the repeal won't be immediate. Fortunately, Arizona also has a Democratic attorney general who has said she will not prosecute doctors who perform abortions in violation of this law.

Arizona Attorney Geneeral Kris Mayes won her election by 280 votes out of ~2.5 million.

Every single vote counts. Every single vote matters.

No no, I know the Yokut have been living here for literally thousands of years, making their dwellings out of cheap, readily available, local materials like adobe bricks, I know homes constructed this way actually stay comfortable and cool in the blazing desert heat, but also absorb that same heat for the freezing desert nights.

But, hear me out, let's import lumber from south fucking America so we can build huge insulated timber lattices divided by pockets of air and insulated drywall, the goal being to turn every non-ground-floor space into a sort of geomantic air fryer that is actively hotter than standing outside in the Mojave fucking desert.

arizona is proposing a bill to require students to take part in the pledge of allegiance. huge day for precocious high schoolers familiar with west virginia state board of education v. barnette

if you were ever a little shit about being expected to say the pledge of allegiance in school you're going to heaven no matter what

lmao

people make fun of arizona’s elected mine inspector but i saw 2 open mineshafts on my hike so maybe it’s reasonable actually

go in the dark 👆

The amount of open mines available to explore and die in is amazing

Customers who purchased ground beef from Kroger, Walmart, Albertsons, and WinCo Foods in several states are encouraged to check their products.

Eleanor + shrimp 🦐

one thing i love as a character note on eleeanor’s love of shrimp is that it’s funny and joyous, how unabashedly this woman loves to eat… and it’s also significant that this woman also grew up poor and neglected in arizona and she eats as much shrimp as she can, whenever she can.

arizona is in the american southwest, it’s a landlocked desert territory. while shrimp can be dirt cheap low-class street food in coastal cities, seafood is generally considered high class fine dining in desert states like arizona.

in more recent decades, shipping and refrigeration has made it easier to import seafood, so eleanor can treat herself to a party platter at the grocery store, but the association is still that shrimp is a classy treat you splurge on, not cheap meat you can get anywhere.

eleanor pretty much raised herself, and has done some deeply shitty things to get by. shrimp, especially classy shrimp cocktails, would have been an aspirational food to her, a sign that she doesn’t just have enough money to make it through another day, but also to treat herself to the ultimate high-class grown-up fancy-shmancy delicacy. her idea of heaven necessarily includes all-you-can-eat shrimp, because that’s what would really, fundamentally signify to her that she’s gotten her divine reward.

the good place is full of cool little details like that and i love it

Glad to see my lifelong disinterest in golf is paying off

let me tell you about golf

i grew up in a little desert valley called Tucson, Arizona, where it only rains 2 inches a year on average. the majority of the city’s water is pumped from an underground aquifer, which took millions of years to fill. one of the biggest conservation efforts in our city was for water, naturally, and i spent a lot of time learning about low flow toilets and 5 minute showers. i learned that filling your sink basin and washing your dishes in that water is less costly than running the tap. i learned that it only takes 2 days without water on the desert for someone to die

the city was sinking as the aquifer drained. neighborhoods fell into flood zones that didnt exist 10 years ago

there’s a road called Golf Links in the city and it is lined with golf courses. miles of green grass where grass doesn’t grow, in a valley where it doesn’t rain. why? because the rich white retirees who moved there to stop the aching in their joints decided they should also get to play golf. meanwhile our public schools taught small children like me that taking long showers would kill the world

let the golf industry burn

There are 15,500+ golf courses in the United States alone. 

Each one consumes ~312,000 gallons of water per day.

That consumption is equivalent to 55+ million humans per day in the United States… roughly 1/6 the entire population.

We simply cannot sustain this frivolity, especially for something 99% of us will never use.

Destroy golf courses and plant wild grasses and butterfly bushes in their place.

The Kinmundy Express, Illinois, July 23, 1931

Here’s A Story on this from Tuscon.com, and an important exerpt:

So his bill could also be used to block discussion on economic inequality and class politics, meaning this could be used to gag most history and political science courses. Another distressing bit:

Given the recent popularity of the BDS movement on college campuses(inspired by the anti-apartheid movement), and the conservative backlash against it focused on banning speech or actions taken to support it, this seems particularly significant to me.

And this isn’t an isolated thing. There’s a guy in Missouri who, under the guise of trying to make college “more transparent” and geared to the job market, wants to get rid of tenure. He sort of gives away the game though when, in that interview, he says stuff like this:

What this is really about is opening professors up to reprisal for their political veiws, and for engaging in research(for instance, climate science) that Republicans are ideologically opposed to. And remember: thanks to ALEC this stuff is going to get reproduced and disseminated all over the US, and likely at the Federal level. These guys didn’t write these bills -they barely even know what’s in them!- so this sort of things going to expand going forward.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 2016. 12:34 LOCAL TIME. DESPITE THE FACT THAT ARIZONA’S DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY HAS ALREADY BEEN CALLED IN FAVOR OF HILLARY CLINTON, RESIDENTS OF ARIZONA ARE STILL WAITING TO CAST THEIR VOTE. MANY HAVE BEEN WAITING IN LINE FOR UPWARDS OF 6 HOURS. AS IT BECOMES CLEAR THAT ARIZONA VOTERS HAVE BEEN MISLED, RE-REGISTERED WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT, LIED TO, DEFRAUDED, AND TURNED AWAY FROM POLING PLACES TOO CROWDED TO ACCOMMODATE THEM, MANY SOURCES ARE BEGINNING TO CITE VOTER SUPPRESSION AS THE TRUE REIGNING CHAMPION OF TONIGHT’S ELECTION.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/investigate-voter-fraud-and-voter-suppression-arizona-3222016-democratic-party

Here is a White House petition to get a federal investigation into voter fraud/voter suppression in Arizona. Please sign this!! It’s speculated that Bernie Sanders voters were targeted and we deserve a chance at fair voting.